NBA One Guy (the East!), a Man City Punishment Primer, and Tom Cruise’s Bomb With J. Kyle Mann, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by J. Kyle Mann to talk NBA rookies before they highlight one player from each East NBA team ahead of the season. Then, Chris Ryan and Van Lathan join to discuss the Cable/Streaming Hall of Fame, Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger,’ and Manchester City's troubles. (0:00) Intro (2:44) Rookies and NBA One Guy (the East) intro (7:01) Bulls, Hawks, and Celtics (21:37) Nets, Hornets, and Cavs (36:28) Pistons, Pacers, and Heat (50:36) Bucks, Knicks, and Magic (59:09) 76ers, Wizards, and Raptors (01:10:23) Cable Star Hall of Fame (01:19:06) ‘Digger’ and Tom Cruise (01:35:40) Manchester City's situation Host: Bill Simmons Guests: J. Kyle Mann, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Create a Personalized Price Plan® today. https://www.statefarm.com/lp/football/ 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/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables. On Monday night, we did Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We do some horror movies this month. Friday the 13th is going to be next week, by the way. So, uh, I don't know if we're gonna do all horror movies, but at least we're doing two and maybe, maybe some more. Who knows? So that's happening. Don't forget the What Chaos podcast that we added. If you love NHL, please go check that out and check out Jocelyn Book Club. Those were the, the two latest pods. We have a bunch of basketball podcast stuff as well. We also have some, some written stuff that we've added with, with our relationship with Substack. Tom Pellicero, we talked about the sweep. Brian Curtis launched his Substack finally this week.

• 1:23Bill Simmons?

  It is called Now They Tell Us. I thought the first installment was fantastic. He's going to be covering all types of sports media topics. So if you love the press box, please go check out Brian Curtis and his new endeavor. Coming up on this podcast, Jay Kyle Mann and I are going to go through the East and talk about one guy from every team that we're particularly fascinated by. And then Chris Ryan and Van Lathan were here because we did, uh, we did the Friday 13th rewatchables together. And Chris wanted to give us a book report on what's happening with this Man City situation, which is the single most fascinating suspension situation, probably in the history of professional sports leagues. So we talked about that.

• 2:04Bill Simmons?

  We talked about Tom Cruise and we talked about, um, the Cable Star Hall of Fame were the three topics for that. So that's all coming up next. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Kyle Mann talking some hoops. This is the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would, earn points in eligible settled bets, win or lose. Keep collecting points, level up and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever and it's with FanDuel. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC or Wyoming.

• 2:44Bill Simmons?

  Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 3:18Bill Simmons?

  All right, Jay Kyle Mann is here. He pops on this podcast a bunch during the NBA season. You can also hear him on the Ringer NBA Show and he does some video stuff for us too. And he loves rookies. He loves college guys. Which rookie, if I gave you AJ, Caleb, Boozer and Peterson, now that we're, we're within like less than three weeks to the season, which one are you the most excited to see? Combining where you felt before the draft, what happened in the draft, where they went to, and then all the buzz and all the stuff you're reading as we head into October 21st here.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Gosh, it's just, it, there's a flavor. It's a real Baskin Robbins situation where if you catch me in the right mood, I could just give you any, any of these guys. I'm excited for kind of different reasons. I mean, Caleb Wilson is going to have, like, we've talked, you and I have a lot about this. I mean, he's going to probably win Twitter the most often. I think there's going to be many of those like Blake Griffin-y rookie, rookie year type moments where we're just like, did you, did you see what he just did?

• 4:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Peterson will get hot, you know, DeBons will have his moments. I think, um, I'd probably still just go Boozer, just, I know that's the boring answer and he may be perceived as boring, but I think if you even watched him in the preseason game last night against the Hawks, he's trimmed his body down. He immediately was just doing winning Cam Boozer type of things. And so I'll, uh, I'll, I'll stick with that one because I had him number one at the end of the college season.

• 4:44Bill Simmons?

  So you came to the LA office and you did a whole bunch of, uh, group chats with Mahoney and, uh, Verrier. And I actually was in the office and I just crashed your Memphis and New Orleans section. So the, the pod, I don't think it's going up with. All of us love Memphis for being better than, you know, I think on FanDuel, they're 29 and a half. And I think the biggest reason is just Boozer's, seems like he's going to come in right away and be a 19 and 10 guy. I'm the most excited for Caleb, just because of, uh, I think for the first month of league pass, I kind of know what Boozer is, as much as I'm going to enjoy watching that Memphis team and their identity. Peterson, I think will be hit or miss.

• 5:26Bill Simmons?

  There's going to be games you catch him on the right night and you're like, oh my God, we haven't had a two guard like this since forever. AJ is probably in the worst spot because I don't know how much he's going to have the offense running through him and he's playing with Trey. But then Caleb, it just feels like it's, it's, the ceiling has been removed for where it could go. I have no idea where it's going to go. And he's one of the guys, we're going to do an NBA one guy gimmick in a second, but he's clearly the guy for the Bulls where I'm like, I literally can't wait to watch this.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, and there's a lot of runway for him to, to experiment and be messy because they're not in a hurry to be good, obviously. And, you know, he, he and Bozellis with, with Splitter, I'm just interested to see how he uses them. You know, they imported some shooting when they went and got the Buddy Heald thing done just to, just to, they needed, they just needed another spacer to go with Norm Powell. So, um, yeah, I mean, he's gonna, I think you're right. I mean, Boozer is kind of the guy, you just kind of said it and it's going to just run. I don't even know what the appliance comparison would be, but you just know that that thing is safe. But Wilson is gonna, he's gonna have, on both ends of the floor, I think he's going to have electric moments where he just erase, you know, chase down blocks, things like that.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  So I think night, night to night, I mean, the, the texting, I don't, I don't think there's going to be as much of that with Boozer, right? They're like, can you believe what he just did? But it's just going to kind of hover at the same speed, whereas Caleb's going to spike really high at moments.

• 6:53Bill Simmons?

  And he's also going to a fan base that desperately needed somebody like this since forever. Like this is, there's real energy around this team now. We're going to play, I'm calling this NBA one guy. So we're doing the East today, you and I, uh, and I'm going to do the West on Thursday. But this is one guy from each team that jumps out to me from a kind of swinging the ceiling or the floor of the team itself, but also I'm really interested by the position they're in. So I told you I could have mailed all these to you or you could have just played off me and you were like, ad lib, baby, let's go. I don't want to know any of these guys.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  You like, I, you like to surprise me, so I figured I'd just say that. So, yeah.

• 7:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was going to go in alphabetical order in the conference, but we'll go out of order because Caleb was my Chicago guy because he's checked every single buzz box so far, but I'm going to tweak it. It's him and Bozellis together. And if you read, do the training camp, like just reading the coverage of the team, those guys have already bonded and seem like they're, Bozellis is smartly aligned with him, but I also kind of like the matchup of the two of them together that makes sense to me as a combo. And I think there's going to be something there. Like all the early indications are like, you know, somebody wrote a huge, I think it was ESPN wrote a huge Caleb piece. And there was some anonymous quote from a team source and they were like, we think we have a guy.

• 8:18Bill Simmons?

  And when you start seeing stuff like that, that was like when the Patriots got Drake May, like you see this with quarterbacks, sometimes you see with the NBA, but when, when the organization is like, oh shit, we have a guy. And it feels like that's happened already, but Bozellis, I think both of us have liked, never felt like he clicked with Donovan. But them as the three and the four together kind of makes sense to me. I don't like Nick Claxton necessarily as the center for that, but those guys as the three and four, let's see what this is going forward, long-term makes sense to me.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we saw a little flash. I wasn't sure what to make of Bozellis when he was coming out of, uh, G League Ignite, but he's kind of slowly won me, he's very like chaotic good, which I think is what this tandem is going to be. Like it's going to be, I said messy before with both of them.

• 9:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  It's like Bozellis showed little flashes of playing in ball screen a little bit. I was revisiting a lot of that stuff in our, in our prep for our preview thing. And I was like, he's going to have to, he still dribbles really high when he's in traffic. He's going to have to work on a lot of those things and not to step on, you know, a point I made about him with the, with, and on, on our pod, we elaborate on it in a lot of detail, but I, the, the way Tiago Splitter rolled out, um, Denny, you know, last year and the way that he empowered him to get downhill, I could see him taking a similar mindset with, with Bozellis. So that, in that sense, and defensively, I think that they're going to be pretty electric too. These are like two crazy, crazy athletes.

• 9:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And that was my thought too with Splitter. The Denny point, I didn't think of that, but if I, if I'm coaching this team, I just want both of those guys to be going downhill and running and just being athletic, being in space and, um, both those guys can do it. I, I thought Bozellis really had moments last year and then there would be moments where he just didn't play and, and you never really knew what the objective of the team was, but I thought athletically, he's top of the line. And then Wilson is a level above him athletically. So you put those two together and I just think there's going to be some really fun nights. There's going to be some ugly nights, but there's going to be nights when the crowd, especially they haven't had a home crowd in so long, that's really been pumped about the team. They're going to have nights at home, I think, when, when they're going to be flying up

• 10:36Bill Simmons?

  and down, especially Giddy. So if you're looking at Giddy too, like this is like the perfect kind of toy chest for him. These two athletes who just want to run and want to go, you know, to the rim. So, um, I'm excited for those two together. All right, we'll go in alphabetical order from, from here on. One guy, Atlanta. My guy is Lou Dort for this team. And it's not a sexy pick. 27 years old, contract year. Playoff threes last three years, 39% in 24, 34%, then 31% last year. And it got to the point where it felt like the other team was dying for him to shoot, right? It was like, we'll take our chances with Lou Dort.

• 11:20Bill Simmons?

  Presti dumped him. Never a great sign.

• 11:25Bill Simmons?

  I trust Sam Presti. If, and, and you, you could say it's salary cap. I get it, but if they really wanted to keep him like they wanted to keep Hartenstein, they would have kept Lou Dort. They felt like they'd be okay without him. But I look at him with Atlanta and I think about like, if they're going crunch time and it's McCollum and Dort, Alexander Walker, Jalen Johnson and a Kangu, right?

• 11:50Bill Simmons?

  I kinda like it. And then you could go super small if you wanted, like super small and just put Daniels in for a Kangu and just play Jalen as the smallest small ball, five, and maybe have Dort guard big guys. But he gives them a physicality and something that they didn't have. And I also think he's gonna have a huge chip on his shoulder. So to me, he's the swing guy for them.

• 12:12Bill Simmons?

  If he, if he can be 2024 Lou Dort, I think that's a massive thing for them.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting to think about like why Presti would offload him because I've, I've been kind of going through and, and looking at, you know, like Wiggins ends up with them as well. Isaiah Jones ends up with the Pistons.

• 12:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  It kinda made me have flashbacks to, you know, Presti with his connection to the Spurs. Kinda makes your mind go here where you're like, there was a funny thing that happened with the Spurs where they would have role players sort of leave the, their little community at some point. And we would value those guys super, super high. And I caught myself having a moment where I was like, is that gonna happen again? Are we gonna have that thing where they're, they're with, their value was affected by being within the Thunder ecosystem?

• 12:57Bill Simmons?

  Like Danny Green syndrome almost.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, or like, or what was, was it Gary? I'm blanking on his name, the guy who hit all the ton of threes in the, in the finals. Gary, ah, whatever. Or Speedy Claxton, I remember. Didn't he get a big deal after, I think it was 2003? I just kinda wonder if we might see that again. I don't know that that's the case.

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  So you're saying like the system role players, when they leave the, leave the nest? It's not the same?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:24Bill Simmons?

  What was that Gary guy? Are we that old? We can't remember the guy.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Gary Neal.

• 13:26Bill Simmons?

  Gary Neal, that's right.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd wondered about that. It's, yeah, you, you hit it there with the lineup thing. I mean, Daniels can guard up and guard bigs. This team has, still has a lot of overlap between their guys. Even like, you don't read a lot into preseason, you know, you try not to, but watching them, I'm like, I do expect Kingston to have a positive impact on them. Like, I think he'll play early.

• 13:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  But it still feels like there's, the roadmap is just not totally there yet. Like, it kinda made me wonder, it got my wheels spinning about like, are they a team that's like gonna have a potential to make, to push in? Because there is some overlap.

• 14:06Bill Simmons?

  Like a two for one or something?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, like some, I was trying to figure out, I was like, who, who could they put on? Cause I was looking at it, I was like Kyrie, doesn't really make sense for Dallas and Atlanta to do business together, cause they both have kinda similar needs, right? It's like Dallas isn't like, well, we don't need more non-creators or whatever it is. And then I was like, maybe Garland? I don't know. I was kinda trying to look across the league about what kind of a guard or creator could give them more options, because I kinda wonder at the end of the day, if Jalen Johnson is probably like at the, on the highest type of a team, like a second or third type guy, you know? I've, I've been wondering about that.

• 14:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, they also have the ability to trade Dort if they wanted.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  That's, I was wondering that.

• 14:48Bill Simmons?

  At 17 million, that guy is definitely a February piece. Atlanta is a team to me that seems unfinished and a lot of it is tied around how he fits in. And then if Flemings is gonna be good or not this year. 20-year-old guards, I'm, I'm just not gonna make a prediction. You, you might end up with Jeremiah Fears, you might end up with James Booknight. You just don't know.

• 15:09Bill Simmons?

  Boston. Who do you think my guy is for Boston to discuss? If you had to guess?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Uh, Ron Harper Jr.

• 15:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I do like Ron Harper Jr. No, I'm going, uh, I'm going chalk here with Paul George.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Always down to talk Paul George.

• 15:28Bill Simmons?

  30, 36 years old, 17th NBA season. He's played 945 regular season games, 125 playoff games. And since 2019, a seven-year run, he's missed 213 games, including 41 and 45 the last two years. But then you flip it around the other way, in the 2020s, 22, six and four, 39% from three. Statistically sexy. Good sexy statistical profile, uh, if you.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  For his career, yeah, for sure.

• 16:02Bill Simmons?

  And I guess, I was trying to figure out if he's ever been in a better NBA situation, which is weird, cause he's not, not the same guy he was four years ago. But just from a, hey, Paul George, anything you do for us is a bonus. If you're good, that's fucking great. If you don't have it or you're a little banged up or whatever, we don't really need you. We have all these other young guys, we can throw into your spot. I'm thinking, so Jalen played 20, 2,443 minutes last year. Which Tatum basically is just gonna take, because Tatum's back. Tatum is usually around 26, 2700 minutes. Hugo and Shireman were around 2,200 combined.

• 16:48Bill Simmons?

  I think if, if, I think they need 55 Paul George games during the regular season and 1,500 to 1,600 good minutes. So he doesn't play all the time, but when he plays, he's around 28 minutes.

• 17:01Bill Simmons?

  You can switch with him. I think him and Tatum together are gonna be really fun to watch. These two tall guys who can guard every position on the floor. And Dave sold me on the, this guy will actually play off Jay, uh, Jason better than Jalen did, which is just gonna be true. As you know, I love Jalen Brown.

• 17:19Bill Simmons?

  But I think he could be a really additive piece to them and I've talked myself into it. So tell me that I'm crazy or I'm right.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  The idea of Paul George is one of the all-time, like the idea of a player. He's one of the, he's like first ballot on that because you're right, the statistics are like, you know, 15, 20 years from now, when people look back and talk about him, it's gonna be pretty interesting, because he at times has been an elite pick and, at 6'9", has been like an elite, you know, pick and roll player in the league. He's been an elite movement, not just catch and shoot, but he can move left to right when he's shooting the ball.

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  He can really pass the ball too. I, I think he's one of the all-time, like for guys his size that are smooth, fluid handlers, like he's, he's great. But I think the thing that is, those things change as you get older, obviously. And I think you're gonna see it in smaller doses. I think where he's gonna jump on and improve some of what, you know, Brad Stevens was trying to improve on in crunch time for them is, um, he's a good, he's a better passer than Jalen is, and I think he's a more dependable decision maker than Jalen is. He's bigger. He's definitely at that stage of his career, like that 2022-ish, kinda like Iguodala phase where, and this is, this is part of basketball, is once you hit a certain age, you become incredible at stripping people. This is, I found this in my own life.

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  Pickup, yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I just think, cause I was re-watching the matchups between, it's so funny that these guys ended up playing, getting traded for each other, Jalen and Paul. He was irritating Jalen because he just anticipates and, you know, I think he's gonna become more of that type of a player, like.

• 18:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Not necessarily shuttling and mirroring guys. I think the other thing for the Celtics too is, people keep looking at this as like a one-to-one Jalen versus PG thing. I think, and I'll, you know, I laughed a lot over the years whenever you would talk about Peyton Pritchard, about him taking responsibility, but he's just gotten better every single year. So I think it's gonna be just an aggregate, like guys taking a bite out of what's left there in Jalen's absence, and I think Pritchard is one of them.

• 19:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, if you just think about it holistically, the offense is gonna run through Tatum and then Pritchard. And if Tatum's not in the game, the offense will probably run through Pritchard, but maybe a little Paul George too.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  And I.

• 19:33Bill Simmons?

  Experts? Yeah, I wonder like how much they're gonna stagger these guys and not have them out there, but, um, I've talked myself into it, because I thought he was really good in the playoffs last year. And that was coming off a 25-game break for whatever he tested positive for. And then he came back for 10 games, then, then the playoffs. But he was really good in the playoffs and we've seen these NBA guys as they hit their mid-30s, they do have, they only need one good year from them. Next year, he's in expiring. And they have Hugo and they have Shireman, who they're going nuts about. And it's a, to me, it reminds me a little of the Philly situation where you have these other options if somebody doesn't play, right? It's like Paul George isn't playing tonight. Well, we're fine.

• 20:15Bill Simmons?

  We have Shireman, Walsh played 1,200 minutes last year, Harper, and then Hugo, and they'll patch it together. But I, I think the, the ultimate goal would be, what does this look like in the playoffs in a series? Can you count on him every other night? Things like that. I, that I have no idea, but I do think they can get 55 games, 1,500, 1,500, somewhere in there, minutes. And I think that fans are gonna like him. I, I can't believe I'm saying that, but I, I just think he's an additive player. You like him less if he's one of your two guys that are gonna decide whether you win the title or not, but he's like not one of their five guys who are gonna decide whether they're a title team. He's in a much better situation, so.

• 20:58Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I fully drank in the Kool-Aid, I poured it all over myself, and I don't, I think he's gonna be additive for them.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I think, I think he's regressing a little bit into like overqualified role player status a little bit.

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  100%, totally.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And, and but, and I, but I think that's okay. And I, you're thinking about like the best basketball situations he's been in. This'll probably be the best. I just keep thinking about cumulative passing when I think about the Celtics.

• 21:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  You think about Derrick White, you think about, Ja, Jason has always been a little bit better at that. Not that everything's about Jalen, but he's always been the better of the two about getting off the ball. I just think they're gonna have a lot of good passers on the floor where it's not gonna bottleneck. And if you think about the teams that Paul's been on, last year with Embiid, with Maxey, with the, it's just the ball didn't move quite as well.

• 21:42Bill Simmons?

  No, you're standing in the corner.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think this'll be, he's gonna be an overqualified connector too, I think.

• 21:50Bill Simmons?

  I still don't understand the trade.

• 21:54Bill Simmons?

  But I at least understand the trade. I wouldn't have done it, but I get why they did it. And I think it was a basketball decision for them with the minutes and all the players. And I just don't think it was sustainable with those two guys. I think they thought we've hit the ceiling with this. We won the title. We need to get out of this. Brooklyn, I have Michael Porter Jr. For this one because I thought about Demon because Demon, there's some interesting stats with him. Like he had this crazy month where he shot like 44% and he has size and I'm intrigued by him. But I went with Porter because he's the total internet podcast package. He is first team all NBA trade machine. He'll be in the trade machine until the deadline in mid February. Well, he'll just be just throw him in.

• 22:38Bill Simmons?

  He's got the good stats, bad team stuff. He's a really good, and I think Randall's like this too. We don't want to finish in the bottom three. Can you win a couple of games for us and get some stats and maybe push us into the bottom five or six, so we're not in the bottom three? And then, uh, just as maybe the craziest interview of anyone in the league. I wrote down just some of the things. He, he said he once texted Jokic how to approach and date a Slavic woman and Jokic left him unread. This was a tidbit. He once said a McDonald's All-American High School team would absolutely beat the women's Olympic team. He said he wouldn't date anyone who has dated another NBA player.

• 23:23Bill Simmons?

  It's just an automatic cross off. He said the Porter's family has vices. His brother loved gambling and he loves women. He shared that. He accidentally put Adam Silver's number on Snapchat. Do you remember this? This was a few years ago. That happened.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:38Bill Simmons?

  He said in a podcast that he tests potential girlfriends by throwing on Andrew Tate to see how they react. And then back in 2020, he said he thought COVID was used for population control. So I'm, I'm excited for him in a free agent year. I don't know what he's capable of. We have more podcasts to go on. I don't think he's really, I think he's going to be letting it fly and uh, he's a trade machine guy. Michael Porter Jr., I'm in.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. Some of the risk for somebody who gets the, gets shots up, the, some of the riskiest and most harmful shots that, that, uh, that Porter takes or when he's in front of a microphone. And I was just thinking that, um, whenever you relaunch the hottest take, you were giving me the tour and showing where that, where that would be taking place.

• 24:22Bill Simmons?

  Bring him, just bring him in?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Bring him in cold. Just bring, bring Porter in cold and just like turn the mic on him. Just let him start speaking and you'll be able to just kind of trim it into episodes.

• 24:32Bill Simmons?

  Right, we'll get like a half hour of straight content.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:37Bill Simmons?

  Look, he's an expired contract, I think at 37 million.

• 24:43Bill Simmons?

  A good team is going to trade for him.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Well, Detroit would have made a whole lot of sense. It, it is interesting that you hear people, I think Bernthal was talking about this because Bernthal's dad was a basketball coach, I think, or something. He was saying your, your personality, your play style reflects your personality. And it is so fucking funny how Porter Jr.'s personality absolutely is reflected in the way he plays basketball. It's just no conscience, just absolutely doesn't, doesn't second guess anything. But he's still, for all the joking around, it's like he's 6'10" and he is just an incredible, you know, he can get a shot up in any situation, even if, even if it's a closeout, even if he's driving. I mean, he hits shots over Anthony Davis.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Like he's just, he's, uh, he's one of the most talented shooters in the world and he happens to be six foot 10. And you're right, some team is going to look around and just go, let's add that. And I've also been encouraged by him coming to this team. He, his quote, something sensible that he said was that he wanted to be an even better off ball player. It's like, in a way, he kind of knows who he is. I was glad he wasn't coming in there and just being like, all eyes on me. He, it's, uh, it's not a harmful way that he plays.

• 25:52Bill Simmons?

  28 years old. This will be probably his last big contract. If you catch him on the right night, coming off screens and just firing, he seems unstoppable. I think he, from all the guys from this decade, I think he's going to be the number one blank was a problem video that we have in 2039. I think there's going to be a three minute Michael Porter Jr. Thing where it's like, was this guy the best part of all time?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Do you see the, do you see the prompt I put out last night? We should, I said, we should just start challenging ourselves to see how hard we can make it. Like just to pick.

• 26:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh, what player?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody suggested we make a Costa Kufus. He was a problem video and I'm working on that in my spare time right now.

• 26:33Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Like a, like a Greg Steamsba?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, Steezy, you'd have to really pour off some tape for that one, but yeah.

• 26:41Bill Simmons?

  All right, next, next team is Charlotte.

• 26:45Bill Simmons?

  Nas Reed is the easy pick for this. 27 years old, last three years, 14 and six, 38% from three, 25 minutes a game.

• 26:55Bill Simmons?

  Uh, beloved teammate. I think he's a guy who could be on the floor in the last five minutes of a, of a good game.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Oh, we know that. Yeah.

• 27:03Bill Simmons?

  Which they needed. Here's what's interesting to me because they traded LaMelo and you would think the Charlotte threes would go backwards. They made 16.4 threes a game last year, which led, led the league. It's a lot of threes.

• 27:17Bill Simmons?

  Miller, Khan, Kobe White, Grayson Allen, who they have now, Nas Reed and O'Neal. Those guys combined, just those six made 16.4 made threes a game last year.

• 27:31Bill Simmons?

  And I wonder, is this team, could this team potentially make like 19 threes a game? 18 and a half, like what, what's the ceiling for that? And then how much of an advantage is that going to be? Cause we're, we're seeing this in baseball where they look at all these different inefficiencies for regular season. And lately it was like defense or, you know, like Tampa Bay just always zags against where everybody's going. And with Charlotte, I wonder like, if you're making 18, 19 threes a game, is that worth like 10 wins? And then could Nas Reed play at 30 minutes a game instead of 25? Can he play with, both with Diabate and without him? Or are they going to play him at power forward with Steinback? But I think how they use him is going to be the key to this team. Because I like all the other pieces.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it seems like that's been the recurring thing you hear from people is just, you know, they want to get these threes up, but how are they going to create them? And you assume that, you know, LaMelo not being there, I kind of think it might just be a little bit of a stylistic shift. Cause you don't have like the elite, you know, passer, uh, playmaker, pick and roll guy.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  But I've kind of wondered if they might go a little more Warriors-y where they're depending on their, their movement, shooting and just kind of playing and then getting cutting from that.

• 28:48Bill Simmons?

  I think that's what they want to do. I think they want to have, I think they want to run a lot of the stuff through Miller and Khan. And then Kobe White, obviously too, but a lot of, where it's just way less predictable than just LaMelo dribbling the ball up.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's something interesting and underrated about Nas is he can handle the ball really well for his size. So he'll be able to like space the floor effectively in a way that Miles didn't. And then, um, he can drive his position really well. So that he just, he's a really versatile piece. We'll see if the Wolves fans there, how hardworking they are at the, over the course of this season, just missing him. Not just because he was a great vibes guy, but he, he is really, really versatile, like really, really skilled for his size. Shot heavy, heavy volumes, spot up threes last year and hit 40% of them. So Charlotte really leaning into their, their shooting thing, even if the means to the end is going to be a little bit different this year.

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  He's always been a good per 36 guy. He's always been a good eye test guy. And I like the fact that, you know, in, in your head, it feels like he's been around forever. Which Lou Dort's like this too. It's like, you're only 27?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I was kidding, 2019, right?

• 29:57Bill Simmons?

  You could have told me he was 32. I would have believed that, but yeah, he's only 27. So I think Charlotte, um, the, the other key for them will be how much, how much can Khan? How much can stuff run through him? Right? Cause we forget Khan really flamed out the last three weeks of the season and I, and in the playoffs. And I don't know how healthy he was, but it cost him the rookie of the year. But these year two guys, and we're going to see with Flag too, and a couple of others, like year two, you make a huge jump. You're, now you're used to the schedule. You've worked on conditioning, different things to get, you know what you kind of need to do. And I think for him, he'll be, I think he'll be in good shape, but I also think he's going to be ready to run plays and offense for them, which, um, I don't know.

• 30:42Bill Simmons?

  I always felt like when they did pick and pop with him and he had the ball. And it's either he, he was throwing it back to whoever said him the pick, or he was just playing off the pick and shooting. I always felt that was unstoppable. And I want to see like, can you do that with Nas Reed? Can you do this? And then the other one is Steinback. What, what is he going to look like for them as like a rebounder? Cause they, it feels like they're a little lighter rebounders. Anyway, um, okay. For Cleveland, it's clearly Peyton Watson.

• 31:12Bill Simmons?

  24 years old. Signs a four-year, $88 million deal. Kyle, his first three years, he was seven points a game. 19 minutes a game, 33% from three. In the 25 playoffs, which is less than a year and a half ago, he played 14 minutes a game for them. And then in '26, it all jumped up. Mainly because of this 19-game stretch he had where there wasn't a lot of Jokic. And he was like 22 a game, he was hitting threes, he looked like just an awesome two-way player potentially. But he also had the ball a lot. Now he's going to Cleveland. Guess where he's not going to have the ball a lot? Cleveland. Because they still have Mitchell and they still have Harden.

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  We've never seen him succeed with a lot of minutes in the playoffs. We haven't seen it at all. They paid him like a playoff guy. He's in the salary group right now. He's Io, Brooks, Giddy, Jabari, Hartenstein, McDaniels. Nemhard on the Pacers, Vassell, Kobe White, Zubots. These are like proven really good, I'm not one of the two best players in your team, but I'm right underneath. And they're paying him like that. And as talented as he is, I'm... I don't know if he has it or not. Like, I just don't, I don't know yet. And I think anyone who says, "Oh, we definitely know from that 19-game stretch." I don't think you can say it. I don't know how it's going to play out. So where do you stand?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I mean, he's definitely going to take a hit in terms of the organic, just cutting, style that... Of just flying around Jokic that comes, that comes with playing with him. It's a little bit different playing in such a heavy, heavy ball screen situation. And you're playing with two guys who are rough spacing bigs. I think you could argue at this point, Jared Allen and Mobley. So that'll be different, too. But I mean, the catch-and-shoot stuff with him. His shooting has really, really improved. He was almost 40, 45% last year from, on his catch-and-shoots. So I think he'll be able to serve that role. It's just kind of, he's going to have to be hyper-efficient, I think, to justify the payment that he got for, you know...

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Based on, he has, he has a lot of kind of upside ambition. I don't know if this is like a Jeremy Grant thing where he's going to pursue that and pursue that. And then we're just kind of, and then we're like, "Ah, I think you're probably better over in this box. We might be on that path." But it'll be interesting to see how he responds to being a little bit in tighter kind of parameters, I think. And as opposed to, who spacing-wise was he working around in Denver? That was really somebody to move around? I mean, Aaron Gordon, Aaron Gordon's become a pretty good shooter over time. So this will definitely be a much different spacing challenge for him in Cleveland.

• 34:00Bill Simmons?

  I feel like it's either going to go awesome, or it's going to be really rocky and awkward for the first month. And you could give me either. Look, I thought Denver should have kept him. And if I have Jokic, I'm just paying the apron and the tax. And obviously, the Krunkies have a ton of money because they just bought the Angels and they keep buying sports teams. With that said, I was more surprised from the Cleveland side of this. And I know they were able to shed some contracts and kind of, kind of figure out how to Scotch-tape this together and make it work. But they don't have a lot outs if this doesn't work. Because they gave Mitchell the extension. Mobley's making a lot of money. They're back in in the Harden business for two more years. And they kind of like, they don't have a choice with this.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  This has to work. And we've never seen him as a side piece of a really good playoff team where he doesn't have the ball a lot. And I just want to see it. How is he going to play? Because at Denver, he looked awesome, but he had the ball. Like, it was, you know, the team didn't really have a choice. They had to run a lot of stuff to him, and he did really well. But how is that going to work in Cleveland? We'll see. It's a, it's a pretty big number risk. Because those guys I mentioned are all, with the exception of maybe Jabari, guys who had real, like Io, Brooks, McDaniels, Zubots, Vassell. Like, these are guys who've played in big games and kind of know their role. And I'm not sure you know your role with them. Okay, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to go through the rest of this.

• 35:29Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. On FanDuel, a player leaving the game doesn't have to mean the end of your bet. It's called pinch-hit protection. If the player you bet on exits the game and is replaced by a pinch hitter, your bet stays in play with the player who takes his place. Because in the postseason, managers are going to make moves, lineups are going to change. And FanDuel gives your bet away to stay in the game. I agree with what Cousin Sal said on Sunday. I think we're headed for a Tampa-Milwaukee World Series. Just seems like the perfect matchup as we head into a lockout. And also, both those teams are really good. I am on Ben Rice for homers. Basically, every Yankee playoff game the rest of the way. Because he's on fire, and he's the only one on that team who's hitting. And I don't think it's going to stop. So there you go.

• 36:13Bill Simmons?

  When you're making your player picks this postseason, look out for pinch-hit protection. Check it out in the FanDuel app or visit fanduel.com/BS to get started. FanDuel, your home for home runs. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea-flicker or a tush-push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now, that's a solid game plan.

• 36:58Bill Simmons?

  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Detroit Pistons. I wish this wasn't the answer, but I think it has to be. Durin is the most fascinating guy on this team. He got the contract 40 for 200. Centers making more than him this year will be Anthony Davis, if you count him as a center. Embiid, Towns, Bam, Sabonis, Triple J, if you count him as a center, Chet and Wemby. So he's being paid as a top-tier dude. I voted for him for second-team All-NBA. He was absolutely abysmal and horrible in the playoffs. And if you're going to be favorable, you say, "Well, he had a lot of, he was putting a lot of pressure on himself because this contract was coming."

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:36Bill Simmons?

  The glass half-empty would be, the league kind of figured out what to do with the roles. And be physical with them before that lob's even thrown. And there wasn't really a Plan B for them. And he got in his own head and didn't do as well. This is, this is a bigger version of the Watson contract. If they're wrong on this, it's kind of a, it's kind of a half-a-decade sinker for them. Because this is, you can't have three expensive guys. So now they've locked in him. And I don't know, we'll see how it goes. Because if it doesn't go well right away, the Piston fans, I don't think are going to be that friendly about it.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a two-fold thing where, you know, it's partly the guys that are around them. You need somebody, some of the people that they invested in, like, you know, they hoped that Kevin Herter could come in. Not trying to just randomly blame Kevin Herter. But it's the people who are surrounding this, you know, central method of scoring that the Pistons really bludgeon people with. In a year when the East was down, it does, does need to be, you know, mentioned that in this vacancy, they came in and just kind of occupied the space with the K. Durin, I heard you and Kirk talking about it, and I absolutely think it's true. They just, they killed people with that because it was so tough to prepare for.

• 38:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  But if you're playing the percentages, you're looking at it and you're saying, "I don't think Jalen has a whole lot outside of catching the ball in the, you know, in the block, off the roll, and, and, you know, taking one dribble and dunking it." Like, not a super great, you know, connective passer from that spot in the short roll. Doesn't really have much of a pop game. It's just, he was very, very limited. And you watched against the Magic, and they just said, "All right, man, we're just going to kind of set up shop whenever you're, whenever you catch that ball and you're ready. And we don't think you have anything after that." And, and it was like, so when you combine that with, you know, Jenkins kind of turning into a pumpkin in the playoffs, and then, you know, those guys that you imported to kind of take pressure off of that not doing anything.

• 39:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, and you lose Tobias. You lost Tobias, who was the only other guy he could run a play for, and know he'd get a decent shot. He's gone.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So there are pressure on those two things. I mean, we'll see. We mentioned Isaiah Joe is another one of the, the OKC guys who sort of, you know, was pruned off of that experiment. And they got him for so cheap. We'll see if he can add something. You know, him playing with John Collins, I guess, can play at the four or some in that Tobias spot.

• 39:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't like it.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  But it is tough, man. I mean, he's still young.

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  I was, I was wrong about them last year. And they won, what, 60, something like that? Their over-under this year is 48.5. And there's like heavy juice on the under. Them going 49 in the much-improved East where there's no tanking anymore? That seems like a tall task. But yeah, that, this will be, if he starts out badly, this will be tough. Now, he could come out and be fucking awesome and be like, "This is why I deserved the contract." But that's why I'm watching him. This is, this is another, like, here's the ceiling, here's the floor. If he looks like the guy from the playoffs, it's not going to be great. They also don't have the Beep Stew anymore. You know, it's like a little security blanket for him. Now you're actually counting on Paul Reed in a real way, which... Paul Reed's fun.

• 40:45Bill Simmons?

  You know, he's, he comes in, does the, the big man Dion Waiters every once in a while. But now, now you need 82 games of it. Indiana.

• 40:55Bill Simmons?

  Who'd you think I had for this one?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I had Oubre. I didn't know if you were.

• 41:00Bill Simmons?

  Oubre, good defender last year in the, at least in the Celtics series, Oubre. So you think Oubre's gonna play for him?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I think that he just makes sense. Like, I think that he's gonna line up with Halliburton's sensibility pretty well. Like, I think that just the speed of the way that they're gonna play, um, I was looking at it. It's, it's a version of the way that he played with Charlotte, I guess, but a more sane version. Um, yeah, I, I just think he's gonna fit with their style of play. And he's matured over the past few years and the, the types of, it, it's been interesting cause I think that he is a 3 and D guy, had a like, ugh, I don't know Kelly Oubre too. You kind of heard it over people's voices change over the past couple of years. We're like, Kelly Oubre is actually pretty serviceable dude. Who'd you have, though?

• 41:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, with him, when he went to Golden State and it was just such a bad fit, it made me think like, oh, this is a guy who can only fit in certain situations, right? So now he, he found a better situation in Philly. Now he's in a team with Indiana that plays a little more like Golden State does with a lot of movement and things moving around. And we already saw him failing that. I had Zubotz because, um, what they gave up for him, but also like just looking at their, in their playoff run in 25, which was a lot of games. They made it to game seven of the finals. Myles Turner, 14 points a game, five rebounds.

• 42:24Bill Simmons?

  Two blocks a game, four three-point attempts a game, 29 minutes. Zubotz in the 25 playoffs, even though it was one series, but it was against Jokic, the best player in the world. 17 and 10, got a block, 36 minutes a game.

• 42:39Bill Simmons?

  So you think, all right, he's not gonna be able to space the floor like Myles Turner did cause he doesn't really shoot threes, doesn't shoot threes at all.

• 42:47Bill Simmons?

  But Myles Turner wasn't like an amazing three-point shooter. He was okay. But OKC, by the time we got midway through that series, was like, knock yourself out, dude. We're giving that to you every single time. And Zubotz being around the, the basket, playing off Halliburton, I just feel like is such a better fit for these guys. And I also got to watch him in person, you know, a bunch of times. And I, he was way better in 25, 26. I think he was a little hurt even before they traded him. But I just really like him and, and, uh, and I'm excited to see them with a real center. And I, I continue to be really bullish on Indiana. I don't know why people don't consider them a contender in this.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, Zubotz is so different than, than Myles in the fact that he, he aims small and misses small in terms of like positionally, he doesn't really gamble the way that Myles does. Like, the highs might not be as high in terms of like when Myles is flying around, he's long, he's athletic, he's blocking shots and things like that. It's like Zubotz is much more conservative, but he's very smart in the way that he's conservative as a defender. Like, he, he's positionally really smart, so you may not get like the block totals. But I think that he, he processes the defensive side of the floor really well. And it's like, even though he doesn't space the floor the way Myles does, that hypotheticalness of, of Myles spacing the floor killed Indiana in some really critical moments.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Where if you just think about, what was, was it that, was it game six or game five? That he missed a couple just backbreaker threes, um, whereas.

• 44:19Bill Simmons?

  Game four too, that was another one. Yeah, it was the midway through the series. OKC just was like, we're, we're fine with this now. Please knock yourself out.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  I think it might've been game four where he missed a couple and OKC took that game on the road. It's all blurred together for me now, but it's like, even though the, the width of, of what Zubotz does is not necessarily as wide, he's very realized in who he is and what he does. So it's like, you're gonna get a little bit more post-up game. He's a pretty good connective passer. That word keeps coming up. But, um, I think that he's gonna accelerate the way the Pacers play in a good way.

• 44:53Bill Simmons?

  I agree. Plus fun to, fun to cheer for. He goes zoo. Whole crowd goes zoo.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  They're not saying boo, you know, that, that old one.

• 45:02Bill Simmons?

  When I was at those Pacers game, I was surprised by, um, how annoyed all of their fans were by Myles Turner. Cause you, you can't really tell until you're in the arena, who the guy is on each team, that the fans are like, ah, this guy drives me crazy. He was there, this guy drives me crazy guy. And Zoo is, Zoo is as reliable as it gets. You know exactly who he is. He's in all the right spots at all the right times. No center is gonna torch him. And they're, they're playing now against some, you know, there's some good centers in the East now, but he'll be able to go toe-to-toe with all those guys. I continue to be mystified by the Pacers. Like, their over-under is 44 and a half?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:39Bill Simmons?

  Um, like, to me, that's a 50-win team if Halliburton's healthy. I just think they're gonna be really good. I guess the other question would be, what are we getting from TJ? And is he moving toward a different bench point in his career? But I, I continue to like them. All right, Miami.

• 45:56Bill Simmons?

  I'm really fighting off the urge to wonder if, if I might've been wrong on, uh, being too glass half empty on Miami.

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  So I watched some of their preseason game. It's great, it's preseason. Giannis looks great.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  14 minutes swung you, swung you.

• 46:11Bill Simmons?

  Giannis looks great. I have no idea how him and Bam are gonna play, but obviously their swing guys, Wiggins. Because, um, you could even, you know, you can see it from when you read the stuff and just in general, like Giannis is just, he's, he creates open space for guys. They, you still have to put the wall up if he has to head a steam. And I just think Wiggins is in a nice spot. He's at a weird point in his career. Wiggins is over 15,000 points.

• 46:42Bill Simmons?

  He has 834 games he's played. In the 2020s, he's averaged two made threes a, a game and 38% from three. And he's never somebody you want as one of your best two guys, right? Golden State didn't even want him as one of their best three guys. They, they seem pretty delighted to finally move off him. But this is the perfect situation for him, cause Giannis is gonna get all the attention. Heat culture, Spolstra, and you know, they, they doubled down. He did this extension that was a pretty fair price. Like, he's making, he signed an extension for half of what Peyton Watson got, two for 34. And at least with Wiggins, like, we saw him, he was the second best guy on a title team.

• 47:22Bill Simmons?

  I think he slipped a little over the last couple of years from that level, but, um, but this is a nice spot for him. Somebody who's done it before, which I think you have to respect.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Miami's kind of pursuit to answer the spatial questions of having Bam and Giannis on the floor together, your natural, you know, it's just like a, I'm not a chef, but we got a, a dish that's too sweet or salty, whatever. You're sprinkling in shooting to sort of balance out the, the, the problem, the thing, the question that you're gonna have to answer with Giannis and Bam. And naturally, you're gonna add guys that are going to just be implied challenged defenders, like the Tim Hardaway Jr., the Klay at this point in his career. And I think that that opens up a world where we, we know that Davion Mitchell can guard point guards. He's a bulldog in that sense, but there's a big in-between where even though Bam can switch up and down the chain,

• 48:14Speaker 01

  it's like, who's gonna guard these big perimeter scorer type guys? And that's gonna be an opportunity for Wiggins to, to really cash in defensively. There's the catch and shoot opportunities that he's gonna have, obviously. Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be, you were mentioning just the cumulative quality of his career. I brought up a stat about guys under 25 who had scored, I forget the, the point total, but it was only like 12 dudes and it was a lot of stars.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  And Wiggins.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Andrew Wiggins. He's in this interesting purgatory of, we're just like, eh, don't love Wiggins. He's almost like the, he's almost like the wing version of what, the way we talk about Myles Turner. It's just Myles Turner never got his opportunity. If he'd made some shots, maybe he would've entered this, this, this elevated spot. But it's like, he's not quite what you want him to be, but he's still not an outright failure. Wiggins is a fascinating player.

• 49:07Bill Simmons?

  Shock, he'll be a shocking 20,000 point guy.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Who's the other one?

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  Jameson, didn't Jameson get there?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  He might have. Uh, I'm trying to think like, like those Jim Jackson type guys who just, you're like, bam, it's a pretty good total at the end of it when you zoom out, but.

• 49:24Bill Simmons?

  That also reminds me of when, uh, when I was doing my basketball book, there was this old NBA writer who was like a guy in the 50s, 60s, George, I think Casito is his name. And he said Walt Bellamy is gonna be the skeleton of the 20,000 point club. Cause Walt Bellamy was like, just getting to, nobody liked Walt Bellamy in the 60s. Walt Bellamy, I think, ended up with 20,000 points, but nobody ever thought he was a winning player the entire time it happened. Wiggins has at least been a winning player, but, um.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  The Knicks traded Bellamy for.

• 49:54Bill Simmons?

  To Busch, yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he bounced around. He, he had a couple, couple homes. But, um, the thing with, the thing that's so tough to figure out Miami is if Giannis plays 70 games, it probably is a team that's gonna be in the high 40s, cause so much is gonna run through him. If Giannis misses like a month or five weeks, I don't know what they're gonna do offensively. What happens at that point? Cause they, they have a lot of role players and guys that are specifically built around this, the, the force of somebody like him. And if you don't have that, they don't, how are they gonna create shots at the end of games?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, Giannis dictates a certain type of roster build, but I think in all the concern, which I think is fair, all the concern about like how he's gonna age with his play style,

• 50:41Speaker 01

  it can be forgotten that he is an elite floor-raising player still. And I, I think just having him on court, you can roll him out with like a replacement or even a little bit below replacement players. And he's just a pain in the ass, cause you know, there's just so few people in the world that can guard him.

• 50:57Bill Simmons?

  He has at least two really elite years left if he can stay healthy. And then we'll see after that. He's, the, the stats and the history are against it. But, um, but I think it's a nice spot for Wiggins. We could skip over Milwaukee really quick. I had Tyler Hero for them just cause he's in a contract year. He's never been in a situation where it's like, just let me cook. I think he's a sneaky 27, 28 points a game scorer potentially.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could see that, that feels like it's coming for sure.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  I think he's first-team All-NBA trade machine. He's averaged 20 points a game for five straight years. And this is the first time he's been in a situation where they're like, just go ahead, cook.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:35Bill Simmons?

  You know, especially the roster that they have, um, and we'll see how it affects Burris, who's the guy I really care about on that team. New York.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  I have Karl-Anthony Towns for this.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:47Bill Simmons?

  A couple of different reasons.

• 51:50Bill Simmons?

  Extension's not happening. He sacrificed last year for the title, you know, and really, I think, goes down in Knicks history and all that. Did everything you'd want. Might have faded in the last couple of games, but it's fine. They won. Usually, the history of the NBA is when you sacrifice to win a title, the year after, probably less prone to sacrifice. And there's different versions of the disease of me, disease of more, which I've written about and talked about forever, but this is a staple of this where it's like, all right, I sacrificed last year. Now what about me?

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  So you have, this has been Brunson's team. Brunson was the one that got to host SNL. Towns was in the stands. Brunson is a god in New York City. Everybody loves Towns as well. I wouldn't have given him the extension here. He's under contract for the next couple of years anyway. I don't know how he's going to age when he hits his 30s. And I'll, I'll wonder if the, this team in general, but specifically him, do you sacrifice as much when you've already won? And it's been the, the question of the NBA for 75 years. How do you act after the year you won? And I just, I don't know with him. We'll see.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's interesting how it's like, no one is immune to that where, you know, there might be little situational moments where people are, you know, people are just praising a team for their guys doing what you're talking about for those, oh, yeah. But it's, the rubber hits, meets the road at some point with every person, you know? So Towns, you know, they, they've got a lot more to mine. We went, like, again, I'll plug the group chat episode again with the Knicks, which it'll be later this week when we get to them because they're at the top of the NBA because we're going bottom to top. But he really hit on something where him as the high post passer guy, I think that's the part of his game where if he continues to lean into that and the Knicks continue to play through him, there's a lot more for him to show. So maybe that's a way for him

• 53:50Speaker 01

  to just kind of, you know, squeeze the rag as the season goes on and just show like, hey, you know, without me, that seems like the quintessential argument if you're Karl Anthony Towns. It's like, I'm not just out here spacing the floor for Brunson. That team hit a turning point when they started playing through him like that.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  And that would be, that would be my argument because there's nobody else on here. It's like, do you expect Mikal Bridges to tap into Brooklyn Mikal where he was like running pick and roll or? I don't see any other primary offense outlets for them. So you would think that would be the way that he's going about arguing for his value.

• 54:20Bill Simmons?

  My guess is it's going to go fine, but I'm always watching this stuff. They also, he doesn't have the Mitch Robinson security blanket this year. So when he gets three fouls in the first seven minutes of, you know, a Sunday ABC game against Miami or something, then it's not Mitch Robinson coming in to save the day.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  We didn't even mention that with Boston, Mitch Robinson. Yeah.

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'm excited for him.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  It's on your mind, right?

• 54:45Bill Simmons?

  The, the center situation's going to be pretty good with Boston. Orlando, so I have Suggs here.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:53Bill Simmons?

  Who's missed 72 games the last two years, who was 40% from three and 24, and fell off a cliff. And in the playoffs last year, 30% field goal, 24% from three. He shot almost eight threes a game and made 13 in the playoffs. He was 13 for 54 and his shot just went out the window. And if he can't shoot, but has the confidence that he should shoot, that's single-handedly will sink a team. It's interesting. He's only 25 years old, but he did miss 72 games the last two years. I don't, I don't, this is not exactly Cal Ripken Jr. They can figure out the Franz, Palo, ultimately, like if they decide those two don't make sense together, they'll just trade Franz, right?

• 55:38Bill Simmons?

  The Suggs piece is a little harder because they're kind of stuck with that contract. And if he's offensively the guy he was last year, that guy's just on your team, but with the confidence that he should be taking big shots in big games. And I think there's more there. I really like Suggs. I just didn't like how he played last year. And I feel like this is a fork in the road season for him. So what are your thoughts?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he's like if Evel Knievel were like about, he just can't, he has no regard for his, yeah, his own safety, just throwing himself around all the time. And that can be good and bad. I think it's, the thing that with the Magic is it's almost like the, the on court version of the knucklehead theory where they're like, you know, you can have one knucklehead, but it's like, you can, you can have one really hyper confidence shooter that's self sabotaging at moments. It's like Anthony Black. That's who I had down as my guy for the Magic who I really love. Or, you know, you have Palo who can be inefficient with his shot selection and his credibility's been up and down. Interesting, you, you automatically went to Franz as the guy they, they would get rid of and Palo is kind of was the implied person for the past. Did you want to say something about that?

• 56:46Bill Simmons?

  I think it's easier from a money standpoint.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  Because Franz's deal is less. And I, I think teams are always just more scared to trade the guy who they've already anointed as their franchise guy. It's a little bit of a Tatum and Jalen situation. But if I were them, I wouldn't do anything because I'm not going to win the title. I want, I want to take that as far as I can go with those two guys and see if it can work. And Franz has had some injuries and I also think there's a lot more there with Palo. I just wouldn't, I wouldn't give up. I, I, their big move this year was our coach was bad. What is this going to look like with a better coach who can kind of unlock some of this? And I want to see a year with Sweeney with the same pieces, trying to figure out something

• 57:33Bill Simmons?

  that made more sense offensively than whatever the fuck we watched last year.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:38Bill Simmons?

  So I, this team, I don't think this is a big deal this year, team, but in the offseason, that's where you make the Palo Franz to say, if this goes badly again, that's where you probably make the move. They don't have any picks left.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, I mean, this roster suits Sean Sweeney's sensibility as a coach, like as a defensive minded coach. So I think he's going to be able to, you know, that palate cleanse of, of just getting somebody new, a new voice in the locker room. We'll see if they can, you know, get back into some of the intensity and the physicality that we liked so much of them when they were kind of a hipstery team a few years ago. But we're kind of far into this experiment and I'm looking at this team and I'm, I'm thinking, we don't really have many more years to just kind of fritter away and be like, ah, you know, we'll move on. It's like.

• 58:21Bill Simmons?

  Especially with the money. Yeah. They're, they're like way up there salary wise too. So, yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is not a, so you had Black, huh? You think there's more there with Black?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. By the way, Anthony Black's younger brother, I would recommend you go check him out, Beckham Black. He's a badass.

• 58:36Bill Simmons?

  I know about him.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, yeah, I love Anthony Black. He had a month, I think it was in January, where he was shooting like 40% from three, like just really, really good. It kind of makes me wonder if there's an opening with the, if you were going to pick one lever for them to pull for a guy that does have some value, but doesn't totally fit what they're trying to accomplish long-term. He's somebody that I could see somebody with like really coveting eyes come after him.

• 59:03Bill Simmons?

  Like a smart team.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you know, I, it'd be mutual because I think the Magic know what they have. He's so good. You'd have to be blind basketball wise not to see that. But I think, I don't know. You're just kind of looking around thinking like where, what is the move? Because I, it does feel like something needs to be tweaked. It's just unclear what it's going to be.

• 59:23Bill Simmons?

  I think there's a real chance it was the coach. And that's why this whole team, the Suggs piece and the coach seemed to be the two things that held them back the most. I just felt like he took, I thought Suggs in that playoff series took the most, I can't believe you think you should have taken that shots out of anyone in the entire playoffs. Next team, Philadelphia. I, we don't need to dive into this, but Jalen's obviously the guy for this. And making this as concise as possible, there's going to be nights where they need him to be last year's Jalen Brown. And there's going to be other nights where they're going to ask him to basically be Lou Dort on the Thunder last year, you know, and just, can you stand over there and just stay out of the way? And how he handles that will be one of the many fascinating things about their season.

• 1:00:08Bill Simmons?

  So there's going to be nights where like, hey, can you just set some picks and guard somebody and maybe take 10 shots? And I don't know if he's going to handle that well, would be my guess.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the, the Maxey Brown dynamic will be interesting to watch, but in terms of like satiating him over the course of the season, this is a unique situation with him beating LeBron who, oh, shocker, he's 41 from those reports that kind of went around yesterday. It's like, yeah, his feet and his back hurt. Big shock. They're going to be enough openings over the course of this season, I think, to, you know, make Jalen happy. Also, hey, I wanted to say, there's some little birdies chirping that LeBaron Fylon is kicking some ass.

• 1:00:47Bill Simmons?

  My guy.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Did I, I just, it's, you know, I know we share an affection for him. I heard that he's been kind of taking it to the starters. That's, I heard that.

• 1:00:58Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Bill Simmons?

  I really wish Charlotte had taken him. I'm still upset about that. That was sitting right there for them. Well, we have plenty of time to talk about Philadelphia. Two teams left. I'm gonna go backwards alphabetical. Washington, it's Anthony Davis. Who just, they're basically like, we're not giving him an extension. So, he becomes a February trade deadline guy.

• 1:01:25Bill Simmons?

  Rich Paul, who continues to work his magic, as we saw recently with the Peyton Watson deal, is, seems bound and determined to get him an extension. He's 33 years old. He's played 277 games since they won the 2020 title, the Lakers, which is 45 a year. And he can also opt in next year at 62. Which is just kind of lurking over all of this and was the reason like his trade value wasn't nearly as high as you thought it would be. He's got, always has weird quotes about, "Oh, I put on too much weight. They asked me to be center." It's like, I don't know what position he thinks he is, cuz he's, you know, especially as you get older, I think he's a center. But he is fundamentally on paper, a nice fit with Sar.

• 1:02:08Bill Simmons?

  Right? Now Sar, we'll see how healthy he is this year. And Sar Davis, DeBansa together, makes sense to me.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:16Bill Simmons?

  But at 33 years old, I'm not positive what's left here. And all we've seen is him in street clothes. So what do you think? What's left for Anthony Davis here?

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  I would say-

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  What would you bet? If you had to bet his stats for 2026-27 season, games, points, rebounds, what would your, what would your guess be?

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  If he plays, I would say-

• 1:02:40Bill Simmons?

  If he plays, games have to be part of it. You have to pick games, points per game, and rebounds per game.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, games will go, I mean, I think the safe bet is to keep it in the low 40s. I mean, based on what we see.

• 1:02:54Bill Simmons?

  I wrote down 48.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I'll go 40, 44.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  I think when he, when he plays, I mean, he's gonna, I mean, the Trey Young, Anthony Davis combination is, is just kind of like match in NBA Jam heaven. I mean, they, they do fit together. How, how they figure out the spacing around that with Sar and with DeBansa, who isn't known as a great catch and shoot player. So that could be interesting. I'd say 18 points a game. Is that too low? That might be too low.

• 1:03:23Bill Simmons?

  Like 18 and 9?

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  This is such a weird roster. It's such an odd-

• 1:03:31Bill Simmons?

  I was at 19 and 9, so we're right around the same.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:03:35Bill Simmons?

  There's, there's a lot of people to serve on this team.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:39Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot of shots to be passed around. I'll be interested to see how they do that. You know, even like some of their swings, and you have Trey Johnson coming in, it's like, I'm only playing five minutes, I'm shooting. You know?

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Bob Carrington was being held back as we-

• 1:03:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we, poor Bob Carrington in the shackles, but uh, yeah, I just don't, I don't know what to expect from Davis either way. And he'll be, I think, first three weeks an eye test guy. Where I think you'll know it on the TV. It's like, oh, Davis, looks great. Hmm. He's, he's either playing for a trade or extension, or it'll be like, Davis isn't playing tonight, we're kind of on the up and down roller coaster, and I don't think that'll be good for anybody. I still don't know why Dallas traded him, though. Okay, last guy.

• 1:04:23Bill Simmons?

  Toronto.

• 1:04:26Bill Simmons?

  I have Murray Boils for this.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Wondered, I figured.

• 1:04:31Bill Simmons?

  Playoff stats, 27 minutes a game. 14 and 6.

• 1:04:38Bill Simmons?

  They're talking about him playing a little small ball center. And just being Swiss Army knife different positions. There's a lineup that we're gonna see. With him and Kawhi and Graves, who looked like a maniac in summer league. Barnes and Barrett. Where they just go length and scariness, and uh, and Murray Boils would be the key to that, but I was really, really, really impressed by them. And in general, I, I'm really kind of warming up to the Toronto over and just, I don't know what they're gonna get out of Kawhi, but it might, they might not even need more than 55 games from him to win 50 games. This team is just gonna be one of those, you see them on the schedule, and you're like, fuck.

• 1:05:21Bill Simmons?

  Playing Toronto tonight? Jesus, I hate going against these guys. I think that's where their destiny is, but I know you love Murray Boils, so go.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, like he, he, his ability to, to guard up, up the, uh, up the positional chain is gonna be a huge tool for them. You know, scoring is still gonna continue, cuz he's basically a below the rim, kind of a, a five interior. He likes to score around the basket. So you'll have to, it's, it's very Draymond Ian in that you're gonna have some questions to answer, but he's a really good passer. He spaces well, like even if he's not shooting the ball. He has a high basketball IQ. I think something that's interesting about Scottie, who Scottie, over the course, B-ball Index used to have this matchup versatility rating that would just kind of measure, you know, the, who you could guard. And Scottie has year in and year out been really, really at the top of that.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  So I, I think Murray Boils and Scottie together are gonna take off some of the traditional assignment kind of difficulty that Kawhi has had in the past, where it's just like, we're gonna have Kawhi guard this tough guy. It was just kind of implied. It's gonna settle him into a role I think that suits his age a little bit better.

• 1:06:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  So you're right. I, I just think that like defensively, that 3-4-5 in a small ball lineup, a lot of people have talked about it. It's gonna be a nightmare. I like, I'm gonna be really, I really wanna watch Miami play Toronto in particular. Like, I think that's gonna be just a bloodbath. But Kawhi, I think will help them offensively too in a lot of different ways, cuz he's just an improvement in every possible way over Brandon Ingram.

• 1:06:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, they turned Brandon Ingram, who had apparently a partially torn Achilles, and a couple of picks down the road, into a guy who was really good last year, who, um, you know, left wreckage behind. But you figure Murray Boils, Kawhi, Barnes, just the three of them together. Pretty nice foundation. And then Graves is the wild card.

• 1:07:14Bill Simmons?

  If Graves could just come in and be a maniac for 18, 20 minutes, now it's like there's no let up with anything that's happening. Is there anybody, is there one guy we didn't mention that you feel like we have to discuss? Cuz I asked you to come up with three to four of your own. Did you have somebody that you feel like is paramount we discuss before we go?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  We mentioned Anthony Black. Let's see. Jalen Tyson, I think is gonna matter for the Cavs also.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I thought for sure you were gonna, I went a little more obscure with my picks, cuz I thought you were gonna go digging in the bin a little bit. I, that's why I had Ron Harper.

• 1:07:52Bill Simmons?

  I like Ron Harper.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, let's see.

• 1:07:56Bill Simmons?

  By the way, Mike Conley-

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Two great we mentioned.

• 1:07:57Bill Simmons?

  Mike Conley went out of his way to praise Harper. He's like, I didn't realize Ron Harper was this good.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not surprised.

• 1:08:05Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Pella Larson is another guy that I think he's a little bit, fans are gonna kind of learn who he is for the, for the Cavs. He got a new deal recently.

• 1:08:13Bill Simmons?

  Or for the Heat, yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's just gonna be a lot of in-between, wearing a lot of hats type of stuff that Larson is gonna have a chance to come in and do for them. So, a little more of a hipstery answer, but I think he's gonna play.

• 1:08:26Bill Simmons?

  I liked him last year too. I did not like the contract. I think those contracts, that's like the Jovic contract a year ago. Those contracts are death when you're doing the 15 to 16 million for somebody who's not one of your four best guys. Those are the ones that seems like the teams regret the most.

• 1:08:43Bill Simmons?

  All right, Con, man. Did we cover everything? I think we did. Check out, check out group chat. Big ass preview, going backwards, uh, division by division. And you can hear me on there talking about my love for Memphis, and also, we had a very long, what the fuck is going on in New Orleans conversation that was enjoyable. Good to see you. Thank you.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  You too.

• 1:09:06Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's kick off a new segment called Agents of Change. It is presented by Workday. The NFL is a game of split-second decisions. The people who actually change the course of a season usually aren't the ones making the wildest moves. They're the ones who understand the situation, know the system, execute when the pressure is on. So let's look at some of the league's true agents to change. Players, coaches, front office minds, whatever you want. The ones that are impacting the team's trajectory this season. So, you look at, uh, at Chicago, where they lose their quarterback in the first two games of the season. They figure out how to win with Case Keenum. They figure out how to win with Tyson Bajent.

• 1:09:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, last week against the Jets, they have the ball, I think they ran 89 plays. Just, just figured out how to audible and adjust, and it's all cuz of Ben Johnson, who's making a case for being one of the three or four best coaches in the league. San Francisco's the other one. San Francisco, it seems like they lose a guy, you know, they lose two guys a week, one guy a week, whatever. Every week, somebody else goes down. It never seems to matter. They're always chugging along. The game management, uh, the end of the game stuff is always great for them. So Kyle Shanahan would be the other one, I would think, for the Agents of Change. I think the best thing about an NFL coach, when they're successful, is no matter what's going on with their team, they can adjust and try to win with it. And I think those two guys specifically

• 1:10:32Bill Simmons?

  have, have been the, the linchpins of that. In football, real change doesn't come from moving fast just for the sake of it. It comes from having the right systems in place to act when it matters, like what we just talked about. The same goes for business. That's why Workday helps enterprises put Agentic systems to work with the context, permission, and guardrails to move fast, safely, and not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. All right, we're recording this. It is a Monday afternoon. We just did a rewatch of Wells. Chris Ryan is still here. Van Lathan is still here. There was a couple of extra sports culture topics I wanted to hit. And one of the things I wanted to throw a UCR, and I'm so glad Van's here for this. Dominic West, who's in War, the new HBO movie,

• 1:11:15Bill Simmons?

  HBO TV show where it's like the most high-profile nastiest divorce ever. Is he a cable Hall of Famer? Because I feel like he is now.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 1:11:25Bill Simmons?

  And then who's in the cable Hall of Fame? Because I feel like you have to be in at least two or three signature things.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  I think Danes is up there.

• 1:11:33Bill Simmons?

  Danes is definitely in there.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  I think Matthew Reese.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  Matthew Reese is a first-ballot one. He might be the number one guy.

• 1:11:40Bill Simmons?

  I think my guy Ham's on there.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Ham, yeah. I mean, I don't, I'm not as big into your friends and neighbors.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Mad Men, Your Friends and Neighbors.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  Fargo.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Fargo.

• 1:11:50Bill Simmons?

  He's popped in on Morning Show.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:11:52Bill Simmons?

  But he was Don Draper. I mean, that's one of the six, seven best shows of all time. But I think he has a case. But Dominic West is a good one because he's McDalty. But he's not quite the star on The Wire because basically in season four, he's barely in it, which is the best season of the show, but he's still important. But then The Affair, which was like that, kind of the end of a Showtime era, and was, I felt like a show that, that had some mojo. Now he's in War. And then, but he was also in Industry.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Dominic West?

• 1:12:24Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't he?

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  I don't think he was.

• 1:12:26Bill Simmons?

  Was it Industry? Who am I thinking of then?

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 1:12:29Bill Simmons?

  All right, so there's three. So I have three for him. Oh, I'm thinking of Kit Harrington. I'm mixing up with English people.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 1:12:37Bill Simmons?

  Is Kit Harrington in the Hall of Fame?

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  Well, he's got two, two big ones.

• 1:12:41Bill Simmons?

  He's got two big ones.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  So I guess the.

• 1:12:43Bill Simmons?

  So how many do you need to be in the cable Hall of Fame?

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  Well, if you nail a Tony Soprano, you're in.

• 1:12:48Bill Simmons?

  Right. If it's an iconic role, you're in.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  Here's the problem, is that now we're, we've gotten to this point now where like Reese Witherspoon essentially makes TV shows, Laura Dern essentially makes TV shows, Woody Harrelson makes a lot of TV shows. Like, you're getting all these movie stars who kind of dilute the value of the trophy I think you're trying to give out.

• 1:13:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  Which is people who are like, I have been here from when it was like FX, Cinemax, HBO and Showtime. And now I'm here when it's Apple, Netflix, and.

• 1:13:20Bill Simmons?

  A bridge in the gaps.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  I've, I've, like, I've just lasted. And I can lead a show, I can be second in a show.

• 1:13:26Bill Simmons?

  So with, like, Amelia Clark is Khaleesi.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:30Bill Simmons?

  But it doesn't have the second one. I don't know if Khaleesi is enough.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  No, she tried to make Ponies was the, like, the big effort that she had. Not effort, I mean, it was a good show.

• 1:13:38Bill Simmons?

  But then, the fun thing about this idea is then you'd have the, the people who'd be like, it's time for Sharon Horgan.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:44Bill Simmons?

  And you're like, I don't know.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  Then you have other people.

• 1:13:47Speaker 03

  We don't appreciate Sharon Horgan.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  Obviously, like.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  Look at her stats.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, Edie Faulk is in, right?

• 1:13:54Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Oz, plus the Sopranos.

• 1:13:56Bill Simmons?

  Carmelo is, Carmelo, she's in.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  But Nurse Jackie as well.

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But then Oz, like, kind of important for Oz for two and a half years.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, Oz is an important jumping off point.

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  Elizabeth Moss is probably in there because she goes from West Wing to Mad Men to.

• 1:14:11Bill Simmons?

  Handmaid.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Handmaid still.

• 1:14:13Speaker 03

  And has done a couple of other shows.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  But, but I think it's diminishing returns for movie stars that are dipping into television. I don't, they have to do a little bit more.

• 1:14:21Bill Simmons?

  So maybe they're, maybe that's like a different wing in the Hall of Fame.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Carrie Coon, I put in there. White Lotus, Gilded Age.

• 1:14:27Bill Simmons?

  Carrie Coon's a good one.

• 1:14:28Speaker 03

  And Leftovers.

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  Um, so like Nicole Kidman.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Pluribus Lee, what's her name?

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  Ray Sehorn.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  Ray Sehorn, Pluribus, plus Better Call Saul.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:14:36Bill Simmons?

  But like Nicole Kidman can't be in. I think if you're an established movie actress, you're kind of, not slumming on TV, but you're, or Kate Winslet.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Dominic, Dominic West is the guy who this is made for. That actor is the guy that this is made for. Like, the guy who, he's not the main character of The Wire, but he is The Wire's orienting character.

• 1:15:00Speaker 03

  I'd put Goggins in this. Goggins has done Justified, The Shield.

• 1:15:06Bill Simmons?

  And then his Lotus scene gets him in.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  Vice Principals and Righteous Gemstones. And, yeah, Lotus.

• 1:15:12Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm. There's a great one for this that would get like, people would be all excited. Littlefinger, who was also Mary Garcetti.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:20Bill Simmons?

  That guy, whatever that guy's name is. He's 100% in.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, he.

• 1:15:24Speaker 03

  What's his name?

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  I can't remember. He starts off as Garcetti.

• 1:15:26Bill Simmons?

  That would be the, that would be the Hall of Fame category. It's like, what's his name? And that would be every year you elect one.

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  Pedro Pascal's done Game of Thrones, Last of Us.

• 1:15:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Pascal's a good one because, but he was only in Thrones for like eight episodes.

• 1:15:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they were pretty fucking memorable.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, he has one of the most iconic scenes of all time. If you're gonna be in Game of Thrones, that ensemble is so expansive, you have to either have a other, another show to buoy you, or you have to be one of the main drivers of plot in Game of Thrones.

• 1:15:58Bill Simmons?

  Emmy Rossum.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Khaleesi is one of them.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  Emmy Rossum's there.

• 1:16:02Bill Simmons?

  Now, it's two good ones.

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  Shameless plus furious.

• 1:16:04Bill Simmons?

  I like Claire Danes is good for this. That's like the perfect one where it's like, oh, she's first bout. She's gotta be in there now.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it feels like every five or six years, it's like, oh, she's gonna win an Emmy probably. You know, like, yeah.

• 1:16:13Bill Simmons?

  All right, so you're down with this. So you think Dominic West, definitely?

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:16:18Bill Simmons?

  And then you have Idris Elba. Needs one more.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  Well, he's done Luther, Hijack, and The Wire.

• 1:16:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's true.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  I think he's in.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  He does have Hijack. He's in. I forgot about Hijack.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  First season of Hijack is awesome.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  I think he's in. I think he's definitely in. And like, once again, in The Wire, what, Stringer lasts till season three?

• 1:16:36Bill Simmons?

  He's three full seasons.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Stringer lasts till season three, and he is such an important component to ground in the entire world. He's not like an also ran character in The Wire. He's really, really important.

• 1:16:47Bill Simmons?

  Burnthaw?

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  Punisher, Walking Dead, Bear.

• 1:16:52Bill Simmons?

  We Own the City.

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  We Own the City. Yeah.

• 1:16:54Bill Simmons?

  American Giglo, a show only Mallory and I watched.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  Never saw it. Never even heard of it.

• 1:16:59Bill Simmons?

  We were the last two. What about the guy from The Bear?

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  Jeremy Allen White?

• 1:17:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because he was also at Shameless and a couple other things.

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  He's where Emmy Rossum was.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Obviously Bryan Cranston.

• 1:17:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Cranston.

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Bill Simmons?

  And then it's like, when is Aaron Paul's time gonna come?

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  Well, he's done Westworld.

• 1:17:16Bill Simmons?

  He held Carrie Breaker Bad.

• 1:17:17Speaker 03

  He's done Breaking Bad.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  He's probably in.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  Did he do a third one that I'm forgetting?

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Westworld, Breaking Bad, he's probably in.

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  Oh, Big Love.

• 1:17:26Bill Simmons?

  Big Love.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  Big Love. A forgotten, forgotten show.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  That for the time that it was awesome, was really awesome.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  Yep. Add a B.C. might just make it just for the three seasons of Oz.

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  Euphoria, Oz, and Lost.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Add a B.C. Or I'm forgetting about.

• 1:17:45Bill Simmons?

  But you count Network TV though?

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying, you don't network.

• 1:17:47Bill Simmons?

  I don't count that Network TV. This is the cable streaming Hall of Fame.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Who, we're missing some glaring ones here.

• 1:17:53Bill Simmons?

  I know. I'm just, I did this off the top of my head, but I was, I think this would be, it made me think how with culture, we do have the award season, right? We have the Emmys and the Oscars, a couple others, but we don't have any sort of big thing that we could argue about.

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  Besides Hacks and Watchmen.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  I would argue Jean Smart's probably in just because of Hacks. I mean, she won the Emmy five straight years.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Bill Simmons?

  Although there are no comedies anymore.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Five straight years is fucking crazy. Yeah, that, that, that puts you in.

• 1:18:21Bill Simmons?

  And I would say Louis CK's in because Louis was the most important show for four years. He's fucking in. There'd be controversy, like, whatever, but he's in.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  No, I just like it because it's like, the, the topic is kind of losing air and it's like, oh, it's going down, it's going down. And then Bill brings it right back up.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Louis CK, you guys listening to the R. Kelly lately?

• 1:18:37Bill Simmons?

  That show, that show was the most important show for.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Which version of Louis?

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  The FX one.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Okay, so there was, because there was an FX one, there was an HBO one too.

• 1:18:46Speaker 03

  Uh, there's Lucky Louis.

• 1:18:47Bill Simmons?

  Lucky Louis HBO.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  And then he made the one about the bar.

• 1:18:50Bill Simmons?

  We were doing Grantland, and Louis was on par with all the other shows that we talked about for years.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  It still was pretty high up in the New York Times Top 100 list, given, given like his legacy.

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  He owns all of the shows that you can get on his website, but you can't get them, you can't rent them, they're not on any streamers.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  What's happening, what's happening right now?

• 1:19:10Bill Simmons?

  Louis.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  You're going on a whole Louis CK?

• 1:19:12Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm just saying, I wonder what would happen if it was on Netflix. I wonder if it would have a resurgence or not.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Interesting. Chris, you wanna?

• 1:19:19Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty rare to make Van uncomfortable. This is exciting. Just saying, it was a good show.

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  Both of us are having like this meta experience of like, this like from a one topic we weren't prepared to discuss, to like, reckoning with Louis' legacy. And I'm like, I thought I was talking about Manchester City.

• 1:19:37Bill Simmons?

  That's coming up. Wait, before you do Manchester City, Van saw Digger. The biggest bust of the last two years and the final.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  Two, yeah.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  The final nail in the Tom Cruise coffin unless he's playing a Mission Impossible guy.

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  I'm not pronouncing that dude dead yet.

• 1:19:54Bill Simmons?

  Okay. He could play Mission Impossible or Top Gun Maverick.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  He's going for Days of.

• 1:19:57Bill Simmons?

  Or Cocktail Two.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  Days of.

• 1:19:58Bill Simmons?

  Days of Thunder Two.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:19:59Bill Simmons?

  He's sequels only at this point.

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna say this, and I understand how this is gonna sound to the audience because of my reputation.

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  As a zagger?

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  As a zagger. Okay?

• 1:20:09Bill Simmons?

  Professional zagger.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  I would rather them call me a zagger than something else that sounds the same. Okay. So, so I saw Digger.

• 1:20:19Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  I went to see the movie. I saw it by myself.

• 1:20:22Bill Simmons?

  Did you see it because you thought it was gonna be fun to see how bad it was?

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  So I saw the movie just because of the divisiveness of the reactions to the movie.

• 1:20:32Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  Now, a lot of people that I know have said that this is like, the, one of the most terrible movies over on the big picture. They seem to be a little split. Sean liked it more than Amanda. So I was like, I have to see this movie for myself. You guys, I thought Digger was brilliant.

• 1:20:48Bill Simmons?

  Brilliant.

• 1:20:48Speaker 03

  Are you an inner E2 fan otherwise? Like Birdman?

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Birdman I liked. The, the Revenant, I was like, I'll never see that again. Those are the only ones that I've seen besides this. I thought Digger.

• 1:20:59Bill Simmons?

  I like the Revenant.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  I thought Digger was brilliant. Like, I thought Digger was brilliant in execution. I thought what I heard Amanda say about it is very true. There are times where the movie is incredibly grating and like, just like hard to watch. And you can tell that at this point, like AGI doesn't have anybody to like, pull him back or edit him from scenes that go on a little bit too long, that are a little too off-putting. But beyond that, which is, you know, a flaw of, of a director that has a lot to say. I don't want to ruin the movie for see, I know you haven't seen it.

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  I thought it reconciles itself really well. It takes on a really important topic. And it is entertaining. Like, I legitimately loved the movie.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  Did you read a lot about it or listen to the big picture or any of those other, like, did you, did you go into it with any expectations other than like, I want to see what the big fuss is about?

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  So I didn't read enough about it to have the movie ruined. I watched clips of what they had to say about it, just because I was kind of interested. Um, and then I went into it without having any of sort of the meta-commentary in the movie spoiled for me. And expecting excess.

• 1:22:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Because it is excess. I say something. That role for Tom Cruise at this point in his career is, to me, the perfect role for him to take. And for me to say why I would have to spoil the movie, which I don't want to do.

• 1:22:24Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, the bitch only made eight million dollars in the first, so it doesn't seem like. But to me, there's a juxtaposition of how we view Tom Cruise and how he probably wants to be viewed that is illustrated through his performance in the movie.

• 1:22:39Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm. Okay.

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  So I really enjoyed it. And at the end, I sat back and looked at the film and taken it in its totality. And I thought, there's probably a little bit of this that, I can't, I couldn't put my finger on it. Why this one is overhated, when there's so much space made for these big gigantic swings by these directors. And the one hundred and seventy-five million dollar art movie that people are saying is this kind of like, it's almost heresy. And this is what's happening now. Like, we're giving tons of movies to.

• 1:23:13Bill Simmons?

  Seems like it got the people fired at WB too. It was the final nail in the coffin for them.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  But they're having a putrid, terrible year as well. Like, just beyond this, Supergirl and a couple of other films. I don't want to be typically hyper verbose about it, but I really enjoyed it. I really liked it. And it seemed like my theater did too.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  I have a couple of Tom Cruise thoughts.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:33Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he should have promoted the movie at all. I don't think he should have done anything. And I don't think it helps when he does interviews and those things. I just think he's gotten too weird. This did lead to my favorite social media video of two thousand twenty-six, which was Tom Cruise on the red carpet. Realizing the lady was missing one of her legs and then realizing he didn't appropriately have the interaction go. Reflecting that he knew that, so he kept coming back.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  And circling back for two extra handshakes with her. And it was the weirdest fucking thing I ever watched. And I watched it twenty times. And I just couldn't believe how strange it was. And just his general energy. I don't know what's going on with this dude.

• 1:24:14Speaker 03

  I think one thing that's really been a hallmark for him since, I think, Night and Day even, if not before that. I think he's always had like incredible marketing push, pushes and has done these wild stunts. But I remember back when that movie came out and it was like, he was gonna go to a premiere on seven different continents in twenty-four hours. And it just, I wonder whether or not it serves the movies anymore. Like, when it becomes the spectacle of Tom Cruise in interviews or, or doing social media stuff becomes like a bigger deal than what the movie is. Because obviously people hear like, like, this movie was marketed. Like, you couldn't be like, I didn't know Digger was coming out.

• 1:24:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. People chose not to go.

• 1:24:55Speaker 03

  So people are like, pass. Now, you, we, once people understand what the movie is about, I'm sure there's a bigger debate to be like, should they have shown more of it? You know, to people in the trailer or whatever. But I do think it's a fascinating commentary on like our modern media moment that people can kind of feel like they know what it is and have seen it just by watching all of the accumulated clips that they see.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  So based upon what actually happens in the movie, the movie was completely and totally mis-marketed. When I say completely and totally mis-marketed, the movie seemed like it was marketed as almost a farcical morality tale. And that's like not what the movie is at all. The movie is part like absurdist. But another part of it is devastatingly grounded in real world stakes and consequence in a way that that interplay just keeps you, or at least kept me enthralled all the way to the end. To your point, Tom Cruise does not know how to exist outside of spectacle right now.

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  And our belief in Tom Cruise as a spectacle is running out. Because we've been with Tom Cruise. I told somebody this, I was talking to Jack Sanders about this. And I was like, you know, I played the Top Gun video game on the first Nintendo.

• 1:26:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  The first Nintendo, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Mid-eighties.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  That means I'm in elementary school.

• 1:26:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  And I'm playing the video game that is based on a movie that Tom Cruise has starred in. That's a long fucking time ago. All right, that's a long time ago. So at a point, you can't spectacle yourself through your career in your sixties. People have to feel like some type of actual connection to you beyond, uh, things going fast. And he just doesn't know how to be anything other than a star. He's been a star. He's shown that he can do that. It remains to be seen whether or not he's going to be able to show that he's a human being. And I think when you look at these interviews and stuff like that and you see him talking, we're like, Tom, why can't you just talk to us? Like, why can't you just?

• 1:27:03Bill Simmons?

  Because the last time he tried to do that, it couldn't have gone worse.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  But he wasn't even doing it then.

• 1:27:08Bill Simmons?

  The two thousand five, that Matt Lauer interview, which was.

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  That he was doing it then.

• 1:27:11Bill Simmons?

  That was the last time. It was like.

• 1:27:12Speaker 03

  The psychiatry one?

• 1:27:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and about postpartum depression and medication and how mad he was at Matt Lauer that he didn't understand. I felt like ever since that happened, he just scaled back. And he's like, you're just gonna see me as, man, I love higher learning. It's so good.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29Bill Simmons?

  God, it's such a great, you gotta be so proud of that man. Handshake.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:33Bill Simmons?

  It's just this like unrealistic energy at all times. And I don't know what's going on.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  But if there was a person to sell this movie, a movie that's like really, it, it's a, you have to make people kind of fall into the narrative of the film. I just think it would have went better. I think a lot of this stuff.

• 1:27:51Bill Simmons?

  So who would have been the right actor for it?

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  Ah, that's a good question.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  Do you think another actor should have played it?

• 1:27:56Bill Simmons?

  It was almost like Tropic Thunder Tom Cruise as Digger.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Bill Simmons?

  What I had in my head. I, I intentionally, I try not to find out too much about the movie.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think an actor that would have been big enough to.

• 1:28:08Bill Simmons?

  Like, could Christian Bale have played this?

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Nah, because you need a bigger star. He could have, but you need a star that, because there's something that's, that's happening in the movie that's a commentary basically on the lead.

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  So you, you need a bigger star. There's just not many guys.

• 1:28:23Bill Simmons?

  Could have been Leo?

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe, maybe. I probably, almost definitely.

• 1:28:29Speaker 03

  It was set up with Leo at Netflix. I think it was the original version of this.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  Almost definitely, yes. And also, it would have made sense because of some of the stuff, some of the passions that Leo actually has.

• 1:28:38Bill Simmons?

  You know what's the worst thing that happened to Tom Cruise for this aging thing you're talking about? How good Top Gun Maverick was.

• 1:28:45Bill Simmons?

  And, and when it hit, we all loved that movie. He's great in it. Um, they nail it. There's like just legitimately great scenes in it. And I think it made him feel, you know, a little like LeBron winning that Houston series last spring where he's like, I can still do this for ten more years.

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  I think he's also somebody who looks really good for sixty-five or sixty-four, whatever he is.

• 1:29:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  And is mostly interested in archival legacy performances of his own, rather than like creating new characters, which is what. I guess this is really gonna send the wrong message because like, he really put his ass on the line for this one. And now he's gonna go do Days of Thunder.

• 1:29:24Bill Simmons?

  This was like his Paul Newman in The Verdict, basically.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  And I'm sure they'll put Top Gun Three in, in.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I'm just so surprised that he hasn't learned the collateral lesson. Collateral lesson.

• 1:29:35Bill Simmons?

  Evil Tom Cruise.

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Evil Tom Cruise, but also lowercase t Tom Cruise. Right? I remember even when Tom Cruise went on.

• 1:29:43Bill Simmons?

  He's so good in that.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  He, he went on One Oh Six and Park. And he goes on One Oh Six and Park, which was a big deal. The motherfucker is still Tom Cruise. Everybody was like, oh shit. But he goes on there to do the, uh, to sell that movie with Jamie Foxx. And I never forget that he's talking up Jamie Foxx as Ray. And that was interesting to watch him. He's like, Jamie is Ray. And it's like, fucking A, like Jamie has fucking arrived. But it also felt like Tom Cruise in that moment was just being a good guy, like a good pal. He was still in promotion mode. But that movie and that performance was grounded in a way, I don't feel like he's tried it again. Like, I don't feel like he's had.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's, it's like, at this point, everything else has been established for him. The only thing that hasn't been established for him is the smaller muted role where he gets into it and it feels like he's really connected to it.

• 1:30:39Bill Simmons?

  I just wonder if he has too much baggage to play parts that we don't already know what the part is. And I mean baggage with like, we know so much about the last like fifty years of Tom Cruise, basically, or forty-five years.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  I think he's, he's just a celebrity in a way that. It's kind of an alien, you know what I mean?

• 1:30:58Bill Simmons?

  That's what I mean, like he doesn't, he had all these celebrity relationships and then they come and go. He doesn't talk to them anymore. He doesn't like have relationships with his kids. And I don't really know anything about him and it seems intentional. The Scientology thing's been explored forever, but he's, out of all the celebrities we have, I think that's the one that I have no idea who the real person is. If you went to dinner with him for two hours, what would it be like?

• 1:31:24Speaker 03

  Well, I think it would probably be like, everybody who's like directly interacted with him in a dinner or working with him on, like they all come out of these movies like that dude is the fucking.

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so much energy.

• 1:31:36Speaker 03

  Like he made sure this happened.

• 1:31:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Speaker 03

  He's like never, he's tireless. He has so much attention to detail. He's always just trying to make the best movie. And it sounded like he did the same thing with this. Everybody who came out of Digger is like, I can't believe like what I witnessed on that set with Tom Cruise and his level of preparation and his dedication to the movie. It just didn't, it just didn't work.

• 1:31:56Bill Simmons?

  So that's what carries it for him.

• 1:31:59Speaker 03

  Van, but Van saying that makes me want to see it even worse. I just didn't get a chance to see it this weekend.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  So there's a monologue that he delivers in the movie. And it's a long one and it's heavy-handed and it's this sort of commentary on what's happening in the movie you're watching and the movie that you're not watching at the same time and all that stuff like that. I think he's going fucking crazy. I think he's on top of, I think he's on his shit. But that film needed a human being to sell it. It, because it is about the very nature of, I can't spoil it, but it's about the very nature of performance. It's about the nature of what it means to be performing, not only in the story that you're watching, but in a different story.

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  It's about like how those things connect and take our eyes off the ball of what's actually going on. And it is, to me, it worked very, very well. Now, look, it's a lot of movie. It's a lot of movie and it's, there's some masturbation in there. There's some jerking off. Like just when the artist is masturbating, like.

• 1:33:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, thank God.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:33:08Bill Simmons?

  I thought you were doing like Meg's Silence of Lambs.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  But anyway, um, I, I just think that Tom's gonna come back. He's gonna make days of, who knows? You think anybody?

• 1:33:19Speaker 03

  Were you intrigued to go see it or were you like, this is a renter?

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  It's a renter for me.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Okay, I feel you.

• 1:33:24Bill Simmons?

  I came, I worked out on Friday. I came home and I turned the TV on to see if there was baseball on, forgetting that there was no baseball on a Friday, but the last cable channel was a movie channel. Cocktail was on. And it's Cocktail there in Jamaica. He's behind the bar when, when Flanagan shows up. And Elizabeth shoes at the bar and she's like giving him the, you know, flashing the eyes at him. And then Flanagan shows up and he's like, I'll bet you $500, there's a, not gonna do his Australian accent, but he has a success manual in his thing and, and Cruz and him are vibing. And I was like, man, Cruz fucking, there was just nobody like this dude in this prime. This is a ridiculously stupid movie.

• 1:34:06Bill Simmons?

  He's a bartender in Jamaica and it's like riveting and he's great in it. He's so charismatic. And I don't think he ever figured out how to audible from the charismatic thing as he hit his 50s and 60s. Like what, when you have that kind of power that you can bring anything to life like that, what do you do when you're 65? You're not gonna be able to do it in the same way. So what movies do you make?

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  But this is the kind of place where like he made Color of Money when he was a kid and Paul Newman was an older man. And Paul Newman is bringing along a younger actor, is playing a guy who's like grappling with the last lock, lack, loss of his own masculine virility and all this stuff. And Cruz, I haven't seen Digger, doesn't typically engage with that. In Top Gun Maverick, the whole point is that he still is the better pilot than all these fucking kids.

• 1:34:54Bill Simmons?

  Right, he's teaching them.

• 1:34:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Like he couldn't have played the Newman part in Color of Money, I don't think.

• 1:34:58Speaker 03

  I mean, he should.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  But I don't think he would.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  But like to me, that type of shit is right there. They all did that. Another film is, I think the perfect, this being perfectly deployed, is Redford in Indecent Proposal. So in Indecent Proposal, obviously Redford is a millionaire billionaire guy who wants to sleep with Demi Moore and her all-time finest, right? Pay the money, whatever. Redford is both. I am being supplanted here because it's gotta work out for these younger kids, but at the same time, there's still this magnetism of power and experience that makes that character desirable.

• 1:35:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Tom won't even do that. He's holding on too tight. He's, he's still gotta win the race at the end of it. Brad, quiet as kept, same thing. In F1.

• 1:35:53Bill Simmons?

  And they're the same age, basically.

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, F1's a good example of that.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  Like Brad, kinda quiet as kept, same thing.

• 1:35:57Bill Simmons?

  We talked about that when we did the F1 rewatchables.

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  Right. He's not quite.

• 1:36:00Bill Simmons?

  The other guy should have won.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  He's not ready to lose the race yet.

• 1:36:05Bill Simmons?

  Gotta be ready to lose the race.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  Everybody loses the race.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  Including Man City.

• 1:36:11Speaker 03

  Good segue.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  Oh, look at that.

• 1:36:14Bill Simmons?

  All right, so Sierra's gonna explain the Man City thing to us, which is a hundred times worse than the Clippers?

• 1:36:19Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, 114 times. Uh, so they've gotten, uh, found guilty by the Premier League's independent commission that was looking into their financial malfeasance or their, their trespasses over the last. When they came in, Sheikh Mansour brought, bought the team through like the Abu Dhabi Investment Group in 2008. And you probably were like somewhat aware that this team came in, they, they spent a ton of money.

• 1:36:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, they were the awesome ran forever. It was the Clippers.

• 1:36:52Speaker 03

  Totally the Clippers. So is Manchester United is, uh, historically one of the, the biggest, if not the biggest team in England.

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  They're the Yankees at one point.

• 1:37:00Speaker 03

  And then a lot of money from the Gulf came into Manchester City. Where that money came from is the, what's up for debate. And they immediately hired Roberto Mancini to be their manager and then started buying all these great players. And they finally win the title. Three years later, won, I think, six Premier League titles, have won the Champions League, won tons of trophies.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  I knew that things would change for them when they hired Roberto Mancini.

• 1:37:27Speaker 03

  Did you really?

• 1:37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I knew.

• 1:37:28Speaker 03

  Cause they were a big Bob Mancini guy?

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  As soon as I saw Roberto Mancini get hired, I was like, they're fucking sick.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  They hired Bobby?

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  They hired, oh, Bobby M?

• 1:37:35Speaker 03

  They got, they, they immediately just started, they basically like changed the calculus of transfer spending in world football.

• 1:37:43Bill Simmons?

  This was when I was friends with Mark Stein, when I was, when I picked Tottenham. And this is before this all happened with Man City. And Man City was one of the finalists and the reason, one of the reasons I didn't pick them was it was like, they can't ever win. They're the lovable losers. And then the money came in and it changed.

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  So, uh, over the years, many raised eyebrows. How the hell are they, uh, spending this kind of money? There are rules put in place a couple of years into their ownership cycle where it's basically league-wide called uh, financial fair play, which means basically you can really only spend in a relationship to what you make. Now, you can make the argument that that helps bigger clubs.

• 1:38:23Bill Simmons?

  So this is like NBA second apron a little bit?

• 1:38:25Speaker 03

  So if you bring in 500 million.

• 1:38:28Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  That's what you're like working with in terms of your transfer budget. But if you bring in 50 million and you spend 300 million, you're negative 250. And if you go over negative 100 million over the course of three years, if you don't balance your books, basically.

• 1:38:44Bill Simmons?

  So you can't just be the rich guy who's like.

• 1:38:46Speaker 02

  You can't just go out and get a bunch of.

• 1:38:47Bill Simmons?

  Money's no object. I'll spend a billion dollars on this.

• 1:38:50Speaker 03

  And this is made all the more complicated by two things. One is that the, this has been something that people have been speculating about for more than 10 years.

• 1:39:01Speaker 03

  And when this is starting to happen.

• 1:39:04Bill Simmons?

  Speculating that they weren't making as much money as they claimed they were making.

• 1:39:08Speaker 03

  Because Manchester City's books would essentially, their claim would be that they're as, as big of a club as Real Madrid. And Real Madrid is one of the biggest brands in sports.

• 1:39:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:19Speaker 03

  And have built that up over decades. Manchester City coming along and, I mean, just ask yourself how many Manchester City fans you know? Probably not as many as Arsenal or Liverpool or Real Madrid or Barcelona fans.

• 1:39:31Bill Simmons?

  So this sounds like if somebody was pretending they had more podcast downloads than they actually did.

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  Several years ago, exactly, the Premier League.

• 1:39:39Bill Simmons?

  You started putting like five episodes up a day to try to juice your Apple rankings.

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  Several years ago, the Premier League levels these charges against Manchester City because one of the problems is so many of the ways in which Manchester City is showing revenue comes from companies, sponsorships through companies that are also connected to either the UAE royal family, companies in Abu Dhabi, the national airline.

• 1:40:07Bill Simmons?

  This sounds like the Mark Walter.

• 1:40:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got a lot, but like the money.

• 1:40:11Bill Simmons?

  Money going back and forth.

• 1:40:12Speaker 03

  The money is there.

• 1:40:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 03

  But where they're claiming it comes from is what's up for debate. And for years, this, these charges have been sort of looming and hanging over the league and hanging over Manchester City and the kind of cynical view is like, I think they just have better lawyers and they're just going to delay and delay and delay and delay until this is just like, it's not unlike the fears I think people had that like Ballmer had more financial might than the NBA itself. I think that there is a concern that Manchester City would be similar to the Premier League. At the start of what has been an eternal three week break in the Premier League because they're off playing for their national teams. On the Friday that that started, the Premier League is like guilty, 114 out of 115 charges.

• 1:40:58Speaker 03

  Manchester City has until October 2nd to appeal this, then we're going to wrap this up by December. But like, we are gonna, we are gonna like.

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  What's the penalty?

• 1:41:09Speaker 03

  They don't know, we don't know yet. They have not articulated what the penalty is. So that has led to this crazy speculation of everything from they are expelled from English football to.

• 1:41:19Speaker 02

  Expelled like no team like done like SMU death penalty?

• 1:41:21Speaker 03

  So there's the pyramid system in England where it's like these lower leagues that, and it all goes up to Premier League. They're run by different governing bodies, but the lower leagues have said, we don't, we stand with the Premier League. Like if they kick them out, like we're not going to take them.

• 1:41:36Bill Simmons?

  This is SMU death penalty.

• 1:41:38Speaker 03

  Some of this is like, I'm, I'm reading this from a bunch of different places, but ultimately like it's really bad for Manchester City.

• 1:41:44Bill Simmons?

  But how, I mean, you can't do anything other than that as the penalty, right? You could vacate titles. Who cares?

• 1:41:49Speaker 03

  I mean, you could, you could deduct them 114 points and they would just go down and come back up next year.

• 1:41:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:57Speaker 03

  If you, or the following year.

• 1:41:58Bill Simmons?

  But if you ban them from Premier League for 12 years.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  But do they go, just go join La Liga or Bundesliga?

• 1:42:04Speaker 03

  No, they can't do that. They can't do that. They can't do that. Because those are national leagues.

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  A team from outside of the country can't join those.

• 1:42:12Speaker 03

  You do bring up a good point that this would perhaps spur on a revival of the conversation about having a super league, about just like 12 breakaway teams in Europe. But the bigger issue that's come up over the last couple of days is last week, finally.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  Why am I so into this?

• 1:42:28Bill Simmons?

  Somebody. Cause it hasn't been reported in a way that you and I would understand.

• 1:42:33Speaker 03

  It's a global story, but England is a small place. Let me tell you what I mean. They asked the new Prime Minister of England, Andy Burdham, who is coming into Downing Street. He's become Prime Minister after being the mayor of Manchester for a very long time, Manchester, Manchester City. And his reaction, when the entire tide of public opinion is clearly, get these fucking guys out of the paint. We always knew this was cheating. They ruined this, that. Think about all the teams that came up short against them. Teams that had their rosters raided by them, like this is big fish.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, they have Haaland now, the guy that from the World Cup.

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  And I'll tell you about him.

• 1:43:09Speaker 02

  My guy.

• 1:43:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  So they, they're the, they're the, oh, okay. So they have him. So they're the light blue team.

• 1:43:14Speaker 03

  He is an example of the reported bullshittery that they were taking part in, which is they bought him for, I think it was announced as like 51 million pounds or euros. I can't remember. He's obviously worth three times that.

• 1:43:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 03

  But they apparently paid more for him and just made the public announcement in agreement with this club. Now I, this, a lot of this is just like rumors and allegations and stuff like that. Anyway, the, the point I was trying to make with the Prime Minister, that somebody asks him, they're like, what do you think of this Manchester City thing? And he goes, well, I would really hate for these guys to, uh, really, you know, face a lot of trouble for this. They've been incredible partners with us in Manchester. So now he steps into the bear trap where they change prime ministers in England pretty frequently.

• 1:44:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 03

  He had had like an amazing first couple of weeks of making these pronouncements and he had like a real, almost like Mom Donnie kind of energy about like, we're going to fix this and fix that. And one of his big things was like, I'm going to make, uh, take a lot of the lessons we learned in Manchester and bring them to the rest of the country. And now people are starting to dig into whether or not there's a lot of like land deals in Manchester. There's a lot of investment. And it's like, it's, I mean, I.

• 1:44:32Bill Simmons?

  Beaks were getting wet.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  I really like this guy, the politician. I'm like, I'm like impressed with him. But it's just like this, this thing just got like global political rather than just like, oh, what are they going to do with Manchester City? It's like, well, if Manchester City, their chairman has diplomatic immunity, apparently they've invested in all this land.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  Diplomatic immunity. Are they, what, what do you mean? Like the, the, the government's going to get involved and put people in jail?

• 1:44:59Speaker 03

  No, but like he, I don't think he could have any like tax charges filed against him.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Speaker 03

  Um, and on top of that, I think it's just this idea that if you have enough money, you can buy your way out of whatever trouble you're in. So.

• 1:45:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, America's not like that.

• 1:45:13Speaker 03

  No, I mean, this is.

• 1:45:15Bill Simmons?

  Do that here at all.

• 1:45:16Speaker 03

  Square, brother. Uh, so it's just become like this very, very, very interesting sports story. And I think.

• 1:45:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, the end game of it.

• 1:45:23Speaker 03

  People who care about football, this is like Lance Armstrong times 50. This is, we have been watching these guys dominate this league more or less for the last.

• 1:45:32Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:45:33Speaker 03

  15 years. Everybody was always like, damn dude, you guys just bought another 300 million in defenders.

• 1:45:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause Barry Bonds never won a World Series.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Right. It was all for him.

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there are multiple clubs, like there was a year when Arsenal at one point had lost like six players to Manchester City, you know, like had.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Nobody was asking anything then. It's like.

• 1:45:59Bill Simmons?

  No, they, they, this was a thing the whole time.

• 1:46:02Speaker 03

  When they first came in, this is when the debate about, and I think this is happening in the NBA too, where the debate about, do you allow sovereign wealth funds or in, in the NBA's case, I think private equity, but like, do you allow these huge financial powerhouses to get involved to the point where they're bigger than the league?

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, obviously.

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  This is not like, oh, the car dealer in Pittsburgh has the hockey team.

• 1:46:29Speaker 02

  It's about trillion dollars.

• 1:46:30Speaker 03

  The fucking government.

• 1:46:32Speaker 02

  Of Saudi Arabia or like, yeah.

• 1:46:34Speaker 03

  So they have diplomatic relationships with this country. They have economic investment relationships with this country. They have, um, 200,000 people from the UK live in, in Abu Dhabi. Like it's, it's all interconnected. So how do you punish this team? And what happens if they're like, all right, cool, bet. I'm liquidating this team and have fun city of Manchester.

• 1:47:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, didn't they build the new stadium?

• 1:47:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Etihad is the stadium there. Yeah.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  So then, okay. So.

• 1:47:06Bill Simmons?

  So big winner, Manchester United.

• 1:47:08Speaker 03

  No, I mean, they still stink. Uh.

• 1:47:10Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying like getting Man City out of this completely and.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  But at a certain point, cause I'm trying to think, college football being one thing, prior to NIL, there were all kinds of things that like, if you shut down was the death penalty at SMU, you didn't destroy the school. There's still a lot of stuff that's there at the school.

• 1:47:33Bill Simmons?

  SMU actually just has to stop being a college.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  Has to stop being a college.

• 1:47:37Bill Simmons?

  It's just gone.

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  In this situation, think about the economic damage it would do in any league that we follow to just nuke a franchise.

• 1:47:45Bill Simmons?

  Like the Dallas Cowboys are just gone for 10 years.

• 1:47:47Speaker 03

  But we're going beyond just like the 5,000 people who work at, at Cowboy Stadium are out of jobs. We're talking about like a massive economic footprint in a country.

• 1:47:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:59Speaker 03

  And in a, in a region.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  Right. And that, that was the same thing would exist here, right? You nuke that, you nuke the Cowboys.

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  This would be like if Ballmer was like. It would have to be like, almost like Balmer and Cronky together pulling out of Inglewood or something like that.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:48:14Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna say, it would be the equivalent of if a city lost all its sports teams at the same time. Like if Boston lost the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins all at once. That's like, cause in, in Manchester, this is the team. It's not like there's a baseball team and a football team and a basketball team.

• 1:48:31Speaker 02

  The reason why I ask is, in your opinion, doesn't that mean that the, that there will be some self-preservation involved in whatever the penalty here would be?

• 1:48:41Bill Simmons?

  But what if the Saudis are like, well, fuck it, fine.

• 1:48:44Speaker 03

  It's the, it's the, um.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  No, I'm talking about the league itself.

• 1:48:47Speaker 03

  Abu Dhabi is the ones who own Manchester City. Saudis own Newcastle.

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  So, so then like, I mean, they don't give a fuck, right? They, that's another thing is like, if money can buy everything, no matter what, well, there is a region where the finances of the people who we were talking about, if it's MBS, if it's anywhere else, is directly connected to the price of oil. And they can essentially buy whatever the fuck they wanna buy. Right? So like, whatever they wanna buy, they can buy.

• 1:49:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  They decide they wanna pay a guy $600 million in a contract, if, if it was a year to play soccer, it's not, no skin off, it doesn't matter, right?

• 1:49:20Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that happened, basically.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Basically, it did, right? So there was always going to be some, if not malfeasance, there was gonna be some improp- improp- improperness there, a little improprietary, I don't know what I'm trying to say. There's gonna be something there that was improper, if they get involved and that much money comes into it.

• 1:49:36Speaker 03

  Well, it's just, it's just like, I, I think that they started spending and perhaps there was no rules to prevent something like this, because nobody had ever thought that a petro state would buy a football team and start funding it as a way of using it for soft power across the world. You know what I mean?

• 1:49:53Speaker 02

  But like, when I, like, what I'm saying is, in this situation right here, it, can the league swing the machete as much as they want to?

• 1:50:02Speaker 03

  Well, so.

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  You like, that whole region, the team is gone, the jobs are gone, everything's gone, the economic, like, what, what's the worst they could do?

• 1:50:10Speaker 03

  I mean, they took the, they took Chelsea away from Roman Abramovich, he had to sell.

• 1:50:14Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so that, the multiple outcomes are, you have to sell the team.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  I don't think that they're gonna do that.

• 1:50:21Bill Simmons?

  But that's the, well, if we're going through everything, that's the best case scenario if you're a Manchester City fan. It's like, well, they just have to sell the team.

• 1:50:28Speaker 03

  Yes, and you know, a consortium that includes Jeff Bezos just bought Liverpool, or bought a big chunk of Liverpool. It's not like sports franchises are going down in value, I don't know.

• 1:50:40Bill Simmons?

  I would say they would have some takers. So that's, that's number one. Number two is, you're out of the league for 10 years, or five years, or 15 years, whatever they say. And then number three is, you're out. You're never coming back.

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:50:54Bill Simmons?

  You're, you're liquidated as a franchise.

• 1:50:56Speaker 03

  The only other, I guess, option.

• 1:50:57Bill Simmons?

  Is there any other possible outcome?

• 1:50:58Speaker 03

  It would be a, here, for the next four years, you start your season at minus 25 points. So like, a kind of rolling penalty.

• 1:51:08Bill Simmons?

  Huh.

• 1:51:09Speaker 03

  And.

• 1:51:10Bill Simmons?

  But then why would anyone wanna play for them?

• 1:51:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:51:12Speaker 02

  So you just destroy the franchise on the pitch.

• 1:51:14Speaker 03

  Basically. You, you keep it, you keep the semblance of the franchise together, but you make it, basically, like, now you have to go to the bottom of English football and fight your way back up. And.

• 1:51:27Speaker 02

  Essentially, what the death penalty was, it wasn't like, we're contracting your sports-

• 1:51:31Speaker 03

  You don't have scholarships.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  You don't have nothing to do, necessary roughness type shit.

• 1:51:35Bill Simmons?

  How about vacating the titles? Do people even care about that?

• 1:51:38Speaker 03

  Well, this has been a huge debate. And it's an interesting conversation, because I think, obviously, like, we've had-

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  You can't do that in the pros, man.

• 1:51:43Speaker 03

  -scandals in American sports, like, whether it's been steroid baseball, or Lance Armstrong and Tour de France, or even somebody would say, like, you know.

• 1:51:50Bill Simmons?

  NBA.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  NBA stuff, right. There have been discussions about whether or not they should have to vacate those championships. Should the championships then go to the people who are, teams who are in second place?

• 1:52:03Bill Simmons?

  Ooh, congratulations.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  You can't do that.

• 1:52:05Bill Simmons?

  You're now the 2018 champion.

• 1:52:07Speaker 03

  But I think that, to me, the more-

• 1:52:09Bill Simmons?

  Here's a handshake.

• 1:52:10Speaker 03

  To me, the, the kind of-

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  Do you have a parade?

• 1:52:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  If you get, if, if, if the shit is vacated, right? If it, like-

• 1:52:16Bill Simmons?

  A retroactive 2018 parade?

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  Right, like, if Alabama, Alabama played LSU, one of the most debilitating experiences of my life, 2011, we, we get the championship, they make us champions, do you have a parade? Do we like Baton Rouge?

• 1:52:29Bill Simmons?

  It's like a fake title.

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I don't think anyone's excited about it.

• 1:52:33Speaker 03

  So here's a question. Like, in terms of the, we all knew all the, the whole time, I, I am not saying that Alabama was cheating, but there was like, a feeling when NIL came in-

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  I come, you know what's up.

• 1:52:47Speaker 03

  That it was like, now everybody is doing what the teams in the SEC were doing.

• 1:52:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, we need to, we need to talk about, you know what's up.

• 1:52:54Speaker 03

  But is that, like, does that negate or take away from what Saban accomplished?

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  Nope, because, the reason why it doesn't, is because on one side was all of the fucking dogs that they had, and on the other side is fucking Honey Badger and all of these other guys too. So, the competitive balance that happens there is for other teams, like, that's actually more a Mississippi State problem, or even like, a Tennessee problem, or a problem of those athletes not being able to go to those schools. By the time you got to the national championship game, it was good on good. So that was, that's less of a fucking issue. It's dog, it's first round talent everywhere.

• 1:53:30Speaker 03

  And there have been several premier leagues that were decided by two, three, five points. That was about, like, a guy slips and doesn't, you know what I mean? Like, the margins are very fine.

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're a Liverpool fan, does this make you mad?

• 1:53:41Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, yes.

• 1:53:44Bill Simmons?

  Do you feel cheated?

• 1:53:45Speaker 03

  I feel cheated in that I really liked our previous manager, who was mostly the manager during this era, Jürgen Klopp.

• 1:53:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:53Speaker 03

  And I think he's one of the most dynamic coaches-

• 1:53:56Bill Simmons?

  He's a big Klopp guy.

• 1:53:57Speaker 03

  I've never seen.

• 1:53:58Bill Simmons?

  Klopp.

• 1:53:59Speaker 03

  And I think-

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  Kloppster.

• 1:54:01Speaker 03

  I think he knew he was playing with one hand tied behind his back, or against uneven, an uneven playing field, and they went about their business, but I, I don't, I don't, I just don't know what the right answer is here. I don't, like, it's, it's that thing where you're like-

• 1:54:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, you can't liquidate the franchise, that's crazy.

• 1:54:18Speaker 03

  No, I don't even know that they have, like, the legal means to do that.

• 1:54:21Bill Simmons?

  But you could ban them from the league for-

• 1:54:23Speaker 03

  Well, especially the, the rest of the teams in the league could vote to, to expel them, you know, and just be like, play football elsewhere. Yeah, start your own league.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  But, but you just said there's nowhere to play.

• 1:54:31Speaker 03

  If that happens, like, I don't see, I don't see the Abu Dhabi group being like, yeah, we're just gonna stick around. We like, love England, so we're just gonna hang out, you know?

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  Oh, so maybe a way to send them, well, okay. Another question I'll ask real quick. My last question.

• 1:54:45Speaker 03

  I'm gonna say hang out, like, continue to invest in England.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  So, is the premier league prepared to force teams or compel them to sever their relationships with golf money? Is there, is there, is there going to be, no?

• 1:55:01Speaker 03

  I don't, I, that would be, I think what they would-

• 1:55:04Speaker 02

  Nobody's gonna do that.

• 1:55:05Speaker 03

  I think what they would say is that, the money is the money, it's the way in which the money was accounted for, and they tried to hide, it's just, which is the crime. Or not the crime, but the, that's the, that's the problem.

• 1:55:16Bill Simmons?

  None, none of these leagues have ever said, yeah, we can't let that person in.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  Nobody's gonna do that.

• 1:55:22Bill Simmons?

  If the check clears, they're letting them in.

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  No, you saw, Adam Silver was delighted about the, the Vegas valuation.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  But he let him poker off.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  But the problem is this, though, yeah, but the problem is this, though, when it's that much money, what people are not gonna wanna do is leave 300 or 400 million dollars, a billion dollars on the table. They want, they're gonna wanna figure out a way how to utilize as much of the limitless spending that those countries are willing to do. So, in that lies, like, a festering opportunity to do shit that's behind, like, there's a salary cap, sure, there's all this stuff, sure, but, sure, but, yo, man, there's an extra 400 million dollars out there, like, how do we get it? Like, is there a world where-

• 1:56:07Speaker 03

  There's also a reality where England left Europe several years ago, when they did Brexit, and economically are not in the same position that they were when they were part of a common market, in, in terms of, like, trading with the EU. So, like, they're like, I don't know if we can really, like, afford to, to give this up. I, I don't, I don't know, I'm not a complete expert.

• 1:56:26Bill Simmons?

  Right, so even if, even if you find them for, or you get that, rid of them for five years, it's half a decade, that's a long time, all their players will leave, they'd have to start over from scratch, they lose a ton of revenue, maybe that's how it plays out.

• 1:56:38Speaker 03

  The whole point of that-

• 1:56:39Bill Simmons?

  Cause you still have people like Mark Stein, who's worked for Man City his whole life.

• 1:56:43Speaker 03

  Yes, you do have-

• 1:56:44Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, so he just doesn't have a team anymore? He's, they're dead?

• 1:56:46Speaker 03

  Uh, I don't know. I mean, SMU had, SMU fans probably felt that way.

• 1:56:50Speaker 02

  It's a long ass time, until they became a relevant college football team. Again, it's like, they, they are a relevant college football team right now, they got their program back, like, before then, but like, now with NIL, there's so many fucking rich guys that are in and around that program, they're always going to be a problem. Texas Tech, places like that are gonna be a problem. I guess what I'm saying is, you know, I'm trying to think-

• 1:57:11Bill Simmons?

  Meet with UCLA.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  I'm just, I'm trying to think, I'm trying to think.

• 1:57:16Speaker 03

  Have you, you're not, you're not a booster yet?

• 1:57:18Bill Simmons?

  I'm not a booster.

• 1:57:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  You're a booster.

• 1:57:20Bill Simmons?

  Not a booster.

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  He's an emotional booster.

• 1:57:22Speaker 02

  He's a, he's a cultural booster.

• 1:57:24Bill Simmons?

  You know what I am? I'm a connector.

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  There you go. I don't know. It's just, it's very fascinating. Like, how, cause how do you do it?

• 1:57:31Speaker 03

  I think they'll wrap it up by Christmas. I mean, the appeals process being what it is.

• 1:57:34Bill Simmons?

  But they're playing this season right now.

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  No, they, well, they've been off for three weeks. So this is all anyone is talking about. And the first game back next weekend for Manchester City is at Liverpool.

• 1:57:45Bill Simmons?

  And what happens to Holland?

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. What, what, what does he do?

• 1:57:48Bill Simmons?

  That's all I really care about.

• 1:57:49Speaker 03

  I'm sure a lot of these guys have clauses in their contracts about what it takes to break it, what it takes to escape and get out. I think this would be a force majeure kind of thing that is been on, I've never seen something like this happen in sports, I personally. Like there were scandals in Italian soccer, Italian football, Calchopoli. Uh, there have been cheating scandals, whatever happened.

• 1:58:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember. Yeah. You remember?

• 1:58:14Bill Simmons?

  The Italians.

• 1:58:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:16Bill Simmons?

  The difference, the Italians would just kill people.

• 1:58:20Speaker 03

  This is a situation where I think those guys would probably be like,

• 1:58:25Speaker 03

  the, the thing I think keep coming back to is the reason why I think Abu Dhabi got involved with the team in the first place was to use it as a platform to express a different version of their like vision for the world and their vision of themselves to the world, sports watching. If, if, uh, if they've been disgraced here and people have written about this, like what's, what's the incentive to be involved?

• 1:58:49Speaker 02

  Well, no, this, I mean, what they, what they essentially do is they, it's really interesting. If you take boxing or golf or soccer, they just go all in, let the chips fall where they may. And if it goes bad, they're out. No fucking big deal. A lot of these countries know that, um, you know, they're based around fossil fuels. Like that's what the economy is based around. That's not infinite. And so at some point there needs to be penetration into other areas of like.

• 1:59:19Speaker 03

  Travel.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  Travel. Come here. There was this gigantic, um, this gigantic development that was supposed to be happening in Saudi Arabia. They were essentially building a city.

• 1:59:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:59:30Speaker 02

  You, you've heard of this and it was going to be this gigantic, huge thing, like four trillion dollars or whatever they were going to do it. And that was a way to like have people come there and vacation.

• 1:59:40Speaker 03

  Become a tourist destination.

• 1:59:41Speaker 02

  Become a tourist destination to kind of get out of needing to, you know, have your economy dictated by the rises and falls. All I'm saying is that like, they're not going to give a fuck. There's something else for them to buy. Like there, there's a different way for them to insert themselves into Western culture. Um, and I don't mean to come off sounding like in any way xenophobic.

• 2:00:01Bill Simmons?

  No, I, I agree with Van. They just move on to the next thing.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Move on to the next thing.

• 2:00:04Bill Simmons?

  The question is, what is the franchise and this stadium worth? So that's like a state of the art stadium.

• 2:00:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:00:10Bill Simmons?

  It's a big franchise in a, in a good spot with a big fan base. And Liverpool just went for whatever.

• 2:00:15Speaker 03

  But it's a, it's a, it does the.

• 2:00:17Bill Simmons?

  And are you buying it a disgraced team that can't compete for five years?

• 2:00:20Speaker 03

  Carry over? Like if, if, uh.

• 2:00:23Bill Simmons?

  They'd have to carry over for five years.

• 2:00:24Speaker 03

  Billionaire X comes in is like, I got it. I'll buy it. I'll buy it for six billion. Let's get out of here. I'll buy it for 10 billion. Let's get out of here.

• 2:00:31Bill Simmons?

  No, there's got to be ramifications.

• 2:00:32Speaker 03

  Does the, does Holland and, and, uh, Rand, Turkey, like all these guys stay on the team? Like that seems like a pretty cool.

• 2:00:39Bill Simmons?

  I think they're out for, if I was sports R, which you know, a job I've been applying for for 20 years.

• 2:00:45Speaker 03

  Sports R then would have the global.

• 2:00:46Bill Simmons?

  Sports R brings me in.

• 2:00:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:48Bill Simmons?

  I would just be like, look, you're out for five years and you got to sell the team. And that's where we are.

• 2:00:52Speaker 02

  Team's gone, out of five years.

• 2:00:54Bill Simmons?

  You sell the building. The team cannot compete in the premier league until 2031.

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:00:58Bill Simmons?

  And that's what I've decided.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  And what I say to you is, hey, we have this fucking stadium, right? It's a big, huge deal. We have all of these jobs that are on the table. What about the economic, we can't come back in five years. The economic distress will might kill.

• 2:01:14Speaker 03

  This is where you get into too big to fail stuff.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  Right. The economic distress might destroy what it is that we have going on and permanently alter the league.

• 2:01:22Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't mean they can't play somewhere else. Just don't know where that would be.

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  They join the Saudi Arabia league?

• 2:01:28Speaker 03

  No, I mean.

• 2:01:28Speaker 02

  It's not happening.

• 2:01:29Bill Simmons?

  MLS?

• 2:01:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:33Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:01:33Speaker 03

  Jump up right next to the Philadelphia Union. Uh, this is my, this has been my book report. There you go.

• 2:01:38Bill Simmons?

  It's a, it's the rare sports story that there's no solution. That is a solution that's obvious, right?

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  There's a fair solution. You know, the fair solution is they broke the rules and there should be a punishment. Other teams have gotten these punishments. Nottingham Forest, Everton.

• 2:01:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, they're definitely getting punished, right?

• 2:01:54Speaker 03

  Yes, but is it gonna, what, this is the problem with, um, three weeks of nothing, but people trying to outdo themselves by how outraged they are about it is like, now we're getting to the point where it's like, all right, man, you guys want Elliot Ness to come out and put these guys in handcuffs? Like what are we going to do? Like, what's an appropriate punishment for what these guys did? And it's been three weeks of like, I haven't had any football I watched, so I'm just thinking about this. I'm listening to sports radio all day and podcasts about this.

• 2:02:23Bill Simmons?

  So what's the mood in like your average Manchester pub at like 7:30 on a Saturday night? It's gotta be grim.

• 2:02:29Speaker 03

  It'll be really interesting to see Liverpool versus Man City next weekend because it's at Liverpool. And a lot of people think that it's going to be like a real hornets nest. But it will be also interesting if see, if it's just like another game. I, I don't know. I, I can't, I can't really call it.

• 2:02:46Speaker 02

  Truly last question. If in fact.

• 2:02:48Bill Simmons?

  Van loves this. He didn't know anything about it.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's really fascinating because there are a lot of other problems that exist in the world that are, that this is kind of a microcosm for.

• 2:02:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:02:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if, if in fact the role less travels hap, less traveled happens here, and there's really not a big penalty. And everybody decides that we're going to do something that's more for show and do our best at sweeping this under the rug. How will the worldwide or English soccer fandom respond to that? Would there be outrage?

• 2:03:19Speaker 03

  Wait, so say, rephrase that again?

• 2:03:21Bill Simmons?

  So if they're soft on the penalty.

• 2:03:23Speaker 02

  If they're soft on the punishment.

• 2:03:24Bill Simmons?

  But the thing is they can't be softer than existing penalties.

• 2:03:27Speaker 03

  A lot of people feel, which is like, you can buy your way out of trouble.

• 2:03:30Bill Simmons?

  What's the worst penalty that the premier league has ever given out?

• 2:03:34Speaker 03

  Um, I, I, I think they're.

• 2:03:35Bill Simmons?

  People have been banned for a couple of years?

• 2:03:38Speaker 03

  To an individual or to a team?

• 2:03:39Bill Simmons?

  To a team.

• 2:03:40Speaker 03

  You get points deductions and then you get banned from, uh, like you can get a transfer ban. But they have not been significant and the teams that have had to take them on

• 2:03:51Speaker 03

  for the most part have either figured out ways around them.

• 2:03:54Bill Simmons?

  But what they did was a hundred times worse than anything anybody else probably did.

• 2:03:57Speaker 02

  So like, there's no punishment that could even, they invented a new infraction.

• 2:04:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:01Speaker 03

  So you have to understand that there are dozens, a dozen fan bases at least who are like, these guys directly impacted my, like my enjoyment of my life.

• 2:04:13Speaker 02

  See?

• 2:04:13Speaker 03

  Like we had this team, we were this close to Champions League qualification and they fucking bought it. We had this team, we were in the FA Cup final against them. They kicked our ass. We had this guy who was supposed to be the backbone of our team for the next five years and they bought him. And like that's, they got blood in their mouths. Like people are pissed off about this.

• 2:04:33Bill Simmons?

  This is what would happen if like the Clippers had won three titles with Kawhi.

• 2:04:37Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:04:37Bill Simmons?

  And then all this stuff came out. People would have been so much madder about that story.

• 2:04:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:41Bill Simmons?

  But they were, you know, they fell short every year.

• 2:04:43Speaker 03

  You think about like the things where it's like, if the Clippers had also just continued then to be like, we'll take Tyrese Halliburton. We will take this guy. You know what I mean? And every year you were like, damn, we got a good little player. Like this is, we got, we've got something for the future.

• 2:04:55Bill Simmons?

  Clippers are like, we'll take Brook Lopez.

• 2:04:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:04:59Bill Simmons?

  We'll take Nick Batum.

• 2:05:00Speaker 03

  This is why there is a second apron though. You know, like this is if, if you would let three years ago, Mark Walter have full, like I can, I can outspend everybody.

• 2:05:11Bill Simmons?

  Baseball fans would say.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  That's the way to go.

• 2:05:13Bill Simmons?

  This is kind of what happened with the Dodgers and it's a relatively similar situation.

• 2:05:17Speaker 02

  And the Dodgers and then like the Yankees before them and the Red Sox.

• 2:05:21Bill Simmons?

  Everything within the rules.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22Bill Simmons?

  How he had the money to do this stuff seems like it was not in the rules.

• 2:05:25Speaker 03

  And it's also like, I think the idea of rather than caring about like competition between athletes, you're caring about like bookkeeping and the fact that the Dodgers figured out this way to amortize these contracts over the.

• 2:05:38Bill Simmons?

  To pay themselves with their own money and then have more money to spend.

• 2:05:41Speaker 03

  We're going to backload your deal or we're going to make it an eight year deal that pays out like this. You know, it's like, if you guys had thought of this, you should have done it, but I think there, it feels unfair. It feels unfair when Scoobal goes to the Dodgers.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  It, I mean.

• 2:05:56Bill Simmons?

  I think CR is pissed off about this.

• 2:05:58Speaker 02

  I think he is too.

• 2:05:59Bill Simmons?

  I think he's a smoldering volcano.

• 2:06:01Speaker 02

  There, there is, there is.

• 2:06:02Bill Simmons?

  These motherfuckers cost Liverpool.

• 2:06:05Speaker 03

  Liverpool's had a nice run. It's fine.

• 2:06:06Speaker 02

  There's daylight between, hey, you know what? How about a league? Me and Max went back and forth about this. Like, like how about a league where there is some type of care put into competitive balance where you just can't use the rest of the league as a farm team. For like, I understand that. This is something that's like actually much more breathtaking. And that is hidden.

• 2:06:27Bill Simmons?

  Hey, you're fucking on people's lives.

• 2:06:28Speaker 02

  Money that is not supposed to be there. This is like a complete subversion of the spirit of the competition in the league.

• 2:06:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:37Speaker 02

  And rules that are supposed to be.

• 2:06:38Speaker 03

  I'm sure there's a Manchester City fan out there who's listening to me and they're like, this is what Manchester United used to do.

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  People would have a good player. Manchester United would come pluck him up. Like it, it's not like this is, this is the first time anyone's ever splashed the pot in the, in English football. But I think that the scale of it, the fact that year after year, you would get to like, sort of like the spring and the team you were cheering for was like playing with like a kid from the academy and some dude, like converted winger was playing fullback because they were like, everybody's fucking hurt. And then Manchester City just brings another hundred million dollar guy off the bench. And you're like, God damn dude, I forgot. You guys have Jack Grealish. Like how do you guys have all these people?

• 2:07:18Bill Simmons?

  This reminds me of the rewatchables category. How would Van Lathan get out of this one? I'm wondering like if you're Manchester City, the, the people that own it with the fans,

• 2:07:30Bill Simmons?

  how do you get out of it? It's like, hey, you guys wanted to win.

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. We did. Yeah. This is.

• 2:07:34Bill Simmons?

  I didn't hear you guys complaining when we were lifting up trophies.

• 2:07:37Speaker 03

  The zag would be.

• 2:07:38Bill Simmons?

  You weren't asking how the meat was getting slaughtered?

• 2:07:40Speaker 02

  Every year they won the governor's cup.

• 2:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  Like the, the, the Kings, shall I?

• 2:07:46Speaker 03

  The zag would be to do Leo and Wolf of Wall Street and be like, I'm not fucking leaving. Like give us our penalty, but we're committed.

• 2:07:54Bill Simmons?

  The, I'm not fucking leaving Jordan Belfort defense.

• 2:07:57Speaker 03

  And we're hanging out and we're going to build this back up from the studs. We love Manchester. We love, uh, being here.

• 2:08:04Bill Simmons?

  So in the short term, you save a ton of money because all the players are out of their, they have all the loopholes to get out.

• 2:08:09Speaker 03

  In the short term, you're also going to have to pay a huge fine, I think.

• 2:08:13Speaker 02

  Well, what, what, like just at the end, at the risk of this going on another 30, 45 minutes, like what, what, what, what's that number look like? Like what would that be?

• 2:08:24Bill Simmons?

  Like $500 million?

• 2:08:25Speaker 03

  I, I mean, yeah. I, I, I like the, the level of like accounting, alleged accounting fraud would suggest it would be in the hundreds of millions. If you were going to be like, you have to pay that back.

• 2:08:36Bill Simmons?

  If this happened with the Knicks, I'm trying to imagine what it's like to be fans of other teams.

• 2:08:40Speaker 03

  Oh, that's the other thing. They are going to get sued by these other clubs.

• 2:08:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:08:45Speaker 03

  Individually.

• 2:08:47Bill Simmons?

  If this happened in the Knicks, I'd be like, get them, get them.

• 2:08:50Speaker 02

  So this could be potentially a billion dollar mistake.

• 2:08:53Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:08:55Bill Simmons?

  CR's book report.

• 2:08:56Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 2:08:57Bill Simmons?

  New feature.

• 2:08:58Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 2:08:58Bill Simmons?

  This was great.

• 2:08:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:00Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, guys.

• 2:09:01Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, man.

• 2:09:02Speaker 02

  No problem.

• 2:09:03Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kyle and Van and CR. Thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Gahow as well. I'm going to be back on Thursday with a big ass football podcast. Um, don't forget about rewatchables. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is up and I'll see you on Thursday.

• 2:09:39Bill Simmons?

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