Chuck Klosterman on the NBA Finals, a Rival League, the Sonics, 'The Rehearsal,' Cooper Flagg, and the Fear of AI

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Chuck Klosterman to talk about the NBA's popularity and foul baiting (2:58), before they discuss the biggest sport franchise moves and the possibility of a new international basketball league (31:53). Then, they talk about Cooper Flagg, and ‘The Rehearsal’ (58:38). Finally, they dive into prison escapes and AI fears (1:25:27). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Chuck Klosterman Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rghelp.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:30Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have Chuck Klosterman coming on in a little bit. We have been doing podcasts together since, I think I had a podcast in 2007. Initially, I think the first time when I got to know Chuck, we did a back-and-forth email exchange. I'm going to say in 2004, when I was writing for Page 2, and we did some back-and-forth in print. And then as soon as the podcast formed, as soon as I had my pod, which I think started May 2007, we started having long, long talks on the pod. So this one is no different. We're going to be talking about a lot of NBA stuff. Talk about Nathan Fielder's, the rehearsal. Talking about, a lot about AI at the end.

• 2:13Bill Simmons?

  Gets a little grim at the end, actually. But I thought it was a worthy topic. But anyway, this goes all over the place for the next two hours. So that's coming up in a little bit. Wanted to mention- The rewatchables, we put up Working Girl yesterday on the rewatchables feed. You can watch this video podcast as well. I had a great time. It was 20 minutes longer than the actual movie, which we usually try to make the episode the same length as the movie. We couldn't pull it off this time. Same length or less usually is the rule. Not this time. We went for like two hours, 15 minutes. Me and Amanda Dobbins, Joanne Robinson. You can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch all of the stuff from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel.

• 2:54Bill Simmons?

  And don't forget about FanDuel Sportsbook, by the way, because they have all customer profit boosts coming for every game of the NBA Finals that we're going to have left. I'm going to try to figure out, I'll tweet out something for this week for, I think, game three. I'm trying to come up with something, something good. It's probably something in the neighborhood of Indiana with the over and maybe a Siakam rebound thing. If there's a case for Indiana winning game three, I think it goes a specific way and that's probably the bet. So that's what I'm going to figure out. We're going to take a break. We're going to bring in Pearl Jam and then Chuck Close. This episode is presented by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years.

• 3:39Bill Simmons?

  And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home, car, and more. Whether you need an in-person or digital assist, they're ready when life hits you with a full court press. Get a game plan that helps fit your life. Talk to State Farm today. State Farm, with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state.

• 4:28Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're recording. It is 9:22 Pacific time. The man, the man, Chuck Klosterman is here. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. Haven't talked to you in a while. It felt like the right time. A lot of stuff percolating in the air.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  How do you, how do you gauge the right time? What does the right time feel like to you?

• 4:47Bill Simmons?

  If I miss talking to you, if I feel like there's a lot of storylines for us to hit, usually things have to feel weird in some sort of way. I think sports feels a little weird right now, which I guess we could start with that, with the, with the, with the NBA, a sport that you and I both really love and we've been following forever. And it has these ebbs and flows. And sometimes you have a series like OKC-Indiana with San Antonio-Cleveland in 07, San Antonio versus New Jersey in 03. There's these times when the matchup doesn't have big cities, doesn't have stars people are used to yet. And everybody just freaks out and talks, oh, my God, like the ratings for game two, I think were the lowest since the bubble, that were the lowest for a Sunday night since 07.

• 5:32Bill Simmons?

  Game one was bad too. And then everybody overreacts. A, do you care about ratings at all? And B, where do you think about where we're heading with the NBA these next five years from a star standpoint?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I guess I, I care is an interesting word. I follow it certainly. I'm always interested to see, because they always, they use that as a way to sort of understand everything else. It's sort of like the rating, we look at the ratings and if they go up, well, then we have to look at what's happening in these games and decide that this is the future. And if they go down, we think this is a failure. It's not super surprising that the numbers are lower. I would, I would think that there's, it, I mean, you get the sense that all of these pro sports outside of football are sort of moving into more sort of kind of niche identities. Like, I don't know if this is a terrible number considering the matchup, but really is only for people who really like basketball. So maybe the percentage that we're seeing is an accurate depiction

• 6:29Speaker 04

  of how interest, what is the actual interest in professional basketball when played well by interesting teams who don't have a ton of guys who are famous. Like, maybe this is the actual number.

• 6:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, I remember when I was writing my Page Two column in the mid 2000s, especially when it got pretty bleak there. There was like a Pistons Spurs 05 finals and people were worried about like the, the Artest melee happened. People worried about like basketball's too. There weren't enough points. It didn't seem explosive enough. And I remember it had this running joke about how I was one of the last 20 NBA fans. I was thinking with this finals that it reminds me like you're basically pushing away the casual fans, the people who only parachuted in because, oh, I know who LeBron is or like it's a big market, whatever. And it reminds me of like when, uh, when Pearl Jam released Spin the Black Circle. And it was a way to-

• 7:23Speaker 04

  It remind you of the Vitality record, this series. Okay.

• 7:27Bill Simmons?

  It pushes away the fans that didn't really care to begin with. And it's like, just come here. We want to appeal to the real fans. Cause I think OKC versus Indiana is an awesome basketball matchup.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  So do I. I mean, the Vitality thing is interesting because that was a conscious decision by the band. It would be weird if the NBA was consciously like-

• 7:44Bill Simmons?

  Right. This was an unconscious decision.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  But okay, we've been doing this for what, fucking 25 years now we've been having these talks. What's the one thing that has never changed? The NBA is always in a crisis. It always is. And there's never been a time it hasn't been. I think 1984 to 1987 is the only period in my mind, in my memory, when it was like, everything is great right now. There is no problem. There is no percolating future we got to worry about. Like, things are good. This has always been the case. I think I wrote that almost exact sentence in like a piece I did for ESPN in like 2005. The NBA more than any other league is always seeming to deal with this, but you know, what if people don't like this? Like, that problem just doesn't seem to go away.

• 8:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm trying to think. So-

• 8:28Speaker 04

  You know what were the healthiest periods in the history of the NBA? I would say the middle 80s. That's but, you know, and perhaps-

• 8:39Speaker 04

  Late 60s, early 70s, maybe?

• 8:42Bill Simmons?

  I think 91 and 93, Jordan's first three titles was a home run. When you had the Knicks, you had the Bulls. They were adding, they're of course stupidly expanding and doing that stuff. They had so much talent. I think that was really good.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  But if that was the case, why didn't a few years after that, then we're like, we gotta move the three-point line, man. We gotta do all, these games are, they're 88 to 76 in the playoffs. That was the big thing in the 90s, right? No one scores. It's just bully ball, teams beating on each other. It was like, there was Jordan and then like the Knicks and all these physical teams. The Heat were like that for a while.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Jordan goes away for two years. The ratings go down. Everyone's like, ah, no one really liked basketball. They really only liked Jordan. Jordan comes back, the ratings go up. Ah, you see, people don't really like basketball. They only like him. It's like, it didn't matter what went on. It was always perceived as a problem and it seems to be unique to them. Because this is like, I, there's just never a time when people aren't talking about whatever. Like now it's like teams score too much. You know, that there's too much three-point shooting and there is. Although it is preferable, I think, to games that are 81 to 70, I would say, you know?

• 9:51Bill Simmons?

  So, so from a basketball standpoint, the last time the league felt really healthy was that 08 to 2012 stretch. When the Lakers were in the finals for three straight years. They played the Celtics twice. The Dirk Nowitzki 2011 season and then the decision, which was, I think, the most important kind of fan interest event that probably happened in the 21st century, right? But at the same time as all this was happening, all these NBA teams were available. The franchise values were going down. We were headed toward this huge like lockout and this big crisis that they were having economically. And the league felt like it was in peril, even as the basketball was good.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  I remember a lot of talk about like, we, there's a dress code now because we don't want, I mean, that was a little prior to 2008. But stuff like that is always going on. Like I, I suppose it's just like, you know, uh, this is something else that we've kind of talked a lot about over the years. It's like. It's fascinating how the NBA sort of sustains this level of popularity mostly through non-basketball media events. Like, it is very rare that the thing that most people are talking about is what's actually happening in these games. And it's always sort of been that way. I'm not sure exactly why it is. It might be the fact that because there's fewer players

• 11:15Speaker 04

  and we can really see them and we really do get to know their personalities, it pulls away the sense that what they're doing professionally is the most important thing and what's interesting about them matters just as much. I don't know. I just, I feel like, sometimes I feel like we do these podcasts and I'm like, did I literally say this 15 years ago? I often feel that way.

• 11:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but what's weird about this one is that I would think ultimately having OKC and Indiana develop as signature teams would be an awesome outcome for the NBA. And yet, it's not perceived that way at all.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  Well, you're perceiving it. I mean, there's now this

• 11:53Bill Simmons?

  I think I'm in the minority, though.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Well, you are in the country. I wouldn't say you are in the media. I feel like there's now kind of two channels of basketball discussion. And one has gotten, kind of the side you're on is, we gotta watch every single game. Like, I can't talk about this unless I get the NBA ticket and watch every single game and I need to have opinion, you know, a pretty informed opinion on, you know, the third best guy on the Pelicans or whatever. And then there's the other side, which is sort of like, well, this is entertainment. This is kind of an entertaining league, kind of like what Derek Thompson would describe. It's like, I love the NBA, but I watch no games. You know, there's these two sort of silos of how this works now. And

• 12:38Speaker 04

  what's interesting is both sides of this media equation talk to each other and the conversations don't go well. Because you have one guy on one side trying to describe like, why the help side defense of, you know, Oklahoma City is so fascinating. And the other guy is like, well, how do we feel about Chet, though, as a person? It's like, it just doesn't work. You know, it's like, but it kind of keeps going that way. So, yeah.

• 13:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is presented by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years. And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home, car, and more. Whether you need an in-person or digital assist, they're ready when life hits you with a full-court press. Get a game plan that helps fit your life. Talk to State Farm today. State Farm with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. You know, I think people have struggled with OKC. Russell and I talked about this on Sunday because there's not really storylines yet for them. I think people struggle when there's not that like typical big picture storyline to grab onto, which is like LeBron's doing this podcast with Nash right now.

• 13:45Bill Simmons?

  And it seems like every time he does it, something comes out of it that then moves into the cycle of how people talk about sports now. And I don't know if that's a cycle that represents how everyone talks about sports, but it's that weird ESPN show driven. So like recently LeBron had this thing about how he's basically doing the thing where he's talking about his critics, but I don't know who the critics are who says-

• 14:07Speaker 04

  Someone in city doesn't have a bag. And this is, this is infuriating to him. I don't know who the person is who said this. It's probably somebody with like 80 followers. Somehow he saw it and that's what his, he took a great offense to that. And then Steve Nash kind of acted like, oh, I'm offended for you and-

• 14:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was this amorphous criticism, but it wasn't attributed to anybody. And LeBron has 40,000 points, but people don't think he has a bag and that really offends him. And I'm, I'm thinking like LeBron has a lot of ways to score. I think we all have appreciated that for a long time.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  I mean, are there guys who have a bigger, larger bag? I mean, yes, Kyrie Irving has a larger bag than LeBron James of things he can do with a basketball. But it's very clear which guy is better. And it's like somehow it's like this is always this thing back and forth where it's like if somebody is great because they're physically imposing, they're insulted that people don't view them as more of a skilled craftsman. But if someone does all skills and they're all talent, then it's like this guy isn't even that good, really. This is this is fake somehow. It's like there's, I don't know who is the person who's like, I'm happy the way I'm perceived. Like what NBA player is happy, maybe Mike Conley? I don't know. This doesn't seem like anybody's happy with how other people view them.

• 15:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's either.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  All things. Maybe it's true for me and you. I don't know. Maybe no one is pleased with how they are seen.

• 15:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's like Kyrie's a good example. Kyrie, the respect everyone has for his skills in an offensive game is actually above what his actual quality and outcome is.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  I mean, if we're going to talk about this stupid term bag, he has the best one. I think, you know, I mean, in terms of finishing by the rim, the ability to handle the ball, the ability to see the floor, the ability to pass. He's the best at that I think I've ever seen of any player ever, then with my eyes. But he's not one of the 50 best players I've ever seen. You know, it's just that that skills are an important means at a basketball camp, he would kill it. Like during the stations in the morning, Kyrie Irving would destroy everyone. But it's not the same as being, you know, I mean, I still, I do think I'm more, I defend him more than most people. Like, I think it was, I, I, I was supportive of the Dallas trade when it happened. I think, you know, but it is a, I mean, LeBron now,

• 16:21Speaker 04

  I mean, he's just, it is interesting to see how he has sort of evolved as a person like, you know, and we've really seen it in a way that we don't really see with most guys because no one is that famous for that long. But we've really seen changes in him.

• 16:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's almost with celebrities that have that, but not athletes where we're with somebody for 20, almost a quarter of a century at this point. You know?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  I mean, it's like, it's years ago now, but it's like, remember when LeBron used to constantly chew his nails? Remember that he chew his nails constantly on the sidelines? And it was like, that's what like a little kid does in a way, you know? And that, I mean, I'm not, that's, I'm not criticizing for doing it. I'm just, but it's, it's really interesting. Like the things that we've seen him sort of shed and add over time, not as a basketball player even, just as a guy, you know?

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the things that he's added from an offensive standpoint, like he, like he can really punish people in the low post now. And, and he has all of these different things he does down there. And then I think his step back three, which he's really been doing since the mid 2000s. But now it's like one of his go to shots. But I, I think what probably bothers him is that Durant, I can't believe we're talking about this. But like people have this perception Durant, myself included, I think Durant's the best scoring forward of all time. LeBron has been the most successful scoring forward of all time. But I think Durant, just the ease of which he just gets to 35 points, like for this, what? I think the last time he didn't average 28 points a game was like 2009 or something.

• 17:58Bill Simmons?

  But we're talking about degrees, right? LeBron, there's a lot of brute force with him and a lot of like fast break, like just flying down where he's just a better athlete than everybody else.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  There was a period when he was with the Heat, when the thing that LeBron could do is late in the game. If the team needed a basket, he could just go in the paint and dunk on someone. He didn't do it the whole game. He would only do it a few times. As good as Durant is, a more skilled, probably offensive player, definitely a more skilled offensive player than LeBron. He never had that.

• 18:26Bill Simmons?

  The brute force piece, yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  The, the thing where, I mean, he, you know, Durant can get a shot and get a great shot and go up over him, but he still has to make it. You know, he still has to get the shot. There's still a chance he's going to rim out. But when LeBron could just go to the basket and pretty much throw it, there was, there was nothing. You had, you could always concede that if Cleveland, that if Miami needed, at one point Cleveland needed two points, they could just do that. So, you know, who is the greater player? There's no question who's the greater player, but I, yet LeBron is still sort of offended that he's not seen as the greatest player in every context. Like he kind of wants to be perceived as the greatest player in every possible way it could engaged.

• 19:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, he's, he's one of the greatest scorers ever. But it probably, there's probably two other people that got mentioned against him and, and then he takes that. I said, you know, I, I just, I always love, I just want to know who said that he didn't have a bag because that would just be a dumb, like whoever said that on a TV show or a radio show or a podcast, like that's somebody who doesn't watch basketball. So you're arguing against somebody who's an idiot.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  No, if somebody watches basketball needs to say something. I mean, that's, that's the weird thing. It's like these guys all got to come up with something to say all the time. And inevitably they're going to say idiotic things because the expectation is you have to say something all the time.

• 19:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, how do you put Shay Gildes Alexander in a context as, you know, he's somebody that just gets the 32, 34, 38 points a game. There's a case that he's already at this point of his career as good of a scorer as Kobe Bryant ever was, but we're not, that's like a third rail. Nobody's allowed to go there yet because Kobe averaged 35 a game in a season and he's perceived as this, you know, like the, other than Jordan, the pinnacle of two guard scorers. But I think what Shay is doing is on that level at this point.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  Well, it's possible to make that argument right now. Will that argument be able to be made in 10 years? Okay, we gotta watch, you know, like he might be peaking right now. This might be his, as you would say, his apex mountain. Maybe he's on his apex mountain right now or the, but we'll see as time passes, kind of, you know, it's, um.

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what I feel, Dwayne Wade, right?

• 20:35Speaker 04

  I mean, like, well, here's like a thing that's kind of interesting. You know, I watch a lot of these playoff games with no volume. Like I'm in the room with somebody else in my family, they're on the iPad and they're watching something narrative. So I just watch without sound and I am continually amazed by how different the experience is to just watch a game as opposed to have someone attempt to describe it. Like all this idea of him being a follower, right? Like when I'm watching this with no volume. To me, it seems like he gets by guys. He's a great free throw shooter. So he kind of, it's, the contact is legitimate. He's not like saying, he's not like pretending to get followed. You know, it, so he does this, you know, and it's when I'm watching without sound, it's like, well,

• 21:17Speaker 04

  this is a real effective thing. But then when I watch it with sound on, the first time it happens, even if they don't necessarily criticize him for it, they mention that other people have. And you start talking about this thing that seems to color everything. I mean, like I, um, I, the, i- i- it does strike me that like a lot of the things that we talk about, about, you know, it's, it's simply just us reacting to what the announcers or the analysts say. Like it's not necessarily the reality of those statements. It's just that this was said, so we have to decide whether we agree with it or not. So when I watch him play, like I, I like watching play. I like watching Brunson play. I like all these guys who apparently now

• 21:59Speaker 04

  are sort of perceived as being like an, an unwatchable sort of, like they have, they have an unwatchable style. I, I never feel that way. I'd rather see a guy, you know, get by a dude, kind of stop, get followed, try to get an and one, than just guys running in the corner and just shooting threes over and over and over again. That to me is, that is the least interesting thing.

• 22:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And that's why I really like this series because it's two teams that are doing, that are zagging against where the NBA was going. The only thing Shay does with, with fouls that I, that I do think he's guilty of is when he drives, especially when he drives to the right, he puts his left hand out as a, as a borderline like stiff arm and kind of keeps it out there. And then sometimes they'll try to lock the guy's arm or he'll just, it makes it look like he's getting fouled, but really he's the one that's sticking his arm out and the refs just fall for it, which I don't blame him for, but that's it.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  I feel like they're, they're officiating in the playoffs has been much better than during the regular season. I've been, you know, I've been, I, I like the level of they're letting them play. Now, some guys, he being one, does seem to get like regular season calls. Like they call fouls, he'll, he can draw a foul the way he would in January where a lot of other guys can't. Like the other guys, like they just got to live with it. But that's always been the case, right? Isn't there's always been the assumption that, you know, stars get the calls and he was the MVP, so he's going to get those calls and, you know?

• 23:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God. I mean, you go back in history, that's how it goes. The only person who seems like he gets away with more than everybody else, and I don't understand it, is Caruso. Like for a fact, he is way more handsy and way more physical and just constantly like peppering, peppering some, it's almost like he's doing a movie Thai class or something. He's just hitting guys and they just kind of let him do it. And I, they did in Denver series, they did in the last series and he's doing it in this series too. And nobody else in the game gets away with it. I don't understand that.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Okay, there were some elements of that with the whole Houston Rockets team. And there were bits of this with like the Houston Cougar College team this year. It's kind of like, do you, do you have a friend who constantly gossips about everyone? Do you know anybody like that who's just constantly gossiping? That person is given more leeway to do that than other people. You get used to it, right? You're like, oh, so, so they always talk shit about everybody, but that's just who they are. Or if anybody else did it, it would be like, why is this person, you know? So it's just these teams, like Caruso now has built in this idea that this is how he plays. And either you're going to call foul on him on six consecutive possessions, he's going to be out of the game. Or you're going to let it happen. I think that this is a, it's to his credit in a way.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  Like he has sort of socialized the refs to see him as a, like a, sort of like a, he's at a physical disadvantage that he has to make up through grit and they let him do it. I mean, it was, it's like the reverse of when they would just be like, well, for Shaq to get a foul, you have to hit him with a hammer. Like we just are going to accept that, like, you know, we, you have to, we're just going to assume that he's that big and that strong. It's just going to be contact every time. So a lot of things that are fouls have just gone. And that's what I think. I don't know.

• 25:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Shaq was like that and Rob Gronkowski was the other one who was like that. They used to drive every Patriot fan nuts. He just got officiated differently because he was so big. It seemed unfair that he was going against like five, 10 cornerbacks and stuff.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, this is kind of, I guess, more of an abstract question, but if you were, you know, like commissioner of the NBA or whatever, and you were talking to the officiating crews, would you say you got to make sure everyone's officiated the same way? Or do you have to sort of understand that some guys are going to be officiated differently? Because I think the natural inclination is to say the former and yet it doesn't really work. Like you'd almost have to do the latter.

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, so game six of Knicks Pacers was interesting in that respect. I remember talking about it afterwards where Brunson and Halliburton were boches getting mauled and they were just kind of, they, the refs, I guess, just agreed before the game, we're just gonna let this go. Halliburton was just dribbling up the court like on pseudo fast breaks and people were just shoving him and pushing him and they just weren't calling it. But they weren't calling it on Brunson either. I'm good with it's that. I don't like the special treatment stuff.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, I think these games are more interesting when there's more contact.

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  Contact.

• 26:18Bill Simmons?

  So we're in this stretch where OKC, a team that I, I feel like people can't get a handle on because the defense is so good. Defense is something that's never really resonated with people in the same way. Like the, the 2000 Ravens, you know, that they're, it just doesn't work as well as offense because people understand offense better. So you have that, you have Indiana that doesn't, that their star is somebody that is a guy who averages 18 points a game in the playoffs. And people are like, he's gotta step up. It's like, this is who he is. He averages 18 points and 10 assists a game and leads the team and makes everybody better. He's not a, I gotta step up guy.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  They're better when he's the second or third leading scorer.

• 26:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  But I believe in scorer, that's the best. And he, you know, I feel, you know?

• 27:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's, he's a facilitator. He's, he's exactly like what Nash was like 20 years ago. Nash wanted to be at 20 points, 14 assists and make everybody better. And that's what he did. But people seem to miss that with them. But in general, like, I like the styles. I think the games three and four in Indiana are gonna be really good. And yet the series, we're, we're gonna come out of it and people are like, that was a failure. The NBA's in trouble. What this OKC, oh my God, they're gonna be better two years from now than they are now. This could be like a little mini dynasty that we have and none of us even know how we really feel about this team. It's almost like you need some sort of controversy, scandal, bad blood behind the scenes, something

• 27:46Bill Simmons?

  for people to care beyond just the basketball stuff. That's what the Lakers did so brilliantly, right? Shaq would show up fat every season. Kobe would get mad at Shaq. Phil Jackson would do these veiled barbs at everybody. It always seemed like they were teetering on a collapse and they would pull it together for the playoffs. And people are like, this is amazing. This is exactly what I want. Whereas OKC is just like, we all like each other. We're just gonna keep winning.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it does seem like there's a basketball thing to discuss, which is,

• 28:16Speaker 04

  I don't know, it's so odd now. You're watching a game and it's the second quarter and one team is up by 19 points. But then you're in this weird situation where you're like, well, it's not so common for this team to, for anyone to come back from that deficit.

• 28:32Bill Simmons?

  Like, you don't feel safe at all.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Well, yeah. So do I gotta keep watching and then possibly like, I mean, game two where it just never really changes, you know?

• 28:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but then with four minutes left, Indy's down 20. No, Indy's down 20 with four minutes left, but I'm like, ah, they could still do this, like, which is insane.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  I was early. What happened is I kind of lost kind of attention, but I was kind of following the score. And at one point it sort of tightened up a little bit, but it's just, it's a, it's a weird thing. It's like, it's like, it's weird if the, it's fun to have these great comes backs, but it's also strange if all leads are meaningless, you know? But because everyone shoots nothing but threes, if you shoot a little better than your opponent and they shoot a little under what they normally do, it becomes like a 25 point margin. And I don't know how that can be fixed.

• 29:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing that changed it, like the Celtics were the guiltiest of all of this where they have a lead and then they change how they play because they slow it down and they're trying to protect it. And that seems like that screws up a lot of stuff, too. It's interesting with, uh, this, cause I was thinking about Scottie Scheffler too. The US Open is coming this week and he has like the best odds to win a major in a while. I think he's like under, he's like plus 270 or something. Cause he's been that great. I think he's won 10 majors in the last year and a half.

• 29:49Bill Simmons?

  But people think he's boring. And there's no like Scottie Scheffler, we would never have a Scottie Scheffler argument. I would never call you and be like, hey, I just wanted to talk to Scottie Scheffler with you for 15 minutes. And you'd be like, what? We're talking about Scottie Scheffler. What is there to say? Tim Duncan was like this and the kind of that 2003 to 05 range where it's like, yeah, Tim Duncan's really good. And we just immediately ran out of stuff to say, I wonder if, I wonder if SGA has moved in there, but Scheffler to me is the number one where he's like dominating golf now in a way that we have not seen since Tiger Woods. But people don't find him that interesting. So it's just kind of happening over here.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have one Pete Sampras, I felt for a while.

• 30:33Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 30:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, where um, uh, where the news just kind of becomes, oh, he won again. And it isn't, no one is excited that it happened. It just kind of seems like almost that that was the inevitable outcome. I mean, basketball is the upside that there's more guys, right? So when you were saying that, like, Jim Duncan, there were many people to talk about and many things to discuss about. Golf, I suppose, is different, although there's more personalities in golf now than I can remember for a while, but I don't really follow it either. So.

• 31:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's almost like when Scottie Scheffler, what happened in that thing when he got arrested for six hours? Easily the most exciting thing that's ever happened with him. Otherwise, he's just dusting dudes in these tournaments and people are like, holy shit. We gotta take a break and I want to talk about franchise moods. The NBA Finals in full swing and our buddies at Fandals Sportsbook are here all the way with you. We have an all customer profit boost for every single game of the series. That's right. You heard me. Use your profit boost bet. Which team's going to win? Who's going to drop 30? You can build a parlay for a shot at an even bigger parlay. Whatever you want to do. If your bets win, you'll win even bigger.

• 31:45Bill Simmons?

  And you could do it all again the next day. So like, for instance, if you think Indiana is going to win game three of the NBA Finals, I would probably do the over with that because that means the pace is going to be faster. Maybe do Siakam over rebounds, Indiana will win in the over in the game, maybe Halliburton six assists. Put it together. Get ready to go. If you don't already have Fandals, it's not too late to get on the action. Visit fandals.com/BS to join today. That is fandals.com/BS. To claim your profit boost for each and every game of the NBA Finals. Make every moment more with Fandals, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. You must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Opted in required. Bonus issued as non-deductible profit boost tokens.

• 32:30Bill Simmons?

  Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fandals.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rghelp.com. This episode is brought to you by Verbo Private Vacation Rentals. Verbo, you can save over $200 on select homes when you stay for a week or more, say, if you wanted to. Go catch a couple of baseball games in Boston. Take some time off work, fly into Bean Town, watch the Sox play. After that, you can do anything. You can go book a Verbo in Cape Cod for a week. The world is your oyster, or your lobster roll, or clam chowder. Really, it has shells, gills, and it's indigenous to the Atlantic. It's your edible metaphor of choice. They're crustacean crazy around there. Guess what?

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  Since you stayed longer than a week, you saved over $200. You know what that means? More shellfish. I love shellfish. Hope you're not allergic. Next vacation, stay longer and save. Make it a Verbo. All right. Franchise relocations. I was thinking about this in the context of the Sonics, a topic that I've brought up a million times, that I wrote multiple columns about, that I keep bringing up on this podcast. But I was starting to wonder about them in the context historically of most devastating franchise relocations ever. Because Seattle doesn't just lose professional basketball, starting in 2008. Going forward, they also lose Durant, Russell Westbrook, who had just been drafted by them, but they're about to leave.

• 33:58Bill Simmons?

  Sam Presti, who I would say has probably been the smartest GM of the last 20 years. And then all this stuff that happens all the way through the, they don't win a title, but then they have this rebirth, built around the Paul George trade a couple of times. And now they have this dynasty potentially sitting there. And you're in Seattle going, it was already horrific that we lost our team, that we lost the 1979 champs and this umbilical cord we had to basketball, and people loved that team. But now we have to watch this other team basically become a rocket ship? And I was trying to think, what's worse for a franchise?

• 34:39Bill Simmons?

  The only one I could think of that's definitively worse is the Brooklyn Dodgers. Going to LA like that one is like that's has to be number one.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  They still it still gets brought up all the time. It's the weirdest thing. It's sort of like people, you know, they, you know, we still call, you know, middle school kids playing baseball, playing Babe Ruth baseball. It's like he's like 100 years later. We still use that term as yeah.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  And the Brooklyn Dodgers thing that still comes up whenever 18 moves, you know, when, when the Browns left Cleveland.

• 35:08Bill Simmons?

  I had that too.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  It was a cataclysmic deal for Cleveland, but then they got the team back so quickly. And they retained the colors and all that stuff. And they did have to see the Ravens succeed. Um, but uh.

• 35:23Bill Simmons?

  So, so here's what I have.

• 35:26Bill Simmons?

  And I don't even know if this is a rankings, but these were the eight that really jumped out to me. Brooklyn losing the Dodgers is one, and I think, I think the Giants moving to San Francisco is another one because you think of baseball back then in the, you know, in the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and the three New York teams were the hub of Major League Baseball, right? There were other teams, but it was like having those three there. That was it. They were the epicenter. And then by the time we got to the sixties, there was only one team left. They had to bring the Mets back in. But the Giants going to San Francisco, the Colts going to Indianapolis, especially how they left, kind of out of nowhere.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Left in the middle of the night and.

• 36:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  But it, but the, and you know, and Baltimore had had like, uh, they hadn't been good for a while, but they had such a deep tradition. You know, that was still built into the town, you know, unitas and all that stuff. So that was a bad one, you know?

• 36:17Bill Simmons?

  That was a bad one, but they end up, they get the Ravens back, right? So it gets a little tempered by that. Same thing for.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  There was a pretty big gap between that though. It was a lot of years. Yeah.

• 36:28Bill Simmons?

  And, you know, speaking of that, the Browns going to Baltimore, same thing, which you could see coming, you could see coming, but they only don't have the Browns for four years. Devastating to lose them, but only for four. Sonics to OKC, they haven't had a basketball team since, and their basketball team that left ended up basically becoming, you know, Facebook stock.

• 36:51Bill Simmons?

  Or Amazon stock or whatever like it's it wasn't just that they left they became multi billionaires when they left. I think a really underrated one is the Whalers going to Carolina because and I would also throw in the Nordiques going to Denver and and the Stars going to Dallas.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Well, I when I heard the North Stars were going to Dallas, like I'm not somebody who follows hockey, but I thought like this is because I had sort of when I was a kid, you know, adjacent to Minnesota, it seemed like oddly, the two franchises that mattered the most were the Twins and the North Stars. Not, you know, like football is more popular than anything. So of course the Vikings maybe mattered the most, but the Twins and the North Stars seem more reflective of the town like like it was like a because hockey is huge in Minnesota and the Twins were. So I was but people handled it. Okay, it didn't it didn't seem to be as devastating as I thought it was going to be, you know?

• 37:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, and they ended up getting one back. And then the only other one. So Buffalo loses the Braves to the Clippers. They moved to San Diego. They never get another NBA team. Now Buffalo is not a huge city, but I think you lose your team and you never replace the team. That's probably the worst. You know, like the Colts going Indianapolis was was like somebody's wife just packing up and leaving in the middle of the night like that's that that was like the biggest gut punch probably, but they did get a team back. I still feel like Brooklyn losing the Dodgers is the worst one, just because people have talked about that for generations.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Because in most of these situations, I get the sense that.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  If, once we get to a generation who doesn't remember the team being there, then it's not that big of a deal anymore. Like you can't, you can't have this memory of this team that was never in town. But the Brooklyn Dodgers are the exception to that. They're like people who of course had, I mean, there's not many people around who were like watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play and it would still come up. Like I feel like a guy, I feel like the New York mayor or something, a guy running for mayor recently made a reference to the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, you know, leaving town or whatever. That, that

• 39:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because part of their DNA was, their DNA was they hated the Yankees, right? The Yankees always beat them. So you couldn't then be like, okay, now I'll switch to the Yankees because that was their, our travel. My dad grew up in Brooklyn and was a Dodgers fan as a kid. And he didn't have a baseball team really for the next, I don't know, 12, 13 years until he was living in, uh, in Boston and started rooting for the Red Sox during the, when he was going to college and the 67 Red Sox kind of got him back in. But that was, I don't know, 12 years later and he's just like, they, even the Mets came and they're like, fuck it. A lot of, and some people stayed with the Dodgers.

• 39:47Bill Simmons?

  Like I, my friend Hershey, his dad, even though they left, stayed with the Dodgers, which is like a really hard thing to do because you're just basically reading newspaper box scores and then occasionally they're on TV. Anyway, I, I feel like the Sonics has moved up the ladder. I think they've passed the Browns. I think they've passed the Colts. I think you could even argue they've passed the Giants when the Giants moved to San Francisco because the Mets basically replaced the Giants in the National League. I think a lot of the New York Giants fans jumped there. I think it's the second worst now. To lose a basketball, to lose professional basketball for 18 years.

• 40:24Bill Simmons?

  And then on top of it, have your team become this team that was incredibly fun to watch and had some of the best players in the league. Like it's a continued gun punch and not talked about ever.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, uh, like, would things have played out the same if the team stays in Seattle? I guess that's a hard thing to know.

• 40:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, hold on there. That's, so that's one of the great what ifs of this century. Remember I wrote my book, I did my what ifs chapter? This is a completely different Kevin Durant conversation.

• 40:55Bill Simmons?

  If they just stay in Seattle, they're gonna have a lot of money, right? Because Seattle is, I think, very similar to Silicon Valley, like how the Warriors became the superpower. Even though the Warriors were a mess up until the early 2010s, then they had all this money that came in and they just built the superpower. They could have built it. I just don't think Durant ever leaves. I think he's Seattle for life. I think he's still there. I think he's like Kobe on the Lakers for Seattle. I really do. I don't think he ever leaves.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  That mean, I guess it's possible. That just happens so rarely with anybody. And he does not, I mean, he's kind of a wandering spirit or whatever.

• 41:31Bill Simmons?

  He became a wandering spirit. He stayed in OKC for nine years or eight years, right?

• 41:36Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah.

• 41:38Bill Simmons?

  I think he eventually became a wandering spirit, but I don't know. I don't think he leaves because I think unless him and Westbrook were up, that would have been the only way that that blows up, I think.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  So Durant a journeyman? And if so, if not, who's the greatest NBA journeyman of all time? Does he not classify as a journeyman?

• 41:57Bill Simmons?

  No, he's too good to be a journeyman. I think he's a nomad.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  How many franchises you been with? Let's see, one, two, three, four franchises now?

• 42:05Bill Simmons?

  About to be five.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  What's five? So you could play for five teams and not be a journeyman? Who is the greatest journeyman?

• 42:11Bill Simmons?

  But journeyman means you were just bounced around like you were James Posey.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  But, but I have a feeling like a lot of guys you're gonna bring up are gonna have played for less than five teams. When we think of, you know, classic journeyman.

• 42:23Bill Simmons?

  What about Shaq? Is Shaq a journeyman then? Shaq played for Orlando, the Lakers, Phoenix, Cleveland, and the Celtics.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  It's weird, I guess. If you have a, if you have a bunch of franchises right at the end, it makes it seem less journey-ish, you know? It seems that the journey has to be along the way. I mean, there also is like a sort of pejorative meaning, like, you know, like the journeyman all-star, who have been journeyman all-stars? Moses Malone was played for a lot of different franchises and he was great in every one. Well, not at the end, but for the early ones, certainly.

• 42:58Bill Simmons?

  Moses is a good one. Moses, I think, played for like six or seven teams if you include the ABA.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we would never classify him as a journeyman, I guess, you know?

• 43:06Bill Simmons?

  I wouldn't. Journeyman is, to me, means you're a role player.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Always, okay.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  I think I would use nomad.

• 43:14Bill Simmons?

  Probably Robert Horry.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Okay, so he played for how many franchises?

• 43:19Bill Simmons?

  Houston, Phoenix, Detroit, San Antonio, the Lakers.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Didn't he change your journeyman?

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Cause he played for a lot of franchises and always at, you know, we was the, you know, fourth best or fifth best player in Boston. Then he was the best player in Sacramento for a little bit. Then he helped out, he helped out the Blazers when he was there.

• 43:39Bill Simmons?

  Portland.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:42Bill Simmons?

  And that's four teams.

• 43:46Bill Simmons?

  That's a, that's a good one. I, Robert Horry is probably the best version of it, I would say. Cause it was, he had a thing about, he was on, I mean, all these guys go on podcasts now. He did a thing about how he should be in the Hall of Fame and I was like, I agree with him. I think he's one of the best, he's probably the best big spot role player in the history of the league, other than maybe a couple of guys who are on the 50, 60 Celtics. I, when I did my pyramid for my book, I had him in the pyramid. There's no, been no career like him.

• 44:17Bill Simmons?

  So I think I agree.

• 44:21Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he actually.

• 44:21Speaker 04

  If I, if I heard he was going in, I mean, if you look at say his career and Mitch Richmond, Mitch Richmond's career, like who had a better career? And Richmond's in the Hall of Fame and he's not, um, you know?

• 44:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Not to criticize Mitch Richmond, he's kind of an easy example, but I mean, like he was, I'm not saying he wasn't a great player, but he doesn't seem like a Hall of Fame player to me.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. One of the things I had when I did that thing in my pyramid was about, if you ask somebody, remember the Robert Horry game, they would say, which one? That's when you know you've had a good career. Like the, oh yeah, the Robert Horry game. It's like, you mean the one in 2002? You're talking about the one in the oh five finals? Like you'd have to, you, when he knocked over Steve Nash, like which one, uh, which one would you do? But yeah, I think Durant,

• 45:08Bill Simmons?

  I think that's, that's an unbelievable what if? I think it's, we could be talking about him completely differently. He could have like four titles. We would, he would be like undisputed, one of the best six or seven guys.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  But do you think if he stays with that franchise, they win four titles?

• 45:23Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Why would that be?

• 45:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  I mean, why? Why would that, you know, why, why, why would that have happened? He's won, he's won now two titles when he went to Warriors, but why would if he stays that they

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  Because I think you could make an argument, they would have spent more money the first eight, nine years he was in OKC because they would have had more money because they were in a bigger market. And like, you don't have to trade Harden right before he's due for some extension because you're not worried about it because whatever you pay the luxury tax.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Are they, are they in a position to draft Westbrook? Are they in a

• 45:59Bill Simmons?

  They had Westbrook already. They had Durant, Westbrook. They had all this stuff. Westbrook was drafted by Seattle and then they moved.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  Okay, so he, his first year was in Oklahoma City. Okay, well, yeah. I mean, I can't, I can't really say like that never would have happened, but I don't know why necessarily him staying in Seattle would have won them four championships. I think they, maybe they had have won one championship, maybe.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  You could argue they were super close from 2011 on. And if they had operated like, say, the Warriors and made some big money plays with like a bigger cap, maybe that would have been the difference.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  I mean, that's a lot. You're asking a lot now. They gotta totally operate their franchise differently.

• 46:39Bill Simmons?

  But then if he doesn't go to Golden State, those are two available potentially. I'm just saying it's a, it's a thought experiment. I think could he, could he have won up to four titles? Possible. I don't know.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  You know, and it was, it, what was the thing about the move that existed sort of the general sense is that Seattle was a, I guess, a city that I thought was one of the rare towns where basketball was the most important sport, it felt like.

• 47:03Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  There are some sports, cities where baseball is the most important sport, a whole, most important sport, a whole bunch where football is, but I felt like Seattle was one where it was basketball. So it is a bummer that they don't have a NBA team. I mean, it seems that there should be an NBA team because you know, and it's weird that Portland has one in Seattle, doesn't it? It's just strange.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, they're gonna have one soon. That brings us to our next topic, which I gave you a heads up on about this international basketball league that might be happening because there's been, there's some information popping out. I haven't talked about it that much in my podcast. I'm still not positive it's going to happen, but I think in the rich guy circles, a lot of them are talking about it because a lot of them have been asked to invest in it.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  Five billion they want. They feel like they need five billion for it.

• 47:46Bill Simmons?

  I don't know the exact number, but I know I have an idea of the, uh, the premise, which is they basically want it to be like F1 and it's this international league. They play less games and they go to different spots all over the world. So they go to like Singapore, they go to, you know, Monaco, wherever the hell it is, almost operating like F1 and they go there and they're there for like, I don't know, 10 days and they're played multiple games in the same spot. And then they have all this other stuff that happens. Like there's like concerts and it's like an event. It's like, almost like a takeover the same way F1 does it. And you move from spot to spot and maybe it's like a 30, 35

• 48:29Bill Simmons?

  game season. I don't know. Um, and what they're telling people is that they have a couple of major stars that are going to be joining, that are going to be jaw dropping. And I, it's pretty clear because Maverick Carter is running this that, or is like one of the people involved in pushing it, that he's dangling LeBron is going to be one of the people that do it. Could it be Kevin Durant? My, my guess is it's probably older, older, famous superstars nearing the end of their career who are just going to do where they would get a bunch of money, probably equity in the league. Um, and it's a financial play and you try to build something. I guess I have a few questions, one of which is, will

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  people watch this? And also does it matter? Because like when you saw like the Kobe China stuff, that was the first time I was like, wow, people love this shit. Like you remember when Bob McAdoo went to Italy for like four extra years in the eighties and became like a god in Italy? Like, maybe this is a smarter way to end your career, to make more money and you're, you're global and you hit all these different countries and you blow up your brand that way because you've kind of taken everything you could possibly can out of kind of the American NBA culture. Um, I just don't know if the league works and what that would look like. And so I'm laying all this out to you. What's your instant reaction?

• 49:50Speaker 04

  Well, I it doesn't seem like it would work to me as an American product. So what I'm saying is that I can't imagine it being it being very interesting to American audiences. And I think the idea of if like if it was like LeBron and Durant and those guys at their age, if they come out and they seem like shells of themselves, that would be very kind of disenchanted to people. If they play well, it would be like, well, this league is a joke. These guys are 40 years old and they're dominating. I think that the American appetite for sports has kind of shifted over the last couple of decades. I think maybe in a small role, you maybe played a role in this in that the sense that like that,

• 50:35Speaker 04

  that the that the the consumer of sports now is mostly interested in the highest possible excellence above anything else. That like the idea of of college sports and high school sports, I feel like that is receding. And and I think that if you try to start a league and the level of play seems like

• 51:01Speaker 04

  like a two tiers below what we're used to seeing, that would fail. I feel like they would need to go after the kind of person who loves this NBA Finals. Like people who are interested in international basketball. It's a smaller audience, obviously, it's a, you know. But I do think that there is a kind of person who loves basketball, who watches the NBA. And they're like, I don't like this, though. And if and when they but but when they see international players, they seem to be excited and titillated and they love to see Joker and they love to see Luca and they love to see the style of play. They watch, you know, Team USA or whatever. And they're like, I wish this was how the league was. I think that would be the person you need to go after if you want to succeed in America. If the idea that it doesn't matter if it succeeds in America, if it's like this thing where it's like,

• 51:46Speaker 04

  these guys want to expand their brand into Taiwan and stuff like that. And we just want to have these big events, I guess, but that's a different kinds of success. I mean, to me, a successful league would mean that it's it can exist on its own in America and to some degree rival, you know, the NBA.

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't think that's the goal. I don't I think America, any success in America would almost be a bonus. Was my guess, like the the worldwide stuff. So it's a little different than. You know, Liv, I think Liv backs up your argument where people, it just hasn't resonated here because it's not all the best players. Nobody really understands it. It just hasn't worked, which I think is one of the reasons why it's been. But I would argue for the golfers, it's probably really worked because they made way more money than they ever expected to make playing golf. They would probably run it back and do it again. So from a basketball standpoint,

• 52:39Speaker 04

  yeah.

• 52:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So from a basketball standpoint, if you're just talking like, if you can make twice as much money, and I know these guys are making 50 million now, but if they could make 100 million or they make 75 million plus they get equity in this new entity and they look like they're at the cutting edge. I just, the history of sports says that some of these guys will bite. You know, like even think about like the ABA and the, you know, WFL back in the day when, when we were growing up. It's always amazing to me how many people jumped.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  The USFL was great. The USFL was about as successful as you could imagine. That didn't work. But I mean, I, what the thing, the situation you're describing, I mean, is both plausible and I think we would both agree would be bad for the sport, right? Like this would not be good.

• 53:27Bill Simmons?

  Be, I think it'd be bad for the, for the NBA.

• 53:32Bill Simmons?

  To not have guys kind of aging gracefully. I think the sport, the sport that, now I think there might be a woman's component to this too, this idea. That's where it gets really interesting because the WNBA, like the players really don't make the, the way that, that league is so over leveraged with their finances that it's impossible to really pay the players, right? So they make all their money off the court. But if you could basically, if you got Katelyn Clark to be involved in something like this and you gave her some crazy amount of money and she's traveling the world and she's playing 30 games a year and has equity in the league, that becomes more interesting to me because I do think people would follow

• 54:12Bill Simmons?

  her. I, I don't think any NBA player in their prime would just pack up and go and leave. Like I can't see like, maybe I should be careful because maybe one of these people would do it. But I can't imagine like Yanis being like, okay, I'm good. I won one title. Now I'm going to just go grab some cash. It really does seem like an end of the career thing as an idea.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  I could see it possibly with an international player if they dislike the experience of living in America for whatever reason. I mean, I don't know why that would be the case. You would think their life, but if that was the case, maybe. But

• 54:52Bill Simmons?

  Like Wemby, like could, could they get Wemby to be in this thing three years from now if this, if this goes through? Who knows? He's from France. I don't know. I don't know if he likes America.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  But he seems motivated to play against the best.

• 55:06Bill Simmons?

  You would think.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Well, well, that's what he expresses, right? I mean, sometimes these guys live, if he's like, the fact that he's, he's putting the effort in to express that, whereas I don't always hear that from guys. Well, is it, is it, is it possible that a young player could do that? I think so. I think that would be the possibility because, you know, these guys have such long careers now.

• 55:32Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  That they would be like, well, I can come back and maybe play in the NBA later. I mean, this is like, this makes no sense in a way, but you know, I think a lot about like load management and these problems and like, these guys are just, you know, now we're in the playoffs and guys are getting hurt constantly. And I think part of it is because it's so rare that they play hard this often. I was thinking, why is this? Like, well, you know, and part of the reason is, is that there's so much incentive to have a long career now, to play 18 years, you know, because you make so much money at the end, the numbers only get bigger. But I think a lot of these guys are kind of thinking at the end, when they're not even toward the middle. They're like, I gotta make sure that I have this long enough career

• 56:15Speaker 04

  to make the big money at the end. Sometimes I think this would be in it. If after your 12th season, your salary is capped, whatever you're making in your 12th year is your salary, your yearly salary going on. So that he's gotten so that, that I don't, I think it's very strange now that used to like, A 10 year career should be a long NBA career. And now that's sort of expected. Big part of this is that these guys, they want to take every fourth day or day off trying to the end. And it seems to me that if the deal was after your, whatever you're making in your 12th year, sort of becomes your standard, what you make per year going forward, even if the CBA changes, even if all these things changes, that's the number.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  That there might be less of a, like it's, it would be hard to tell a guy, it's like, well, you gotta play hard now. And if his argument is like, well, I also need to be able to play some in 10 years. I, I think it's, it doesn't seem strange how long these guys play now? This has become like, you know, Chris Paul, what was his, what was his 20th year, 18th year? What year was he in this year?

• 57:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, they just, they take way better care of themselves. I think here's, here's the problem. The players are cosigning the schedule. Like the schedule can't change unless the players are also willing to push to change it. And they're not willing to push to change it because it goes to 70 games, which is where it should go. Everyone would lose 12 home games. And then everybody would lose 12, you know, I guess one sixth of their paycheck, whatever, one seventh.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  Everyone would lose six home games.

• 57:49Bill Simmons?

  Right. But you lose, so you, but you'd sacrifice basically one seventh or one sixth, whatever works out of your paycheck. You'd make less money, the league would make less money. And that's the reason it's happened. Adam Silver actually said this in his press conference. He's like, we're happy at 82, we think it's fine. He's wrong and it's, and it's terrible for the league and he should want to fix it. And he should make it a crusade to fix it and it should be important to him. And he doesn't care. Um, but I don't think the players care either. And this is stuff they could have bargained for that they didn't.

• 58:18Speaker 04

  I, I'm not sure going to 70 games would change load management that much. And the guys attempting, I don't, I don't, I don't think that would be enough to, I, I think that they would still sort of perceive themselves as being guys who need to be ready for the playoffs. I still think they would, you know, I,

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  I think it would. I think it would unquestionably make the league better unquestionably. You would have, you'd basically be playing three games a week. And I think three games a week is doable and you could even make it so you play like Tuesday, Friday, Sunday, or you play, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, whatever it is. Have some sort of routine. I, I think it would, but all these leagues, like the NFL is going to go to 18 games. There isn't a single person on the planet who thinks that's a good idea. But they're going to do it because the players have to do it because their careers are three years long, four years long, for the most part. 80% of them, their careers are done by the time they're 27. So they don't, they're going to sign up for whatever.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  And then they're just never going to cut back on games. That's just not going to happen.

• 59:15Bill Simmons?

  No, they'll probably, do you think they'll have 20 by the time we're in our 70s?

• 59:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  They may have 22. Think how stupid that is.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  The amount of money they're dealing with, the numbers are so large now. I mean, it is, it like, if you kind of look at like, just say with the NFL or whatever, it's like, like not just revenue, but like what it costs to run a team over time, like what it's just, it's going so up. There's, there's really no way around it. There's no way to, to decrease revenue. Like, like the league can only get bigger. They're not like, you know, when they say things are like too big to fail. Some of these leagues are like too big to stop. Like they can only have to keep getting larger all the time.

• 1:00:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially when they're getting giant sale prices and the guys are paying a lot.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

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• 1:01:33Bill Simmons?

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• 1:02:18Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes, yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves, and the financial wins just keep coming. PNC Bank. Brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member FDIC. What is your highly specific Cooper Flag prediction?

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  So you know, how for how good do you think he's going to be?

• 1:03:05Bill Simmons?

  I think he's gonna be incredible.

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  He's incredible.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  I think he's gonna be, I think he has a chance to

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  be somewhere in the Duncan KG vicinity would be his ceiling.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  I think he's going to have a career like Detlef Schrempf.

• 1:03:24Bill Simmons?

  Detlef Schrempf. Okay.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  He's going to be a very good player. I think he's gonna be a very good player for a lot of years. Um, you know, I mean, Schrempf, I think was a made all NBA once. I think he was a third team all NBA once, but a few, a few all star games. But I don't know if he's, I don't see him as a dominating player. Like, I don't think he's gonna, I don't think that, I think that he will, uh, be the, you know, the, uh, the second best player or the, on a good, on a great, on a good team, or the third best player on a great team. So that's why I kind of think that's the player he's gonna end up being. I mean, I like him as a player, but I don't, nothing I saw to, to, to me, not that I'm an expert or anything, but made me think like, he is going to be, um, you know, unstoppable. I think he's just going to be very good.

• 1:04:10Bill Simmons?

  And I think KG, even though he doesn't have the same height KG has, I think that's the best comparison because of his competitiveness, which is what he's similar to KG. He's just a maniac. Like, all the guy wants to do is win and like he, every single practice, every drill, he's just like KG was. He just has to dominate everything and those guys usually are, are absolute beasts in the NBA.

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  That's also Tyler Hansbrough was like that. They called him psycho.

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  Hansbrough wasn't that.

• 1:04:37Speaker 04

  He didn't have the skills, right? So I don't know, I don't know if the competitiveness alone, I mean, that's a component that's gotta be there. I mean, how, like, it is an interesting question. How many, who, who are great athletes in any sport? Great, elite, that you would say, not very competitive, though.

• 1:04:55Bill Simmons?

  I think there's been.

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  Who is that? Okay, sure. Give me the ones that jump in your mind.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  I'm not going to because we live in an aggregation universe where that like I say one name and then it gets thrown out there. You know, the names. There's, there's guys that either had, were the crazy competitors that everybody talked about, or the people that we're constantly disappointed by because it seemed like they're begrudgingly giving a shit, or they were always injured, or, you know, they like, there was just a specific difference.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Give me, he doesn't have to be someone active now. I'm like, I'm trying to think of what, what to you is an example of somebody who is, who you consider elite, you know, in the top tier, but you would say not competitive, though. Not very competitive.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  But I think all of these guys would be competitive to a certain degree because they get to the NBA, right? You, you have to have some sort of level of competitiveness to get to the absolute top level.

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  So you're saying that flags, that flags competition is like, he's like, he goes to 11. He's more competitive than the people he plays against.

• 1:05:55Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing we're 100% positive of. But I, but I also feel like he's an elite, elite, elite defender.

• 1:06:04Bill Simmons?

  He's already like an elite passer. He's just additive in everything he does. Everything he does makes other guys better at all times, right? So it's, it's a little similar to how, even though they're completely different, but like Halliburton is just additive. Everything he does is, just helps other guys. I think he's like that too, but it's more in like the KG side. And that was what made KG so great. The KG was like defensive anchor, didn't care if he scored, almost like scored begrudgingly. There's a, there's a flag offensive piece where he, he can potentially be a little Tatum-y. Like you might be able to run him as your point forward. He's not as skilled of a scorer as Tatum was, but he might, you might be able to run the offense to him at the top, but then have him be your

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  best defensive player. And I think that would be the ceiling, like a little KG, little Tatum. I'm not saying he's going to get there, but I think that's the ceiling.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  He's got physical, great physical attributes, really competitive. What makes him different than say, than Russell Westbrook? A great physical specimen who is extremely competitive and works extremely hard.

• 1:07:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think that was a, that was a big success for Russell Westbrook, right? The athleticism and the competitiveness. I think what's different with flag is.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  Would you, how elite do you classify Westbrook? You like to say which like, when you're ranking guys, where were you ranking of, of players of the 21st century? Where do you rank him?

• 1:07:23Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he's probably one of the best 50 players ever.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  But if you were.

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  Top 50, okay, I'm just curious.

• 1:07:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, probably 50, 60.

• 1:07:34Speaker 04

  I, I, I feel like you talk bad about him much more than you talk positively about him. That you see, you see his flaws as more defining of him than his positive attributes.

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think the issue with Westbrook, if you're going to look at him and you're comparing him against the greatest players of all time. The guys I had the issue with, there's like, the situation has to be perfect for them. And there's like a lack of malleability. It's like, you know, the, when he put up his biggest stats in OKC, it was like, he had the ball all the time. He did everything and that was great for him. It wasn't necessarily awesome for the team. You just had a limited ceiling with that. And I always thought there was a push and pull with Durant in some ways. I always liked the guys that I feel like can fit into any basketball situation. Kobe was the most interesting out of all of these guys because Kobe always wanted the situation to be the best for him. But a lot of times that was the right situation for the team. You know? And that's.

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  He was, you know, he was.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  Cause he was so talented.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  Most talented player on the floor almost at all times. I mean, even, even though he was with Shaq, of course, he's got, you know, Shaq matters more for physical reasons, but like, he's still the most skilled player.

• 1:08:41Bill Simmons?

  Shaq's a really good example for this question you're asking me.

• 1:08:44Speaker 04

  Oh, I was wondering if you were going to mention, yes, did, did he, was he not competitive enough to you?

• 1:08:49Bill Simmons?

  So Shaq's the, one of the 15 best players ever. I thought he was awesome.

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  If Shaq was wired like KG was, I'm not sure what happens to the NBA for that entire time. Now, he probably doesn't play as long. But if he was just like, I want to destroy everybody every game and this is all I care about.

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  I do think that was another level he could have gone to. I remember writing that Shaq was like the guy who went to college and graduated with 37 and had a great time, but probably could have gotten a 4-0 if he really wanted to. KG was the guy who graduated with the 4-0. You know, KG maximized every single ounce of whatever his career could have been. And I think Cooper Flagg's going to be like that. And I think Duncan was like that too, by the way. Same thing. Like Duncan was basically playing on a bum leg for the second half of his career. But Duncan was another one. He was just steady. He was always there. He was completely additive. He made everybody better. He was an awesome teammate. He didn't care about his points. Like Flag's not going to care what his box score is.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  That became understood over time, though. I don't think, I mean, I think the initial thing with Duncan, just because of his demeanor, was is he engaged enough? Is he interested enough? Like just from the

• 1:10:03Bill Simmons?

  Too passive.

• 1:10:04Speaker 04

  And then, yes, too passive, you know? And then that completely switched and no one thinks that now, you know?

• 1:10:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, the Duncan part is Duncan is definitely a people forget because as the years pass, some guys live on in different ways and other guys we just don't talk about as much. But like Duncan like annihilated the 99 finals. He was clearly the best guy in the playoffs that year, '03. He had some really good battles with the Lakers. I think, so we disagree. I think Flag's going to be better than you. What did you think about the rehearsal?

• 1:10:35Speaker 04

  I think he's going to be good, but I don't, yeah, I don't think he's going to be, I don't know if I, if I, if he will ever, I'm predicting right now, he will never win an MVP award. He'll never win, he will never be named leak MVP.

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  I think I would take the bet.

• 1:10:53Speaker 04

  Okay, okay. You know, there was something unsportably that I wanted to ask you about, though, which is kind of a weird thing, but I'm just curious.

• 1:11:01Bill Simmons?

  We're not talking about the rehearsal?

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Well, we can talk about that, sure. Well, you liked the rehearsal.

• 1:11:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you wanted to talk about it. I was all excited to talk about the rehearsal.

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay, let's do it.

• 1:11:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Why did you like it?

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Well, you know, the whole thing with Nathan Fielder has always been like, what part of this is real and what part of this is fake? Like, there's like more than anybody else. He kind of pushes this boundary between what we're actually seeing and what is orchestrated. And I would not have thought he could have leveled that up. But this last season of the rehearsal, I've never seen something where I am so unclear about what parts are real and what parts are fake. I have, I have no sense of it. It could be 98% real. It could be 4% real. And, you know, so he's, so he's really funny. He finds ways to be funny in situations that you wouldn't normally see that. But there's also like,

• 1:11:59Speaker 04

  an appreciation for the execution of what he's doing. I, it just, it seems like he's working differently than everybody else who does this, you know? And a lot differently. Not like he's taken something other people done and, and sort of, you know, twisted or morphed it. Like, he's doing something that I don't, I don't even know what the analogy is. The, the thing about the rehearsal that's so interesting, maybe you've experienced this. Have you ever tried to describe it to someone who's never heard of it? You will sound like a fucking crazy person. Like, trying to describe what you're watching to somebody who doesn't know what it is. It just sounds, you, you hear yourself saying things that make it seem like you're on LSD.

• 1:12:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So for the people listening to this who didn't see the rehearsal,

• 1:12:44Bill Simmons?

  let's do the, I'll do the exercise right now.

• 1:12:48Bill Simmons?

  The season starts out with Nathan Fielder being obsessed with pilot communication.

• 1:12:54Bill Simmons?

  And a theory that plane crashes happen partly because the pilot and the copilot don't spend enough time trying to connect as partners, the same way you would in like basketball or other things. And goes on this deep dive to try to prove his point. Starts rehearsing pilot interactions. Goes backwards, recreates the silly plane crash.

• 1:13:17Bill Simmons?

  And it's all leading toward, you'd think he's going to actually just have two of these pilots that he basically rehearses together. So they have chemistry, fly some sort of crazy mission. And then the twist is he's been taking pilot lessons the whole time and he's going to fly a 737 with this guy that he's handpicked throughout a couple of episodes and they're going to fly a 737 together. So the season finale is all of a sudden, he's a licensed commercial jet pilot.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Is that, did I describe that correctly?

• 1:13:52Speaker 04

  I mean, yes, everything you said is true, but even like, I don't even think that goes far enough. First of all, what I always tell people, if they've never seen this is, I do feel you need to watch the first two episodes of the first season. You necessarily have to watch the whole season, but you definitely need to watch the first two episodes because he is basing everything off the premise that everything in life would be easier if you could rehearse every day to day moment of your life through the highest possible simulation, which is like, and when you say that to someone, they're like, well, what does that mean? I'd be like, well, are you going to have lunch today at a diner? Would it be easier if we built a diner that you could then go into and talk to

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  an actor who will pretend to be the waiter? Like, it's like, well, how does that make sense? Well, in some strange way, it does, because it's sort of, he's tapping into this idea of, of what parts of life are real and what parts of life are unreal. And, you know, like, you can do an argument with anybody about anything. What's, you know, big picture stuff. What will they often say? Oh, the thing you're describing or the thing you're promoting, that thing you believe in, that's just a construct, right? They'll be like, that's a construct. That's not real. And what his

• 1:15:07Speaker 04

  Theory of entertainment is, is that it's almost all a construct. Everything that we do is a construct and the fact that it's constructed doesn't make it less authentic. So then he's a comedian who decides, is it possible that a comedian could have real change in the world in a good way? Despite the fact that people can't take him seriously because he's always joking. That's how the season begins. Then the season moves into this idea that he's obsessed with plane crashes, seemingly for real, particularly black box recordings. And it's come to the conclusion that the real issue is that pilots and co-pilots do not have enough interpersonal interaction. Maybe it would be better if we made them do a play before every flight?

• 1:15:53Speaker 04

  Where they discuss their freedom of knowledge and their willingness to hear other things. And he's flying a 737 for real, filled with actors, which he couldn't do if they were just people. But because he's paying them as actors, he can fly these people in the same way it's illegal to pay someone to have sex with you, unless you film it and it becomes pornography. I feel like that idea is brought into it. There's also the aspect in this show at the very end where he's kind of like, well, although the, I gotta go back into this. There's also a point in the show where he deals with the possibility, the accusation that he has autism. And his belief that he does not, and that in fact, his artistic qualities are I forgot that part.

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  Are human nature, that everyone thinks about this just like him. And then at the end, when he flies the plane, he's like, well, okay. So if you're autistic, they wouldn't let you fly this plane. So because I managed to get into a situation where I can fly the plane, that proves I'm not autistic? I really think, and I haven't, maybe this has been written about a thousand places. I think this season was like an homage to Catch 22. The book Catch 22, are you familiar with that? Yeah. It's sort of like in Catch 22, the whole idea is that there are these fighter pilots. And the belief is that you can only be a fighter pilot if you're kind of insane. So to prove that you can't be a fighter pilot.

• 1:17:23Speaker 04

  You can't do it by becoming crazy because that validates your ability. It's like where the phrase catch 22 comes from, right? And I think that that's what was tied into this. That like if you, if you listen to the end of that, that last episode, he's basically saying the fact that he flew this plane full of actors, when he wasn't qualified is proof that he was qualified. And that's a real complicated idea when you really think about it.

• 1:17:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then the last piece of that would be this is why we have plane accidents every once in a while because we do not put any real thought into who gets to be a pilot and who gets not to be a pilot. It just comes down to how many hours you flew.

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  Well, and also it was amazing to realize you can become a 737 pilot without actually flying the plane. You can just.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  Just put the hours in and you could somehow get there. And you have to take a test and be like, no, I'm not autistic and all the other things that he points out.

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

  But the other thing that's like, so he becomes a real pilot, right? And, and we see all this footage of him learning this. So when did he start this? Did he start this before?

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he started, he, so he started.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  First rehearsal? Like, how many years has he been doing this?

• 1:18:33Bill Simmons?

  Apparently at least two.

• 1:18:37Bill Simmons?

  Where he started taking lessons and stuff. Cause that was in some of the, some of the writing about the series after it finished, where they were talking about, apparently there was a Reddit thing where people realized that he was taking pilot lessons. And there was this theory that the last episode was going to be him flying because they had seen they, because you can track all this stuff. So I think it had been like two years.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  There's also an interesting aspect that he does something that you don't normally see on television shows. He starts talking about problems he had making a different TV show, The Curse for a different network.

• 1:19:11Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:19:12Speaker 04

  And how it was removed from streaming service because it was seen as being, I can't, anti Semitic.

• 1:19:18Bill Simmons?

  It was an episode they removed because it was anti Semitic allegedly.

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  So then he, well, but it was, it was, it was considered anti Semitic because it was just like, I guess length, like, I don't, I don't, it seems to be opposite. So then he simulates him going to talk to a guy in Germany, which he imagines to be in the city. Oh, then the guy who was simulating the German then says like, this is now it is like, there's, there are things that happen in every one of these episodes that I'm always like, I. There's no comparison to this in anything I've seen before. And I don't know how I feel about it. Like, like, there are, uh, he, he does seem to be a rare thing, which is a completely amoral Canadian.

• 1:20:02Speaker 04

  Like, he seems to, he doesn't seem to have, like, like, he, you know, and, and I guess, and you know, like, like, in, in some ways, I guess I sort of relate to this. He'll be talking about ideas and you can sense that the question around that idea is you, should you even be doing this? Like, should you be having, you know, another aspect of this show? He creates a false singing competition, like a, like a, you know, like The Voice or whatever, except the people judging the singers are all airline pilots. Because he needs to teach the airline pilots how to give constructive criticism. Like, they did all these weird things.

• 1:20:45Speaker 04

  It's like, so he's manipulating all, most of the people involved in this are kind of, I think, being willfully manipulated. Like, they gotta know what something is going on and they want to be involved anyways. Um, it is, there's just, I, I, I mean, I, I, I, it seemed like I'm just like maybe being too rhapsodic about this, but I really do think, like, I, if somebody said to me, it's like, boy, I want, I want to see something that's really good and really interesting and it's gonna, not what I've seen before, like, this is it. Like, I, I, I, I'm trying to think of what TV show prior to this. And you know, when he did The Curse, that was a narrative show that also did things I had not really seen in television before.

• 1:21:29Speaker 04

  I mean, his, his level of innovation and true creativity is just kind of off the scale. And, you know, it's like, there's a lot of people who know the form of creativity. They do creative things because they know what people will anticipate and will see as creative. He is not like that. Like, the things he is doing, he is doing for the first time.

• 1:21:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, it makes me think of how people, and I was a kid, I remember Andy Kaufman. Some of the stuff he would do and how people would talk about it. And it got to the point when he died, people were convinced that he faked his own death. And that was like his big grand thing. So I'm sure Nathan's been influenced by him. A little bit, just how people perceived him. But the way he's take, the way he took this last season. I thought the first season, the rehearsal was amazing. And it was just like, I've never seen anything like this. This last season went a whole other level beyond that.

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  The first season clearly did get fucked up by the pandemic. I feel like that they had to do, like, there were some things that would have happened in that season that just became impossible. Cause I feel like it was shot during the heart of that. Like when it was really hard to do anything.

• 1:22:38Speaker 04

  The Andy Kaufman thing, yes, I'm sure in a way, but what's, you know, like, I happen to just watch a, like, I've seen a bunch of Andy Kaufman documentaries. There's one I saw just recently on Canopy or whatever. And, and the thing that, that about him though, that was like, there was a degree, in my opinion, of real kind of self indulgence to what Andy Kaufman was doing. In the sense that it really wasn't for anyone but himself, which is artists, I, all people do. But I'm just, I'm not even saying this is a huge criticism. There was something where it was like, the only person who could be amused by this is himself. Or someone watching it years later and realize that like, this is crazy that this happened.

• 1:23:22Speaker 04

  With Nathan Fielder, it is a little different because I, I find his motives and his intentions more confusing. Like, I, I don't, I, I can't necessarily say he's doing this just sort of to please himself. I do think there's a possibility that he actually does think that he can stop airline crashes. And he was like, but the only way I can do this is by using my platform as a comedian. So I have to first convince people that, you know, that a comedian should be taken.

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  I don't even know, like, I don't even know how to describe it.

• 1:24:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, you, you left out one other piece, too, is that he loves when anything gets uncomfortable. It's like his, his all time sweet spot. So on top of all this big picture stuff that he's doing and all of these big themes he's hitting, just fundamentally, the best part of his show, it seems like for him, is when it can get super awkward with somebody. Like when he's asking that pilot who, you know, obviously didn't have a lot of luck with the ladies and the guys giving him information and you could just see like something shifts with him where he's, it just becomes the most interesting conversation he's ever had.

• 1:24:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like what you're saying is true because it's like this, it's like a guy who's blind has an advantage in darkness, right?

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  A guy who's uncomfortable all the time has the advantage when everything else becomes uncomfortable. So the more the stranger the situ-, because his personality never changes. They're like his, he remains the same for the totality of everything he does. It doesn't matter if he's doing something boring and there are stretches in the show that are boring. There are, there will be a five or 10 minute stretch where it's like, I wonder if this is going to be a bad episode. Then a lot of times it'll come back at the end. So like discomfort is where he is most comfortable.

• 1:25:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, it'd be great if he was, like, he'd be the greatest NBA sideline reporter of all time.

• 1:25:28Bill Simmons?

  Like, let's go to Nathan Fielder. He's with Rick Carlisle and he just completely picks Rick Carlisle uncomfortable. I did, I think I did the first podcast with him when I was at Grantland. Or one of the first ones and trying to interview him was like trying to, I don't know, ride a, ride a bull or something. You know, and he's, he both knew it was a good thing to do the podcast. I think he liked me.

• 1:25:55Bill Simmons?

  But he's just, his default is he likes when it's uncomfortable, right? So it's a podcast and we're talking and he's a little uncomfortable anyway. And it was just weird to the podcast get, you could just see like the twinkle in his eye every time something would happen. I was like, oh, this is the, those are the most fun people to interview.

• 1:26:13Speaker 04

  Well, sort of. And it's also kind of an impossible interview in a sense, because why do people go on? Like, why do people listen to celebrities on podcasts? Why do people read New Yorker profiles of people or, you know, Rolling Stone profiles of people? They're like, who is this person for real? Okay. And he doesn't do that.

• 1:26:30Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:26:30Speaker 04

  He's never gonna do that, right? So when he is on your podcast, that is the same as when he's on his show. I don't think that there is, um, like, uh, I can't imagine a scenario. Like, I think if, if, if I interviewed him, I think it would be a disaster. Because my whole thing is always whenever I interviewed people is like, well, I want to try to get something from this person that they, that, that will kind of show sort of a reality about them that you can't get through their art, that this is who they actually are and this is what they do. And I have no idea how I would do that with him. I, I have no idea what I would ask him or talk to him to, to convince him that, uh,

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  what I'm trying to find out is what is behind the thing he's ostensibly doing. Because what's behind the things he's ostensibly doing is ostensibly the same.

• 1:27:21Bill Simmons?

  I did a thing, you know, those for your consideration where they show the episode to a bunch of Emmy people? Like they'll go, they'll rent out a theater and they show it and then they interview the person after.

• 1:27:31Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:27:31Bill Simmons?

  So I did that with him a couple of years ago for, I think it was the first season of the rehearsal. We showed the episode and, you know, all these people there and he just, he's just not gonna do that typically, right? So his whole thing was to make him uncomfortable. We brought the guy out who was the, one of the stars from the first season. And that guy came out and it was just, he just wanted it to be as awkward as possible. And it was like, perfect. It was exactly what you would have thought would have happened. I just think that's how he's wired. I thought, Nathan, for you, the Comedy Central show he did, I thought he really started to figure that show out, especially the last season, um, and took a lot of those kind of breadcrumbs from that show and just moved them into this. Now it's like,

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't even know what I want him to do for the next season. I gotta imagine HBO is thrilled. It's like the perfect HBO show. It's so fucking weird. It's so great. It's like such genius.

• 1:28:25Speaker 04

  You know what? You should interview, interview the guy who greenlit this and ask him, what the fuck did he tell you in your office? Do this. I mean, I'm serious because like the budget for this is insane. Like what is in this season when he goes out and has to buy a 737 and he's actually looking for like a bargain 737? And then going like going to these actual places. Like I, I can't imagine how this, if I can't describe it to someone who I'm trying to convince to watch it. How do you describe it to someone to pay for it? I just have no idea. Yeah.

• 1:28:58Bill Simmons?

  What would be your, what would be your number one draft pick for the next rehearsal season for him to dive into?

• 1:29:06Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, this is a real lame answer, but like I, I want him to just do what he does. I want him to just follow what he's doing. Like, cause there's, there's no way, there's no way I could have predicted this. Like there's something, like there's no way I could have advised him to this. I just, I think that what he, he is after something. He is after some idea. I mean, maybe I'm giving him too much credit. I don't know.

• 1:29:27Bill Simmons?

  I don't think you are.

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  I feel like he is after something that, I mean, it in some ways might spend my whole life. This question is like, what is real? Like what parts of existence are real?

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  I mean, you wrote a whole book about this once.

• 1:29:43Speaker 04

  Well, they're all about that. They're all about that in a way.

• 1:29:47Bill Simmons?

  Hey, I was lucky enough to get a son and a daughter through their early teens and their mid teens in the social media era. And even though we were constantly monitoring it, there's still a whole bunch of stuff that can go wrong. And that's why Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default. Built in content settings for the content teens can see, contact limits for who can contact them and time management tools like daily time limits. And sleep mode teens are automatically placed in the teen accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built in safety features to help create age appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 1:30:35Bill Simmons?

  All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down ready to watch the game only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows you your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary.

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  There's something else I want to ask you about, though, that's not related to this, but I just, I feel like you'll have an interesting response. So, you know, it was, it was hot, it's 90 degrees here in Portland, so it's Portland, they let school out. Okay, we can't have school, it's 90 degrees. So, so after we got something, got nothing to do, my kid's home or whatever. So, we watched Cool Hand Luke, you know, which I've watched probably 10 times in my life, or 15 times in my life, one of my favorites, you know. Okay, so that movie's made in 1967. And I've also been, a couple songs that I've been listening to a lot lately is the song Jailbreak by A. Jailbreak, which I had 76 or 77. Escape

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  from Alcatraz, I think it was like 1979-ish, maybe 1980 or whatever. So, there was this period of time when there was a lot of art about the idea of breaking out of jail, right? You know, and there are still people who break out of jail. There was like guys who broke out of jail recently in New Orleans, and one guy immediately makes a TikTok of himself out of jail or whatever. I saw that, I was reading about this guy in Arkansas, a former cop who broke out of jail. He got caught like a day and a half later. And what I was thinking about is, so, prior to the internet and prior to like network computing, if you broke out of jail, could you just never get caught and go into society? And

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  is that completely impossible now? If someone broke out of jail now, could they ever in any way?

• 1:32:29Speaker 04

  Sort of become just like a city because you know, in the past, if there was like, if you got out of jail in Georgia and you got to Kansas or whatever, well, how would they, unless you were like just a murderer that the entire country was looking for, if you were just like somebody who was arrested for cutting the heads off of, you know, uh, uh, commuters or whatever, it's like, there would be no, how would they even know you're there? How would they like, you know, you, you used to be able to get an apartment. You didn't even need ID. I think on my first apartment I got in 1994, I don't think I showed them my ID. I think I just wrote my number down. Um, what do you do now? If someone escapes from, if you escaped from prison, what would you do?

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  Incredible questions. Um, and I followed the New Orleans thing very closely. It was my kind of story. Yeah. There was even, there was betting odds about which guy, just based on the mug shots, which guy was going to make it the longest. And I think the consensus, when, when people looked at the pictures, that guy actually did make it the longest. But, um, so I think the heyday for this would have been the seventies. I think when Bundy broke out of the Colorado jail and was somehow able to make it cross country, that was the heyday for a lot of bad behavior. Um, cause we, we didn't have any cameras. He could just kind of move around and nobody could ever find you. I think the cameras would make it really hard now. And facial, it just feels like there's cameras every

• 1:33:56Bill Simmons?

  year, facial recognition cameras, like the moment, like those New Orleans guys, they move out of there and you're either going, yeah, I guess the goal would be to go to Mexico. Right? You want to get out of America, right?

• 1:34:10Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, it would be hard with, like, to get into Canada now would be pretty hard. But even if you, I mean, so you're, so if you like, let's, if you just escape, you go to a different city, but your name is in the FBI database. You are an escaped prisoner. Your mugshot can be called up anywhere. If you get pulled over by, by a state trooper, I mean, it's very possible that he could be, so what?

• 1:34:37Bill Simmons?

  So you can't get pulled over anywhere. You're basically better off.

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  I mean, do you want like the terrible answer?

• 1:34:45Speaker 04

  What's the terrible answer?

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  You're probably better off finding somebody's house that has a super old person living by themselves.

• 1:34:54Bill Simmons?

  And probably have to commit another crime, take over that house and you have about two weeks there to like, get to really plan out whatever you're saying.

• 1:35:03Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, assuming the person you eliminate has no kids. I mean, I guess if he's a genius, I mean, you're in good shape because his kids don't talk. But if it's like, like if, if someone had taken over, my parents are dead now, but if someone had taken over my mom's house, like that would have, that would have been deduced very quickly.

• 1:35:20Bill Simmons?

  That like, no, so maybe of like three, four days, right? Before people are like, ah, I called dad and nobody answered. And now I'm starting to get worried. It's been four days. So maybe have four days.

• 1:35:31Speaker 04

  Let's say it works. Let's say you find the old person and.

• 1:35:34Bill Simmons?

  My point is, I don't think you can be in the streets for the week. I think you have to find some sort of a roof where you can kind of plan what your next thing is. You probably need a car. Maybe you need to like switch the license plates. And I think you want to go toward a place that doesn't have a lot of people. So maybe you want to go like middle America. You want to go like Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota. Like that should be your ultimate goal is once I get there, now I can, there's less people I can kind of move around. Maybe I find some new house that I could, I could, you know, maybe I could scout a house and doesn't seem like a lot of action. Maybe, maybe it's somebody's winter house that they don't even use and just kind of bounce around. You're going to get caught eventually though, is the point.

• 1:36:18Speaker 04

  Well, that's the thing. You would say that it is virtually impossible for someone to escape from jail or prison and completely just disappear now.

• 1:36:27Bill Simmons?

  I think you get caught within a year. I don't think there's any way to not get caught unless you left the country and went. Once you go down, I think, once you go to Mexico, that area, I think maybe a better chance, right?

• 1:36:40Speaker 04

  Wouldn't, wouldn't the move be?

• 1:36:42Bill Simmons?

  What would your move be? You didn't tell me.

• 1:36:45Speaker 04

  Well,

• 1:36:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm here killing old people and you're not even saying anything.

• 1:36:49Speaker 04

  I would think that the thing you would need to do is to find a sympathetic second person. Either someone you could convince to start dating you, you know, and live to live with, or

• 1:37:08Bill Simmons?

  Oh, right. To be like your, your co-conspirator.

• 1:37:11Speaker 04

  Well, somebody who can be like, I can get you food. I can go and do these things for you, you know? But at some point, you're going to have to try to integrate back into society. And I wonder with now with network computing, if that's kind of like, you know, people go off the grid. But let's, you can escape the, you know, you could, you could escape from all that, I guess. And, and, you know, but then it's like, do you want to escape from prison to live in Ted Kaczynski's cabin? You know, you, if you're getting out of prison, you know, it's, it's what's like in that ACDC song. This thing is like, I'm not spending my life here. I'm not living alone. It's like he wants to find someone to be with. So you would, your desire would be to get back to the world.

• 1:37:52Speaker 04

  But can the world no longer be, can you, can you no longer re-enter the world as a different person?

• 1:37:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're talking with people that probably have committed major crimes and aren't dealing with a full deck to begin with. But I think it's a good point about needing somebody on the outside. So maybe if you escape, you have to know somebody's waiting on the other end than, than now be your accomplice. That's why Escape, Escape from Dana Mora was such a good show. Cause it was like fundamentally, they had good ideas, right? They had the prison guard. Um, they were going to go, they, they, they knew their route. They were going in like a pretty unpopulated place and be able to go and try to get to Canada. And then it went haywire, but even then they almost made it. You know, they were out there for days and days. Nobody could find them.

• 1:38:39Bill Simmons?

  So I think that when you go to like those more remote places, you probably have a better chance as long as it's not cold. Like too cold.

• 1:38:47Speaker 04

  There's so much like, you know, songs and films and TV shows from like the sixties and seventies about breaking out of jail. I just gave a bunch of examples of it. Like, uh, were there lots of escaped prisoners in America in the forties and fifties? Like some guy breaks that, you know, gets off a chain gang, you know, I'm a fugitive from a chain gang or whatever, but there's no like,

• 1:39:08Speaker 04

  When I say like, there's no paper trail, it's because paper would have been the only possible trail. A piece of paper saying that you got sent to jail. That's like, what else is that? Like there, you know, there's, they, they can't send your photograph or your mugshot or a wanted poster to every post office in the United States. It was like, it, it seems like in the past, there would have been a real sort of incentive to try to break out of jail. It might work. It could work well, but I don't think it's possible now.

• 1:39:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, how do you watch Shawshank now, knowing all the current technology? Cause Shawshank, think about like, he escapes that prison, I think was in Maine in the movie? And he's got to go from Maine to Texas and then cross the border to get to Mexico. And in 2025, he's just getting caught within, I don't know, that first of all, he's not pulling off really any of the stuff he put, he's not going to 12 banks and taking out all the money. They just would have caught him almost immediately. Right? This would have been a huge manhunt.

• 1:40:07Bill Simmons?

  In 1968, whatever, maybe, maybe easier to do.

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  I haven't seen that movie since it came out. What is, what is he accused of? I can't remember.

• 1:40:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's, he's falsely accused of murder. He's accused of murdering his wife, but he'd do it.

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  Oh, really? Well, that's real crime, I guess. They might be interested in that.

• 1:40:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I just sort of remember him kind of working out kind of a pretty good life in prison. You know, he was like helping guys, he seemed popular, didn't, you know, worked.

• 1:40:35Bill Simmons?

  Had to get out. They killed, they killed his favorite guy. He ended up in Mexico. Yeah, I don't think that, you're not getting on the bus now. Like, I just think they would catch you. So, so you think in our lifetime, will somebody escape from prison and never be seen again?

• 1:40:53Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't.

• 1:40:54Bill Simmons?

  Like from this moment forward?

• 1:40:56Speaker 04

  Uh, well, uh, I mean, I, I think that we, I mean, since everything happens now, something that could, could happen, I guess somehow, but it, it seems just impossible to me. Like, I don't know how it would be done in the United States.

• 1:41:10Bill Simmons?

  Maybe they would be able to track their Google, Google usage. Like they'd have all kinds of tricks.

• 1:41:14Speaker 04

  But even if they can't catch you, it's like you have to re-enter the world. And it's like, that's the hard thing. It's like you, like you, uh, um, it would be very difficult to live. A quiet life that doesn't require you to like, show your ID for something. Show your, your driver's license, your passport or something like, like you to get a, to even get like a, I mean, there, I think there used to be, it would have been possible. Maybe you go somewhere and it's like, there's day laborers. They pay you in cash. You can get a job.

• 1:41:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:41:46Speaker 04

  You know, I don't think there's anything like that now.

• 1:41:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, now they have real ID for flying, like you, it's even harder to just fly compared to 30 years ago. You just hop out of plane.

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  Well, sure.

• 1:41:55Bill Simmons?

  Somebody could have given you a ticket. It'd be like, yeah, here's my plane.

• 1:41:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I go to the DMV and like wait four hours to get that or whatever. I don't know. It seems just like my normal ID, except there's a star on it now or something, but.

• 1:42:05Bill Simmons?

  We have to wrap up. Do you have any generalized AI fears before we go?

• 1:42:11Speaker 04

  Uh, well, many, many AI fears. Um, you know, I, I can't think of many other examples of something where almost everybody who understands it seems to believe it could have incredibly catastrophic like outcomes. And yet we just keep going on it. I mean, even like the atomic age and the nuclear age and stuff. It was like, we're doing this against our will. Like if Russia wasn't doing this, but like everybody, everybody seems to understand. Like, um, a guy for the Times, Ross Duthard, Duthet, Duthet?

• 1:42:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:48Speaker 04

  Saying his name. He has this podcast. He, uh, and he did a kind of interesting podcast with this guy who like used to work in AI. And is now sort of like the ultimate like doom and gloom dude. It was kind of interesting. And not implausible, except for one aspect to me. Like he's working on a timeline that says like, this is going to happen in 2027 or 2028. Like a complete reinvention of society in the next, within two or three years. There's part of me, it's like, that can't be, there's no way that can, you know, but like, uh, I, I don't know. I, I'm not, I'm worried about it. I mean, are you, what, do you have concerns about this?

• 1:43:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm worried about it. I think it's just, it's almost gonna be, you're gonna have to develop two parts of your brain. One that is able to interpret that somebody has done something with AI and made a fake thing seem real. And then the other part that realizes what's real. I was thinking about this. My dad the other day, he sent me this, uh, sent me this clip. It was a Tibbs press conference. You know how sometimes they'll do these press conferences and they'll change the wording? And somebody had mailed it to him and he saw it and he was like, I can't believe Tibbs said all this stuff in the press conference. It's crazy. Like he thought it was real and it was just Tibbs saying crazy shit in a press conference. And it like cooked my dad and he thought it was real. And I was like,

• 1:44:10Bill Simmons?

  that was AI. And he's like, ah, I gotta figure out like, like this is so hard. I'm gonna be 78 in November. I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life figuring out what's real and what's not real. And I'm like, yeah, I think that's actually what's gonna happen.

• 1:44:25Speaker 04

  Well, uh, okay. I think it's true, but I gotta say, what you're describing, very low on the list of my things I'm worried about.

• 1:44:33Bill Simmons?

  Right, right. This is the war.

• 1:44:36Speaker 04

  War games would be the highest thing. The premise of like Mountain Hit. Okay. Did you see that show that?

• 1:44:41Bill Simmons?

  I did.

• 1:44:42Speaker 04

  Okay. Um, and, and like they, I thought they did a pretty good job of creating a scenario of how someone in this position could kind of create this sort of, you know, global chaos or whatever. So, but I, I don't think, like, the fact that they make up these interviews and all that stuff and it's gonna be hard for us to know as consumers if this is a real thing or that's, that's bad, of course. But I, I, is it the bigger fear that it is going to basically eliminate?

• 1:45:15Speaker 04

  Every interesting job and the only jobs that will remain are the physical blue.

• 1:45:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're going there. Yeah, I was thinking like, because what the reason I use my dad example was because that made me think and Mountain Head's a good example of that, too. That if you can tweak stuff and make people think something's real when it's not. To me, that's terrifying because eventually we can start doing that with presidents saying things they didn't say and all that stuff. Yeah. When you're talking about like, what's gonna happen to society?

• 1:45:45Speaker 04

  No, I mean, and this is what I'm saying, this timeline they're talking about, they're not talking about like, this is something that's gonna happen in 20 years. They're talking about these things happening in two years. Um, because the thing that AI can do, and this is like, I don't know, it's so obvious, it's just that kind of done. Like, the thing that it can do is millions of simulations every second. So, okay, so you can't grow lemon trees in North Dakota, right? So you ask some of these AIs, like, you know, how could we grow lemon trees in a climate that's not hospitable, you know, it's inhospitable? And it will just work through every possibility until it finally concludes, well, what about these seven things? And I say, so it's gonna do that with everything, right? Any situation,

• 1:46:28Speaker 04

  like, there's, there are a lot of situations where people go like, well, um, we won't be able to do this thing, like, this thing we'll need, you know? But it will just simulate ways that can be done until it comes up with one. And I, I, I don't.

• 1:46:44Bill Simmons?

  What did you say? There's gonna be benefit? I'm just devil's advocate.

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  There's gonna be benefits with medicine and, and health and, you know, dieting and all of these things that are probably gonna help us.

• 1:46:56Speaker 04

  So the best case scenario is that that creates this sort of abundance utopia, where AI does everything so well and so effectively and so quickly that we don't have to work. And that you don't like, you know, and that we like, uh, it will, it will revolutionize farming in a way that food will be so cheap, it doesn't matter if you don't have a job. And it will, it will be able to change all, you know, it will be able to figure out ways to, um, you know, construct homes so cheaply that like, you, you, you, that's the best case scenario. But no one seems to really think that the best case scenario is the most likely outcome. The, the, you know, what it seems more likely is that it's going to just completely separate society into.

• 1:47:43Speaker 04

  A fraction of the populace who controls everything because they control the AI technology and everybody else will really have like no role at all like there'll be nothing like like even there won't even really be a creative role because it's going to I mean it's pretty crazy like you can put like I put some text that I had written into chat G P T just see what like I said like edit this and tell me what you think you know and like one of the things that said is this is very much in the vein of Chuck Klosterman like it was pretty wild yeah I mean it's it's pretty crazy like you know how it's like wow you know

• 1:48:24Speaker 04

  it's like I didn't know what I don't feel about that to be totally honest um I I think that like unless we are wrong about this but it doesn't seem like we it seemed like we under like like that that that this is going to be far more transformative than anyone wants and yet we still keep pursuing it there seems to be no attempt at all to slow the idea or to even question what's going to happen when these things start to manifest itself in the way that we speculate is very possible.

• 1:49:06Bill Simmons?

  So the last time this happened since we've been alive was the internet in the mid nineties. When everyone was telling us that it no I know it's not comparison but when everyone was telling us in the moment.

• 1:49:16Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:49:16Bill Simmons?

  This is gonna change everything. We're like, is it? And they were like, no, no, watch. It's gonna change everything. Really? And then it slowly changed everything. And the AI thing is basically super speeding that but it's gonna change every aspect of life. But remember even in ninety seven, the concept of paying for something online, we were so terrified.

• 1:49:35Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:49:36Bill Simmons?

  Somebody's gonna steal all my stuff.

• 1:49:38Speaker 04

  We didn't want to give our credit cards like you could somehow it seemed different than like giving someone your credit card number over the phone and they were writing it wasn't like the idea that it was sort of in this kind of interconnected system.

• 1:49:48Bill Simmons?

  Even the movies from that back then, like the net and disclosure was like, oh, it's all all the stuff that's out there. It's gonna. It's going to take our, take our identities and our lives. So I, I do wonder if there's some of that panic with this, but I also agree with you because I think about a lot with my kids. Like, you know, my kids, my kids are 20 and 17 and it's like, what are they, what is life going to be like for them in their early 30s?

• 1:50:12Speaker 04

  Well, no.

• 1:50:12Bill Simmons?

  Is it just going to be everything AI? Are they going to have jobs in the same way? I have no idea.

• 1:50:17Speaker 04

  So, you know, a few years ago, this book, Staples, came out and, and I thought it was really great. Now I realize many people have huge issues with it for all these different reasons, but I thought it was really engaging and really interesting. The author is this Israeli guy, I believe, and I saw an interview with him. And now he brought up something that I thought is a pretty kind of fascinating point. He said that this is maybe the first time, the period where now like everyone always thinks that there were like living in this totally unique period. And a lot of times it's proved to be false, but in this way it might be. He's like, throughout any other period of time, if you had a kid who was five, you had some sense of things that they needed to know by the time they turned 25.

• 1:50:59Speaker 04

  You know, if it's, if you're, if it's the 1500s, it was like, you get to learn how to ride a horse. Like you have, you have to learn how to like, uh, still like, you know, make rice. You need to do all the, you know, for us, when we were young, it's like, we're going to learn how to drive, right? You can't have to drive in 20 years. Um, you're going to know how to read, need to know how to read all these things. This is the first time where we really have no idea what will be necessary or essential to people 20 years from now. It is very possible they will not need to know how to drive. It is increasingly possible they will not need to know how to read.

• 1:51:33Speaker 04

  I mean, these like these fundamental things are, are completely now kind of up for grabs in a way that is kind of unique to the experience of what's happening with computers right now. I don't, and, and someone's going to be listening to this and they're going to be like, ah, no, that's not true. What about this? You know, let's talk about the industrial revolution and all these things. And I understand that, but there is something bizarre about how unclear the immediate future now seems.

• 1:52:02Speaker 04

  Like how, how, how, how, no one knows what it's gonna be like in a hundred years. But I have a sense that we don't know what America's gonna be like in five years. And that's weird. I mean, that's a weird thing.

• 1:52:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, and the other thing is all the rich people that buy businesses or try to build businesses or expand businesses and invest in all of these different things and technologies. All of them are just in on AI right now, and that's it. And it's like this big battleground because all of those people seem to feel like this is going to determine the future of the next 20 years, period. This is what we have to worry about. We need to plan for this, which makes me nervous.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I also, it's like, I, I, you know, because when we talk about these things, always the first idea is like, well, it's gonna hurt poor people first. It's going to hurt, you know, sort of marginalized people first, you know? And that's usually how these things work. But this is a little different in that I feel like it could completely reinvent the meaning of the economy, what the economy is, what money means. That there are people right now who are pretty wealthy and pretty secure, who could find themselves much closer to the bottom 2% than the top 2% in a short amount of time.

• 1:53:22Speaker 04

  That the, that wealth is going to be kind of sandwiched in the degree to which the difference between having $4 million and $40,000 is much less different than it is currently. Because the meaning of money will change. And I mean, these are sort of like, and, and, you know, when you, you kind of look at like, kind of like metrics that we were used to sort of thinking about, like the idea of inflation, that like every 20 years, things double in price. Or if you look back 20 years, what you could buy for $20, you now need $40 for. I don't know if those things are going to continue. Like all these things that we kind of, these kind of loose understandings we have of how money works.

• 1:54:04Speaker 04

  Things seem to be escalating in a way that makes me, it's kind of strange running this podcast in this kind of dark way, but I am worried about this and I don't know what can be done.

• 1:54:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, it does seem like the first time everything's on the table in a long time with culture and life and everything. But you could tell me AI is going to figure out a way to make all this food that will be just as edible and healthy as anything else and it's going to be way cheaper and food will become much, much, much cheaper in all of these different ways.

• 1:54:36Bill Simmons?

  I'd believe it. It's almost, that would almost be like a podcast. What would you not believe about what's going to happen in the next 15 years? I'd believe just about any outcome with AI. Like, could we have, could we have CNN anchors that are just AI anchors? Maybe. I don't know.

• 1:54:52Speaker 04

  But even, even the best case scenario is weird. Like, let's say in the best case scenario, AI makes it so that essentially no one has to work. That robots do all the, all the manual, physical things. AI makes all the decisions and creates everything. Like, what do we as humans do? Like, what, what, what does life become if there is no physical work and no creative work? Like, it seems very, well, okay, I, I knew you're kind of buddies with Ben Affleck. So I, I was like, I don't often say this, but like Ben Affleck said something that I was, I thought I was pretty smart, kind of. Like, I was surprised. He was talking, someone asked him about this and he was like, well, it's not going to affect

• 1:55:35Speaker 04

  like the highest echelon of creative people. Like, it won't affect actors, directors and so on, but it'll affect everything below it. Like, there's certain things that people will just, they will crave humanity and, and they will not accept, you know, a digitized actor in a movie. But every, all the jobs below it will be gone, sort of. And he said like, well, you know, when, in the movie industry, at one point, we lost all this money when this, when DVDs disappeared. Because that was like a second release of the movie and you could kind of make the money back. And that's the reason there's no middle class in filmmaking now is because we don't have that kind of that second boost. But he's like, what if it's in the future? It's like, say, watch, you watch all of Succession.

• 1:56:13Speaker 04

  And then you have the option to pay, say, $200 and AI will make you one version of Succession just for you, one episode of Succession, where you can say what you want to have happen in it. You know, it will have all the actors.

• 1:56:28Bill Simmons?

  A career or an adventure succession.

• 1:56:29Speaker 04

  You'll have one, you know, so that'll be like the bonus thing if you're fair, you know, as a lovely kind of a cool thing. I wouldn't like the idea of all television being this way, but it would be neat if you could say like, what if this happened and this happened, you know, and that, and to me, that's kind of a good case scenario. But my thing is this, I think that as time moves on, somebody like my kids, or maybe even your kids, will not see much difference between AI-created content and actual content.

• 1:56:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially music. I think, I think music will be the first way that goes. But there'll be some sort of Taylor Swift that's just all AI that becomes popular and people are like, I don't care if it's not real. I like it.

• 1:57:11Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, it's, it's interesting to think about it, like how, like in podcasting, right? Like, what if, what if it was possible to take every podcast you've ever done?

• 1:57:20Bill Simmons?

  I think it's possible now.

• 1:57:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then, and then, and then kind of create a new pod, like you would just kind of constantly create these ideas from like old ideas, you know?

• 1:57:29Bill Simmons?

  I'm sure it's gonna happen.

• 1:57:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:32Bill Simmons?

  We're about to be replaced.

• 1:57:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, it, it could be. And then, I guess we're supposed to somehow kind of also that really kind of plays into this idea that like, nothing new will be created. I mean, like I, I know every time I do any of these things, I am talking about like the slow cancellation of the future because I'm just obsessed with this idea. I think it's the most important idea that's I've come across in the last 20 years. But like, it does seem to me that the likelihood of new ideas being kind of put into the cultural bloodstream is just gonna disappear. And that we're just, and the content we have now, pretty much, is going to be the content in perpetuity, just sort of repackage.

• 1:58:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, the question is, in 20 years with wherever we're going with AI, would Nathan Fielder's last rehearsal season even exist?

• 1:58:20Bill Simmons?

  Because nobody AI could never think of that.

• 1:58:22Speaker 04

  Yes, that's true. So I guess some might say, well, that's proof that they'll never happen. That will that that that there's no way like, what was it? What was the Gattaca tagline? There's no for the human spirit. I think like, but that there's certain things that we'll just never be able to do. Although then whenever you talk to anybody who knows about AI, they're like, I don't know. I don't know. It's like, like, once, once we because you know, if you think about AI as a child, right? Think of it as a child. Okay. When does a child become self-aware of itself? Like three or four or five, right?

• 1:59:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Speaker 04

  But are they aware of themselves or are they being socialized to understand that there is self and there's something, you know? Is it possible that while AI computers will never become wholly self-aware? They will adopt all the qualities we associate with self-awareness. And it will essentially be indistinguishable. Like they will still, they will still be unable to actually cognitively come up with an idea that wasn't someone else's. But there's a lot of people like that, too. There's a lot of people who can't come up with any idea. They haven't heard from somebody else.

• 1:59:34Bill Simmons?

  Let's say, let's say two years from now. AI figures out how to make another Nirvana album. It takes all the Nirvana songs possible. And the technology is so good, they could be like, this is actually the album. If Kurt doesn't die in 94, this is the album we think they would have made in 95. And they release an album and it's got songs and lyrics and actually feels like it could have been the Nirvana album. Would you listen to it?

• 2:00:01Speaker 04

  Well, I would definitely listen to it. The question.

• 2:00:05Bill Simmons?

  What if you look, what if you liked it?

• 2:00:06Speaker 04

  Okay, this is like a real kind of fucking bullshit answer, but like, I would listen to it. The question is, what would I hear? And it would actually force me to confront something that maybe I can't confront. Which is that when I'm hearing popular music, am I really listening to the music? Or am I also injecting everything I know about the individual who made it? And the history of music and what I like about music and what I am like and who I am as a person? And what I think rock means, what all these things into the thing and then hearing it back. And if it comes from AI, will I be like, the only thing is the sonics? So the music, you know, and There are certainly artists who I already enjoy in that way.

• 2:00:47Speaker 04

  That that I that I have no relationship with the I don't even know the person necessarily. If I listen to classical music, for example, if I hear some classical music that I like, there's a high likelihood I don't even know who made it, right? I know nothing about don't know what can't not only do I not know what year it came out, I might not be able even to say like, what century it is from, right? So then I'm only I'm only appreciating that just for the sound, right? Does that work with a band like Nirvana? Probably not, because pop music, rock music, hip hop, all of these things are not exclusively sonic experiences.

• 2:01:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:25Speaker 04

  They are an outgrowth of a culture that we associate with youth and that we associate with all these other things and that, you know, so it might be, you know, impossible to like, maybe the highest compliment you'd be able to give in the example you describe is like, I can't believe how much this seems like Nirvana. I can't believe how close this is.

• 2:01:49Bill Simmons?

  So it almost be like a plant-based burger.

• 2:01:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:01:53Bill Simmons?

  You're like, wow, this really tastes like a cheeseburger. But also, no, it's not a cheeseburger.

• 2:01:58Speaker 04

  Although in that case, in that case, you could say like, well, this is great now. I'm going to eat this plate that they've made this plant-based cheeseburger that I can't tell the difference. It's must be healthier than eating meat. It's going to eliminate our for cattle. It's going to, you know, the amount of methane they're supposedly putting out, but also the idea that it's somehow cruel to slaughter them and all these things. There's no that doesn't happen with like, we wouldn't get the new Nirvana is like, oh, this is great. It's like, now I don't got to worry about the singer killing himself. Like, that's not gonna happen, you know?

• 2:02:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:26Speaker 04

  The fact that Kurt Cobain killed himself has an impact on how Nirvana sounds. And I know that sounds crazy, but it does for most people. And I guarantee you, if you play Nirvana to somebody who has no idea who Kurt Cobain is compared to someone who does, the appreciation of that music is going to be slightly shifted because it is impossible to not know the things that we know.

• 2:02:51Bill Simmons?

  I feel the same way about Milli Vanilli. Um, you know, they had a couple of good songs, but now you can't can't unsee the fact that there was the lip syncing.

• 2:03:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't know where this goes. It makes me super nervous. And now you've made me uneasy for the rest of the day and we have to go.

• 2:03:11Speaker 04

  I did my job.

• 2:03:15Bill Simmons?

  You have two books coming out in 2026, we should mention.

• 2:03:17Speaker 04

  Strange. So, uh, so yeah, I have two books coming out next year, which, cause I haven't had them. It just, it for a variety of reasons. There's a, I have a book coming out in January.

• 2:03:29Speaker 04

  Which I'm, I'm gonna send you.

• 2:03:30Bill Simmons?

  You'll be on before, you'll be on before January.

• 2:03:33Speaker 04

  So, okay. It's a, it's a, it's a book about the meaning of football.

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  It's just called football. It's like Walter Camp's 1896 book, Football. And I think that you will agree with 50% of it. I think 30% you will strongly disagree with. And 20% you will be like, this doesn't seem like it's about football. But that was coming out in January. I would have loved to have it come out before this football season starts because there's always a chance of something's gonna happen in football that's gonna change the meaning of this book, but I don't think so. And then I have another book coming out next fall.

• 2:04:12Speaker 04

  Which, the reason I have two books coming out is because I had to have this come out on a different publisher because my, my publisher rejected this book. They were like, it's too weird. But I want it to come out, so it's gonna come out.

• 2:04:27Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait.

• 2:04:29Bill Simmons?

  A pleasure as always. Great to see you Chuck Holstra.

• 2:04:31Speaker 04

  You bet.

• 2:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Thanks. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck, thanks to Gahad and Eduardo for producing as always. You can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can watch this video podcast on Spotify. You can go check out the rewatchables. We did Working Girl, as I mentioned earlier. And by the way, programming note, I am going to be doing another podcast after game three of the NBA Finals. On this podcast, not going live, but we'll have it up as soon as possible, right after the game, me and, uh, me and Zach Lowe. So stay tuned for that. I will see you late, late, late Wednesday.

• 2:05:20Bill Simmons?

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• 2:06:03Bill Simmons?

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• 2:06:48Bill Simmons?

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