Indiana’s Incredible Finals Run, a Knicks Summer Strategy Session, and the 'Inside the NBA' ESPN Fit With Ryen Russillo and Van Lathan Jr.

Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to react to the Pacers defeating the Knicks to reach the NBA Finals, Pascal Siakam winning the ECF MVP instead of Tyrese Haliburton, and Rick Carlisle’s impact as a head coach (2:33). Then, Van Lathan Jr. joins to discuss the Knicks, what their offseason moves should be, and Giannis trades (37:56). Finally, they discuss the end of ‘Inside the NBA’ on TNT, college football, and more (01:14:16). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Ryen Russillo and Van Lathan Jr. Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! michelobultra.com/courtside ENJOY RESPONSIBLY © 2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA® LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season. Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, get 10 free boneless wings from Wingstop on qualifying orders. Game on, flavor on, Wingstop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order Wingstop on Uber Eats and get 10 boneless wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight so you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from Wingstop only on Uber Eats. Offer valid from September 14th to September 27th and from November 2nd to November 16th. Order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailer's storefront for details. Taxes, fees and terms apply.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast. We are part of the Ringer Podcast Network where I'm doing some culture stuff over the next couple of days. I'm going to be on the Prestige TV Podcast because I may or may not have banged out the entire season of The Better Sister with Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks. And I don't know how prestigious it was, but it's worth discussing. So I think Joanna Robinson and I are going to do a podcast of that tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. You can hear they did the season finale of Your Friends and Neighbors on there as well. We're about, we're heading into a weird TV cycle right now. At least we have the bear coming up and think stranger things. But for the most part, the summer is a little rocky.

• 1:30Bill Simmons?

  So it was exciting that The Better Sister was at least watchable. Going to talk about that and then rewatchable is Monday night. It's me and Kyle Brandt. It's our fourth Steven Seagal movie. Four too many or four too few? You decide. This is, I think, the most fun we've had talking about a Steven Seagal movie. We did Out for Justice. Did anyone see Richie? We still don't know, but we're going to, uh, we're going to find out and break it down during that pod. And, uh, I had a lot of laughs, so that is coming Monday night. You can watch it as a video podcast on Spotify. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. So I have Ryan Russillo coming up because it's Sunday. We're taping this early. It's Sunday morning.

• 2:15Bill Simmons?

  And then we're bringing in Van Lathan so we can do a three man booth because it's the spring of the three man booth. We might as well do a three man. That is all coming up next. We're going to take a break. We're going to bring in Pearl Jam and then Russillo next. 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.

• 3:24Bill Simmons?

  All right, Ryan Russillo is here. Sunday morning, June 1st, 2025. I always get a little sad in June, Russillo. It means we're headed toward only so many basketball games left, the draft, free agency. Football's a little bit away. Couple of good UFC events.

• 3:45Bill Simmons?

  Summer Slam. You missed March? PGA, not that, two PGA left. British, British Open that they now call the Open. And then, uh, what's the other one that's left?

• 3:58Bill Simmons?

  There's one more. U S Open. GHO? No, U S Open. So there's some sports stuff left, but I always get sad because we're just running out of basketball and we had. One of the most fascinating playoff results I can remember, the Indiana Pacers making the finals, 28 to 1 before the playoffs to make it. Pascal Siakam was 65 to 1 to be the finals MVP. This is one of the biggest aberration we've made the finals teams that we've had, certainly since I've known you, but even going back even to when we were kids. And yet I feel like it's the right result. I feel like they were the best team. And I think they would have beaten Boston, even with no Tatum injury. I think this would

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  have been a bad matchup if you throw in Zombie Porzingis. I just think they would have beaten them. Anyway, your thoughts on the Pacers heading to the finals?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Thought it'd be a close series between them and New York. Wasn't 100% sure. Pick the Pacers and then as you saw it play out, there was just another gear that they get to that the Knicks aren't capable of. And certainly with Brunson's offensive ability and then if OG gets it going, you know, Bridges, I think everybody's a little too down on him, knowing how important he was in that Boston series. So I know that there's like a Knicks obit that we're probably going to be doing a little bit later. And then when you watch the whole thing play out, it's like when the Pacers really get rolling, they they felt like, I mean, this is not a fluke. They're the better basketball team of these two teams. And the fact that you can dig into some of this Knicks stuff with the starters, and you always had the Cat or Brunson option to attack, where when you get Haliburton

• 5:33Speaker 01

  going, and once he starts seeing like what you want to do, like his familiarity with the opponent, and this will come into some of the finals preview stuff, like, once he starts getting to play the same team over and over again for that guy, and how brilliant he is as a player, like, you're just going to be at a disadvantage because of his size and his passing. And then, you know, once he starts adding the shot in there, I can't believe, just to be honest, I can't believe Siakam won Eastern Conference Finals MVP over, over Haliburton in this one. I was as surprised as Haliburton, who took a step forward, grabbed the trophy, and it wasn't his.

• 6:03Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was dead even, except for the part that he made one of the crazy shots in recent playoff history. And I thought that was going to swing it to him. Because of that game one, three, plus, because Siakam was awesome in game two, awesome in game four, and awesome in game six. And so in three of the four, plus with the Turner foul trouble, they really needed him to defend Towns. So I see the case. I would have voted for Haliburton.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Okay, and Siakam, who, you know, after game one, I was really down on. And I think with Siakam, my history is that at times it's harder for him to get it going on his own. On the other side of things where he's such a perfect fit for this Pacers team. When Siakam gets out on the break and you think you have the angle on him because he's so big and he, he maps out his steps perfectly and there's this, this Euro thing and his strides are so long.

• 6:55Bill Simmons?

  He's really great at it. That little reverse layup he does off the Euro step, I think there's like three people in the league who have that move.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  And that you can think like, oh, this guy doesn't dribble that much and it doesn't really matter. And he's just perfect for what the Pacers want to do when they want to get out on the break. I just thought between Haliburton's game one heroics, which really was more Neesmith, his basically flawless game four. I mean, 32, 15 and 12, zero turnovers.

• 7:22Bill Simmons?

  And then finishing game six, the second half especially.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  When he decided to put this thing away last night, it was him. And I think the voters like looked at three point percentage, those that voted for Siakam and went, all right, you know, he, he, Siakam lit it up from three. I'll give it to him. And, and I just, there's too many times of these finals and conference finals MVP awards where I think it's too much stat counting on the votes and you're not really looking like who at this time through six games was the most valuable to the team. And it's, it's almost like a quarterback a bit with Haliburton. So I'm, I'm probably too biased for somebody who's just in control of all these possessions. Uh, the same way with Tatum and Jaylen Brown in the Eastern Conference Finals. I was like, what?

• 8:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the thing. So I felt the same way and I thought Siakam was incredible. Especially some of the stuff he did defensively and the intensity and just how much, how many miles he was covering, the speed he was playing at, it never seemed like he got tired. I thought he was incredible. Um, I'm just, I'm on record. I felt this way last year with Tatum and Brown in the Eastern Finals. Like the best part in the team should always win this award. Unless it is so clear that somebody else was so much more impactful than them.

• 8:36Bill Simmons?

  That's the only time I can see it. Like you can even go back over the course of history with some of the finals MVPs. I just don't agree with some of them. You know, it's, it's not like who was slightly better than somebody else on a team. At some point you have to grandfather in the importance of the best guy on a team to what that team does game after game after game. And Halburn's the best guy in this team. It's his team. The pace they play. It's, it belongs to him. It's like, it's almost like in the Super Bowl, we don't go. Oh yeah. Maybe the quarterback wasn't the most important today. Maybe it was the receiver. We always give it to the quarterback. Unless they were terrible or they, or they don't have the stats. But in basketball, we don't do this.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  212 yards receiving three touchdowns, you know, like there are certainly cases and I, I think you probably.

• 9:20Bill Simmons?

  Five sacks and the defense gives up three points and you're like, all right, maybe the, maybe that defensive end should have won it. But for the most part, we give it to the QB because they're the most important player.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I think you would get heat for saying like, somebody should be grandfathered in based on their status. And I know that's not what you're saying. You're saying over the course of two weeks, like Tatum being in control of every single possession should matter. And I'll never get over 2015 with Iguodala getting it over Curry. Curry's the only reason they're winning that series. The only, and Cleveland's injuries. But that to have Steph get double teamed and then kind of figure out the double team. And then everything kind of opens up around it. And they're like, yeah, but Iguodala had to defend LeBron.

• 10:00Bill Simmons?

  Parker in 07 was terrible where it's like, okay, he, he, he scored. They swept. He had a lot of points. Duncan's the best player in the league. He's the whole reason they're there. He's the guy in the meetings. Cleveland's like, we gotta figure out this to Duncan thing.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And by the way, this one, this one is not nearly as egregious. I was just surprised because after game one, you're right. Siakam. And you know, he's just, there are times with him where I'm like, is he initiating anything on his own? And it'll feel like there's really long gaps with the way he comes out in game two, because clearly he probably felt like he left a lot on the table in game one. And he starts getting right. Like when you're hitting step backs into OG. Then I'm like, okay, like, here we go. Uh, you could see at the beginning of game two where he, he clearly like went to bed, thought about it was like, I gotta come out and be a lot more aggressive. So I don't think this one's as egregious of those two things.

• 10:52Bill Simmons?

  I did think about it. Didn't you think about it with six minutes left? When it felt like the Pacers might win, I did think to myself, huh? This will be an interesting finals MVP vote because we only have nine people voting. It's not like they have a hundred. Yeah, nine people, you only need five to vote for one side. And that's what happened with Siakam. He went five to four.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was fine. I was, I didn't think he was gonna win.

• 11:13Bill Simmons?

  Can I tell you, can I give you a bigger picture thing on this?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Bill Simmons?

  I don't think we should give away the conference finals MVP. I don't like it. I just don't like it. I think it, I think it works against everything that, like that Pacers story, the thing they did with their team, how selfless they were. How awesome that team was to watch for three rounds. And then you have to like basically give somebody a trophy and designate, you were the most important, here's your trophy. I didn't like it last year with the Celtics either. I don't, I don't like it in general and I don't really understand the point of this. Like if you were gonna tell me the Eastern Conference playoffs MVP, that's a little more interesting, right? It's like, hey, for the first three rounds, here's, this would be a better kind of capturing of who mattered the most for the first three rounds.

• 11:59Bill Simmons?

  But when you go to a series, then you end up with dumb shit like this where Haliburton is clearly the most important guy on the team. It'd be like in the mid 2000s if, if it was like, yep, Nash, Nash wasn't the, uh, the Western Conference Finals MVP. It was actually Raja Bell. It was actually Sean Marion. It's like, no, it's Nash's team. He should win unless he was absolutely terrible. Anyway, uh, I'm just not a fan.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the NBA clearly made a push here for more awards and to name the greats of the past. And so that's fine.

• 12:33Bill Simmons?

  Called the Larry Bird Eastern Conference Playoffs MVP.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  I can't get worked up about this.

• 12:40Bill Simmons?

  Me neither. Um, how did Indy pull this off? Have a theory. On top of how good they were and they beat a 64 win team and they beat Giannis.

• 12:52Bill Simmons?

  So the Knicks were relatively new with these five guys, right? And just their style and they're only playing seven guys. Everybody's playing big minutes. They want to play slower. If you look at some of the, especially you look at game two of that Celtic series. That's just the kind of, it was like 91 90. That's what the Knicks, the lower the score is, the better it is for the Knicks. Slower the game goes, better it is for the Knicks. And you have all this sample size of studying the Knicks and the Pacers were clearly like, we're going to run. This team doesn't play enough guys. They don't want to play this pace. They don't get back on defense. They have two liabilities. We have to keep pushing the pace, keep pushing the pace. It was almost like in football when uh, somebody's like this, this team only has four guys in the D line. The more plays we run, the more they keep them on the field.

• 13:36Bill Simmons?

  They're going to wear down as the game went along. And I felt like that's what happened over the course of the series. Game five, New York comes back.

• 13:44Bill Simmons?

  Indy's not really running. They're not playing with the same pace. Game six, they ramp up the defensive pressure. They're taking off after every break. They're just running, running, running, trying to put them on their heels and the Knicks couldn't handle it. And we're going to talk about the Knicks later when Van comes on.

• 13:59Bill Simmons?

  But I do think that's a real flaw for them. And I look back to round two with the Celtics in those first two games and it's just they, they played right into the Knicks hands. We're going to, we're going to walk it up and launch a bunch of threes. The Knicks were like, that's great. Cause when, once we get close to the end of the game, we're actually going to have a better chance to execute. And the Pacers were just like, we're going to do the opposite. Chaotic, go nuts. We're going to wear you guys out and it worked. And I, I just thought it was really, really brilliant how they attacked it. I really, really appreciated it, respected it.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  The pace part of it is just so alarming when it starts like getting away from you. And I don't know who made the comment, but I had noticed it before where, I don't know, I went to replace something and then I'll fast forward like in the downtime, where you know, like, okay, it's out of bounds. I can jump ahead 10 seconds. I don't, I don't need all of this stuff. With the Pacers games, you can't do it.

• 14:54Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Because you'll miss like, you'll hit fast forward on something where you think it's dead. If I'm behind. And then next thing you know, right. Next thing I know, like two guys in the Pacers are getting back on defense after a make pointing at each other. And so early in the series is like, you can't assume like almost every other game that you're still going to be fast forwarding before the inbounds. Right. And the number of transition buckets, which shouldn't happen after makes. Of all the things you could be disappointed about with the Knicks, which generally on this season, I'm not disappointed with the Knicks at all. I thought this is a really good season for them and we'll get to it later. They won 11 playoff games.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. Uh, the thing I think is really frustrating and it's, it's something that's happening at the NBA level. That's weird. Do you remember how like backcourts all of a sudden just overnight? It just felt like overnight, nobody cared about these dangerous potential backcourt passes. I never remember seeing that for 40 years of watching the NBA and then all of a sudden, like a couple of years ago, it just decided guys were like, yeah, I don't care. Like maybe he's backcourt and then we'll see what happens. Right. Something else that, you know, you know, very early on in whether it's your playing or, or watching it is that on the shooter side, if you're going up against a team that runs like the opposite deep player, not meaning deep to the basket, but deep back to the half court line.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Like he has to be completely locked in makes or misses to combat the Pacers in this case, their guy leaking out and wanting to run every single time. It's almost like a safety who has to make sure nobody's going to get behind him. Yeah. Like never come up and help and run support. You have to. And so if the other guy is shooting, that's on you because it's really hard on the shooter being the furthest away to then try to get back into transition defense, but sometimes that's going to be on you. And so wherever that communication break down, it's like, hey, you have to be the person that gets back.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  You'd think you'd get more familiar when you're playing the Pacers every other night and the Knicks never got more for, like that must've drove Tibbs in this whenever, and you know, they'll probably put them so to the pain of watching the tape of all of this stuff. The number of times that kept happening. And it's like, look, even if we're going to lose, let's stop letting them do that. They were throwing like end zone corner fades on some of these things going like, I assume Toppin is going to win. And like, there were times the Pacers guys were catching it and it wasn't even in stride. It was just like, throw it up there, Argyle win the ball and then let's see what happens.

• 17:27Bill Simmons?

  They even do it to Thomas Bryant. They, he had a couple of those where he's just like stumbling toward the basket, hoping to get fouled.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Thomas Bryant, sneaky all time teammate. That dude was happy last night.

• 17:39Bill Simmons?

  He is, you know, it's interesting that Turner said at one point, I've been playing against that guy since AAU. And I forgot he was kind of a good prospect. He's had an interesting bounce around career. Um, and then basically because Tony Bradley gets hurt, he ends up being one of the stars of, uh, of game six. Yeah. They used all of the Knicks weaknesses against them. Townsend Robinson, you're going to play them together and you're a lot of rebounds, but you're going to be really slow getting back. Right? Um, Brunson, if you're going to have a guy who's this ball dominant, and you're not going to have a lot of assists in a game and everything's going to run through one guy, well, we're going to make him fucking work 94 feet. We're just going to throw guys at him. But your guy Nemhard, who I felt like as the first half was going along,

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  it felt like he was going to become the key of the game. Cause Neesmith wasn't right. Neesmith was hurt. You could see it. He wasn't the same guy. And they needed Nemhard for Brunson, but it didn't seem like he trusted his own shot and the Knicks were just leaving him open. I think he was two for seven in the first half. But all the shots were wide open and the Knicks were clearly like, hey, Nemhard, knock yourself out. Go ahead. Take, dude, you want to drive and get that little 15 footer? We're giving it to you. You, we're going to leave you up in the corner. And he had to step up in the second half. I hate to do the ESPN halftime. You got them hearts, gotta step up. But he had to step up offensively because they had to keep him out there. Not only did he step up,

• 19:08Bill Simmons?

  he took over the game against Brunson defensively in a way that for two years he wasn't able to do. It was like, it was almost like, like he unlocked something. And he started frustrating Brunson when Brunson head butted him and they didn't see it. You knew the game was over. So it was like, he got him. He broke him.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  I bought a Nim Hard T-shirt last night after the game. Not surprised. I, I don't even care if it's cool or fashionable. I'm so, I'm, I actually am mad it took us this long to talk about him. I don't care. Look, he went six of 12. He ended up hitting a couple of late shots. Right. And it was ugly early. He couldn't hit anything. He was open. Couldn't hit it for four games. You could tell a little bit. Yeah, you could tell too, like he was thinking about it, like, all right, let me settle in here. The hitch before he took the wide open three? Yeah. But what he had to do against Brunson in the absence of Neesmith, and I, I always wonder, like, you're always sitting there thinking, hey, like, what would you do against Brunson?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Like, how do you handle this guy whose handle is so tight? He has this low center of gravity. He's like a bull. He's so strong. His footwork is perfect. Just when you think you have him, and then to add in his foul baiting stuff, which is, I'm not going to miss watching that. Um, because with, with Brunson, well, with Brunson, it's not free throws. Maybe in there. It's, if you really, like, I don't know why I do this to myself, because I appreciate him so much and I really enjoyed that Sixers Knicks series so much too. But I also enjoyed both fanbases screaming about the other team's star in working the game the way they do. And certainly if it had been a Brunson SGA matchup, like I was a little worried of, of like how that was going to be received.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  But the problem with Brunson is that Brunson is doing it off of the ball. He's doing it on inbounds. He's doing it whenever a screen is set. Like, he is trying to do it the entire fucking game. So if you decide you want to hate watch that part of it, like, I worked myself up into a lather a couple of games ago. Because I go like, let me just keep track. Like, I have a Brunson bullshit tracker that I keep in my notes throughout the entire course of a game to just be like, yeah, no. Put that on eBay. No, ESPN's talked to me about it a bit after the Heat index, because the Heat didn't have a very good playoff run. Maybe trying to sell it like, uh, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, like a private company that's acquired or something like that. But, so when I'm thinking about how hard it is to deal with Brunson, because then you're still waiting for him to get you. And he's going to get the call.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  And at one point, I was like, maybe the best thing is just to be as physical as possible with them the entire time. And then you're like, well, that isn't really going to work. What Nemhart did, his physicality, that inbound play where Brunson pushed him first, Nemhart pushed him back, the retaliator ends up Tyler Ford hits him. And we love Tyler Ford. I'm like, Tyler, how could you do that after where Brunson kind of flops on the retaliation from Nemhart here? But like, whatever Nemhart's approach was, it was more about his mentality of like, when he hit the layup and then gave Brunson the ball back before all this happened, where it's like, I'm gonna be here all fucking night.

• 22:11Bill Simmons?

  But I think Brunson had him psyched out for most of those two years. And then last night, he was like, it was like the guy going after the guy who's been bullying him. I was watching it. Obviously, I'm on a couple Celtics text threads, talking about the, all the stuff the Celtics should have done in the last round. And it's like, all the stuff the Pacers.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  I thank you for leaving me off of those.

• 22:32Bill Simmons?

  You're welcome. You're welcome. I'm watching the Pacers do all this stuff. The Celtics had better personnel to do all the same stuff. And they just didn't do it. Everything Indiana did to fuck with Brunson, the Celtics could have done. They had better, better players. Like Derrick White couldn't have just done what Nemhart did yesterday and just been like 94 feet. I'm following you. I'm in your mug. I'm in your mug. When you get over half court, I'm gonna make you work. Because the key with Brunson is you gotta, you gotta mess with them before he gets into the 20 feet near the basket. It's gotta be the other 75 feet is where you have to get him. Make it hard for him to get the ball. Make it like later in the shot clock. And then just keep whipping guys and keep making them try to get rid of

• 23:16Bill Simmons?

  the ball, basically, because the Knicks don't want to pass the ball. I was looking it up. There was a, you know that stat head on Basketball Reference?

• 23:27Bill Simmons?

  Only like 15 teams have won at least 10 playoff games, scored 100 plus points and had less than 21 assists a game. Like, they don't share the ball. This was the Knicks ended up, they were under 20 assists a game and they averaged almost 110 points a game. They don't share the ball. They're ball dominant and it's like whoever gets the ball over half court, that guy has it. And the Pacers had to make it harder before they went into all their shit, which is what they did. And I'm sure Missoula was watching this going nuts. I can't even imagine the regret. The first two games specifically, I can't imagine the regret the Celtics had. They played a completely wrong, they had the wrong game

• 24:07Bill Simmons?

  plan, everything. And Indiana, opposite. What a win for Carlisle. I mean, you think the 2011 finals is one of the great coaching, outthinking, four straight teams for four straight rounds, like runs anyone's ever had, built around one star and a pretty weird team, and they just outthought everybody. And then he just did it again. So now he's like, now he moved up the ladder historically, I think, to make the finals with this team on top of the 2011 finals, on top of the 03 Pistons that almost made it, the 04 Pacers that almost made it, the Artest melee fucks up his chance to, that team probably wins the title if that doesn't happen. But this is now, I think, one of the four best coaches

• 24:52Bill Simmons?

  of this century. I don't think that's hyperbole.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I don't think it is either, because whenever you're talking to people that work on the NBA side of things, the number of years where it's say, it's like a summer going into the fall conversation, like, hey, what's going on, you know, whatever. And like, especially when you talk about those Dallas teams, like, you know, how do you see the West or whatever? The number of times I would hear different staffs go like, well, they've got Carlisle, so that's good for like another, however, like whatever you think their floor is, like, move them up a couple seeds.

• 25:23Bill Simmons?

  He's like that Mike Tomlin almost, where he's like, wow, that's 10 wins because they have Tomlin.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I swear, man, I just wish. And I don't know if he's the guy to do it, even though, have you ever met him?

• 25:37Bill Simmons?

  Carlisle? Yeah, cause he did some ESPN stuff for a split second. He's interesting guy, nice guy.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had him around, you know, when back in the Bristol days and like if he came in and you could make any kind of connection, he would give you kind of this wry smile, like open up a little bit. But if you didn't really have anything to offer, he wasn't like, he wasn't a guy that was going to walk in and just be like, what do you guys want to talk about? Like, let's go. And these different guys have different personalities. But that's the part of the game that I get frustrated with because I'd love to know like what Carlisle's talking about with his assistants. Like, okay, this is, I mean, we can sit here and say, hey, they wanted to attack this. They wanted to try to get cat confused with whether or not he was going to come up or whether he was going to be in drop. And then if he's out, are we going to go with Brunson here? So there's some simple things that I think most of us that watch this game a lot can identify.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  But I would just love to know, like, when he's done, like, this is what we would do. And these are the conversations that we would have. And these were the debates that we would have. And here's something we did that we knew didn't work. And then here's how we corrected all of that stuff. I feel like there's still a massive disconnect with this sport that we all love, where I would like to understand that stuff at a greater level. Finishing there, because as an aside, how many years do you think you're going to reference the second round Celtics Knicks thing? Because this is, this one is going to haunt you.

• 26:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, let's see what happens with Tatum. Because it all leads to, you know,

• 27:05Bill Simmons?

  it's, it's definitely a top four. The combo of those two games definitely in top four were Celtics losses.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  2010 is your worst finals experience, right?

• 27:14Bill Simmons?

  Game seven, yeah. That's, that's the worst.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Were you there?

• 27:18Bill Simmons?

  I was.

• 27:20Bill Simmons?

  I was actually under the basket. The Lakers were had for the second half, watching Gasol just run amok against a wiped out Rasheed Wallace. That was the worst. There's been some other bad ones.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Watching the Celtics not be able to get a rebound in person pretty close.

• 27:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:37Bill Simmons?

  And Gasol especially, who they had kind of manhandled in 08 and then was, it was a little like numbed heart last night. The, uh, the Carlisle thing, remember that Dallas team he had? When they had Luca and Porzingis and it just didn't feel right. And they had it for a couple of years and they even, they, they, they had that Clippers series that they lost 4-3 the year after the COVID. But it was clear it wasn't, it was like, has he lost the team? I remember even talking to you in the pod about it. Like, has Carlisle kind of run his course? Why can't he unlock this team? And now you see the team that he has now and it's just clear like this is, this is just such a better, uh, type of team for him to have.

• 28:20Bill Simmons?

  And maybe that, maybe when you're coaching Luca and he has the ball all the time and you can't really have a lot of input in a Luca offense, right? It kind of is what it is. It's like having an input in a James Harden offense. At some point, somebody just hears the car keys, they're just going to do what they want. Like, how is Rick Carlisle really going to help it? So it's interesting that not only does he, uh, he pulls that Hal Bern trade off. And then the Siakam piece, which I think we were all like, okay.

• 28:52Bill Simmons?

  They didn't really give up that much. You gotta do it. But turns out to be this incredibly impactful trade. And they really didn't give up that much. And they gave up, what'd they give up? They gave up, uh,

• 29:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know my notes here somewhere, but it was like just a couple meaningless firsts and a couple contracts. And that gets their 2026 unprotected.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Well, because he wasn't, uh, I remember when the trade happened, uh, there was something that I wasn't good on where it was like, all right, so Siakam, like this is actually kind of like a Knicks conversation because this time of year, or even after the transactional stuff, it's like, okay, but does this guy mean Euro championship potential? It's like, Jesus, like how many of those deals do you think are even available every year? So like, what's wrong with just getting better? But he was going to be a free agent, remember, in the deal. So it was a bit like you're going to give up these firsts and it really felt like one of them wasn't even going to be that big of a deal.

• 29:50Bill Simmons?

  It was the 24 first that in a bad draft, the 26 unprotected was the one that was like, whoa, okay. That's yeah, that's not nothing.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Right. And it was the Bruce Brown deal because remember he had the contract.

• 30:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Which again, that contract was so funny because he ended up making all of that money on all this stuff. So it was the Jacoby Walter pick. Um, and then it's a 26 first. So you're thinking, okay, fine. The players don't mean anything. And you structured the Brown contract this way in the first place.

• 30:20Bill Simmons?

  But you also now have to pay Siakam and it's like, ooh.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I didn't know if he was.

• 30:25Bill Simmons?

  What's that worth?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  I didn't know if he was going to stay there. And then as soon as I said, look, if they keep him fine. But if you're doing this and he's an expiring, like, what are you doing? Then as soon as I had said it, somebody texted me. It was like, he's doing an extension. It's already understood. Like it's, it's done. The part that I would criticize myself on with the Siakam thing.

• 30:44Bill Simmons?

  I love their self evaluation. This is why you're one of the best.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Well, uh, cause I've, I've seen him have playoff moments where I'm like, where is he? And then I think he becomes a little predictable at times. And then I, I felt like all of that was reinforced where he was relying on game one. And then from that point on, the guy was a stud. So I give it to him. Um, and I, I think I've even said at times, like debating, like a couple of years, you're like, man, am I going to vote this guy? Third team, all NBA and looking at it. And it's like, I probably don't give him enough credit. For the stability level that he is at, uh, knowing, you know, he's never going to flirt with some of these other guys that the guys were paying all this attention to. Anyway, the other part of the criticism was just that, well, all right. Siakam's pretty good. But then you were like, hey, we're the Pacers. Like who's demanding to be traded here?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Who are we saving our cap space for? So now we're playing Siakam 37 minutes a night where the guy who's had a track record, who's done some things in the playoffs, despite this weird stretch where he didn't seem like he could hit a three in the playoffs for like a bunch of years in a row. That's.

• 31:45Bill Simmons?

  That was the rub against him.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the part that we all need to do a better job with is like, you're assuming a lot that you're supposed to wait around for the better option than Siakam.

• 31:57Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Well, but it was, I think it was a red flag that Toronto was trying to, didn't want to keep him. I think was the red flag, but the thing, the thing I remember us talking about when it happened was, you know, we do, like, we do these Ringer 100 lists when you actually list all the players and it's like, he's always, well, he's always in the 35 to 50 range, right? He's, he always plays 35 to 37 minutes a game. He's been in big spots, like in the 2019 Raptors. 37 minutes a game on a team that won the title, 19 and 7. He's made a second team All NBA and a third team All NBA. Last two years in the playoffs for the Pacers, he was 21 and 7.

• 32:38Bill Simmons?

  And I think it was really smart. The question I had, and you really felt it, because they started out 10 and 15, Russillo. And it was like, is this guy the right fit for them? Because Haliburton wants to play fast and it doesn't seem like Siakam always wants to play fast. And it seemed to me, especially when Haliburton wasn't playing well the first two months, it always seemed a little push and pull with the pace with them. And I think what's been great about Siakam is he's, he's now like, supercharged himself. And the pace he plays with now, I've never seen him play like that. I think that was one of the reasons he was so special in this conference finals was he was, you know, flying. It really did look like mid 2000s Sean Marion. That was what it reminded me of, like some of the stuff.

• 33:23Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I think he's a little bit of a better offensive player, but I thought he was that impactful offensively and his ability to guard basically every player on the Knicks. You know, you don't ideally want him on Brunson, but if he got on a switch with them, he could handle him. But he could also guard Towns. He could guard Bridges or an Obie. Like pick a Nick, he could guard him. So I thought, I don't know, I, I, I wasn't like upset that he won, but I just think in general, I don't love those things. When I, so most unconventional finals teams we've ever had.

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  And I would define unconventional as your season wasn't very good. Or you don't have like a clear top 10, top 12 guy in the league. So we just go back 25 years. The 23 Heat team. That beat the Celtics in seven. Was 44 and 38.

• 34:16Bill Simmons?

  But they had Butler. Just for whatever reason in that Bucks series and for a little stretch there, it just seemed like he was one of the best six guys in the world. So it made sense, but when you look back, maybe not as much. 2020 Heat. Bubble year, 44 and 29. I just think all bets are off in the bubble. I thought of the 14 Spurs. Cause they didn't, they had like Duncan at the tail end, Kawhi wasn't Kawhi yet, Parker at the tail end of his prime. They went 62 and 20 that year. They made the finals the year before. Parker was second team all NBA, now he played 29 minutes a game. You know, it was a little unconventional, but I can't really give it to him.

• 34:59Bill Simmons?

  07 Cavs, 50 and 32. But they had young LeBron who, you know, that fit the prototype of like, you can make the finals with an awesome guy. 04 Pistons. They're 54 and 28, but that was probably the best defensive team of the century. I don't know how unconventional that was. And then the 99 Knicks is the only other ones. Lockout season, they went 27 and 23. Ewing gets hurt, they're the eight seed. And they somehow get to the finals anyway. I would put the 25 Pacers up against almost anybody. Especially the odds would reflect it. You're 28 to one to win the conference and you win the conference.

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  Even when we would talk about it on this pod and I, I think I was higher than them, than them you, but I, and I also wouldn't have said. This is the team that's going to make it. I thought they were sleepery, but I thought the Clippers were sleepery too, and they got bounced in round one. You know?

• 35:56Bill Simmons?

  I think this is about as weird as it gets, Russillo, for the finals. This is, this is as wild cardy as we've gotten in either conference.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Do you know the last time there was a 1-4 matchup in the finals?

• 36:12Bill Simmons?

  When?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Your least favorite finals of all time?

• 36:18Bill Simmons?

  Which one? I have a lot of least favorite finals.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  We just talked about it, 2010 Lakers Celtics, seven games. Do you know how many times the four seed has won?

• 36:31Bill Simmons?

  It's not good.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  One time.

• 36:35Bill Simmons?

  You know how many times a team that was plus 200 or more in the odds heading into the finals says one? I think it's twice.

• 36:44Bill Simmons?

  I think it was the 95, the 95 Rockets and the 04 Pistons were the two.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Do you remember the, the four seed that beat a one seed?

• 37:00Bill Simmons?

  Who was it?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Your Celtics in 69.

• 37:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, 69. Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  That's which is one of the weirder finals, but you know, there's some similarities. Well, there's actually no similarities because that's the Boston team that has this legendary run and it's like, okay, they're done. But yeah, I think there's, there's still a lot of meat on the bone of like who the Pacers are. Because as we sit here all impressed with them, I am undaunted in that like this is normally not how it goes.

• 37:32Bill Simmons?

  Let's take a break. We're going to bring in Van Lathan, talk about the Knicks. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. We all have our routines during the playoffs. I'm the same man who once wore the same T-shirt every single day during the 2003 baseball playoffs. I am the same person who will tell my wife to come into the room when I need a team to win because she's good luck during the NBA playoffs. These are things that happen. Well, Michelob Ultra are a great addition to any game time routine. It is a superior light beer. It's really great and they're getting fans closer to the game with exclusive prizes, including courtside seats to see your favorite team.

• 38:11Bill Simmons?

  Play, signed memorabilia, lots more. Enter for your chance to win at MichelobUltra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Superior Access Courtside 2024 to 2025 Sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 or older, ends on July 1st, 2025. Multiple entry periods. Visit MichelobUltra.com/SuperiorAccess/Courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines and official rules, message and data rates may apply. Void where prohibited. All right, Van Lathan is joining us. We're going to get wacky. Dan, how are you feeling about the Pacers being in the NBA Finals? We just talked about this for 35 minutes.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's good.

• 39:00Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know.

• 39:02Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:02Bill Simmons?

  Great start.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I mean, look, what do you guys want me to say? I think they're a fun team. Why did we book this guy? There you go. I mean, I mean, I don't, I'm really kind of, I think it's a much better story if the Knicks are in the finals.

• 39:16Bill Simmons?

  Okay, make the case.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  The Knicks just bring a lot with them to the finals. They bring a lot of different storylines, a team that has an incredible cultural identity in the NBA. But when you look back in their history, just not a ton of winning. So that means you have something that you normally don't get, which is a gigantic market with a storied franchise, but also a starving fan base and probably the most fun fan base in the entire country in terms of their ability to be both funny, violent, ridiculous. You know, if you saw a Knicks fan with their dog died.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Like blue and orange, or a, a, a, if you saw somebody walking down the street and they had an anaconda or like a python on their shoulders and it had like a Knicks cap on it, you'd be like, that's a Knicks fan. And they're a fun fanbase.

• 40:22Bill Simmons?

  I want to see that.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, you're right, for, for that reason. And kind of a scrappy, interesting team. I like the Pacers. Uh, I'm a Tyrese Haliburton fan. Um, they have an amazing fanbase. They haven't been there a while, i- i- in a while, but they're more of a fun basketball team. The Knicks were more of a fun cultural team to me. And culture always beats basketball when you're talking about who you want to see compete.

• 40:44Bill Simmons?

  So Vance is a star fucker is what he's telling us, Russel.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  All I'm telling you is that it would have been fun to have the Knicks in it.

• 40:50Bill Simmons?

  He was like, oh, that's Shalhoub. I've seen some of his movies.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Can I have the, can you just ISO for me here for like a minute on this?

• 40:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you want to go Brunson style?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Go for it.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, yeah. It might be hard. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take my time.

• 41:05Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna harden it. Okay, we'll go stand in the corners.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Get out of my way, Daniel House. So the celebrity shots, I'll admit, like, I'm watching a regular season Knicks game and they do celebrity row. And you're like, okay. Yeah. Oh, wow. Hey, Bernard King's there again. And then we finish with Spike Lee, who a lot of us are kind of like, when he started trying to glom onto the St. John's thing, like, dude, are you serious? Like, come on, what are you doing? Um, but then when the next thing you notice, it's like, hey, it's that guy again. And for whatever reason, like, our guy Miles Teller, he's right next to Shalhoub. And they don't even give him a graphic, which

• 41:50Speaker 01

  I imagine when you're at a certain level as like a pretty major actor in Hollywood, when they give the graphic to the person like Shalhoub, who I understand what level he's at, but you don't even get a graphic, like, that's the kind of thing where you're talking to your PR people. Um, and I like Shalhoub.

• 42:03Bill Simmons?

  Or firing them, I would say.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  I was next to Shalhoub after a Lakers game once, and I almost, I was so close to just saying, hey, just so you know, your PR people keep turning down Bill Simmons, and we know it's not getting to you. Here's Bill's number. Just go on the pod and talk some hoops. But I was like, I'm not gonna do that, because security might come running over. Um.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't care. I don't, I don't need it. I, I, these celebrities that have to stand up fucking courtside, like you don't have to stand up. There's nobody in front of you. It's like having a beach house and complaining about an obstructed view.

• 42:37Bill Simmons?

  Fair, fair point.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  There's this massive sideline courtside bullshit that goes along with this. Like I, I felt bad for the, like Mike Epps was like, I'm around. Cause the Pacers just didn't have any balance when they were going with celebrity row on some of these broadcasts. So yes, I am guilty of wondering at times during a regular season broadcast. But knowing that the finals was going to be just like, we were going to see a lot of it. And I don't know what Oklahoma City was going to do. Cause you just can't hang was still in this lineup.

• 43:05Bill Simmons?

  So you gotta bring in hater. The hater is like the only one they have.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  My other thing is, yeah, we get Chenoweth out there. I can make that happen. Um, Eric Chenoweth, but.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  The Knicks, the MSG crowd, whenever they would do celebrity row, very anti jam bands. Trey was always right there on the baseline. Trey from Fish, you can't fucking give him a graphic. Derek Trucks is over there. So I noticed a lot of anti jam band stuff. I noticed the same five or six people over and over again. And if it had been Knicks, OKC, it was going to be really one sided and kind of annoying. And it's like, we got it. The lady from Law and Order is there again.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Want you guys to notice something. When I talked about the Knicks and their fan base, I talked about the people. I talked about the people with dogs and outside fighting, harassing ESPN people. I talked about those people. Those are the people that I talked about. I couldn't care less about the, the, the celebrity road type of stuff. I don't like it. It's not my type of deal, but I think the Knicks fans are a cool fan base, up or down. And I just wanted to see them in the finals. But I like the Pacers. Like the Pacers are a fun basketball team, run up and down the court, you know, of three and a half seconds or less. It's fun. It's fun. I'm, I'm, I'm here for it. I'm ready for it. But I thought I really wanted to see the Knicks pull it off. I have no idea why I was rooting for the Knicks, but I was.

• 44:34Bill Simmons?

  I am pro Pacers fan base and they've also, so they won three ABA titles in 70 and 72 and 73, nothing since. Half century drought for them. Um, and then OKC has never won. And, and if you give them.

• 44:51Bill Simmons?

  Give them the Sonics title and say that was their last title. I have two middle fingers for you because that wasn't their title. Just like the foot, just like the five Minneapolis titles do not belong to the Los Angeles Lakers. That's fucking bullshit, too. The Sonics existed. They won the title and it does not belong to OKC. Anyway, the Knicks. So the underreaction would be we made the final four. We beat Boston. We had a really good season. We have really good players on good contracts. Why wouldn't we run this back? The East is going to be worse. Tatum's out for the year. Cleveland, God only knows what's going to happen with them. Indiana might be having this miracle run. Like, we're really talented. We can fix this.

• 45:36Bill Simmons?

  The overreaction would be we've got to make trades. We got to fire our coach. Dan, would you underreact or overreact?

• 45:44Speaker 02

  I would underreact, but they're going to overreact.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  It is just too much for everything that they were able to accomplish. And they had, by any metric, a really successful season, right? There's too much uncertainty for them. When you talk to people that are close to the Knicks or like in and around the franchise, like.

• 46:06Bill Simmons?

  He's like having Shams here now. Jesus.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Well, hey, if you're connected to Tommy Alter.

• 46:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  When you're connected to Tommy Alter, you're one step from almost every player in the NBA and probably the high school players as well. He knows them all.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  I think he's coming through LA with Kevin Herter. Dan, are you in on that lunch?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  I probably will be Kevin Herter and then probably. It'll be Herter. It'll be Herter, Tommy, and then a name, nondescript white star.

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  Katelyn Clark's nephew.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  You don't know who that other person's going to be, but they're going to be somebody, you know? It might be Bill Hader. It could be John Krasinski. It's going to be like, hey, you know, Krasinski's coming. He's meeting us at Babel.

• 46:53Bill Simmons?

  Hader's coming. Don't talk about Barry with him. He doesn't want to talk about it. Don't bring Barry up.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I want to talk about David Lee Roth with him.

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  What's the matter? You got school tomorrow?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  But it seems like the people inside and close to them, they're unhappy with the brand of basketball that's being played or Cat's ability to defend and to stay and drop during this whole time. They want something different.

• 47:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, Van, did you, did you see the now they tell us story in the Athletic that seemed to be in the Athletic engine for four days in case they lost game five? It was a, I think that was the fastest I've ever seen a piece like that up. I don't think the game would have been over for 20 minutes. And there was a 4,000 word Athletic story with all the issues the team had. And then crammed into a couple of paragraphs for like two sentences was after they lost to the Knicks, to the Pacers last night. And it was clearly all written and

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:53Bill Simmons?

  Towns and Thibodeau were the two kind of stars of the piece in not a good way, Van.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would underreact. I think they have a, a, a great core. I think they got a little injured towards the end of the year. Obviously nobody's hurt. Uh, but I think you had Cat with the knee. You had Mitchell Robinson also dealing with some things. Um, I don't know how much you can get out of this team. I mean, obviously they need to add, you know, uh, depth, but I don't know how much you can get out of this team.

• 48:20Bill Simmons?

  Can't add depth and also pay $210 million for seven guys.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  I'm just talking about the problems that they have. I'm just talking about the problems that they have. So I'm saying to me, because they are where they are, I, you know, see if they can run it back and get another magical run and get over the top this time.

• 48:35Bill Simmons?

  Russillo, under or over?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  I feel like I added some tension here with Van. I think he's, he's.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  No, you can't. Van loves it. The, the more tension, the better for Van. This is where he thrives. You should have saw when I brought up Chewbacca during the Star Wars pod, how he, that was when the pod really took off.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  You better watch out.

• 48:56Bill Simmons?

  Kyle Brand said Chewbacca does have an asshole.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, I'm sure he, of course he does. He has to take a shit. You have, you better watch out. There are a lot of people out here in these Star Wars celebration streets that are waiting to see you on one of these walks randomly in LA to tell you what they thought.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:14Bill Simmons?

  I'll keep an eye out. If I see a big furry person walking forward to me, I'll just start running. Russillo, underreact or overreact?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Underreacts. Most wins since 2013, first Eastern Conference Finals since 2000. They were 0-10 against Cleveland, Boston, and OKC. It felt like it was pretty clear that they were a step below all of those teams and they end up being really competitive with the Pacers. I know that there's a bit of an assumption today, too. It's like, hey, if they hold on to game one, then maybe it goes back to New York for game seven. I think that's, I don't like to just take a win away from a team and then give it to the other one and then say the next five would go the exact same way because, as I like to say, is all the outcomes are connected. The reason OKC lays a massive egg in Minnesota in game three is because they've figured out in those two, three quarters in games one and two, they're like, we're just gonna be better than these guys and it's gonna

• 50:03Speaker 01

  be fine. The same reason why the Pacers up 3-1, lose game five, and Siakam's like, hey, they played harder than us. Yeah, they were facing elimination. They were at home. You knew you had one at home in your back pocket and then you probably had another chance, you know, if it were gonna go to game seven. So, there's definitely a way you could talk yourself into the Knicks maybe being ready for game seven if that shot from Haliburton doesn't go down and send it to overtime. But, this was a boring team that got a lot of coverage for a long time. They pieced it together in a really calculated way. They were smarter than everybody on Brunson. You know, he's a nice player. Nobody thought he was gonna, I'm not even sure they thought he was gonna be this. The OG trade-

• 50:44Bill Simmons?

  There's no way. Nobody thought. Anyone who says they thought that is insane. Nobody in a million years thought he was gonna be a guy who averaged 30 points a game in the NBA.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Rick, Rick's dad is like, shit, I didn't know he was this nice, you know?

• 50:56Bill Simmons?

  I remember we did a pod segment that summer where we, cause remember they were talking about whether they overpaid or not and it wasn't even the max?

• 51:04Speaker 01

  It was 100 million, wasn't it?

• 51:05Bill Simmons?

  And we were like, we kinda liked it, but it was like, eh, who knows?

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause, I mean, he also had like that bad playoff series with the Mavs, but I don't really hold that against, this is something that Bill, you've taught me, especially with some of these younger guys that have these really big profiles. And a nice regular season and all the counting stuff that we all love. And it's like your first taste of it out there, even if it's not a conference finals. Like you see guys that just aren't super comfortable and they have to, you have to go through that. I think Brunson even had a little of that and now he's like one of the most comfortable dudes ever. In these huge moments, the cat thing is a risk, but you know, it's funny because every bad Randall game and every good cat game, you're like, how could Minnesota give up this guy? And then you see the cat struggles at times. You're like, this is why Minnesota was like, we're good to move on from this. And the fact that he's going to be 60 million in the last year of this deal, it still goes a bunch of years.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  The Bridges thing.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you the money quickly?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  It's massive.

• 52:00Bill Simmons?

  Forty-nine, forty-nine next year, fifty-three, fifty-seven.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Sixty-one.

• 52:07Bill Simmons?

  Sixty-one. And unless they, unless the league officially legalizes him being able to drive to the basket and kneeing guys in the balls as hard as he can, which I think they made a lot of progress with yesterday because it happened twice. If they legalize that, I think he'll be unstoppable, but I'm pretty sure that's not a legal play, man.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  It's just impossible to have a guy making that much money unless that guy is going to anchor your franchise and then like win. Like paying that much, he's become a complimentary player, a very important complimentary player there, but he's a complimentary player. And you're just not, you're not going to be able to win paying a complimentary player that much money. If, especially if your ace is not one of the top five guys in the entire league.

• 52:51Bill Simmons?

  And Russillo was about to mention the Bridges contract, which is the other looming piece of this. Twenty-four point nine next year, then he's a free agent, but they can take care of him this summer. Blow out the deal, make it longer, bigger. But now you're really locked into the team.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  God. Yeah, but you're probably sitting there going, when Brunson also took what seemed unfathomable at the time, a four-year deal for 156 instead of the five-year 270 deal, which is like peak Brady going, yeah, that's fine. I'll take way less than everybody else. Oh, we didn't bring in any receivers again? Why did I take a pay cut?

• 53:24Bill Simmons?

  They did that to him for like five straight years too.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Look, when this, when this team got rolling and you saw the pick and pop and picking stuff, like all of the different combos of Brunson and Cat. Where you've got these two great shooters, Cat for big is, is fine. Like even when it's ugly, it still works way more than I ever want to think that it's going to work. When it starts, you're like, this is gonna work. And like, that kind of worked again. Their offense by month, let's go over it right now. October 3rd best in the NBA, November, the best offense in the NBA, December, third best offense in the NBA, January, the sixth best offense, February 13th, best offense, March, the 21st best offense, April 18th, I think it was only like eight games, pre-all-star, the second best offense in the NBA, after the all-star break, the 11th best

• 54:11Speaker 01

  offense. So really, this becomes a conversation of like, what's going on here with this group? How much flexibility do they have? The other problem is, if you look at their starting five from January 1st until last night, that's a negative group, negative 1.4 points per 100 possessions. Okay. In the playoffs, their starters, out of the 16 playoff teams, they were ninth in net rating, I shouldn't say plus minus, in net rating here of all starting groups. You know, number one is OKC.

• 54:38Bill Simmons?

  You see the Shamet thing, by the way? The Shamet and, uh, who's the other guy who had the best net rating?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Delon, right?

• 54:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, right. They had the best plus minus on the team in the last round.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Reggie Miller had a few last night. He even wondered out loud on the broadcast. He's like, will Shamet take Bridges' minutes? You're like, no. And by the way, Tibbs, when he tried to figure this out, get back in, he closed with the five guys again. All right? So number one and number two in net rating again, for starters, OKC's plus eight, the Pacers are plus five and a half, and the Knicks were on the negative side of things with that starting group. So I think this is a huge win. Celebrate it, Knicks fans. Who you've been, what they've done, building towards this, all the transactions. But there is a hard conversation about who they are and what Cat is or isn't. And that's the whole reason why a really front, a really smart

• 55:31Speaker 01

  front office in Minnesota, and I know some people argue it's more about the contract, but a really smart front office was fine moving him for Randall and DiVincenzo.

• 55:39Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you one other thing, Ben?

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 55:42Bill Simmons?

  Cause I agreed with everything Rissolo just said. And if you were evaluating this Knicks team, and you do glass half full, and it's like, that was an awesome season. We were one of the four teams left in the playoffs. There's some, we got Mitchell Robinson back with 17 games left, and by the time we got to the third round, he was huge for us. Let's run this back and see what we have.

• 56:02Bill Simmons?

  On top of everything Russillo just said, so the Detroit series, they're down eight in the fourth quarter of game one, down 11 with six minutes left in game two, down 10 with nine minutes left in game five, and down 10 in the third quarter of game six. In the Celtics series, they trailed by 15 plus in the first five games. In this Pacers series, they were down double figures in four of the six games. This is a team that routinely was behind trying to claw itself back with weird lineups and whatever. And I think at some point you are who you are with that stuff. If you're like, look at OKC. OKC, who's fucking awesome and is putting together one of the great seasons in the history of the league.

• 56:43Bill Simmons?

  Like, they killed teams at home. Every time they played at home, basically, except for that first Denver game, they were destroying the other team, right? And at some point, that's kind of our, you are who you are. And I think the reverse with the Knicks is like, if you're five guys together, as good as they are on paper, don't play that well together. And then we get to the playoffs and you're always falling behind. At some point, that has to mean something, right?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, but you know, there's a certain point where anomaly becomes consistency, right? It becomes part of your DNA and part of who you are. Maybe they get comfortable when they're down a little bit. Maybe it's a part of who they are and the makeup of their team. I will say this, though. It was easy for them to come back against the Celtics. The Celtics don't have the heart of a champion. But when you, when you, right, when you-

• 57:37Bill Simmons?

  Won the title last year, like literally 12 months ago.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Lot of injuries.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Lot of stuff went their way. Lot of stuff went their way.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Choose your own adventure of, do you want this team's best player to not play?

• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  Do you want Porzingis to turn into a zombie?

• 57:56Speaker 02

  But I will say something about the game one of this series. Russillo hit on it and you know, all the observations he made about how any series goes are obviously correct. I will say something about this game though. I was watching it at Bill's house. I had stopped and started talking to Ben about Martin Luther King Jr. That's how over the game was.

• 58:17Bill Simmons?

  We were just going 50s and 60s.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I looked at Nick for listening to you talk to him.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, like we were, I was, me and Ben were having a deep conversation about the civil rights movement and all of this stuff. Ben's asking all of the questions. I'm gonna put a cookie on his head.

• 58:33Bill Simmons?

  He's doing it in history. So, yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Don't, don't.

• 58:36Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  He's interested, Bill.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz you asked him what he's studying and he was like, I'm doing history. Here's, here's what we're working on now. And the Knicks were getting whatever was going on in that game.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Here's what really happened.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Exactly. No, actually what happened was Ben came down and he went, yo, Unc, how do we subvert the white power system? And I'm like, sit down, young man. Let me tell you about.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Ben, I was just listening to Brand Newbie. First of all, people sleep on that.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  So look, that's how over the game was. And Bill, who was, you know, concentrating on basketball at some point goes, huh? I don't know, it's seven point game.

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  I was in the conversation. It went from 19105 to 1912.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Right here. Either you're dismissing a complicated history amongst our people, or you're not doing your job.

• 59:23Bill Simmons?

  I say, guys, Knicks are only up seven now. I don't know what's happening.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  And at a certain point, when they lost that game, you know how individual players turn into pumpkins? It felt like the Knicks aura turned into a pumpkin right there. That was like three losses because it was so gut wrenching. That it shifted the little team of destiny thing and the momentum from that being a Knicks thing to it being a Pacers thing. And I was like, whoa, wow, this is a game that in the last series, they managed to win. They managed to pull off and they didn't pull off. They didn't pull this game off here. They will probably lose this series is the way I looked at it after that game was over and they were playing from way behind.

• 1:00:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  It for the rest of the time. And so I saw it. So, so that to me was the moment that, um, it was, it was like a huge moment in that series. And if they do win that game, I feel like the momentum that they carried on from the Celtic series would have probably made them a much tougher out over the course of the next five or six games.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  So that's the biggest case for the underreact because this happened two, two other times, like basically in the last 20 years. And I went to one of the games, which was 2018 finals, game one, which is the greatest game I ever saw LeBron play or maybe anyone play. He was, he was just beating the Warriors by himself. And that was the JR Smith game. And it goes in overtime and they lose. And I don't know if they were going to beat the Warriors in a seven game series, but they weren't going to beat them five out of seven times, right? And you could see LeBron, he was so mad in the last minute of overtime. He almost got in the fight with Curry. He was so mad because he knew it was like, we can't win the series now. We're never winning. We're never beating these teams four times

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  when we gave one away. The other one we've talked about before was that 2008 Spurs Suns, which was an awesome game. It was the year the Suns got Shaq. And when Spurs win in overtime, or maybe it was double overtime, and you just felt like, I don't think the Suns can beat that team for, four times after blowing that game. So with the Knicks, like if they win game one, maybe that does flip it. And I think that's what you'd have to talk yourself into. With that said, if I, if you had, if you told me.

• 1:01:48Bill Simmons?

  Is Tibbs coming back? Is Tibbs not coming back? You have to bet on this. I think I would bet on him not coming back. And I think I would bet on them finding somebody else. And I don't know who that is. But I think it's like 45%, 55%. It's in that range. But I just feel like somebody's going to get blamed because the deeper issues are how far they were falling behind every game. And it was starting to get a little fluky with the comebacks. And that's how you have to look at it, big picture. There's a Giannis piece. We still don't know with Giannis. I still think Milwaukee should keep him. And until Giannis says, trade me and I want to go there. And that might be Golden State. That might be the Knicks. That might be, who knows? He might be Houston, sounds great. Or he might say, I don't want to go anywhere.

• 1:02:32Bill Simmons?

  But if Giannis says, I want to go to the Knicks. There are trades you could figure out with that. So that's the only real blow up trade. Russell is smiling. Because you're acting like you don't have four of these written down. Well, I do. Let me throw this at you. Let me throw this one at you. Towns for Durant. I think Durant has a year left, but you can extend him. The salaries actually work as a one for one. Towns, if you remember, has a whole friendship history with Booker. Like they've known each other since they were kids. They have the same agent.

• 1:03:14Bill Simmons?

  There was a, well, I remember, we got pitched this at The Ringer in 2019. Towns and Booker and Russell all wanted to do a podcast together. And they all lived in different places. And we were like, there's no way. But like now, we would have the technology. D'Angelo Russell, your guy. Oh. Those three guys are all friends together and same agency, all that stuff. And I'm thinking if they don't have a ton of outs with Durant, and if you're the Suns, you don't have a lot of ways to get better. You want, like, and Booker loves Towns. And I think they're still buddies. Is that a way to get out of the Durant business? And then if you're the Knicks, you have this one year run with Durant. You can talk yourself into Mitchell Robinson 30 minutes a game. You're out of the Towns defense business. You've kind of sold high.

• 1:03:59Bill Simmons?

  You got out of Rando. You got out of Towns with this big contract coming. Russell, is that something that would intrigue you if you were the Knicks?

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, I think I'm more into it if I'm on the Knicks side of this thing. And I think it is worth in this kind of like, I think we're all being pretty positive here about the Knicks. Cause I don't really know how you get, I mean, you can be disappointed, but I don't know that you can be mad about anything that's happened this season. This has been a great season. Think how it played out with Cleveland falling apart and then the Knicks taking Boston out. And you get to take Boston on top of everything else, you know? Yeah, literally out, like out maybe for the decade. Right, that'd be long, but we'll see.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  But I wanted to add in just the Mitchell Robinson part of it. I think I get why Embiid stepped on him last year. Like maybe Embiid was smarter than everybody else and realizing like, hey, when this dude is out there, he's a problem, even though I probably focused on, you know, I just don't like guys that are a zero threat on offense. And then I always thought it was odd with him where he'd be complaining on Instagram. Like every now and then Van, he would have like a post where it's like, I'm not just here to rebound or something.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Let me cook. Yeah, I don't like, like dudes that cannot, don't have a kitchen asking to cook at the NBA level. And I saw him, what in the LA Fitness run, he looked really good. Uh, I think my dad was playing in that game. So, look, I, I would be more into this thing. I, I think this is really interesting because you're like, all right, Mitchell's there. It's, it Durant, I think is probably a better happy destination because I think I'd always be worried like, all right, I'm getting Durant. Like what's the expiration date on his happiness here? Because there seems to be a bit of a track record with that. Sure, he's a little bit older. Um, the cat 61 million years from now, I think it's alarming, but it's also what will it look like in relation to what other salaries are going to be? If this cap goes up 10% every single year.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  So that's another factor with that. If I'm Phoenix, I'm probably going to have to reset this around Booker. If he's cool with going through that, which again, it seems like all indications that, you know, he's probably a little bit more bought in than you would think from the outside. But that might be something where you're delaying it all around him because you're bringing in a more expensive, younger flawed player than what should probably be a quicker reset on Phoenix. Like Phoenix seems like they don't want to get, get this over with. But it, it probably means Durant's moving out and then they're rebuilding around this whole thing. I, I don't know that I'd want to be in the cat business for four years. And look, as an aside, I'll just tell you. Case for the cat business though, quick? I can't stand watching him play a basketball game.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  And that is unfair to him and his production. I mean, his plus minus regular seasons.

• 1:06:40Bill Simmons?

  He is the most frustrating guy.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  I can't fucking stand it. And I know it's better than I'm giving it credit for. So it's a me problem. I need to work on me.

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  An objectively good basketball player, right?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  He's really good. He's got some major flaws, but.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  He has to be in the top 20 of any, if you're making a basketball list. He's one of the 20 best players in the league. And he's been conference finals, conference finals, conference finals, two years in a row on different teams. So it's not like you can't succeed with them. And that would be the case, Van. Be like, we get out of this Durant business. He's leaving in a year anyway. Instead of like getting this three for one, two for one, we're getting a top 20 guy back from him who our best player really likes. And we could maybe redo this any place center and he rebounds and he's 24 and 13 every game and he's had real success.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  I mean, look, it on the, I'm pretty much aligned with Rizzolo on the Phoenix part of it. I, I like it a lot less. On the New York, New York part of it, it seems like it makes a lot of sense. It seems like it gives them flexibility in the future to build the, the type of team that they want to eventually, you know, give it up, get over the hump for the first time since like 1972 or whatever it is. I will say this though, like the Tibbs part of it is interesting to me because

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  for as much success as they, as they've had, his style of basketball and his overall being greats on people, it wears on people. He grinds out a fan base and you normally don't see a fan base that like has been in the doldrums and has had the success that the Knicks have had uh, over the past year, this year, like really want to move on from their coach. It's like, he is the ultimate fair weather type of Knicks figure. It's like, we're winning games. Oh, Tibbs might be able to stick around. Look at what Tibbs is able to do.

• 1:08:27Bill Simmons?

  Tibbs drives me crazy.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Right. And so now, and so now I, I think that if you ask most Knicks fans, they want a fresh coat of paint on their head coaching position. And I don't, and, and that's despite all of the success. They don't believe that they can win with the way Tibbs does the things that he does.

• 1:08:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, the, I mean, the case against Tibbs is the, the thing, and we've talked about it on a few pods even before these playoffs. Why is he doing the minutes this way? What's the point of this? And then you get to the playoffs and he completely flips how he's doing the minutes. And all of a sudden it starts playing guys who hadn't played forever, who were actually pretty good off the bench. And it's like, why not use the regular season to try more different, you know, more lineups, different combinations, get people out there. And then when you get to the playoffs, you're in a position of strength. And instead it felt like he was throwing shit against the wall. And I think that would be the biggest criticism with them. It's like, yeah, of course this wasn't sustainable.

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  You're trying to win a title with six guys. Too hard for four straight rounds. So I don't know. Seven guys. I mean, Miles was. But he kind of lost, it seemed like he lost confidence in Miles as it went along. So if Yanis did ask for a Knicks trade, listen, I was on the trade machine. I put on my trade machine outfit, put on my goggles. Overalls. Fireproof. Fireproof overalls, my painter's cap. It's really hard and it has to be a three teamer. And I think it's got to be Towns and OG together and Towns and Bridges together. And you need a third team. And I think the third team would have to be the Spurs and the Spurs would be getting either OG or Bridges.

• 1:10:14Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think the Bucks end up with Towns and Vassell and multiple first round picks from, from San Antonio. And then the Knicks would get Yanis, but they would have to take a couple of contracts. They'd have to take Conneton and they'd have to take Kuzma. And I don't think this will happen because if I'm Milwaukee, I just wouldn't do it. I'd rather, I'd rather keep Yanis, take him into February. And if we have to trade him, man, I just feel like I have more leverage at that point. I wouldn't do it. I would not trade Yanis. I am on the record, the East is weak. I'd keep him. He might be the best player in the whole conference. Keep him, figure it out. Indiana has shown you that maybe if you build the right team around a great player, you can move your timeline faster than you thought. So I would not trade him.

• 1:10:58Bill Simmons?

  Would you, what, what would, what would happen for you to have to trade him or so? What would you need? Just like the, be overpowered with picks? What would it be?

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Before the combine, you and I, your statement there, I have absolute agreement with. After the combine, I would just get it over with now. Cause I think at this point, you can get a ton for him. I think if it gets weirder, whether it's before the deadline or it's next summer, I don't know that the value is going to be the same. And we could talk about the timeline of the contract and control, which is also a factor here. But I'd say of all the topics that I discussed with people, more than half of it was what's going to happen with Yanis. And it was kind of all over the place with different theories and different meetings. And here's what the agent's saying, and here's what he's not saying and all this stuff. I'm like, this is just way too much noise about something that like, if I'm Horst, I would just get in front of it and try to load up on, on all this.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Cause you're probably going to be trading him and it's going to be in a, in a depressed market a year from now or next February. So normally I totally align with you, Bill. If he's happy and wants to come back, that's all I need to know. You're absolutely right about the East. I mean, if Yanis ends up in the West after the lottery and my God, this East-West thing, you know, this is, we're going to need a summit for this.

• 1:12:09Bill Simmons?

  If I'm Yanis, I don't want to go to the West.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wouldn't want to go to the West either.

• 1:12:13Bill Simmons?

  You want to do LeBron. LeBron, LeBron was smart enough in the 2010s to realize like, better conference, I should stay here.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Um, to me, if, you know, obviously if he wants out you, so are you, are you saying that you wouldn't trade him even if he asked out? Are you, are you, you're saying that you'd hold on to him even if you said, I want to get out of here?

• 1:12:32Bill Simmons?

  So here, here's how the league works. If he does ask out, he will tell them, these are the three teams I will go to.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:39Bill Simmons?

  And then you work with the deal with those, they're not going to trade him to somewhere he doesn't want to go. They're like, hey, OKC just blew the finals. We've traded you to OKC. You'd be like, I didn't want to go to OKC. They're going to work with him. So if he says, I want to go to Golden State,

• 1:12:55Bill Simmons?

  they'll go down the road and really try to figure out the Golden State thing. And Golden State, I, you know, literally everybody would be on the table for them. But if he gives them a list of like Golden State, Houston, San Antonio, the Knicks, then you just basically pit all those four people against each other and try to figure it out. We saw this with Durant a couple of years ago.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:15Bill Simmons?

  Where Brooklyn could have just traded Durant, but they actually, he's like, I really want to go to Phoenix. And they were like, cool. Their owner's insane. He's going to give us 230 cents in the dollar. So this works out great.

• 1:13:28Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if that's going to be the case for 31-year-old Yanis. I, I just, I. I think Golden State, because they have urgency would overpay. And I think the Knicks would do everything possible to make it happen. Because if the Knicks could just end up with Giannis and Brunson and one of the swings, you just figure it out after that, right? Like that's, you have to do that.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  The title is the thing that makes it interesting with Giannis to me. He was able to stay there long enough and actually deliver a title for the team that drafted him, right? And so at this point, giving him the right trade does two things for them. Or like, like observing his wishes or meeting his wishes does two things. Number one, it loads you back up to maybe go get another player that you can get another title with. I mean, they hadn't won in so long or been basketball relevant in so long. They just owe him a lot. Like Giannis is the Bucks right now. That's, that's number one. And then number two, you say goodbye to him in a way that's like not really contentious. And let, lets him go start over and, and try to do it with another franchise. And you get what you want.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Like you don't drag this out and make this into a situation that, um, where he's unhappy or where people are looking at Milwaukee as a place where there's, you know, unhappiness in the organization. If he asks out, you brought us a title. We had great memories, the whole deal. Goodbye, let's start over. And we have everything that we're going to get back from the trade to build and try to get back there again in four or five years.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  He's not asked out.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:03Bill Simmons?

  So we'll see. All right, we're going to take a break and a lot more stuff to hit. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun? Sometimes earlier than expected? Sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead? But what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully, your team doesn't go to Cancun.

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. 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 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. So Inside the NBA had its last TNT show today. And it's been like a, almost a year-plus funeral for this show on TNT, dating back to last year's playoffs, when it seemed like it was heading goodbye, even though they had a year left.

• 1:16:32Bill Simmons?

  And then we did that whole thing, and they did a documentary. And yet, it's just moving to ESPN. It's not dying. And so, on the one hand, I felt sad as a lifelong basketball fan. TNT was such a huge part, dating back to when, you know, 30 years ago, however long it was, like, you know, living in Massachusetts, watching that show, watching that show, those games, seeing Barkley join in 2000. You have this whole history. The three guys together were the best. They add Shaq in, it goes terrible for a year, then it eventually becomes good. And they were such an essential part of being basketball fans.

• 1:17:13Bill Simmons?

  And it's still going to continue on ESPN. Yet.

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  And yes.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Just say what you want to say.

• 1:17:23Bill Simmons?

  I think ESPN is going to fuck the show up. I don't care if I get aggregated.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Sag. I didn't understand.

• 1:17:28Bill Simmons?

  I think they're going to fuck the show up. I don't think they, unless they completely change how they do commercials. The show is going to be different and people are going to be pissed and Barclay and those guys are going to be pissed. And I think it's going to go badly. The only way it doesn't go badly is if they do the commercials and they give them the lengthy segments that you need to have that show work. They're going to have to change how they do it. They just paid so much for the NBA that if they don't do that and they do these same short, terrible segments that you're about to see in the finals where it's like a one and a half minute halftime and it's like a 20 minute pregame. If they do that, they're going to fuck the show up and everybody's going to be bad. So I'm going to start there, Russillo.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  They did pay a lot for the NBA. So then to say now all of a sudden you're not going to have all that commercial inventory. Cause we've talked about the halftime show ESPN with people that we really like that are on the show. Maybe others that aren't necessarily our favorites, but I barely catch it. Like that's the 15 minute timer to get something done around the house.

• 1:18:33Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  For me. And, and if I do catch some of it, I mean, it's just a lock. It's like, oh, the best player on the team went two for 10. Okay.

• 1:18:40Bill Simmons?

  Somebody's got to step up.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's going to get scolded. Like, okay, here we go. It's a 30 second scolding. And then I don't know who okayed. Maybe it was because everybody was trying to be the TNT show, but the analysts talking to break. Nobody's good at it, folks. Nobody's good at it. It's just confusing. You're like, is this, are we in commercial or are we doing Carl's Jr.? I don't, I don't understand what's going on.

• 1:19:08Bill Simmons?

  It started with PTI 25 years ago and they're the only ones who are really good at it.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you. Little, little history lesson. Uh, I don't.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll, I actually think the people that are at the very top with ESPN know this. And.

• 1:19:26Bill Simmons?

  They haven't cared. Whoever's running ESPN has not cared for this entire century about this. This is something they knew was a problem and they just didn't care. They just cashed the checks from the commercials.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Bill Simmons?

  They did not care about the quality of any show they had.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  All right. But if it's going to be on the model of like, we bring it in, but you get to do your thing, then don't you think that's the negotiation? Do you think that's, that's part of it to even?

• 1:19:50Bill Simmons?

  I think you could say that coming out of the gate. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it's gonna be the same. And then you get there and I, I've literally witnessed this in situations I've been in. Once, once you're actually there, it's like, oh yeah, that. Yeah, the halftime's coming now, be a minute and a half because we had, we got this job.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

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

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  They've done it this whole century is my point. So they, so they were gonna have to completely shift what their business motto is to accommodate the show. And that's the only way it's gonna work. Otherwise, we're all gonna be mad.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  But this is like the situation where one of your homeboys starts dating a girl that you actually care about and have respect for. And you warn him, don't fuck this one up. Like it's your cousin or somebody like that. I know how you are. I know how you treat all the other girls that have been around, but don't fuck this one up. We're paying attention to you now. I think before they could do whatever they wanted to do with these various shows because nobody really cared how these shows were treated, you know? Like nobody really cared. Whether or not you called these shows back, whether or not you took them to Cut or TGI Fridays. What kind of hotels you guys were staying in. No one really cared how these shows were treated.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Now you're dating a girl from our church. You're dating our sister. You're dating our cousin. You gotta treat her right or else all eyes are gonna be on her. When she starts complaining, we're gonna be like, hey, man. This is the right. Okay, we care. So I don't think that they'll treat Charles Barkley like anything other than the prom queen.

• 1:21:26Bill Simmons?

  I, for the three of us, it would be more fun if they mistreated him a little bit because he would be the all time.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to say my piece about this. I don't like how this is going. Here are my thoughts on multiple platforms.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  That happened to me once, Van, and the guy was married. I was like, you can eat all the dicks.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  This has been a weird thing, though, because there was all this stuff said, and you all know Barclay's my forever number one. There's never, never gonna happen.

• 1:22:01Bill Simmons?

  The greatest guest of all time, too.

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Well, he's my favorite athlete. There will never be anybody that I'll care more about as an athlete than him. I think it'd be weird at this stage of my life, like, all right, nope, I'm moving this guy up. I mean, unless I had a kid, but even he'd have a hard time because it's like, I doubt you're gonna be as good as Barclay.

• 1:22:17Bill Simmons?

  This is tough for Chris Paul to hear this, but go ahead.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Chris knows. So.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  We talked about it.

• 1:22:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I've told them.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's fine. He's a competitive guy, but yeah, he's. But Barclay was like, I might sign, I might not sign. Like Barclay wasn't dumb about it, but he was doing almost a book tour with his contract negotiations. Remember like the live thing was getting involved and like that stuff was happening? And that's where some people with their agents, they'll get it out there more and more and everybody just starts talking about it. Then it's like the Scott Boris thing. You're like, we only had to pay this guy 200 million bucks. What a bargain. And you don't realize like it all worked. Ernie had said he'd never work anywhere ever other than TNT. And if the show wasn't on TNT, then he was done. I've been confused about this show so many fucking times.

• 1:23:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Where I thought last year, I was like, this is it? And then you have to look it up like.

• 1:23:11Bill Simmons?

  Then there's like, now there's a year left.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  There's another year, but the rights, but now if it goes here, and then it's like, no, we're just running it back.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  Three of them are like, we haven't signed deals yet. It's like, so you don't have the show?

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Barclay saying he'll never do it again anywhere else other than TNT. So, oh, I've made my peace with the fact that it's over. But no, it's not over. I actually didn't know that it was that they were moving to ESPN as a unit. So maybe like two, three weeks ago, I literally thought the show was over.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Because they keep saying it all the time. And so I'm totally with you, Van, and on top of everything else. And look, I would laugh about it, but Barclay dumps on ESPN all the time.

• 1:23:49Bill Simmons?

  Kills him.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  They did it last night.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Kills them. That's the interesting thing to me. He's been shitting on them so hard for like the last 10 years, tough. So now for them to be over there, that's so fucking interesting to me.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  But it also speaks to like Jimmy Pataro running the thing going, hey, this is a great product. This is better than anything we've had. This has been the gold standard. This is what every single new studio show, when you sit in on these meetings and I would be in tests of these shows and like, we want to be more like TNT. We want to be more like Inside the NBA. It's like, all right, yeah, well, good luck. How about you let somebody be on these shows more than 12 months and then see what happens. And granted like-

• 1:24:29Bill Simmons?

  How about you give them time to actually-

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Let it be.

• 1:24:32Bill Simmons?

  Relate with one another. They've done some of the pregame stuff they've made longer, but the during the game stuff and then the postgame goes right to Van Pelt. So there is no postgame show and that's why you have these shows, because the game just happened. And then we want to hear from the, from the best possible people talking about the game. And what that, where they shifted it was they want SportsCenter. But like, the real secret sauce to ESPN is they're trying to drive as much revenue to SportsCenter as possible. So the faster that they can have that SportsCenter follow the end of the game, that boosts the rating for that SportsCenter. And then they can get, that's 365 days a year. They can just get more money for it. That's not going to work with Inside the NBA. So I, I don't know. I guess that SportsCenter just goes away

• 1:25:16Bill Simmons?

  and they move Inside the NBA in there was the only way that would work because that's what the fans are going to want. If they mess with any piece of this, everyone's going to be mad. And that's the part that I can't wait to watch. Like even like little insignificant stuff. If we feel like it's different anyway, people will be mad. And that's it. I don't know how it plays out.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  They have to do legitimately the exact same show.

• 1:25:39Bill Simmons?

  Replica.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Underdog, everybody, the tweets, the golf, they have to do the exact same show.

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, it seems like they're hiring the same crew. Everybody's coming like, and that was a big part for Barkley.

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  Right. They, so they, if any part of it does, if any part of it, I'm, I'm being serious too. If any part of it doesn't move hashtag not my Inside the, the, the NBA, it's, it's, it's going to start. Um, I have a question. How does Stephen A. figure into all of this stuff?

• 1:26:13Bill Simmons?

  They already took care of that with the, with the deal. That deal's for like First Take. And he gets his own stuff and gets to do his own. I think they knew when they were doing the deal, you're not going to be on NBA next year in the same way.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  But I'm asking.

• 1:26:27Bill Simmons?

  How does this impact his acting?

• 1:26:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, that, that we're gonna have to wait and see. Fair.

• 1:26:36Bill Simmons?

  You think, what do you think? They're gonna like, put him on the show every once in a while, Ben?

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  I wonder how Stephen A., who is Stephen Naismith, who is the basketball authority at ESPN. I wonder how these guys come in, who literally have been blamed and lauded for dictating the course of NBA culture. At first, it was like, even when the league was not as fun to watch, these guys would make the league fun, right? Then it was, these guys' criticism of the league is part of a larger problem with basketball culture. That's how much influence they have. But it didn't really matter to him then, because they were on another network, right? But having those kind of guys, whereas consequential to basketball culture in his same

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  home field, home turf, I just wonder how that's gonna go. I wonder if Stephen, if we, if a month into this thing, we pop up and Stephen A. Smith is sitting up there with them, just because he wants to do it.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know, I mean, there's been so much talked and written about the show. There's almost nothing added at this point. Everybody understands how consequential the show is. I think the most important thing about it, I was thinking back, the game five of the, and I remember writing about this at the time. Game five Cavs Celtics 2010, when LeBron, when the series was 2-2, and the Celtics just kind of killed the Cavs in game five. And LeBron was bad and seemed kind of detached and didn't seem like, my life's on the line, I gotta take care of it. It's just something was off the whole game. You're watching.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  This is the mom thing?

• 1:28:13Bill Simmons?

  No, no, no, this was, this was just, he just wasn't good.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:16Bill Simmons?

  And it got to Inside the NBA after. And Barkley was so disappointed in how LeBron played, like he just started talking about it. And he's just like, I just don't understand. I'm just so disappointed that LeBron played like that. That's the kind of stuff that made the show so essential because those guys really care about basketball. There would be moments that happen in these playoff games or the end of a series or whatever. These big picture conversations. It to me, it way, you know, the, the, the show's funny as shit. It makes me laugh in a way that I don't think any studio show has, but it was the way they could capture the moment sometimes was so important. And that's the thing ESPN can't risk with that show.

• 1:28:57Bill Simmons?

  You have to have these guys after games weighing in in a big picture on stuff that only really Barkley and Kenny. Like that's, that's where the show really matters and they can't fuck with it.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  What if they replace Kenny with Mina Kimes?

• 1:29:14Bill Simmons?

  With ESPN people?

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. Just thinking of crossover appeal, like off the Stephen A. point. Like there's no way Stephen A.'s not sitting at that desk with those guys at some point. There's no way that's not happening.

• 1:29:30Bill Simmons?

  It'll be in the pregame, not the postgame.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I, I, I would, but he will be on there. He, he will be on there.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  It's the lock of the year. You can't even bet it. He's going to say, I'm going to go on that and it's going to be really interesting. I'm not saying he's going to now be a part of the show all the time, but like the dude wants stuff and it's worked out. And he's not going to have that show exist without him stocking by for a cameo.

• 1:29:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, can we all agree that the more ESPN juice they sprinkle on the show, the matter the general public will get?

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that'll be the part that's unfair. There'll be no juice. There's no remnants of any juice whatsoever. And like the second something, it doesn't even have to be different that people are going to get on ESPN's case. ESPN gets actually too much shit because it's on all of the time and all of us were on pontificating 24/7. Like imagine if CBS or Fox, who's running NFL also had 20 sort of 24/7 programming of people talking about the NFL. Like ESPN exposure, they're, they're just.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  The amount of volume there is for it of all of us that were either on it then, or the people that are on it now, it just leads like these other channels like TNT is like, hey, Bones is up next.

• 1:30:52Bill Simmons?

  You haven't seen this one yet. Somebody's dead.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  That guy didn't say shit about Tibbs in his minutes.

• 1:30:58Bill Simmons?

  Bones. Here comes a new charm.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  He's Dustin from Prince.

• 1:31:03Bill Simmons?

  Charmed. Alyssa Milano's back.

• 1:31:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, listen, I think it's going to be discussed all the time next season. It's going to be weirdly one of the biggest subplots of the year. And I think people are going to be really protective of the show that they really like, and how it's going to fit into this very strange ecosystem. ESPN's weirder than ever.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:31:28Bill Simmons?

  It really is. It's the weirdest it's ever been from a, from a talk standpoint.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  One of the last major brand connected shows. When I say, I'm not talking about like, uh, you know, YouTube shows or other things like that. I'm talking about brand connected shows. The show is connected directly to a major sporting brand, right? A major sporting league that is completely un-PC. Like, doesn't even try.

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  Like, completely un-PC, not PC at all. Like, we, whatever comes out, if we're going to talk about it, they're going to have, they, they don't try at all. Whereas ESPN has tried very much to walk the line and be in the game of not offending people, or even dialing back some of the political rhetoric of the past couple of years to not offend people. But when Barclay talks about San Antonio, he talks about the big old women in San Antonio. He, they, he's going back to the jokes. And so like, all of that stuff, whether or not that melds with the culture at ESPN, which is a lot more buttoned up than, uh.

• 1:32:40Bill Simmons?

  I'm not sure there's much culture left anymore, but.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  Well, whatever. That, the absence of culture then. So they gotta be able to do their exact same thing. And now, you know, if, if anybody has complaints, they're going to have them with Disney.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Okay, but we're ignoring a piece of evidence here that tells us that they're going to leave these guys alone. Like, the Bill and myself ESPN experience, again, they're different experiences because of who we were with those companies at the time. But the people that we were dealing with. What McAfee is allowed to do on that show is the antithesis of what all of the people wanted to be on the air when we worked there. Okay?

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  So he has freedom of movement with the licensing part of it. So that should be the model. That should be.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  So basically, if you license it, you turn it over, here's the time slot after the game for an hour, we're not touching it.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  I also think like Jimmy and Burke underneath Jimmy are smart guys. I do. I really, I know we take our, Bill and I enjoy sometimes going down memory lane and getting pissed about all this stuff, but like the place at the top feels much more streamlined now. And I just can't fathom guys that have really good track records would come in and then go, let's, I'm not, I'm not guaranteeing like it's, it's going to be word for word, note for note, all the same stuff. But I don't know why those, like, if you were telling me there were other people in the past that would still be in charge, other people, you're like, how the fuck is this guy in charge? How is this guy making this decision? Oh shit, this guy got replaced six months later and now it's a new Game of Thrones deal. And now this person, because they were in this person's wedding or something else happened here, you're like,

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  this person's making decisions? You're like, what the fuck is going on here? You're like, oh, you have to meet with this person. Who's that? Your new boss. You're like, what? I mean, so that doesn't feel like the structure anymore.

• 1:34:22Bill Simmons?

  That's good summary.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Was I, was I wrong about any of that?

• 1:34:25Bill Simmons?

  That was, that was a good summary. No, it's, listen, they're, they're outsourcing something in a way that we've only seen them do with McAfee, but McAfee's not in the middle of the day.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  A little different.

• 1:34:38Bill Simmons?

  It's a little different than the spotlight you have before and after NBA games when you're paying 20 million plus for 20, however, 20 billion, whatever it was, man.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  Um, all right. It's a TBD, I guess. It's a wait and see. Ben, what else do you care about? You wait, you, should I lay out and have you guys do college football for 10 minutes?

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  I mean, you, you, you could.

• 1:35:01Bill Simmons?

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• 1:35:45Bill Simmons?

  Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. College football, because we're heading into the summer. And then all of a sudden, college football will be starting in like mid-August. And we'll be like, wait, what? The college football started? What? Give us the three things you're most excited about this year.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Man, these young quarterbacks.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  So you have a couple of guys that are like, you have some young guys that are like really on the precipice of stardom. DJ Lagway of Florida, Lenora Sellers at South Carolina. And then you have some guys in new spots. John Matier at Oklahoma.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  That are like, really gonna be interesting to watch to see how things go. Right? Arch Manning, young quarterback who has a small sample size, but the entire college football world, I would say a large portion of the sports world. Is gonna be watching to see how Arch Manning plays. Obviously, you have K Club Nick at Clemson, Drew Aller at Penn State.

• 1:37:01Bill Simmons?

  What about Nussmeyer?

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  Garrett Nussmeyer at LSU. LSU has a completely-

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was the number one pick.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Reformed roster. Um, and so all of these guys that are in these different spots, first getting their chance, also at Alabama. Is Alabama running out? Oh, what's, what's going on at Alabama? I haven't, are they, are they running out the, uh, the five star that they had that was behind, um, can't remember the kid's name now.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Dude, I was watching Pacers Thunder from March this morning, so.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  You weren't really doing that, were you?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, Ty Simpson. I have the defensive assignments if you want, but.

• 1:37:44Bill Simmons?

  Pacers Thunder? Was it a good game?

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  No, they smoked him. I don't know if you guys want this, but like the Pacers were 35 and 28 on March 10th. Now granted, you know, we know that Nemhart missed time, Neesmith missed two months. As you mentioned in the beginning, they started nine and 14, 10 and 15. They went 15 and four. They had a loss at Milwaukee, the one point loss to the Lakers on the tip in by LeBron.

• 1:38:06Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Then they had, they had an off day before they lost by 21 at Oklahoma City. So they went on this great, OKC didn't have chat, defensive assignments. Haliburton had Dort on him. Neesmith had Wallace on him. Hartenstein played Turner, obviously. SGA played Neesmith and Jalen Williams played Pascal. So there you go. We'll see, we'll see what happens. Uh, yeah, I'm kinda out of season with all this stuff. Van, but I'm, I'm bigger picture. I'm doing a big Tuesday college football thing. Bruce Feldman's coming on. This, every year, every year now, a sport I love disgusts me far more than any other sport. Like this sport is fucking gross.

• 1:38:47Bill Simmons?

  You don't ever know what the sport's gonna be?

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  No, it's just the new thing where we shouldn't have had 12 teams. Now we're gonna have 16 and the SEC and the Big Ten. I don't understand how the Big Ten all of a sudden after two national championships is like, yeah, we're awesome too now. Because the depth of the conference is not the same as the SEC, but that's not really the point because I'm mad at both the SEC and the Big Ten for doing this. Alright, so you. You ransacked everybody else's conferences. Now you're pissed about how deep your conferences are. And now you want four auto bids apiece. So it's 16. You guys get eight and then I don't look, I haven't read through all the different proposals. But it's just sucks that this sport has no like David, they need a David Stern. Who would just go, yeah, actually we're not doing any of those things.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Um, and I don't mean to sound like a guy who's, you know, at a neighborhood meeting here at an HOA thing, but for the greater good. And this sport is not about the greater good and it's fucking gross that Stanford plays Wake in an ACC game. I mean, you've heard all these rants from me before, but all the latest news cycle stuff with college football. It actually gets in the way of my excited, uh, excitement for Nussmeier. Dialing it up, taking chances on third and 12.

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  Slinger.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, third and 12, fuck it, we'll probably be out here for fourth and seven.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Um, I'll be honest with you, I don't pay attention to it anymore.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:40:11Speaker 02

  And, and the reason why I don't is because

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  the core is this. I want to be able to enjoy LSU versus Mississippi State on a random Saturday. Anybody can enjoy LSU Alabama. Anybody can enjoy LSU Florida. Anybody can enjoy LSU Texas. I want to enjoy LSU State. I want to enjoy LSU out of conference, like lower FCS teams. I want to enjoy college football in its essence. And the more you pay attention to everything that's happening in and around the sport, you just can't. Cause it's not the same.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  So you like block it out and compartmentalize it, it sounds like.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  I block it out and compartmentalize it. I pay attention to programs, players, recruiting and coach movement. Because the business part of it is such a fucking bummer right now. Every once in a while. To Ryan's point, I'll think about the fact that the Pac 12 doesn't exist, or that SC has to play Minnesota in conference. And I'll be like, yo, what the fuck are we doing? Like beyond even a cultural standpoint from what college football is and used to be, that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense to travel across the country and play somebody and then have Penn State

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  come to the Coliseum and walk in quicksand for the first half of the game because the guys are traveling too far, then kick ass and it's none, it doesn't make any sense.

• 1:41:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know, can I piggyback on that?

• 1:41:54Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:41:54Bill Simmons?

  Cause having some parent people in my life who have kids who compete college level, and how these conferences have screwed up even beyond football, like even if your kid's playing girls soccer, running cross country. And it's like, yeah, my kid goes to Berkeley, we have a meet at Penn State this weekend. It's like, what, how is this college sports? The whole point of the conference is where you're putting teams near each other so that the kids didn't have to travel that far, so that they could continue to do schoolwork and they could play sports, but it wouldn't dominate their entire life. We lost that narrative, what, 20, 25 years ago, once the conferences started getting weird.

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 1:42:33Bill Simmons?

  And now it's like, now it's insane.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was watching Carter Bryant, the Arizona kid for the draft last night, and it was the Arizona Oregon game. And I was like, oh yeah, good old, and I even stopped myself, like not a good old Pac 10, Pac 12 game. This is a Big 10, Big 12 game.

• 1:42:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  This is fucking stupid.

• 1:42:51Bill Simmons?

  But this started with the Big East when the Big East started to get a little weird. And the ACC, that first time when they started jumping back and forth and we're like, wait.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  Well, you could go back to the Big 8, you could talk about.

• 1:43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  You know, the big eight part of it was was a disruption, but at least all of it still made geographical sense. And the Big East, there was a couple of different things that happened. They screwed themselves. ESPN offered them a really like straightforward deal for their college football TV rights. And they pushed back and it was like, well, cool. You morons are like fifth on the priority list.

• 1:43:21Bill Simmons?

  It was one of the big forks in the roads of this century for sports.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:25Bill Simmons?

  And then they got competitive about, oh, you're not going to do this? Watch this. And they beef up ACC and the rest is history.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  It's just also, it's kind of like a larger, and I don't mean to get too into the weeds on it, but it's a larger conversation about like moving from a society where culture dictated football into a society where money dictates football. Right? So when culture dictates football, you have different areas of the country that play football in different ways because of the caliber of player and the style of play that that that comes from there. Right? You had Pac 12, pretty boy football. You had bruising, down south SEC football with speed and power, kind of the same thing. Grinders playing in the cold weather up there in the Big Ten.

• 1:44:15Speaker 02

  And these teams would meet each other and it would really be a clash of those different places. But there was dictated by like the kind of talent you could get from where you were and the, the, the kind of schemes and offensive and defensive identities.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  That's what I miss. And I've already done this too many times, but for Bill's eyes, when you threw on a game, you knew what it was supposed to look like. And that to me was fun. You know, I don't want to drive. I was almost in Nebraska the other day. You know what? It looked like fucking Nebraska.

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  I liked that. I turned around, but I liked.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  Tommy Frazier.

• 1:44:53Bill Simmons?

  I would add, I would add these two wrinkles.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 1:44:57Bill Simmons?

  They'll never make me the czar of sports. I've pushed for the job forever. My best chance is probably the Obama administration because he actually listened to the content. He didn't care.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Thankfully for him, we have a college football playoff.

• 1:45:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, thankfully for him. I don't think people should be, I think if you're out of school, you have to be there for at least two years should be, would be one rule I would make. So you can still have the transfers, you can still all that stuff, coaches or players. It's two years. If you want to transfer, you can do it after two, you can keep your eligibility, but you still have to make a two-year commitment to whatever school.

• 1:45:32Bill Simmons?

  That would be the first thing. The second thing would be, let's, can we fix the conferences somehow?

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:45:38Bill Simmons?

  I like, like, there's, who, like, what you mentioned earlier about if there was a czar or whatever, that'd be the first thing they did. It's like, all right, guys, this is, this is stupid. Let's, let's, let's start, let's press the reset button and just start this over. Maybe the teams on the West Coast should try to play as many of the West Coast teams as possible.

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  That's a conversation with Fox and ESPN. That's really who you're having a conversation with. You're having a conversation with Fox and ESPN, or Amazon, or Apple, or whomever else is making the money go through the roof to align the super conferences and make it worth their while to do it the way that they're doing it right now. That's not a conversation.

• 1:46:17Bill Simmons?

  So we're heading toward, we're just heading toward a 30-team college football league, basically, that maybe exists outside of NCAA?

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Maybe two that are 20 each.

• 1:46:26Bill Simmons?

  Or two giant conferences?

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  And that's why they're already doing this stuff to be like, and we already get all of these automatic bids. And you just go, like, part of me understands the stronger conference. Like, some of these schedules, you look at them going, you've got to be kidding me.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  Florida's, yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  How do you get through this with three losses and you could be considered a top 10 team in the country? But, you know, all the conference, the conference stuff on the realignment part of it, as Indiana fans hate me because I was like, you, you didn't play anybody. And you also, of the 16 teams, the Big 10, I think they played one of the top seven. And they, of course, were one of the top seven. And then they had one of this.

• 1:47:07Bill Simmons?

  They poo-pooed the Pacers for like a month and a half.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:10Bill Simmons?

  Indiana fans, like, you really need to win them back. Maybe Hoosiers rewatch those again? Yeah, some Fever stuff maybe for you?

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  Well, I'm an Angel Reese guy, so.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Ryan knows what's up. Made a lot of progress.

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  There you go. That's what I'm talking about. We still working the game out. We still getting our left hand right. We gonna make them layups, but.

• 1:47:32Bill Simmons?

  You're way better.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Great rebounder.

• 1:47:37Bill Simmons?

  Great rebounder. Mitchell Robinson-esque. Did you guys see that Cooper flag was estimated to make $28 million in NIL last year?

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  I never believe any of that stuff. That's right up there with the videos. I don't believe videos anymore and I don't believe NIL.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 1:47:54Bill Simmons?

  Or the contracts for podcasts?

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  Oh, those are out of this.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  I believe some of those.

• 1:48:00Bill Simmons?

  Signed around $125 million deal. Okay.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  This seems pointed.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  No, it's just, I don't, it's just people seem to report some number that it age again. Then I'm like, all right, I'll put that in the newspaper. It sounds good.

• 1:48:15Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, the 28 million for flag seemed high.

• 1:48:22Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:48:24Bill Simmons?

  A lot of money. Like, why would he have stayed at Duke?

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think part of that is just, you know, he wants to be an NBA player. You know what I mean? So.

• 1:48:31Bill Simmons?

  But he could have leveraged. He could have done the Eli thing. I still think that would have been so much fun if he was like,

• 1:48:38Bill Simmons?

  I don't really love Dallas.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  These are the NIL conversations that I'm having. Number one, I'm hearing that there are actually high school kids that have committed to various schools that are being paid $10,000, $20,000 a month while they're in high school for them to keep their commitment. That's bananas. That's bonkers. That's crazy. That is, cause you know, now the commitments are worth even less than they used to be because the money talks even more than your relationship with your position, culture, whatever. The Cooper flag thing, he was only there one year. And so him making 30 million and out of, from NIL, is this from his senior year on or one year at Duke? That seems like too much money.

• 1:49:26Bill Simmons?

  I know he's got some commercials. To go off, but it was the reported number.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  What was baked into the number? I didn't see the piece, so I 28 seems like a lot.

• 1:49:36Bill Simmons?

  28 seems high. I would have guessed like six.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Did he have part of the TV rights in there?

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I don't know where he's getting it from. Um, yeah, but you think like if, if, if that was kind of money floating around, Katelyn, if she had stayed for one more Iowa year, I can't even imagine what she would have been wearing.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, see now we're, now we're talking because what is she like at $87,000 or something? But the, and this is, this is the part of the WNBA conversation where I would stick up for their salary plight is that it's like, well, you make all this money off of the court. It's like, okay, but what the fuck? Like, so you're admitting like, hey, we're not going to pay you anything an hour, but you're going to make a lot of tips.

• 1:50:18Bill Simmons?

  Um, right. Well, they have less games and they're on the old contract and they have the new contract they're negotiating. But the league, like the ratings for the league are like stunning. And you could argue like Shalhoub was there in the Knicks side and Katelyn Clark was there on the, uh, on the Indiana side. It's like, I don't know, not, not, uh, not far off from a star power standpoint. She's a massive star.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  I would think that she's a bigger star than him.

• 1:50:46Bill Simmons?

  I, you can make the argument, I don't know. Shalhoub, he's had some 200, 250 million dollar debuts. It's a good argument.

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  So he, so Dune debuts, so he has Dune and he has Willy Wonka. You know, I'm in on Shalhoub. I don't want people to think that I'm not in on Shalhoub. I'm in on Shalhoub, definitely in, right? He's a huge star. But I would say that like, there is a little bit of wish casting that's going away, that's going on with like, how big of a star Timothy Chalamet is right now. Dune gigantic, two gigantic movies, but also Dune is like this huge science fiction IP. Willy Wonka is this huge science fiction IP. So I don't know.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  He's a gigantic star. Can I give you a counter? He's hit the point that is the hardest point to get to where if he has a movie coming out, there's just general awareness that he has a movie coming out. And the last person who hit that point was Leo. It was like, if Leo is making a movie, it's like, oh, Leo's making a movie. I'm, I'll probably go see that. I think Tarantino is like that as a director. I think Fincher has hit that point. I think Christopher Nolan has at that point. It's very hard.

• 1:51:58Bill Simmons?

  PTA, but at the same time, like his movies haven't made giant money the way some of these other ones have. That's the thing. Like critically, yes.

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  Artists, yeah.

• 1:52:09Bill Simmons?

  For the artists, for the screenwriters out there.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:52:13Bill Simmons?

  But I think Leo is the last one before Chalamet where it's like, if you see an ad for a new Chalamet movie, you're like, oh, new Chalamet movie. The question for me is, did, did MBJ get there after Sinners? Could, did? Or maybe he needs one more after Sinners to get that. But I don't know if he's there yet or not, but I think Chalamet is.

• 1:52:33Speaker 02

  I think Coogler's definitely there. I think.

• 1:52:35Bill Simmons?

  Coogler is definitely there.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  Coogler's definitely there. I think Mike is right there as well. Sinners is one of the most successful movie projects, maybe the most successful movie project of this, this century to me. Just because it's a completely original story.

• 1:52:58Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  That is like incredibly ambitious, like incredibly ambitious. All black cast in the South, like not a four quadrant.

• 1:53:10Bill Simmons?

  Set in the 1930s.

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  Horror, like a horror set in the 1930s, all black cast, high budget, and it does what it does. It's really remarkable, to be honest with you, as a filmmaking experiment, what the movie.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it cemented Coogler. He can do whatever he wants. So I told Van when we left the theater, the, we saw it the day before the movie came out, right? We saw it like that Thursday at four o'clock.

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Thursday, yeah, it was Thursday, four o'clock.

• 1:53:37Bill Simmons?

  I told Van, $200 million at least.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Bill Simmons?

  It's guaranteed.

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  Very proud of it.

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  It was one of my good predictions.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:53:46Bill Simmons?

  I've had some bad ones, including OKC versus Boston for the finals. It was one of mine. I stuck with that one all year.

• 1:53:52Speaker 02

  Bill told me, we were walking out of the theater and Bill told me, he goes, listen, if the black community just shows up like they should for this movie, I'm telling you, the sky is the limit.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  Did not say that.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  He goes, because I can tell you that I felt it. I felt it deep in my soul. If the black community can just show up for this movie like they should, where the sky's the limit.

• 1:54:13Bill Simmons?

  We agreed it was gonna make a ton of money.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  It's like Todd Chrisley getting out of jail.

• 1:54:17Bill Simmons?

  And then.

• 1:54:19Bill Simmons?

  Is he out?

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  He's one of the great civil rights leaders of our times. Did you see, did you see what he said, Bill? Todd Chris, he gets out of jail and he's in his first, and you know, there's a whole thing Trump pardoned him. So he doesn't want to do that. He wants to come back out and still be cool. He, you know, goes on a whole soliloquy about how bad black men are treated in jail and how great he was treated while he was in prison. Todd, Todd, please clip that show like Todd, Todd was showing up telling you.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  He's like, man, he goes, I was allowed to watch TV.

• 1:55:01Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'm going to wrap up because it's been almost two hours. Well, unless you guys have anything else. Ben, you got, we have seven minutes left in the pod. If you have any, one more topic, give it to us.

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  No, that's it. I'm, I'm, I'm.

• 1:55:13Bill Simmons?

  You're tapped out?

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  I want to go to the gym. Let's be done.

• 1:55:17Bill Simmons?

  We're so, let's go to the gym.

• 1:55:20Bill Simmons?

  We don't need to preview the OKC Indiana series. OKC is a minus 750 favorite and we can do that on our next podcast.

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  I'm going to preview Tuesday. I'm going to watch the March game again.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  I like what you did. I like what you did. You're so happy about the Pacers. You didn't want to talk about the finals.

• 1:55:38Bill Simmons?

  Minus 750 is a massive line for the finals and I don't, going back to, you'd have to go back to Lakers Nets, I think, to see probably a more one-sided matchup. Maybe the second Lakers Nets one where it's just like, I can't even try to make a case here.

• 1:55:54Speaker 02

  I'm going to ask one question before we go. From a franchise standpoint, what kind of trouble would OKC be in if they lost the finals here? It seems like there's not a ton of pressure on them. Obviously it's their first time getting there. They've built pretty progressively over the last couple of years to get here and have this app. But they are such a well put together team, such a dominant team in so many different ways. And a lot of young players, a lot of flexibility right now with what they're paying people on the roster. But if they don't win now, if they don't win, you could argue that they need to win this finals

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  to start the run that people think they're going to have.

• 1:56:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't think they're that worried about it. But I think what's at stake for them is almost like something bigger than the title. Like if they swept Indiana and they finish, they'd be 84 and 18, I think, Russillo. And that just puts them in one of the all time great seasons anyone's ever had. They would always have to be mentioned, which is slightly different stakes, right? I do think Indiana will try to muck it up against them, make it chaotic and try to do what they did with the, with the, with the Knicks and just push the pace, play with as much pace as possible and just try to make it a track meet. But, uh, man, it's gonna be hard for them.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  The opposite of mucking it up?

• 1:57:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, mucking it up and just making it chaotic and weird the whole time. I, you're right. Mucking it up is the wrong word.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  Mucking it up is.

• 1:57:27Bill Simmons?

  Making it chaotic, whatever that verb is.

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  I had an idea in my head of what mucking.

• 1:57:32Bill Simmons?

  Right. So, um, what, just chaoticating it up. Is that a verb?

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm, I'm being a little unfair here.

• 1:57:39Bill Simmons?

  They just want to, they have to do this and make OKC try to play with them. And that's Indiana's superpower, at least so far. Play our pace. You're gonna do what we want to do. Do this with us. And then they rope you into it. You're like, this is fun. I love doing this. And all of a sudden you're down game one. But I don't think that's gonna work.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  This, so to put in perspective, minus 750, it was minus 375 against Minnesota. And I was like, man, that's, that's pretty aggressive there because I thought Minnesota would be more competitive in that series. They were not, uh, right. I think they were gonna win the series.

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  This is, I'm looking at it right now. You would remember this better than I would, Bill, but were the Lakers minus 2,000 against the Sixers in 2001?

• 1:58:23Bill Simmons?

  It was unbettable, but I don't remember what the exact, in 2000, yeah, I don't remember what the exact one, because then the, the Sixers won game one in OT and it was like, oh shit.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Team, team versus me.

• 1:58:36Bill Simmons?

  No, I think if you're looking at, if you're looking at OKC bets, so them to sweep the series is plus 330 and them to win in five is plus 220.

• 1:58:49Bill Simmons?

  They're down to minus 700 on FanDuel now, but I think House is like already on record as like he's betting the sweep and he thinks Indiana will not win a game. That price is great and can go against it in game three, all that stuff.

• 1:59:04Bill Simmons?

  I think Indiana could win a game though.

• 1:59:08Bill Simmons?

  You know, like, OKC got killed by Minnesota in game three. Like, they could, young teams, especially in the road. I think they bet they were a little different home versus road. I think Indiana could catch them in one of those games. But we'll see. All right, Russillo, sad everyone at the gym. Van, a pleasure as always. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo as well for producing this and we'll see you next time. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Russillo and Van. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo as well. Don't forget you can find all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel, Prestige TV, The Better Sister. That's happening this week. I'm going to be on that one. And then Rewatchables, Out for Justice with Steven Seagal.

• 1:59:51Bill Simmons?

  And I will be back on this feed on Tuesday. See you then.

• 2:00:09Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here, visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support. Master you sits or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller

• 2:00:52Bill Simmons?

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