Transcript of A Crazy NBA Month With Zach Lowe, Plus Taylor Sheridan on Building a TV Empire and the Problems With Hollywood

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Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Tiefenentspannt mit WISO Steuer. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by PayPal. You know a clutch move when you see one. A no-look pass, a buzzer beater, a big steal. Well, imagine if your wallet could pull off moves like that. That, my friends, is PayPal. Right now you can find offers from hundreds of brands like Sony, Allbirds, and Viater, and save offers before you check out. Earn unlimited rewards. Plus you can add those rewards on top of credit card points. Now that is clutch. Download the PayPal app today. Save those offers. Start scoring rewards. Terms and exclusions apply. See paypal.com/rewardsterms. Credit card points subject to issuers' terms and conditions. Podcast live on Netflix here on Sunday. We have Zach Lowe right now, he's in a great mood. We have Taylor Sheridan, creator of Yellowstone, and a bunch of awesome shows coming in the second half. Of the pod. Zach is coming off an incredible victorious day in Philadelphia where he celebrated a World Cup win with a bunch of tall Croatians.

Very tall.

I was worried you were going to get crushed in a group hug at some bar last night, but you made it.

You're here.

I made it home. I may have gotten crushed. There may have been a lot of group hugs. Croatians know how to party. And we move on to the round of 32. We're going to be underdogs, but that's fine. Like, look, I'm glad. If this is it, I got to see Luka Modrić summon one last great game start to finish, and that was amazing.

And you're 2-0 in the World Cup this year in person.

Yeah, that's been pointed out to me by multiple people associated with the Croatian football team that I like.

Now you have to go to every game.

Now I might need to go to Toronto. It's being pushed on me that I might need to. And just, I'm just putting it out there, Mets play Blue Jays the day before in Toronto. I could do a double, just skip NBA free agency altogether and just do goes to be a sports fan.

We're gonna try to rip through NBA stuff in 75 minutes, which includes Jaylen Brown. I have not given any take yet on the LaMelo trade to Minnesota. You, you did a whole podcast about it. We're gonna talk Charlotte Phoenix a little bit. We're gonna talk about what happened to LeBron, and we're gonna talk about craziest prediction for the week. You have podcasts coming at least tomorrow and probably Wednesday, maybe two, maybe three. I'm gonna have at least one more on Thursday. So that is the schedule. Jaylen Brown, not traded yet. Information and misinformation flying around. I don't know if he has lost trade value because teams know they want to trade him or because of his contract or whatever. I thought it would be resolved a little bit quicker. He was in France, a little pissy about some Advanced Metrics tweets. Got mad at Bobby Marks for passing along something he heard from a front office. Um, he's been doing panels. Uh, the word on the street on Jaylen in France, and I know multiple people who were either in his vicinity or whatever, is that he was, was, was acting like he's done in Boston and that this is it.

And I don't think he's very happy with this. Do you think Boston mishandled this in any way?

First of all, you have sources on the ground in across France, like at whatever region, the Bordeaux region. Oh, it was Cannes. Okay.

So you have sources on the ground. Yeah, it was Cannes. He was at, he was on sports panels there. Uh, I don't think he's really too happy about the last couple weeks.

What would the mishandling have been? Tell me what the mishandling would— because they won a— let's, let's not for— lead, let's lead with the thing. They won the championship with Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum.

I'm just talking about this offseason mishandling.

So, so from literally final buzzer of Game 7 until right now, what is the case that Boston has mishandled? Not— is it not trading him already? Is it even getting into the Giannis bidding to begin with? Because you can't not have that get out. And even— and it's only— and once it gets out that you're interested in Giannis, who is better than Jaylen Brown, older but better, and addresses— okay, fine, we can litigate that if you want. Once that gets out, there is no other realistic path for this to happen. Like, you don't— it doesn't have to be reported anymore that the Celtics are offering Jaylen Brown. There's no other offer. That's it. It has to be Jaylen Brown. It's just math. And so you let everyone else to put the logic together. So what should they have— should they— I think your only alternative is you just answered your own question. Okay. Just trade him right away or don't, or don't get involved with Giannis. Those are the two things.

No, here's the issue. And I, I've been, I think the Celtics have done a great job this decade. I've rarely disagreed with anything they've done. They get into this Giannis thing and they make a real offer for him, right? And this is, I think, 2 weeks before he gets traded. They're anticipating that because of past dealings with Milwaukee and because of how the league works, that this won't get out. This is gonna stay between us. Well, here, there's a couple different things that happen this time around.

That's terrible. That's a terrible assumption.

Well, okay, but new owner, we have Jimmy Haslam in there now. He wasn't really in there like when they were thinking.

Yeah.

When the Jrue Holiday stuff was happening a couple years ago, he wasn't in there yet. You also have Milwaukee not knowing whether they wanted to keep Jaylen Brown or not. So obviously they're gonna be stealth canvassing his value in a couple different places. And that's how this shit gets out. It's the third team that always spoils this 'cause they're delighted to tell people, oh my God, they checked with us and whatever. So I think the mistake the Celtics made, if you're gonna do this, you're gonna go down the road and actually put Jalen on the table, which they did. And they only made one offer, which I've said multiple times, the, the offer for the Jalen, the picks, anything else was a lie. Hugo was never on the table. They never beefed up their offer the last weekend, nothing. But if you're gonna do this, I think you just have to put Jaylen on the block at that point. Because once he is out there, you have to anticipate how he's gonna react to it. This guy already feels like he's the, the Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch on this team, right? He already feels like he's the little brother.

He already feels like it's Tatum's team, not his. A lot of the stuff that he was saying during and after the season, even the quote about he was the most proud of the season versus any other season. I actually understand his point on that, even though I don't think he should have said it that way. Everyone counted them out. Everyone— their over-under was 41.5. He was the only reliable scorer and offensive weapon on the team. They went 56-23 the last 79 games. They were second in offensive rating. And I think he feels disrespected. So you put him in one trade, now you have to trade him. And now that there's blood in the water and teams know they have to trade him, you're gonna get shittier offers. So I would've just done it all at once.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what you think they should have done. Because I thought what you were going to say when you started, what I thought you were going to say was once you put him in for Giannis, you then just have to make the honest trade, which means swallow Shireman and Gonzalez or whatever it is. But you're not saying that. You just think, let you're saying just open it up and do it immediately. But haven't they opened it up? Isn't that what's happening right now?

They did it now, but they did it. Now that he's upset about how the process planned out and now that teams know they have to trade him, it's a little different than being like, hey, we're pursuing Giannis with Jalen, but we're also open for offers right now. And I, I just feel like it's okay, a better market if teams feel like, oh shit, Jalen's gonna be on the table. I'm competing against the possibility that he's gonna get traded to Milwaukee for Giannis. Now I don't know who they're competing with. Like, hey, you know, and, I also feel like having actually watched the Celtic games last year, unlike most of the people who are online just doing analytics and on-off shit and stuff like that, like, as you know, and I've said this many times, I really value the reliability of a durable star who over and over again has to carry this burden that night after night he's gotta be the best player. He's gotta match against the other team's best player. And it's like, oh, the on-off was, not great when he was the— well, the Celtics had an awesome bench, right? That was one of the best assets of the team.

When their bench came in, their bench was better than just about every other bench in the league, and that's gonna skew those stats a little bit. What you can't capture and go back and look at his game log going against Detroit, San Antonio, OKC, pick one of the best team, the Knicks, pick one of the best teams in the league last year. He was their only guy that I knew was gonna show up in the game. I didn't know if Derrick White, I, Peyton Pritchards, You know, as good as he is, he's trick or treat. Sometimes he just doesn't have it. All these bench guys, Keita, it was basically just Jalen. So I, I think weirdly he's become underrated and I don't really understand it.

I mean, a lot of it has to do, I, the let, I, I, my brain is just can't do the analytics thing. I can't do it. I don't want to do it. So let's just park that over here. A lot of it is just the contract, right? And I think it, it like, this is the difference between The, this is one of, this ties into why the Hornets traded LaMelo Ball now when he's on his second contract and not when they've potentially signed him to the third one that can get much bigger. I don't think it would get much bigger in LaMelo's case, but with Jalen, because he made All-NBA and they won the championship and all that, it's now at a point where it's like 60, 65. Like these are just hard deals to trade for someone who's not one of the, I, I, I don't want to get into where to rank him, but he's not a top 5 player in like a no-brainer with a bullet.

Top 5, but he's one of the top 15.

He sure is. And yeah, I mean, he was last year. I, I, we would have to sit down and do it, but he was in my top 15 on the last Ringer 100 we did coming off last season. It's just a, it's, it's a hard trade to make. And it's, if you don't get Giannis, now you're staring at, is there a deal out there that we can sell our fan base and we can sell the current players on the team that like, hey wait, we traded him for, for what? Like that, does that not make us worse this season? Like, yo, it's cool that we cleaned up the cap sheet and got a couple picks. But like, what's the headliner that we got that helped us now?

And they threw away last season. So you're throwing away a second season in a row, basically a chance to contend after you've won the '24 title. I, I just feel like they must have known that we, listen, we, you and I have both talked to a million people about Tatum and, and Jaylen and do they get along? Do they not get along? Is it, are they good like work relationship but not friends? Like you could go into it a million different ways. It's the people around them that always cause the problems. I think for the most part, I'm sure those two guys are fine together, but the circles around the people are the ones that start half this shit. I do think it's notable that Jalen didn't really say a lot about Tatum during the season. It was not about— you never heard like a, I can't wait to get my brother back. There was none of that stuff. And then after the season, and especially the last 3 weeks, Where's Tatum? He hasn't said anything. He hasn't said anything this offseason. Jaylen said at one point Tatum was coming on his, his Twitch or whatever.

He hasn't come on. How about the last couple weeks about Tatum? The guy who could actually squash this is the alleged leader of the team, the franchise, Tatum, who could come in and say, I don't want them to trade Jaylen. We won the title together 2 years ago. I can't control the front office, but I want to try to win more titles with them, or that's my guy. Nothing. It's been dead silence, which makes me think that the team has felt at some point either during the season or right after that this is a wrap and that Jaylen just wants his own team. And Tatum probably wants him to have his own team, and that's probably the answer, right?

I mean, having your own team being like, have we not reached a point where I guess there's just no— what is the star duo? This is a great question for you that has gotten the closest to being actual equal peers. Like not 1A, 1B, but like 1A, 1A. Is it Shaq and Kobe? Like what's the one that transformed from Pippen, Jordan to some— because I look at these guys and I'm like, why can't they both average 27 points a game? Like why does it like, it's, is that not on the table? Does it have to be someone's team? Someone's always going to be considered better, right? A better all-around player, whatever. But in terms of whose team it is, who controls the ball, like, I don't know, when Tatum came back last year, obviously he's easing into it, but I didn't feel like there was any sort of, oh wow, things have changed so dramatically for Jaylen Brown.

You felt it in the playoffs though.

In some games you did.

When that pace slowed and it just felt a little more Tatum thing. To answer your question, I honestly have to go back to the '60s with Elgin and Jerry, I think. I think that's the last time where it's like, I don't even know who's better between these two. And Shaq and Kobe were there a little bit, but Shaq always had that trump card of like in a playoff series, if there wasn't a team that could guard Shaq, he just ran amok. I mean, his, his 3 Finals stats were at a whole other level than Kobe.

And I mean, Steph Durant, but those, that team just existed on a plane of, of its own. You know, the only one was there.

That's a good one though, because I think Steph is a better guy all time than Durant. But I do feel like Durant was the best guy on those two teams. Now part of it was 'cause Steph took back, took a real step back and really let Durant kind of be more of the guy on those teams. But that's, that's a good one though. And by the way, how long did those guys last together? 3 years.

It's true.

And I think, I think that's a good parallel to this because I think the reason I'm always gonna think this and, and Durant, no matter how many panels he goes on with Rich Kleiman in different countries talking about the future of sports and entertainment and business, I'm always going to feel this way. I think he thought after he went head-to-head with LeBron and beat, beat him in the 2017 title that he was going to get his flowers and his just due as one of the great guys, not only of this century, but maybe the best guy in the league. And it didn't happen. And it was like, no, you joined Steph's team. That's why he won. And I think it got to the point where he is like, I can't win here. I have to leave. I wonder if Jaylen's at that point a little bit too, where he's like, I, we won a title, I'm Finals MVP, I'm Conference Finals MVP, I carried our team last year. And now the moment Tatum gets back, they're like, thanks Jaylen, we're gonna trade you for Giannis now. And I, I think he wants to leave. I don't, I don't think he feels like he was respected in the right way.

Now there's a million things you and I don't know about, about is there behind the scenes stuff? Are there signals that he sent? Did Jaylen tell him, go explore a deal for us.. But the reality is he's 29 years old. He had his best season ever last year. He's played 2,600 minutes in 10 year, 26,000 minutes in 10 years, almost 5,000 playoff minutes. The guy's really fucking good. Like even if you're going like, you know, he's 142 playoff games. I think he's 20 a game in the playoffs. And if you're going like 125 games and up, it's a list of like 15 guys and all of them are awesome.. And I, I just can't believe some of the trades that I think people seem to think what he is worth. It's like Portland won't give up Donovan Clingan. They won't for Jaylen Brown. That's gonna be a deal breaker for you. Like, so I, Zach, I've never seen anything like this and I don't know how it plays out. I think it's more likely he ends up coming back to the team.

I mean, someone has to play center for the Blazers, right? If they, if they trade for Jaylen Brown, you need to have a functional center on your team. Let me make a couple of parallels and I don't think, I don't think any of these are good parallels. People just today, when talking about the challenge of trading a player making as much money as Jaylen Brown, who's a very good player, but again, not a, he's a, he's on the MVP ballot every year kind of player. Anthony Davis was thrown out. Trae Young was thrown out. I rejected both of those out of hand. I'm like, he's younger than Anthony Davis, a million times more durable. He's much bigger than Trae Young and he's a two-way player and he's in his prime. I reject them. The best one I heard was Karl-Anthony Towns, who the Wolves felt like we have, we were like, this contract is really hard to move and we're in a financial prison with the apron and all the other guys we have. This is the most palatable deal we have on paper. It's like really not that sexy. It's Julius Randle, DiVincenzo, and one first-round pick.

It's going to land like a little bit of a bomb with our fans and it could go badly and it has gone badly., but they felt like they kind of had to do it and it's the best one they could do. And I thought that was a very good parallel to this situation just in terms of where the player is or was in the hierarchy. I think Jalen's last season was better than any season Towns has had start to finish, but just generally where they were.

But here's the difference. Could Towns have ever gone 56-26 with the 2 through 15 that Jalen had last year? No, I don't, I'm not, there's any way.

I, I don't think so. No, I don't think so.

And like, I just think Jalen should get more credit for the season last year. And I don't understand, like he was 29 a game, played all the time.

And he's a baller.

It's just weird to see him being like, I don't know if he's— how good is he? I don't know about that contract. It's like, well, he's one of the 15 best guys in the league and all of those guys have max contracts. So why wouldn't he have a max contract? What's he gonna be playing for? $35 million a year.

I, I get it. I get it. And it, it, it's gonna be— that's why all those parallels to me are either wildly wrong or slightly imperfect, like the Towns one. But yeah, I think the Celtics are going to have a choice. A very difficult choice unless something changes between now and whenever between taking an offer for Jaylen Brown that is going to be, let's say, not super well received by the fan base. Maybe not. I'm not saying it's going to be bashed or it's going to be poorly received, but it's not going to be like the bonanza package that you would expect trading a player of this caliber or trying like hell to put the toothpaste back in the tube and just say, hey, you know what? We're gonna have to figure it out. You guys have played all well together for many, many years.

That's Mazzulla. That, I mean, this is like, this is why Mazzulla behind the scenes is one of the most respected, beloved coaches. Like this is a guy that during the 2024 Olympics when Tatum, his playing time was getting yanked around and he wasn't put, like, flew to France to make sure he was, like, this is a guy who has been attuned with those dudes the whole time. I'm sure he's talking to Jaylen all the time. And if anybody could just get those two dudes in a room and just be like, look man, let's work this out. Like we still have it. We can still be the best team in the East. Like forget about all the shit that happened in the past. The problem is, I don't know if Jalen has just reached a point of no return. 'Cause the difference here is that they've won the title. So it, it can't be one of those things like, I don't have a ring yet. He's at, he already has the ring. He already has the respect from last year. Now he wants the respect from the team in the city. And I think deep down he probably knows like, that's going to be always going to be Tatum's town and not mine.

That's just the way it is.

Can I throw a what if at you?

Yeah.

What does this look like if Tatum never gets hurt, but they lose to New York anyway in the second round the year that he got hurt? And like, how does the next calendar year play out? Because like, it's still quote unquote Tatum's team more than Jalen's team, but it's, they're both still healthy and play. Like, I just would be interested to see how that plays out because Tatum's injury is what has changed this dynamic. I mean, that's obvious, but I just don't like, do we end up in this same place anyway or not? I don't know the answer to that.

Well, if we were one of Jaylen Brown's, every NBA star has flunkies around them, right? Who's just like, you're great, let's go to dinner. Oh, the check's here. You better pay. If we were two of Jaylen Brown's flunkies, wouldn't we be like, why? Why are you the one being traded? Why wouldn't Tatum be traded? He's coming off a major injury. His contract's as big as yours. You just carried the team to 56. Like, you're just planting that stuff in his head constantly, right?

I mean, I would—

why you? Why not Tatum? Why just you?

I would like— I feel like I would be a more valuable member of, of the friend group than that. I would be a more reasonable member of the friend group. But I did. This is what— this is why I asked you. Devil's advocate 2 weeks ago or last week, whenever we said this, I said, if I'm Jaylen Brown, I'm looking around being like, why is it just assumed that if we have to break up, I'm the one that goes? Like, I, this guy just is coming off an Achilles injury. Now I say that I think Jayson Tatum is a better all-around basketball player than Jaylen Brown. I think that's— I think that as well. That's been proven out. So I get why if the Celtics are making a choice, it is Tatum. But if I also get Jaylen Brown being like, what else do I have to do? Like, what else do you need me to do to be of worth of, of— he's there.

He's, he's there right now. He's like, we, you guys were gonna tank last season. We were building our way to a top 3 seed and you traded Simons for the corpse of Vucevic to save more money. And then you, you threw JT back in there and you played him too many minutes and he couldn't even play in Game 7. Like, there's no blood on my hands for anything that happened last season here. When you talked about what, What trade would the Celtics fan base accept? An example of one they wouldn't, if it was Zach Lavine's expiring and a boatload of, of Kings picks, like 3 firsts, 2 swaps, whatever, I, that's not flying. Same for Brooklyn, if it was Porter's expiring and a bunch of, uh, Brooklyn pick swaps, that's not flying either. New Orleans, which I think maybe you would've said a month ago, Murphy with Zion and maybe even a pick. I think that price has dropped now, and I think Poole has to be in it as an expiring. I think that's Murphy and Poole and maybe two firsts. And I don't even know if New Orleans says yes to that because New Orleans is like, well, what are we going to do?

We're not going to win the title with Jalen.

You don't think New Orleans would say yes to Trey Murphy, Jordan Poole, who is— Jordan Poole is just—

Jordan Poole's expired.

$34 million of expiring money.

Plus 2 picks and 2 unprotected picks, which seems like a pretty fair trade.

No one in the league seems to know if New Orleans is like open for business, if they're just like, if they're out, if they're out for the holiday weekend already, like with anyone there.

Well, here's the Portland trade too. So these last 3 are the ones that I was centered on. That New Orleans one for Portland, I think Jrue has to be in the trade. I don't want Jerami Grant. Can't put Jeremy Grant's contract for 2 years, can't be in that trade.

It's the same contract as Jrue Holiday. It's the exact same contract, basically.

I'd much rather have Jrue Holiday, who's already been in Boston.

I don't disagree with you, but I don't, I think, I mean, Jeremy Grant's availability has been an issue. He actually shot it pretty well last year. I don't, I don't think he's just sort of like dead money by any means.

Well, how about this? Jrue Holiday, Camara, and picks for Jalen. That's a trade I could talk myself into from a basketball standpoint. How many, how many picks? 3 really good guards. I don't know.

It's, it, look, I mean, that's—

How many picks is Kamar worth? At least 2, 2 and a half.

But that's the kind of trade where you are going to be met with the talk radio or whatever backlash of like, we just traded a Finals MVP for who's the headliner? The 36, 37-year-old guard who we already had on the team once. And he's fine. He's good. And like, Tammany who? Like, yeah, Tammany what? Like the Boston, the, the Boston casual fans have no idea who that is. And like, okay, some picks, like that's what we got for Jaylen Brown. And I don't like, I don't think you're off base pitching that as like the structure of a trade that makes some sense for both teams.

Although I don't know if Portland loves the Avdiya-Jaylen Brown fit personally, but it's, it would be, I'll tell you this, it would be a bitch to play against.

A lot of downhill force.

This is the trade. We've been texting about this this week. And there's a lot of, lot of smoke billowing around Denver in general. Some I believe, some I don't believe. Murray and Cam Johnson for Jalen and Hauser, which would save Denver $10 million this year. The Celtics could take Cam Johnson in their trade exception. Murray is $50 million this year, $54 and $57. So he's about $8 million behind Jalen in each of those years. But same amount of years, same amount of years, but I'm shaving off $7, $8 million. I'm adding Cam Johnson, who I can either keep or spin in a trade, and I am getting somebody who I still think is one of the best 25 players in the league back for Jalen.. And I think in Bo— I, I think if I'm Boston, I'm signing up for that trade. If I'm Denver, I'm at least having a 6-hour meeting. And it's a reconstruction of a, of, of a team because you're gonna remove the Murray Jokic pick and roll. But you could run a lot of that offense through Joker. You re-sign Peyton Watson with the extra money. You have him more involved offensively.

And you could argue that, that, that team's better, it's bigger, it's deeper. You have Jokic and Gordon and, and, uh, And Jalen as your front line, you're just, you have more flexibility and you have somebody who can really step in if Gordon gets hurt, which he gets hurt every year. And now you're not getting destroyed if that happens and you're under the tax and you can get Watson. That trade makes a ton of sense to me, Zach.

It's, it's a very, it's a good trade. It's a well, well done Picasso trade. Boston gets a little smaller, I think, depending on whether Cam Johnson sticks around the team. They get a little, although they played with only one of the Jays almost all of last year anyway. It's a good trade. They, I mean, Jabari Murray addresses a need for Boston.

I think, well, it allows them to go, it allows them to go 3 guards at the same time, which is something they could only really do last year when Simons was on the team and then couldn't. And also like the, the reason they got into this Giannis thing in general was because they felt like Hugo and Shireman and maybe even Hauser, Walsh, like they just felt like they could patch the minutes together that Jalen had with worse stats, but at least like two-way stuff. And then Tatum would take some of the offensive slack, but really they wanted to unleash Hugo, which is why he was untouchable in that trade. So they would cover the wings, their state, they would still need a center. But it's an interesting team and I honestly, I think Murray's a great bet. I thought he had too much of a burden on the Nuggets. It was basically him or Jokic doing everything and he's in the West and I, I thought he was really good last year and I thought he wore down as, as March, April we got into the playoffs. Celtics could put him on a 30-minute game timeline with White and Pritchard and I, I just feel like they could manage his minutes better.

Here's my obstacle if I'm Denver. Is I have no— Christian Brown is now my only proven rotation playoff level guard on the whole team out of, out of anyone. Now I can do maybe bring back Bruce Brown on the minimum, whatever. It sounds like Tim Hardaway Jr. is going to have some suitors. It may be out of their price range. Jalen Pickett is the only point guard on the team, like the only one. And that makes me a little bit nervous.

They have their mid-level in this though, or at least like some free agent stuff.

It's pretty tight, but I'd have to sit redo the math, but they could because they're shaving some money off. I mean, they'd get guys. I also think there'd be a learning curve of like fitting Jaylen Brown's game with the point. You're going all in on Point Jokic, like almost all in depending on who you get in free agency and sort of fitting Jaylen Brown into that universe I think would be, have a little sticky at times.

But kind of went all in on that anyway, didn't they?

Well, the Murray-Jokic pick and roll and like Murray is a, is like a fail safe. Like, all right, let's, tonight's Jamal's just cooking. You can run that, all that stuff with Jaylen Brown. It's just, it just feels a little, a little different than me to, to me than, than, and that's maybe that's fine. And you obviously get bigger and there's something kind of fun about like Jokic and a bunch of wings and like tweener forwards just taking up the entire court with their arms.

Right. Little more flexibility. That, that was my favorite fake one of all those. Who do you think has a longer meeting about that trade? So it's just Murray and Cam Johnson for Jalen and Hauser. That's it. Who has a longer meeting about it?

About that trade alone, I think Denver has the longer meeting because they are, I think so too. They are at some sort of crossroads where they need to figure out, we're really good, we fell short. We had a lot of health issues. Aaron Gordon again, you know, the two teams that were above us in the standings are just so goddamn good that, and we have this all-time great player in the middle of his prime. Um, have, has what we do grown stale? Is it, is it time to make change almost for change's sake? Is it time to just sort of risk a little bit of like instability in the way we play just to get our upside up a little bit? And, or is that, is that too risky? I don't, I don't know, but I think they are at a major crossroads as a franchise. I also have to bring back Peyton Watson, by the way, which we have, we, we didn't bring up.

But I think that's, that's part of that trade, right? That saving 10 million makes it way easier to bring him back.

I mean, just imagine a lineup of Christian Brown, Jaylen Brown, Payton Watson, Aaron Gordon, and Nikola Jokic. Like, I have no idea how that works on offense other than Jokic answers every question on offense that has ever been posed to him. But that's, that's a pretty funky lineup. And that would be like, I would, I would pay a lot of money to watch that, watch them work that out.

Well, basically you'd be getting weird.

Yeah.

Which is, well, we're gonna talk about Minnesota after the break, but it's the same kind of principle to me. If I'm them, I don't think the team I have, I can beat OKC and San Antonio and they're fucking pit bull guards on both teams. And I don't think I can get Jamal Murray through two straight rounds of that. Plus Minnesota maybe too with McDaniels and Edwards. Like I just, I, you could see him wearing down in real time, I thought last year. So that would be the reason. But, That would be a weird one for me 'cause obviously Jokic and Curry are my two favorite non-Celtics. And to have Jalen on a Jokic team and I, you know, I'm about as pro-Jalen as you're gonna find. I, he really, I thought he was just awesome last year and I love the fact that the best quality about him, and this is what advanced analytics isn't gonna measure, is he really is up for the challenge. If somebody else is a good team with a really good player, he takes it personally and wants to outplay that person in a game. And I, it sounds like a really dumb thing to say, but there's just not enough guys in the league that are wired like that.

You know, where it's like, oh, this guy, I've circled this game. I've been dying to go against this team tonight. So anyway, all right, we're gonna take a break and then I'm gonna unleash my Lamelo trade opinions on you.

I can't wait.

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel, making the USA's run even more exciting. And it's threatening to become a run, by the way. Every match, every goal, every step toward the knockout stage, there is more on the line than ever before. And now new customers can bet just $1 and get $250 cash if USA, our team, reaches round of 16. That's right. Bet $1, get $250 in cash. If USA advances, whether you're betting match winners, goal scorers, same game parlays, whatever floats your boat, FanDuel has you covered. Visit fanduel.com/BS to get started and back USA's run. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. We are in the heart of the World Cup. Look at these little special bottles for Michelob Ultra. Uh, every play matters here. FIFA World Cup 26 for you. The stakes are just as high. Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 26, is giving you a chance to win $1 million worth of tickets and prizes.

Michelob Ultra, from the pitch To the poor, Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at mikulovultra.com/superioraccess/fifa-world-cup-26. Mikulov Ultra FIFA World Cup 26 Superior Access. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21+. Begins on December 1st, 2025. Ends on July 31st, 2026. Multiple entry periods. Visit www.mikulovultra.com/superioraccess. /WorldCup26 for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. One last point I wanted to make on that Jalen trade. We didn't have a Houston trade in there because Houston has literally been telling everybody we want no part of Jalen. We're not interested. That team was a Bravo show last year. How were they drawing the line at, oh, Jalen Brown would make us weird? You guys had the weirdest team on the planet. You know what Jalen Brown would do is actually show up for games and not roll over in a playoff series. Anyway, Lamelo.

Okay.

Yeah, it's just like, settle down.

What's the number one?

You guys were a disaster last year.

Educate me. What's the number one Bravo show in your life? What's, what's a Bravo show that you watch?

Real Housewives.

Real Housewives.

Aren't there— so all the Real Housewives of any variety, that's all Bravo. Everyone.

So they're just still spinning off cities. They did Rhode Island.

I, I, I went to Rhode— that's— if you go to rich Newport, Rhode Island, there's probably some good stuff going on there.

Some good accents too. My wife's a big Below Deck fan. All right, Lamelo trade. You already gave your take.

I did.

Do you want me to give the Cliff Notes of your take or do you want to just give your, your 45-second take?

No, I want to hear the Bill Simmons Cliff Notes. Let's filter, let's filter it through your ears.

I listened to your pod.

It was a very entertaining pod. I listened on a nice little power walk, a very hot LA. And you were bullish on the trade for, for both teams actually.

I think it's like, I think it's like a B for both teams. Is if I were a trade grade guy, that's what I would, that's about what I would do.

I'm at A- or A for Charlotte.

Okay.

And I'll go into the reasons in a second. I couldn't believe the trade from Minnesota. I fucking hated it.

I hated it.

I just couldn't believe it. You do this trade, I wrote down some notes. You do this trade if you want to become the most beloved NBA team with under 25 fans who play video games and are online a lot. It's a 2K merchandise jersey selling trade. I get it. You don't want teams to double Anthony Edwards anymore.

I feel like, I feel like I get it is kind of an important qualifier too. I hate the fucking trade.

I get it on paper. LaMelo Ball would solve a lot of problems that you had with Anthony Edwards last year. There's one problem. He doesn't fucking play. He's played 2 seasons of the last 6. Last year, Charlotte brilliantly— only he, he played big minutes early, got hurt, came back. I watched a ton of Charlotte last year, as you know. They were using him like a race car on Sundays, just driving him slowly around the block. He averaged 27.5 minutes a game from mid-November on, Zach. Um, they were really, really careful about not getting him hurt again, almost like they knew they were gonna trade him this summer. Flawed mid-20s superstar.

What does that mean?

Well, just that's how you, that's how you're able to get a guy like this for Nas Reid and a first-round pick and a swap. And I get it from the Minnesota side where on paper it makes sense. Now they could play LaMelo and Ant and Io together against these smaller lineups against San Antonio and against OKC, which they didn't have the option to do last year. And the, the only thing I really understand from it is that they built, they built that previous team to beat Denver, right? Connelly's like, we have to beat Denver. What is the team we can put together to beat Denver? And now it seems like they've built this new team to beat OKC and San Antonio who are gonna have more talent than them. Well, how do you beat them? These two three-point shooters and we can guard with, with Io and McDaniels and Gobert hopefully protecting LaMelo. And we're gonna have 3-point shooting variance with these 2 guys who in any game can get super hot. I just don't trust LaMelo at all. And if you're wrong, Ant's leaving. And by the way, Tim Conley might be leaving too.

He's got a year left on his deal. And if I'm Tim Conley, I'm cool making this trade, 'cause if it doesn't work out, I'm seeing you guys anyway. I'm gonna be out. He's got a year left on his deal. So this to me feels like a Hail Mary trade that your fans are gonna like 'cause LaMelo's the best player in it. The Charlotte fans are mad 'cause they love LaMelo. Lamelo doesn't fucking play. I wrote down he's the least durable good guard of the last 25 years. 6 seasons, 9,400 minutes, 0 playoff games, which puts him on this crazy list of guys who have averaged 20 points a game in their first 6 seasons but have played less than 10,000 minutes. And it's basically just him and John Moran and Zion, and that's it. He's not reliable. He has a I think he has metal in his ankle. Like, this is not like, oh, Steph Curry had ankle injuries too. LaMelo's injuries are way worse than Steph Curry's were. And I just wouldn't have bet on it. I thought this was a crazy trade. Okay. I mean, that's it. That's where I've landed. Well, and I landed there right away.

All of that, like, all the availability stuff is 1,000% fair game. Also, something I probably did, should have mentioned more when I, when I reacted the other day was there is this sort of like drip, drip, drip trickle-down effect of Minnesota transactions kind of chasing their own tail a little bit similar to how Dallas had to chase its own tail when like, all right, we lost, we left Jalen Brunson, we let Jalen Brunson go, we gotta trade for Kyrie. The Grant Williams thing blew up in our face. We gotta trade him and a pick to replace him with. There's like a little element of that of like Phoenix too. We traded everything for Gobert. We're a little asset poor. Yeah, we're now, we're really expensive. We're probably gonna have to trade Towns. We trade Towns. Okay, that didn't really work. Now we have to do something else. So there's a little bit of element of like chasing their tail a bit. I get all of the concerns. I guess my, if you're worried about Anthony Edwards' happiness level, I guess my question would be what you just hold for something else down the line and go and do, do you not make the Randle trade?

Like what do you do if you're, Bill Simmons, Timberwolves GM.

Well, the Randle trade, they clear— was clearly a money dump, right? And you could say it was a two-part trade, but— and it opened the door for LaMelo. But I also think they just wanted to get away from Randle and not, not pay this crazy luxury tax thing. I have real questions about them spending a ton of money in general.

I mean, they're spending right now. The payroll is, is gonna be high. I think they're gonna add it. I think they're also not done. I think that's important to say. They're not done rounding out the team. For next season.

But the Towns trade was that financial trade period. Yeah, that was it. They— that was, we got to get off some of this money and do it. And it turned out to be a really crazy trade. They have, I think, $11 million to spend on 4 guys. They don't have their own first, control their own first for 7 years. What did you think of that? Io contract was the other one that I was kind of shocked by. 5 years, $112 million. What was going on there?

I, I, what do you, I mean, that's what I like him, but Kobe White got the same annual salary, actually a little more, less years, but same annual salary.

Kobe White got 3 for $74.

Yeah. Less years. $25 a year. I was at like $22.5 a year.

I, this was just 5 years though.

Well, the, yeah, I mean this like, don't you want, so you can't win with these contracts, right? Like if they're too short, you're like, oh man, we only got that guy and he is going to be extension eligible, this and that. And now it's, this one's too long for you. The guy, what, how old is Ayo?

I just, if I had told, I know I, I like him too and I thought he was really good in the playoffs. If I had told you in February when he got traded for a second round pick that he was gonna sign for a 5-year, $112 million deal in the second apron thing, I just would've been surprised by it.

He's 26 years old. I don't, you can't win. Like if it's a 2 or 3-year, I do want a 3-year deal just right down the middle. That's it. That's the perfect length.

I just thought it was interesting. They, they properly maybe even splurged a little on IO, but they've been cutting corners with some of these other stuff. And you know, Randle was a guy who made multiple second team All-NBAs. And the reason that he went sideways after the All-Star break, 'cause they fucking tried to trade him right before the trade deadline for Giannis. And the other, he was never the same after that.

The other drip, drip, drip thing I neglected to mention in the drip, drip, drip of assets is the Dillingham pick not working out was a big a big, right?

But at least that turned into Io, right?

Like, but they had to get, they had to throw picks and all their, they're chasing not just mistakes, 'cause I don't know if the Rudy trade can be classified as a mistake anymore, but they're chasing, they're just, it's like a, it's like a bettor that is losing and keeps chasing and keeps spending more.

It's like a Ponzi scheme blackjack thing. First of all, they missed their title window. They were a conference finals team twice in a row and the West was weaker and they had a real chance and they couldn't get there. And you go back to that Dallas series, I think was really probably their best chance when you think about that matchup and they couldn't beat him. I didn't mention this in my Lamelo case or anti-Lamelo trade case, and I really liked watching Lamelo last year and I enjoyed the hell outta the Hornets. We have zero, I repeat, zero evidence that Lamelo Ball can hold up for one playoff series with his hoops IQ. Or the physicality of a playoff series, much less for what Minnesota's trying to do with a trade like this, win 4 playoff rounds or at least 3 to get to the Finals. We've never seen him play at the level of the playoffs we just watched with the physicality of the teams that we watched and just what basketball's like. You're gonna need, this is like the Wemby conversation. If this is your second best player, sorry buddy, you can't play 27.5 minutes each game, you know, in a series.

We're gonna need you for 37 now, and it's gonna be really physical, and you're gonna get banged down, you're gonna get knocked in the basket. Sport, you can't take the 30-footer with 30 seconds left in the game, down 1 with, you know, 20 seconds left in the shot clock. Like, you have to become a smarter, better player. I thought he made a lot of strides last year, but that Miami playing game was a roller coaster. I mean, think of how nuts we went after that game. Then the next game they got blown out. But I just I, we have no evidence that this is a guy who could handle a playoff series against San Antonio or OKC.

But this is exactly why the Hornets traded him. It's exactly what I said on my show is like they, I just, the physicality, toughness, all that stuff you just said. Plus I do, and I said this too, I do think their record in the play-in tournament of, it's only been 4 games and 3 of them have been like absolutely disastrous blowout losses. And in the Miami one, he did have 30 points, but I think he shot 12 of 31. Also fair to note, like he's a rookie, but Khan was a disaster down the stretch of the season and including in those games.

Khan was hurt though. I mean, Khan hurt his back. He wasn't the same the last 10 games.

But the playoff—

Don't you talk about my son that way.

Well, I don't, I was gonna say, I don't know what would happen if—

He was hurt though.

I don't know, like Hugo versus Khan is becoming like the battle for your heart is getting a little, it's getting, it's, they both have They both have some work to do to prove themselves to you.

Listen, I, I, I love them like I love both my children. We don't pick when you, when you have two kids, you just support them.

And so it's an easy out for you because when the Hornets play the Celtics, when they're, one team plays the other, you're gonna cheer for the Celtics. 'Cause that's your team. Like we need Hugo gonna get traded for another team. That's the true test.

Hugo and the Bucks.

Yeah.

Of who, of who your, your real love goes to. But that's exactly why Hornets, I think trade, I think it boil, you can make the case about picks and salaries and all this stuff. I think it really just boiled down to we watched the playoffs and we just don't think he can hang at that level. And that those are all fair. Those are all fair.

We don't trust him physically or basketball IQ-wise.

Physically, physically. I think the IQ stuff, to win 16 playoff games with this guy, I think you can get over the IQ stuff. 'Cause like you said, I think it trended well last year. I think being the second, the clear second best guy, On a team is going to really kind of force him to recalibrate some of the ways he plays. But I think it's more of the physicality stuff, and I think that's a completely fair bet for Charlotte to— I think when you combine this trade with the Bridges trade that happened today that we're going to talk about, I think Charlotte has come out looking awesome just to, to like put those together. Great work by the Hornets who continue to just kill it under their new regime. For Minnesota, I would just, I would just ask again, what are, what, what path? I mean, according to John Krasinski, they tried to get Jaylen Brown and they couldn't get, you know, like this package was not going to get them Jaylen Brown. So what, what do you, you're trying to compete with San Antonio and Oklahoma City. You're on the clock with Anthony Edwards.

What the status quo was not acceptable, right? Like that's that, like we, we clearly they didn't think so.

So what are you— You're laying out all the, you're laying out all the logic for some of the, the worst of the big NBA trades we've had over the last 40 years. I don't— well, we got to do something.

Okay. I don't disagree. Something to Lamelo Ball. I don't disagree. First of all, I think Lamelo Ball, I think a lot of this has to do with what your prior is on Lamelo Ball. And you and I have disagreed about Lamelo Ball for like 5 years. I just think he's better than you think he is. I've always thought he's been better than you think.

I value durability though.

That's fine.

I like when guys play. It's like, it's one of my weird things. I like seeing them on a basketball court.

It's not weird.. But I, I, you gotta do, I, I guess you're saying just do nothing and just figure it out later, which is a completely like a logical way to go about it. I think the Wolves had concluded that that wasn't an option for them.

The case for it is, I think they're gonna be good.

I think this is gonna work and I think they're gonna be good. If your bar is, well, can they beat San Antonio 4 times outta 7 or Oklahoma City 4 times outta 7? It's a pretty tough bar to hit.

You know, I just, but I think offensively this is gonna be a super, that's my bar for the, for all the trades they made because I felt like last year one of reasons they didn't look better in the playoffs was they had a bunch of injuries at a bad time. Well, they still hurt in the playoffs. Ayo was— got hurt during the playoffs, and DeFronchenzo got hurt during the playoffs. Like, to me, this feels like an overreaction, all that. And so the stat I had before, first 6 seasons, less than 10K minutes, just guys who average 18 points a game, basically merger on, it's Ja, LaMelo, Zion, and Clark Kellogg. That's it. Those are all the guys in the last like 45 years. He turns 25 in August. And if you're trying to make the case for Minnesota, you would say, look, we've seen a lot of success with immature, injury-prone, talented guys in the first like 5, 6 years of their career who went to a different team and put it together. And I think there's gonna be nights with this team, and I'm sure the Minnesota fans will be on high alert. And even people I have in my life like Nate Theis, who like Minnesota, there's gonna be nights when they're on TV on a Thursday night and they're playing somebody awesome and LaMelo hits 8 threes and Ant hits 9 and they beat somebody by 18 and they look awesome and they're doing like chest bumps and all kinds of stuff midcourt and people are, oh, oh, how's that LaMelo trade now?

I'm just telling you.

And there's gonna be, talk to me in April and May. Just, there's gonna be Bill Simmons poo-pooing it.

No, Evan.

Yeah.

Just wait. Just talk to me April and May. I don't care what happens October through March. I just don't.

Here's the real question with Minnesota. And I, I don't, I think people think this question has been answered because they made two straight conference finals and, and there had been such a woe-be-gone franchise for so long between Garnett and those two conference finals that people think the question has been answered definitively as a yes, they should have made the Rudy Gobert trade. If you just reverse time. Like if you assume that the Gobert acquisition is why they ultimately had to dump Towns, and we all said when they traded for Rudy Gobert, a Towns deal looks inevitable because of the financial realities and the fact that he's a center and all this. We all said it at the time. As soon as that trade happened, even before it happened, I remember saying, if they do this, the Towns trade is the next domino that will come eventually. Did they give up on Ant plus Towns too early by making the Gobert trade? I think it's still kind of an open question because it not only robbed you of a lot of assets, I think they over— they clearly overpaid for Gobert. Like it, it, it both got them team success to a point that people have already stopped questioning whether they should have made the trade or not.

And that's okay. But they clearly overpaid either way and it forced their hand on KAT.. And we just didn't get to see all that much of like Anthony Edwards plus Karl-Anthony Towns as the foundation of a team. I think it's just an interesting question.

I hated the Gobert trade as much as any trade I've ever, ever that's been made. They made two conference finals with it. I don't know if I was wrong. I, I don't, I don't, that's the thing. I thought they gave up too much.

I, that's, but that's the thing. I don't know if you were wrong. And like, I, I was on TV that moment and I, I said, On ESPN, I am in disbelief at how much they gave up for Rudy Gobert. And I was as puzzled as you were. I maybe didn't hate it, hate it as much as you did. And I'm not even sure you were wrong despite the conference. I, I, I guess you are wrong 'cause of the conference finals. But like this, this, all of this starts with that trade.

With all that said about the LaMelo trade, I never would've done that. I would've thrown my body in front of it. I'm really excited to watch them this year. I think they'll be really fun. Well, so, but that's the problem. They'll be really fun as a regular season team, and I don't think as constructed, I think they've reduced their odds to win 3 straight playoff rounds in the West. I don't think they have the same odds. They added variance, but I don't think they win the durability, and I just don't trust Lamelo.

How high do you, how high is he?

Also, doesn't it scare you that Charlotte's like, of course. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, take 'em. He's not even on a max. He's at $43 million in Charlotte. Charlotte, by the way, just could have brought back Kobe White and tried to do what they did last year, and they're like, we're good, we're, we're, we're gonna move on now. Um, it was a classic selling high.

There was something else I wanted to ask you, and now I forgot what it was about. About, no, about, about this trade.

Um, by the way, the other thing with this trade that I thought was interesting that everybody missed Josh Green was just shoved in this trade. I mean, he's like $15 million a year. He was irrelevant for the Hornets.

Well, I was delighted to dump him in the trade. I was listening to one pod where they were like, oh, this is a great, like, you know, they did Josh Green, you know, Minnesota got a lot of depth in this. That was a good get. But they're like, good get? This was like a must. You have to take him. That was like Charlotte. Like, if you're doing this, you're taking this. Oh, that's what I was going to ask you is let's, let's try. To just put this trade in a vacuum, I know that's not possible, but like in a vacuum, both with Timberwolves history and like cap ramifications and all that, do you think LaMelo for Nas Reid and one unprotected pick and a, a few swaps that may not even, like, it's unclear if they're gonna— is that actually too high of a price for LaMelo Ball? Like, is that that much that you're giving up if you're Minnesota? A Sixth Man of the Year who's now gonna start and is a good player, has some defensive issues, some swaps that may or may not be anything, a really good pick and some seconds.

Is that actually that high of a price?

Think about where we were in September, October when we were talking about LaMelo, Ja, and Trae Young altogether.

When I was the one saying LaMelo has the most value of the three and it's not close. I agree with you. We had this conversation.

I thought, I thought it was a little closer than you did, but I thought those were the three and it seemed like he had the best chance to be redeemed and maybe traded instead of given away. Trae Young was given away. John Morant not only can't be given away. That's, that's the other subplot is like you're gonna have to add a pick to get rid of him. LaMelo, they rehabilitated his trade value enough to where they got, I thought, you know, I, I think you would've taken that in September if you, even if it would've made the fans mad. It's like, look, we don't know if this dude's ever gonna play. They were able to get 2,000 minutes out of him and they were able to trade him.

My only point is if you isolate the trade, which you can't, I get that. But I, yeah, I don't think they like overpaid for LaMelo Ball to some crazy level.

I think it's like a fair trade, but you have to throw the Randle into it. Yeah, Randle has to be part of the trade. They traded Randle, Nas Reid, and I guess that's fair. The pick and the swap for Josh Green and LaMelo is the trade, right? And that's, I don't know. I feel bad for the Minnesota fans. They haven't won a title since 1991. And LaMelo is going to— this is going to be a very seductive combo. I'm telling you, there's going to be nights where you're like, holy shit, Ant and LaMelo had 23s combined. This has never happened in the history. There's going to be nights. They're going to be really fun together. We'll see. We'll see how long he can play. From a Charlotte side, and they did another trade today, they So they traded Miles Bridges for Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neal and won that trade. They won that trade just with the 3 players in it. Just Miles Bridges for Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neal. I've won the trade. No, how about this? I'll throw in the worst of my 2029 swap. You'll get the less favorable version of that, and you give me your unprotected first and 33.

And Phoenix is like, that sounds great. Let's do it. What a fucking terrible trade by them. That was why, I mean, I just, the picks, I explain it to me.

I mean, do I have to explain it to you? Are you making me do that?

Well, I, how can nobody, how about top? I guess you can't put protections on the picks anymore, but I checked, I checked.

I was like, where I texted lots of people. I was like, no protection on it? Not anything? Top? Nothing? Top. Okay.

Look, I know— For a year of Miles Bridges. He's a free agent next year.

So here's the thing. It's not going to be a year of Miles Bridges. You know that they're going to re-sign Miles Bridges and you have to price that into the trade as well. And that could make your evaluation of it, Bill Simmons, even worse depending on what the number is. And they're probably going to extend Dillon Brooks too. And all of a sudden this team's going to be pretty expensive. I don't want to explain the trade to you. I don't like the trade for Phoenix. They did it because they didn't have a real power forward. They got one now. They did it probably because Miles Bridges is a Michigan State guy. Great. Congratulations. And they did it because they saved money. They saved money this year and they get $29 million of Grayson Allen plus Royce O'Neal, who they view as just sort of fungible, whatever, seventh guys off the books. And they get a starter. He's going to start. And that's it.

Who signed those guys? Just out of curiosity.

The Suns signed both of them.

Oh, so the Suns now have to get off the money that they gave to these guys? If I was a Suns fan, I would be losing my mind.

I was like, why did you give these contracts? You made me be ish be a spokesperson. You assigned me the fucking job, so let me do it without interruption. So I tried my best to do it. I don't like the trade. I think it's an awesome trade for Charlotte who loses LaMelo Ball, right? So they lose like the high-wattage star, a guy that I think should have gotten All-NBA consideration this year, like third team All-NBA. He was in the mix for that. They, they don't get back a player in Kobe White re— resigning plus Grayson Allen plus Royce O'Neal that's anywhere near as good as LaMelo Ball. But Kobe White's good and is a viable starter. I think they lose some playmaking and passing they're gonna have to make up. But what they have now is so much depth if those guys are all healthy that they don't have to speed up Steinbach, they don't have to speed up Christian Anderson. But those guys may be already, they have like a lot of good players. On this team. And in the regular season, that's really important in just sort of getting through the season. And they kicked the pick out they owe to 2029, so they're not under a huge amount of pressure.

And it's a swap thing anyway, so it's not like a huge risk.

Well, they have the best collection of picks probably in the Eastern Conference now.

And Phoenix, that unprotected 2033, I get what they're doing. What they're doing is we're exchanging a future pick for a now pick because we've traded all of our now picks, our near window picks for Durant, and we need we need to be able to do stuff in this period of time when Devin Booker's approaching 30 or whatever he is, that 2033 pick, just like the 2031 Suns pick that Memphis, I believe, has, or these Bucs picks that Portland has that it's like, oh, that's 9 years from now.

What do we care? And then it's like, oh, that now they're coming.

Important to state, we don't know what the rules are going to be in terms of trading draft picks and lottery and all that stuff. But, but those picks are going to be extremely valuable trade chips. And I don't, I, it's not like Phoenix has any roadmap to being a title contender in the next 3 or 4 years.

So I don't, well, I have a follow-up idea for them that you're gonna do the thing where you can't speak for a minute.

Okay.

But Charlotte's picks.

Mm-hmm.

So they have the '27 Dallas first, top 2 protected next year.

Sure do.

They have a Miami pick that's gonna be unprotected in '28. They can swap with Minnesota in '28. They have a bunch of swap stuff. Um, and they have unprotected Minnesota, Charlotte in 2033 on top of a shitload of flexibility that they have now because Zach Lowe, they traded LaMelo, Green, and Bridges, $78 million, turn that into Nas, O'Neal, and Grayson Allen, $52 million. And they also have $41 million trade exception with all these picks. They have their mid-level still. From some of the reporting, it seems like Kobe White was not a slam dunk to come back as like a third guard. And when they traded LaMelo, all of a sudden that Kobe White deal was done. They're gonna have O'Neal who can play 3-4. They're gonna have Nas who can play 3-4-5 really. Grayson Allen coming off the bench as yet another shooter. And by the way, where did Grayson Allen go to college, Zach? Where'd he go to college?

The team I always cheer against in the tournament.

I think Duke University, located in North Carolina. Well, and where did Kobe White go to college?

Where did Rick—

North Carolina.

Where did Rick Schnall go to college?

Um, so they have coming off the bench Allen, Nas, Anderson if he's good, Kalkbrenner, Steinbach, a year of Grant Williams. They— I, I'm so impressed by every— I've been saying this for 2 years. I've been so impressed. Every move they've made, I'm like, another good one. Oh, like that. Great one there. Is this the team you would want to be in the East now for the next 7 years over everybody else? Oh, not next 2, next 7.

7 years.

I get my pick of teams just for how they're loaded, locked and loaded right now.

I like the city. I like the city too. I like the ownership. Okay, so let's— can I give you some candidates?

Yeah.

By the way, I didn't prep you for this because I wanted to see your agonized reaction.

No, this is great because I love to imagine this is like a, where would I want to work off the top? Charlotte is definitely maybe number one. If I trusted the Reinsdorfs at all, the Bulls with Caleb Wilson and Swain are now kind of interesting. And if I were the person that's—

and Boozell.

That's, and Boozell. If I could save the Bulls, like what a legend I would be and how fun Chicago is and all that.

But you know, I don't trust the owners and they don't have that same level assets. And you have owners that aren't going to ever spend.

The Wizards, despite getting DeBansa and having all this stuff, they're just still the Wizards. I can't put them above these teams. Their uniforms stink. The arena is dead. I can't, I can't do it.

Trey Young, Trey Young for 4 years.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you 2 cities. I, a city I like. I mean, if you gimme 7 years, 7 years.

I'm saying 7 years of, of assets, players you have now, chance to win a title. You gotta factor all of it in.

I, I, I just like Philly a lot. I like the city of Philly a lot. 7 years lets me ride out the Embiid thing that I have to deal with.

So you have VJ, Maxi. I'm gonna have expirings with Embiid and George in a year. I have a fan base that the moment anything goes wrong, I'm gonna be blamed and tortured.

Yeah. Okay.

It's weird that Boston—

Atlanta's a good one.

It's weird that you've mentioned 8 teams and didn't mention Boston, which I think speaks to maybe where Boston is right now.

Well, I'm just going 7 years. I'm just going fun. I want some warm weather too. So Atlanta's a good one. I want good weather.

It's too— some beaches.

It's clearly Charlotte.

Charlotte flipped this around. They were the worst run team in the league or in the top 3 year after year for 15 straight years.

Right. Long time.

They haven't won a playoff series in like a good time.

I've known you. And now one of the things I like about this is I, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons they probably, I don't have inside sources with Charlotte. Like I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why you would be like, it's time to move on from LaMelo. I would guess one of the main reasons would be we, what we saw from Miller and what we saw from Khan as a rookie, which is the worst he's ever going to be. Is there more there from a ball handling, playmaking? Can we run more of the offense? Can we have more movement? Can we be more unpredictable? Can we just have like a 12-man team? Can we, can we start to look a little OKC-ish without the Shai piece of it? Can we have depth, shooting, interchangeable guys? And then you guys, I was really glad Krasinski talked about this on the pod. I thought he was excellent that you did on Thursday. Talking about Nas Reid, what a fucking great guy he is. I mean, other than KG, the most beloved, and I guess Ant, but probably a top 3 most beloved Timberwolf ever.

Unbelievable behind the scenes guy. Selfless, like, was one of the, like, really could have torpedoed a lot of what happened with them the last couple years and just didn't. And I'm just a huge fan. We know what he looks like in the playoffs. I just think that team needed more adults and less kids, and they feel like they have now flipped that with Kobe and with, with Nas. And I'm sure there's another vet coming, but I really like where they're sitting.

They have the, the Hornets are in an unbelievable position and it's not like we, I don't think you're missing anything about why they did this trade in the myriad of factors, including faith in Miller and Khan. To level up even a little bit. I think part of it is also like, we're not, we're not going to get carried away with what happened in the last 3 months of last season. Right. We're not going to push all in for '26, '27. We're actually willing, if we do end up taking a small step back, we're actually willing to do that. And we're fine with that. And you know, if we do miss the playoffs or something like that, like the new lottery rules are are pretty good for us in a lot of different ways. And so we're not gonna accelerate for, for short-term gain. We're okay with that if we think it's the right move.

And we sold high on a guy that might never play 2,000 minutes again, for all we know, in LaMelo, right?

It's a big one.

FanDuel only has regular season win odds for 2 teams, just by the way.

Okay. It's interesting.

50+ wins for Minnesota is +108.

So that means they think they're right, right on the 50-win level.

45+ for Miami is -210 and 50+ is +140, which means they think Miami is probably in the 46, 47 range. The more I think about that trade for Miami, I, have you really like just spent 5 minutes in your brain thinking about an offense with Giannis and Bam and where they go?

Yeah.

Just the geometry of where are they going to be every possession?

Yes, of course. I did a whole podcast on that. Did you have—

I know you did a podcast. Did you come up with an actual answer?

The number one reason that I am skeptical that this is a championship contender. Now we got to see how they round out the— we don't know anything, right? We don't know Powell. We don't know Wiggins. We don't know, like, we're going to learn all about what their team is going to look like.

Pat, by the way, Powell, I think they started cutting his minutes as we got closer to the playoffs and in the playoffs. I, I think he's out.

Well, I mean, that was a Powell hero. We have no faith that we can defend with those two guys on the floor together thing. But, uh, I mean, it's gonna be very hard for them to make a competitive offer to Norm Powell. I would also bet on him being elsewhere at the beginning of the season. So, but we don't, my point is we don't know what the team's gonna look like. But the number one reason I said I'm skeptical that they can build an actual contender out of this, like a true blue finals championship contender. Is I just think at heart Bam and Giannis are too duplicative on offense. And I know that that sounds crazy because Giannis is this bulldozer to the rim and Bam shot 7 threes a game last year and all of that. They, at their best, they are still guys who want to operate in the middle of the floor. That's what they do. They do it differently stylistically, but that's where they want to live. And despite Bam taking a ton of threes and all that, that's where they really should live. Like, I, I don't think any— Bam's gotta get much better as a 3-point shooter.

For defenses to treat him like he's a real threat out there. And even so, I don't see that. I'm just like, do you want Bam out of— he's not Karl-Anthony Towns. Like, I want Karl-Anthony Towns shooting 10 threes a game. He's that good of a shooter. I don't want an interior bruiser like that who's just an okay shooter shooting 8 to 10 threes a game. I'm not sure that I want that.

And so it reminds me a little when Houston tried to make it work with Hakeem and Barkley in the late '90s. You know, and you, it works somewhat and they did make the Western Finals, but Barkley had to move out and Barkley had to shoot more threes and he was never a good 3-point shooter. And I, it just, I always thought it was clumsy. And then remember they had Pippen that one year and then it was like, oh my God.

And like, to be clear, I think Miami's gonna be really good. I think defensively they have a chance to be special. I think the East is, is like gonna be very interesting but also very deep next year. Like, and I just, win the Finals, and that's the goal when you make a trade like this. I just, it's gonna be really hard. And that's before you get into the Giannis who seems to be injured at the end of every season for 5 of the last 6 seasons.

I do not think Miami's gonna be very good.

I mean, I think it, I think they'll be fine.

I think they'll be like between 43 and 47 wins depending on how much Giannis plays.

Again, the price is palatable and you just have to, you know, there's 3 paths. There's the status quo, which clearly wasn't going anywhere. There's this path, which may go in any number of directions. And then there's the what if we use all these assets on someone else's path. And I just don't know if they saw that path anywhere else down the line. And in the meantime, I don't know what the upside was. So I get it.

I'll tell you, if I was 80 years old, I definitely would've made the trade. Um, the, the back to Phoenix for a second.

Sure.

John Morant for Jalen Green. What else do you want me to throw in if I'm Memphis?

Okay. All right.

I mean, now we've reached a point where we're—

Is it an unprotected pick?

So Memphis gets Jalen Green.

Straight up. This is a one-for-one.

Who has 36 this year and a player option for 36 the next year. Yeah. And I get off from a rant and I have to throw in a first, an unprotected first.

I'm asking what I need to throw in because I have better picks than that. I could give you my best of Minnesota, Cleveland, or Utah in '27. I'm just— I could give you my Orlando first in '28 or '30.

Let—

wait, you, you tell me what you want.

Let me flip it around. Why is Phoenix doing that?

Because they could get an extra pick and they could roll the dice with Ja Morant for a year and hope change of scenery, Devin Booker, um, a really good fan base. And maybe we, you, you know, here's my, here's my last stop for Ja basically.

Here's my answer. If I'm Memphis, I'm throwing in nothing. That's my offer. It's Ja Morant for Jalen Green. I, I'd probably do that just to clean the slate and I get an interesting prospect to, not even a prospect, interesting young player to take a shot on a player who has not really covered himself.

So you're doing the Michael Corleone, my offer is nothing.

Yeah, my offer is Ja Morant. You either want him or we don't make a deal. 'Cause I, if they have the equivalent contract, I feel like they're like just equally sort of unknown in different ways as just assets going forward or whatever. Like John Moran has obviously reached a level in the NBA that's well above anything Jalen Green has done, but he's older and has a whole boatload of issues that come with him. But like, they have— their contracts are the same length and John makes $8 million more a year, whatever. Like, I don't— like, I'm not— I'm not interested in— I'm not that psyched about exchanging him for Jalen Green, even if it's completely toxic with him on the team. Than I'm throwing you any good draft assets. So you get nothing. That's it. Deal with that. You either want Ja Morant or you don't.

Do you like the idea of Ja Morant, Devin Booker, Miles Bridges?

No.

Oh, they're centers.

No.

And a couple other swings that can guard.

Let's just, how about Phoenix? Just chill. Like feel-good season. You brought back all your key role players who everybody fell in love with.

Yeah.

Con Gillespie and Jordan Good. Let's just take, take a, take a beat now. Okay. Take a break. Controversial transaction today on a bunch of different levels. Let's chill out. No more Team Sparty. Like, let's just chill.

I would do it if I could get a real good pick back from Memphis.

You're not getting one from me if I'm Zach Kleiman. I'm hanging up the phone. Sorry.

All right.

Zach Kleiman, boozer, coward.

I'm happy.

I'm—

this is what I'm saying.

I'm happy.

I hadn't talked about this on the pod either. You already did, but they got Beef Stew. They're just back, baby. What do we get? We had Grit and Grind Grizzlies. What do we have? What is this version of the Grizz? They need a nickname. Verno, come up with a nickname for these guys. It's not— you can't do Grit and Grind again. It's gotta be something else. It's like the Don't Fuck With Us Grizzlies.

My favorite moment of your—

it's just like 3 men in a front line.

My favorite moment of your draft recap podcast with Groggy House and draft beatnik J. Kyle Mann, just a great odd couple of guests.

Yeah.

My favorite moment was it pivoted from House saying something housey to like about Cam Boozer and the pick and to Kyle Mann being like, Listing off the players Cam Boozer was going to help make better in Memphis. Like, I think he's really going to like Cam Spencer and Cam Boozer are going to have a good, good chemistry. Like we've Cam Spencer like that's going to be a big winner. I think it transitioned from all the foods that you had ordered and how you were trying to keep House awake by mentioning food to do it. Kyle Mann hard pivot into Cam Spencer and how that was going to fit and everybody woke up. I mean, I woke up, I was like, wow, we ordered a pizza too. That's a big night.

Ja Morant is a no-go for you if you're any of the other 29 teams at this point.

I don't think they have anything for Ja Morant right now. I mean, who's the team, right? Like you go through the list of teams that need point guards. Toronto wasn't on LaMelo. I don't sense that they're in on Ja Morant. Minnesota made its move. I don't, I mean, Sacramento just drafted a point guard. I don't think they need to be in the business.

If you're Minnesota, would you rather— no, actually, I would've rather done LaMelo. Just Nas Reid for Ja Morant, basically.

I mean, I think Memphis would've been thrilled to do that.

Although now they have a whole bunch of picks.

I think Memphis would've been delighted.

I think they would've thrown a pick for that. All right, before we go, a couple quick things.

Sure.

It's June 28th.

Mm-hmm.

What happens with LeBron?

I, I wish I had a hot, good answer for you. I don't, I don't know. I really don't know.

I'm surprised how many people in my life have asked me what I thought was gonna happen with him. And that made me realize like, why are you surprised?

He's LeBron James.

I just, there's these giant chess pieces either, you know, there's Kawhi might get traded, Jaylen Brown, Jamal Murray, Detroit has all this cap space. There are all these things as we head toward Anthony Davis. July 1st. Anthony Davis. We, you and I think out of all these ones, Anthony Davis is, that would be my bet. Bet my life. You hate when I bet my life. I would bet my life on the, on the AD trade this summer over all the other famous men.

The only thing, the only time I ever said that phrase out loud about sports was when Croatia was in a penalty kick game in the last World Cup and Luka Modrić walked up and said, I would bet my life on Luka Modrić, baby. I bet he made it. Of course.

Yeah. So I have said Golden State for 3 months.

You're sticking with it.

I'm sticking with it. I'm sticking with the expendables. That includes Anthony Davis, which I guess that would have to be Butler and the 2027 first, or I don't even know what needs— I'm sure Washington has to get some pick back.

But I think—

Have we bought House an Anthony Davis Wizards jersey? Like, we, we gotta pool some money and get him one.

House is treating Anthony Davis like he's in it, like, like when somebody steps into the White House because the president got, you know, pushed out or died or impeached or something. And there's somebody like Gerald Ford, like Gerald Ford. Anthony Davis is Gerald Ford for House. He's just here for a year. He's gonna do a job. Anthony Davis is inexplicably in Washington. He's not staying, and they're gonna turn him into a pick, hopefully.

What's going to be more fondly remembered in the Anthony Davis era in Washington and all the great fashion on the bench. Oh, Dallas.

No, the Dallas.

Or the, the 1.5 quarters that he played in his Dallas debut where the Magic— this is why, this is why we did the trade. This is it.

Wilt Chamberlain for 40 minutes.

For, for like a year.

That was their Super Bowl weekend.

They clung to those, like, remember those 2 quarters? That was division.

That was crazy. So I would say Golden State. I wonder if the Clippers, who have both cap space and flexibility and a bunch of different ways to add him— I just don't know if LeBron James would ever play for the Clippers. Now, he did, he did go to Miami. That was a surprise. He did go back to Cleveland and Dan Gilbert. That was a surprise. He went to the Lakers, which was Kobe Bryant's team, when he went over there. And I, and kind of, by the way, still is. So I, I wouldn't rule him out going anywhere. The Clippers solved the most issues for him for get stay in LA, a lot of golf courses, doesn't have to leave his house. But Golden State's a 50-minute flight from here. And Golden State, as you know, is famously lackadaisical about making sure guys are around all the time. So if LeBron wanted to kind of come in and out, I think he'd be able to.

But does he, in terms of living in San Francisco, you mean like, guys like, okay, after the— the guy shows up 5 hours before every game and, you know, he's at every practice.

I'm just saying like after a home game at night, I'm gonna fly back to LA, I'll be back tomorrow. Okay, LeBron, we'll see you tomorrow. Like it's one of those teams. There's flexibility built in with the vets.

Okay.

The question for me, because the most fun team for him to go to is San Antonio.

Wow.

This is where Eduardo right now is like, ding, ding, ding, ding. Here's my social clip. What's up, Eduardo? San Antonio, he solves actual issues for him, for them, and could actually win the title with them. Would it be perceived as a ring chase or not to you?

Yeah. Well, also, and I think this is important vis-à-vis the Clippers discussion, it's a franchise that is dignified and I think befits LeBron's perception, rightfully so, of himself and the kind of teams and franchises he should be on.

Yeah, you could sell that really fast. Like, Pop's there. I've had a long relationship with him. This team's close. I could be the missing piece. I watched them in the Finals for 5 games. They were missing that one veteran leader. And by the way, it could be a trade where it's like Cornette and Keldon Johnson's expiring, and then you could figure out how to pay LeBron $30 million a year for 2 years. And, but do you think it would be perceived as a ring chase or not?

I think he's 41 and a half years old and anything he does in the direction of a ring is going to be accepted as like, it's pretty crazy that the guy is still a good player in the NBA. If he wants to chase another ring and have a new adventure, that's fine. I don't think it, this is not, not to go back, but this is not a 29-year-old superstar signing with a 73-win team. I, I just think if that's what it is and that's what he wants to do, I don't think anyone begrudges him. And people get more into like, oh, how's that gonna work? That's kind of exciting.

Zach Lowe, we are in 100% agreeance.

Oh, we are?

Yeah. I think if I was, if I was like his conciliary, I would, I would walk through San Antonio and Golden State. Denver's interesting too, but I, I, I actually don't think that cements anything. Just watching him with Joker would be amazing.

They flirted with, I mean, you know Denver has been interested in him before. They tried to get him in for a free agent meeting at one point, I think, or something like that. I can't remember exactly.

But that money doesn't work with San Antonio. Works 'cause they actually have flexibility. They actually could pay him. 'Cause the thing we always forget with these guys, they're not taking a pay cut. He's not gonna go work for $2.2 million veteran minimum expansion. You just, Like, this is why Kobe signed up for $40 and $40 the last 2 years. Like, these guys, they want to be compensated. They go to a franchise, like, they're gonna sell LeBron Spurs jerseys. I really like the idea of him on that team, and I wouldn't consider it a ring chase. 'Cause if I'm him, I want to keep playing. I'm still really good. This Lakers thing has fizzled out. It's, they obviously don't want him to come back. They, it's a, it's, you know, it's, there's, it's been an uneasy dance for 6 months. They want to turn the team over to Luka. And San Antonio kind of needs him. If he had been in that Knicks series, I think they would've won.

All right. I'm not prepared to go reimagine the whole Finals that we just had with LeBron James as a Spur. That's a bridge too far at this, at this hour for me. The Knicks won in 5 games and I'm just—

give him all the Keldon Johnson, Luke Kornet minutes. He's out there in crunch time.

You can't just let the Knicks be happy. We were, we're already—

all due respect to the Knicks, I'm doing a hypothetical alternate universe. I'm just saying if they had LeBron last year, that I think that was kind of what they were missing. 'Cause I don't, I don't think Fox plays at that point. I think LeBron is in the Fox spot and I think better decisions are made.

But there were several poor decisions.

Would he wanna live in San Antonio? I don't know. I, the Golden State case would be you and Curry ride out in the sunset together. The team is ju— especially if they got Davis too. The team is just good enough that it's kind of fun. You're gonna sell out everywhere. This will be like, like when the Eagles had their reunion tour in 1995. It's the Hell Freezes Over tour. It's just every place you go, it's gonna be the biggest thing that happened in that city in a long, long time from a basketball standpoint, really since the, the Curry Warriors in the mid-2010s.

Unless it's a back-to-back on the road. Careful.

Yeah, true. I forgot about that part. Maybe, maybe Curry and LeBron just alternate, but all right, so what, so pick, Where do you want to see him go?

Make a pick.

Where do I want to see him go?

Yeah. Where do you want to see him go? Basketball fan Zach Lowe.

I think, I think, I think Golden State is the most fun. I think that him and Curry together is the most, it feel, I, I've, I've transitioned from, it feels like sacrilegious to see them go from like sometimes bitter rivals during those 4 finals. Like they got a, there was like some harmony.

2018 was bitter. Yeah. Yeah.

To what we saw with Team USA. In the last 2 games at the '24 Olympics to, to let's, let's just have some fun and we're probably not gonna win, but it's gonna be fun. Like, I think that'd be, that'd be the most fun.

The 2 times I've been the most shocked sitting in my seat for a basketball game, when Bird and Dr. J got in the fight, I was there. I still can't believe that happened. And then 2018 in the, I think it was the OT at game 1, the J.R. Smith game, LeBron and Curry got really mad at each other. And there was like a split second where it felt like they might actually get into something. And it just watching was like, oh my, LeBron was so mad. He was so mad about the J.R. Smith play. He was so mad. He had just played the best game probably of his life and they were gonna lose. And he like hard fouled Steph or did something and Steph got really mad. And oh yeah, it was good. I think all camera angles have been destroyed.

What I do remember is in the '16 Finals in one of the Cleveland games, and I wanna say it was game 6, He has a block on Curry at the rim, right? And it's emphatic. And he kind of poses a little bit over him afterwards, not like directly over him, but kind of makes a show out of it, makes a meal out of it. And I remember thinking like, that felt like a, yeah, I'm the best fucking guy. I'm bigger than you. I'm stronger than you. And this has been cool and you might still win the series, but remember, I'm the best fucking guy.

Which is also what he did in 2018 in that first game. He just physically overpowered them like Shaq in the finals. It was nuts. All right, so you're, we're both saying Golden State. I would like the San Antonio thing though.

That'd be fun.

And by the way, if he went to Denver, I would talk myself into that in 2 seconds.

Hard not to.

If they did the, the Jalen trade we mentioned earlier, and then they're like, oh, and the, our new point guard is, is 41-year-old LeBron James. We're just gonna try to figure it out in the finals. Okay. What is your craziest prediction for the week before we go?

Craziest prediction for the week?

I don't, I don't have a cra—

but like, I, I'll go like, what's, is there gonna be something this week that makes you go, whoa?

Well, it's too late for Kawhi, a Kawhi trade, right? Like that's already been murmured about enough that that wouldn't be like, oh my God, Kawhi got traded. Unbelievable.

I will say I think Kawhi going to Toronto would get that reaction from me.

I'm going to say Denver is going to do something big and I don't know what it is, but I'll say a Denver move that leaves people like, wow, that's what they did. I'll say that. I was going to say, I was going to say, imagine if the Sixers found a trade for Embiid, but I just don't, I don't, I don't think it's possible.

I'm going to, I have Detroit as my wow team. I think they're up to stuff.

Good wow team.

Stewart trade was really suspicious. I didn't really understand it. It felt like they were clearing some cap, but then they also got Isaiah Joe, so that only cleared half the cap. Maybe there was more to that story. Just feels like, I think they should have taken a swing last February and they didn't. And now, and now they probably will be my guess. And then, then LeBron going somewhere weird would be the other. The other wow thing, if it wasn't Golden State or some of the other teams we mentioned, would be like, wow, he's, he's going to Cleveland on the minimum. Can they even sign him to the minimum?

Utah as a veteran mentor?

What?

That would be— now that would get a big wow. My other wow would be Jaylen Brown just not getting traded, which I actually think wouldn't get a wow because I think it's conceivable he doesn't. It's definitely conceivable. We've seen them put the toothpaste back in the tube. In the NBA a lot of times. It was like, this is done, it's over. It's like, eh, all right, let's, we, well, we had dinner and things are better. It's happened.

This is like, this is like, um, you go and buy like a, a, a Costco case of like 8 tubes of toothpaste and you step on all of 'em and it's all over your bathroom. All the tubes are out. It's a, it's a lot of toothpaste.

When's the next Croatia game?

Uh, I believe Thursday versus Portugal.

Oh wow.

Yeah, we got a bad draw. We got a bad— and the winner likely plays Spain. This is the opposite of the draw Croatia got two World Cups ago. Counter.

I don't think you got that bad of a draw. Portugal is tied to the bitter end to an aging star. We've seen how this goes. Spain, I think it's good for you guys.

Winner gets Spain is tough. That's tough.

Yeah.

But Croatia had a very good draw two World Cups ago when we got to the finals. Like the bracket broke exactly right. So like, you know, what goes around comes around.

Comes around. I think you should do pods Monday, Wednesday, and you have to go to the game 'cause you're 2-0 this year. I don't know, it's in Toronto. It's not like it's in—

No, but it's gonna be free agency's gonna be going hot and heavy. You're encouraging me to do this, to skip out on day 2, 3 of NBA free agency.

Do it on Wednesday.

No, you gotta go to the game. You can't, this is once every 4 years.

I've already been to 2, man. It's more, 2 more World Cup games than I ever thought I would go to. So you gotta go.

I, I think you should go.

Okay. Yeah.

All right.

I can tell my wife. Let's go.

Um, all right, Zach Lowe, a true pleasure. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back with Taylor Sheridan. I wanna warn people, he, he did this from his ranch in, uh, I think Wyoming and the wifi's a little spotty. So there's times when it cuts in and out a little bit. Um, we did the best we could with it. I thought it was an awesome interview. Uh, I had a great time with him, but, uh, just, just bear with it. The, there's gonna be a couple times where it gets choppy. Anyway, we're gonna take a break. We'll be right back with the one and only Taylor Sheridan.

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All right, so I never asked for a lot of guests. We have a, we have a great booker named Allison who's always like, do you want this person, you want that person? I always send her a very short list, and Taylor Sheridan has always been on the, on the list. I've always wanted to talk to you, um, really admire your, your career, everything you've done, and, and your productivity. And now all of a sudden you wrote a book too, just when I was like What's up with this guy? How does he keep doing it? How does he keep churning this stuff out? And now, now you're coming after books. Um, I have so many questions for you, but what, what, what made you want to write a book on top of everything else you're doing?

Well, so it's a, it's, it's a bit of a long story. Luckily you've got a long podcast, so I— we have time for it.

It's true.

So, so you got to go back back to 2003, about, okay, yeah, about 2004. I'm living in LA and there was a gym about, oh, two-thirds of a mile from this apartment that I had. And me and my roommate had run over there and work out every day because we're actors, we don't have anything else to do until we go to whatever shitty job we're going to. And there was a guy that started working out there and, and, and this dude was— he looked very different than the typical West Hollywood gym crowd. I mean, this dude was jacked. With all these prison tats, not the, not the tribal bullshit that a bunch of Hollywood actors get. Like, like, this stuff was done homemade, right? Anyway, so he would— he was very fascinated with fitness. He'd ask me this and I'd ask him that. We kind of became friends over, over the court, you know, just in the gym. Uh, and then he became a personal trainer there, got certified and did all that deal. And he actually trained, uh, my He actually trained my wife. So we became pretty good friends. One day we were talking and he just bullshitting over lunch and he kind of casually mentioned— I think I'd mentioned a movie or something and he hadn't seen it.

I mentioned another, and I'm like, where have you been, in a cave for the past 17 or 20 years? He's like, no, I was in prison. And I said, oh, well, walk me through that. What happened? Was some kind of accident? He goes, no, no, no. I was a criminal. I was a career criminal. I was a drug dealing, armed robbing, burglar criminal. And so, I spent most of my life in prison, most of my adult life. And then, I discovered fitness in prison and that's really— I didn't want to spend my whole terrible place. And so, I got clean, got clean, got straight, I really focused on fitness, and now I'm a personal trainer. And someday, you watch, I'm gonna have my own gym. And within, I'd say, 5 years of that, he did have his own gym. And, uh, and it became the biggest privately owned personal training gym in LA, which is saying something because there's nothing in LA but gyms and, you know, freaking laser surgery. It's just the stuff that's in LA. Coffee. It was very different than the gyms in LA. It felt like a gym, right? He's playing the music, the only music he knew.

So like '80s rock and '70s rock. And it was a really cool place. And he was doing really well. And I started having success with storytelling. And then I got the hell out. I moved out of LA in 2013, moved up to Wyoming. And, and we'd check in every so often. And he, and he actually wrote a screenplay about his life, right? His life of crime. Pretty good. He sent it to me once and I'm like, pretty good, man. Nothing ever came of that for him, but, but it stayed in my mind. Keep moving forward to 2020 and COVID hits. And, and I'm the only film production, TV production in, in America filming. I'm the first one to go back to work. And the way I was able to convince the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild and all these guilds is the safest place this crew can be is on a big ranch in Montana, right? There's no— if everyone's negative when we get there. We can't give it to anybody as long as nobody leaves. So they said, that's fine, stay on the ranch. So then I wanted to— I wanted it so we didn't all go crazy.

I called— I wanted to build a gym on the, on the ranch. So I called Tom and said, hey, can you give me a connection to whoever you get your gym equipment from? Because I need to buy a bunch. And mine, they shut me down. And I said, "What do you mean they shut you down?" He goes, "We're closed. They shut— LA shut down." "Well, every business is shut down. You can't have a gym right now. We're on lockdown." And I said, "Well, don't sell all your equipment. What are you going to do when it opens back up? Just sign up for that PPE stuff and, you know, Newsom's sending money to everybody else. They'll probably send some to you." And he's like, "They're not sending it to white ex-cons, buddy." I'm like, "I've already applied. I'm not getting any money." And I said, okay, I'll send a flatbed. And I sent a flatbed down. I bought a pile of— so I didn't talk to him again. You know, years go by and he reached out. Um, and you know, by this point I got so many shows going, I'm so busy. It's, you know, someone's got to call me about 10 times for me to actually get a chance to call him back.

And I finally reached back out to him and said, hey, how's it going? And he said, said, man, I'm in a, I'm in a real bad way. Julia, go kind of handle that that's coming up the road. Uh, I said, what do you mean? He said, well, they found a mass single father. His, his, uh, his partner had died, um, and he's trying to raise this 5-year-old girl, and he said he's an ex-con, he's a felon, and, and he cannot find any work, reliable work, that with enough daycare to take care of this kid and So he was asking me about the movie business. Is there anything that he could do for me? And I said, I mean, I can probably get you some stunt work or, or something, you know, transportation department, I don't know, something. But you're going to be working 14-hour days. You're not going to be with your kid. I don't know how that's helpful. And, and he asked me, he said, can you, can you give me a loan? I mean, I got one more month's rent. Can you give me a loan to figure it out? And I told him, I said, look, I have a 100% failure rate.

Of loaning money to friends and them still being friends. So I can't do that. I'm not a bank. I said, but let me think. There's— everyone has a story, right? And your story has value. So let me just think about what that would be. And there's a book that I had read many, many years prior to this called The World's Most Dangerous Places. And it was written by a guy named Robert Pelton Young, and it's the most fascinating thing I'd ever read. It's essentially a travel guide for war correspondents about every single place where there's a war going on in the world. And, and this is a very accomplished war correspondent who wrote it. And it's— and at times it was very cynical and at times it was, it was laugh out loud funny. And then at times it was, it was very thoughtful. And I thought, where am I at? For a buck. And he's not the only one who's done something like that. You could look at— you'll remember this from the '80s— the, oh, anything for dummies, right? House Building for Dummies, Spanish for Dummies, you know, whatever it is. And they had taken a similar format and made it very digestible.

So I just thought, how interesting And would it be if we wrote a travel guide for prison? And to be, for the most part, I think, is a really good deterrent to someone from going there, right? But also, if someone did happen to do something dumb, now they're career criminal, this book isn't for them and they know it anyway. It's really for a guy like you and me because everyone's always wondered if you've ever watched Locked Up or any of these shows, what would I do? How would I navigate that world if I find myself in it? And so here's an expert in that, right? Here's someone who spent 17 years in state and federal prison, security prisons, and had to navigate the worst of the worst and came out, came out good, came out not a criminal, right? Made those choices, a success story. So I called him back and I said, look, here's what we're gonna do, and it's gonna be work. Uh, we're gonna write a book and it's gonna be How to Not Die in Prison, and we're gonna use your experience. And I've done a ton of research about prisons because I'm got a TV show about prisons.

Um, but that's research. It's not firsthand of a storyteller and a guy who's already proven to me that he's good at telling stories. Coming together to explore this world and how to get through it, or hopefully how to never go. And so that's what we did. So we wrote the first 3 chapters, and I write the intro, and then he writes the body, and together we shape the body of that. And we took that out, sent it to all the publishers, and Simon Schuster stuck their hand up, and Simon Schuster said, we want to put this out, we want to do it. I said, "Great." Tom rolled up his sleeves and I rolled up mine and we sat down and we came up with this.

If we were doing this in person, I would've interrupted you like 10 times as you were telling that because I thought this book was so interesting. All my experience from knowing anything about prison is just from TV and movies. And it's like, it could go from like Shawshank to the show you did, or a million things, Jericho Mile, going way back. Um, but this is like so detailed, it's almost like you have glossaries in there. You have all these do not do this, do not— I thought it was really, uh, I thought it was really interesting. And I've never read a book like it. It's one of those things where prisons are— have been such a huge part of any society, but nobody really knows anything that happens in there other than what they basically watch or read.

Yeah. And I talk about this in the book. There is a scene in episode 3 of the first season of Mayor of Kingstown where a man is arrested for killing a child. And it actually is a parole violation, so the guy doesn't go to county. He goes straight back to prison immediately. And when he comes in, there's this frenzy, right? Because a child killer is the one person in prison everyone can look at and say, "I may have done this, but I never did that." Right? And so there's a bullseye on these guys. And we filmed this scene where this— And after the first take, I start hearing buzz over the radio. "We need a medic. Actually, we need two medics." And I run upstairs to see what happened. How— Why do we need a medic? Someone have a heart attack? And most of the extras in this scene were ex-cons who had actually stayed in this prison, which had been decommissioned, so now it's empty. Of course, we're paying, you know, a few hundred bucks a day to these guys, and there's not any work because it's COVID. Um, and, uh, so they jumped at it, right?

And, uh, and two of them had panic attacks that were so bad that they had to go to, uh, they had to go to the hospital. And then there was a third one who, you know, we, we closed them in and locked them in the cells And this guy starts screaming, "You gotta let me out. I can't do this." And we let him out, and he starts taking off, and he's like, "I'm sorry, I can't. You don't have to pay me." I said, "No, no, no. For what I just put you through, we're gonna pay you." And they left. They were done. They wanted absolutely no part of even reenacting it. So that was the first thing. Obviously, we all can imagine and surmise it's a terrible place, right? It's not designed to rehabilitate. It's a whole lot of people who have proven to society that they can't get along with society, and we crammed them all together and along with each other. So it's a model that isn't designed to in any way rehabilitate. It's just they're on a big old timeout for however long that may be.

Right.

But it was so fascinating to me that I thought, just what a really rich world to explore. And I would imagine somebody reads this book and they're thinking about losing their temper or they're thinking about, I'll have another drink. I can still drive. Ah, because here's the very real world consequences of that.

Yeah. Oz, Oz beat that out of me, but my 5 years or 6 years, whatever it was, watching Oz. I loved that show.

Yeah, so yeah, it was great.

The story, the story with you, which everybody knows at this point, was you, you came late into the writing thing, right? You were an actor, then you were acting coach, all that, and you didn't really start writing until 41. And then you became probably the most prolific writer of the last 15 years in all the shows and movies that you've done, really in the last— it's been like decade and a half, basically.

Yeah.

Did you— I have a million questions about this, but did you— were you writing before age 40? Like, or did you just dive into it then? I didn't understand that part.

No, no, not in any way that— no, it's not a skill that I had developed. But you have to remember, I'd read, I don't know, by that point, 5,000 scripts, 10,000 scripts. And of those scripts, 900, 994 were bad. You know, I can, I can, I can recount for the 15 years that I was in Hollywood, I can recount to this day the, the excellent scripts that I read, right? I still remember. And there were very few that I read and I thought, Wow, that's, that's going to be something. So most of them are bad. And, and so I knew when I started writing was to simply not do what everyone else was doing. And, and what everyone else was doing was taking shortcuts, essentially breaking all the very basic fundamental rules of storytelling because they couldn't figure out their story. And so what by that I mean this: with a movie, you're supposed to show me what's happening. The camera is supposed to move the story. Dialogue is supposed to tell me how the people in this world feel about what's happening, or what they hope to do, or what they wish they hadn't done or had done.

Right? So, so if you stick to that one very basic rule from the, from the beginning, never have a character tell me something that the camera should show me. And, and if you go back and watch movies that, uh, maybe you like the premise and maybe you like the way it started, and then toward the end something happened, it's just, and it just felt a little easy. Because they couldn't figure out an intelligent way in the story to show me something, so they just had this character say it. All these Marvel movies do it, uh, ad nauseam, where they, where they will just have information dumps that you have to follow to get to the action rather than, than actually moving plot with action, right? And then the other thing that I did was basically find the most interesting thing, most interesting way to say anything. I'll take a scene from Hell or High Water where you have Jeff Bridges' character walk in and he's questioning this waitress about the two boys that just robbed the bank across the street. He says, "Describe them." And, and she doesn't mention height or hair color. She mentions, you know, they look, you know, they're young enough to know better, but you're too old to know better.

And but still, you know, and they look broker than these guys over here, but the better than these guys over here. And, and so just find interesting ways of saying they're in their mid-30s, and they were dressed casually, and one's got blonde hair, and one's got red hair. There, right? So just what's the— what's the more interesting way of describing something or somebody? Um, and then I think the other thing that I, that I try to do, and this probably comes from me having been a journeyman actor, which means most of my roles were smaller roles or guest star roles, I always try to make those impact to the overall story. In other words, those individuals that are just there to push the plot along somehow have an impact on our lead character, whether they make them recognize something about this place, or feel something, or mirror something in their own lives, that these— all these little people have a big impact on our main character, on our protagonist. And then that allows the audience to feel completely submersed in a world, right? Because now everybody has a point of view. Everyone. The guy at the gas station, the waitress, the—

right. You know what you said about, uh, letting the people show you versus writing all the dialogue for them to tell the thing? Tarantino had this thing about Steve McQueen about, um, how a lot of the stuff that he would do was just him reading situations and just him being a movie star. And just the concept of, like, movie stardom sometimes doesn't have to be about dialogue, but just about seeming like you're a movie star on a screen and soaking things in and stuff you do with your eyes. I notice, like, with your shows, a lot of times it's about, like, even, even the, the show, The Michelle Pfeiffer Show, which of course I love because I enjoy other shows, but a lot of it is sometimes it'll just be her staring out, you know, having a glass of wine at the end of the show and just trying to process stuff. You know, and thinking about things.

Yeah.

Like, there's moments like that.

Yeah.

And I don't know if— I don't know if shows and movies are doing that in the same way anymore. They're always like, especially now in the streaming era, everything's in a rush. Everything's like, they have to tell you, here's the murder that we have to solve, and you're gonna see the murder in the first 3 minutes, and we're gonna— but it seems like your shows are way more patient.

Yeah, they're— and there's a— there's a few I think, explanations for that. Okay. And one is, I think the most important one is who's writing these stories. Okay. And I'm— this isn't an indictment of other writers, uh, but, but where are they? Well, if they're in LA or they're in New York, and, and, and, and if you're a producer, if you allow this business to do it to you You are, from the second you wake up to the second you go to bed, you are— you're going. You're meeting this, that meeting, this meeting, tone meeting, prop meeting, casting, this. Then I got to go sit with my room of writers and we're gonna put a bunch of stuff on a whiteboard and we're gonna outline, and you take this and I'll write that, you do this. And then I got to go home to my kids and— or my wife or my husband or whoever, and we're going to try and carve out 2 hours of meaningful relationship, and then off to bed we Where in that is the time to reflect? I live, I live in the country, I live in the middle of nowhere.

So before I, I start riding every day, I take about a 30-minute walk and there's no, there's no traffic because the road's mine, it's on my ranch, uh, and, and I just think. And, and, and I'm, and I'm also not scared to leave my phone behind. So I had time to reflect and actually think like a character. The bigger challenge, and I'm very fortunate in this regard— Wait, wait, can you hold on to that one second?

When you're reflecting, are you thinking about ideas for shows, or are you just thinking about life? What are you thinking about?

It depends. It depends. Sometimes I'm just— And I think this is with any storyteller. When you can get to a quiet place, and I don't mean a physical place, physical quiet place, a quiet place inside yourself, the ideas come. You don't have to go hunt them, right? They just come. So, you know, fortunately I'm the only person around because if I wasn't, people would think there's this on this dirt road talking to himself. And, uh, and but that's what happens. You, you know, I just— my, my routine is, is, is, is very set and And when I'm writing, I always return. I'm in the cat— this is the first place I ever bought, this, this house up here in Wyoming. And it is an 1,800 square feet. And I always come back here because this is where I can control the quiet. And this is where I can get the most done. So the second, probably greater influence upon writers in the industry. And it didn't used to be this way when Steve McQueen was a movie star at Paramount, right? And Bobby Evans ran the studio because he— writers were turned loose, directors were turned completely loose.

There weren't endless rewrites. There weren't meetings with executives about tone and mood and all this nonsense, right? And then you didn't have a lot of people. And by the way, the studio executives and the network executives need to group in the industry, right? These are marketing executives for the most part, uh, or maybe they— whatever they studied, law, whatever, then they came and they got a job in the mailroom at CAA or WME and hated that shit. And so then they ended up as an intern at some network, and then through attrition they find themselves the head of development. Well, what do you know about developing story? You know nothing. So they get terrified, panicked that the audience won't get it because they actually have no— storytellers. So they don't get it. So it needs to be written on the page. There's all this stuff. They want backstory. They want— basically, they want synopses of who all these characters' lives are before we meet the character, none of which is applicable to whatever conflict the character's facing. I've had many actors come up and ask me, so what's my backstory? I said, you have carte blanche.

You don't have a backstory. That character did not exist until I wrote them on that horse on that hill. Didn't exist. So I'm looking through very narrow windows. But, but our business at this point is truly governed by these executives because they're the ones that are going to determine whether or not your script is going to go into production, and they're going to try and control every element of that. The greatest thing that I have is I came up in independent film, right? So, so the first movie that I made was Sicario. That's an independent movie. Uh, Thunder Road, Basil Izwanik, he went out and raised the money from, uh, and they just gave us a chunk of cash, and we went and hired who we wanted to hire and made it. The same thing with Hell or High Water and the same thing with Wind River. With Wind River, I mean, that money came from an Indian tribe in Louisiana. And they're just, here, go do it. I never saw a producer. One time I was talking to my, my DP, we're standing on the top of this mountain. And I said, you know, we've never met anyone who gave us this money.

Like, I have no idea. Never met him. I don't know. We could just leave. We could go to We don't even have to make the movie. We just— this is a tremendous amount of responsibility for someone who's never done it before. Um, but that— but I— so every decision that I got to make, I made, and I got to make it for what I thought was best for the story. And since I wrote the story, I felt the most qualified to do that. So when I made my deal with Paramount, I made that same deal. I said, this is not a democracy. There's no committee. You're going to pay me and you're going to give me a bunch of money and I'm going to deliver you these shows. One of them, because I'm just not that special. I'm pretty common and I'm going to tell stories that common people are going to understand. And that's most of America. You're not going to win no Emmys with me, but I'm not trying to win Emmys. That's not my goal. My goal is to, is to sit somebody on their couch and move them, make them think, make them laugh.

Scare the shit out of them, excite them. That's what I want to do because that's what I want from a show, right? I don't want to— I don't want to be— I don't want to be preached to. I don't want someone to tell me how to think or why I shouldn't think this or should think— look through this rectangle box and go to another world and escape. And, and, and so I have such a streamlined system that I'm able to create this massive volume of, of product at pro— and I bet I work less than a guy who has one or two shows on the air.

Wait, I want to talk about that system, but something you said earlier, this is like the biggest passion point of mine with anything with TV, because over and over again, the best shows or the best ideas or the most successful things seem to come from like one vision, one voice, maybe two, but usually it's one person. And those are the best shows that we care about the most. And over and over again, all the streamers and the studios, they, they seem like they ignore that. That instead of like the one voice, it's like, well, now here are our ideas. And now it's like you're trying to do creativity by consensus, which is the exact opposite of all the greatest shows we have. Why? So why do we do it that way?

The reason they do it that way is to justify their job. And they're not wrong. So when I first started at Paramount, there was a huge development department, right? There were all these people whose job it was to sit there and give me notes and tell me what to do and how to do it and this and that and the other. And after 4 years, they got rid of that department. So all those people got fired, right? Because they didn't need them. They had no job because I wasn't returning their calls. I wasn't— I wanted— I didn't care. I didn't respect because they're not— they don't do what I do, right?

You know, yeah, it's job justification.

Yeah.

And it's like, what do you do all day? I give Taylor Sheridan notes. What do you give them? What are you giving them notes for? He doesn't need your notes.

No. And if you look at— if you look at some of the real bellwether shows, right, some of the— some of the shows that that really— and there's a number of them. You can go back to early Steven Bochco, David Milch, and these guys that, uh, that were— David E. Kelley's another one that, you know, that, right? No one gave that dude notes, and he was a one-man band. He writes all his shows. That guy was writing Chicago Hope. That's 22 episodes of television. And what's the other one that he had on, uh, He had 3 shows on the air at the same time.

The Practice.

Yeah, Picket Fences. And he's writing every word himself, making every decision. And he'd obviously built a very tight team of filmmakers around him, right? Um, those shows was excellent, right? Excellent. Well, what— the—

when you talk about your system I think this is part of the genius of what you've figured out. You've had all the same people basically that you had, you know, your first movie. And you, you have this whole like infrastructure in place so that when you're making stuff, you have like a shorthand. It doesn't need to be 3 months to set up. You can do it in 4 weeks. And, um, and that's the biggest reason you have all these shows, right?

It's even better than, you know, I have editor's assistants that are now senior editors. I have production assistants, you know, guys that were running around getting coffee, that are now first assistant directors. This is arguably one of the top 3 most important people on the set. I have camera operators that are now directors. I have an editor who's now a director. I have directors who are now also producer-directors and executive directors. Actors. I promote from within exclusively. I have a lead costume designer that used to be an assistant costumer. I have a— literally not even— probably not even supposed to be in props. The kid's like 15 years old, he's just helping his dad. Now he's a prop master. So is his sister. And they only know one way to do it. They only know the way that we do it. So there's no arguing or debating about what cameras we're going to use. There's no debating about, about the lens package. There's no— I don't have to teach anyone the color palette, nothing. They know what I like and don't like. And so the system is so streamlined, our days are so much easier.

I had to learn this, right? Wind River was incredibly difficult for me to do. Uh, the first two seasons of Yellowstone were incredibly difficult, and then I figured it out. And I, and I had to get rid of a lot of people along the way. I had to fire a lot of people who didn't see it my way and wanted me to conform to the way that the business does it, as opposed to the way that I wanted to do it. And so all we really do is make everything the exact same way we made Wind River, just on a much larger scale, right? That was a, that was a gorilla. Now we make $235 gorilla, or $35 million gorilla television series.

Right. Well, one of the things you're good at is you're targeting people who have actors, lead actors who have had real success, but you somehow work well with them. And now because you've had success, they want to work with you. So now you have somebody like Billy Bob, you have Landman. He's like literally the perfect guy on the planet to be in Landman, but he also wants to be in Landman, which I don't, Maybe in 2015, you're not able to convince them, but, you know, now it seems like you're getting whatever actors and actresses you want, right?

I was getting whatever I wanted from day one as far as actors goes with Sicario. I mean, those were our top choices, right? Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Same with Hell or High Water. I mean, I told David McKenzie, I said, "Look, I wrote this role." I wrote it for Ben Foster. I wrote it for Ben Foster. And they kept looking for everybody. And I said, I don't know, you could just hire— you do that. And then he actually went on a— he got on a yacht and went for a week trip with his family where he had no cell service, and they still hadn't pulled the trigger on Ben. And I just said, fuck it, I'm hiring him. So I just called this agent up and said, he's hired. 'We got him.' He said, 'Really?' I said, 'Yeah.' I had no authority to do it whatsoever. So then I got— just called the costume— call Ben Foster, get his sizes, because with SAG, as soon as the costume designer calls, you're booked. You're booked. So when he got off the boat— but it was the perfect choice. So yes, uh, I've been fortunate to get the actors that I wanted But I was an actor.

I write for actors. I write words that they want to say. And now I do it even differently. So with Billy Bob, with Kurt Russell and Michelle, Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, that's who I had envisioned for the roles, but I hadn't written a word. And I told Billy Bob, I said, here's my idea. This is the show I want to do. Gonna do it if you don't want to play the role. "I'm not gonna go try and fit a circle in a square, but I'll write it for you." And he said, "Okay." Helen and Harrison said the same thing. Michelle was a little bit tougher sell, but she finally acquiesced. And she was terrified to commit to something she'd never read a word. Um, but when a writer is writing specifically for an actor, right, in a role, that they were born to play, how can that not work?

Wait a second. You have to tell the audience exactly what you told Billy Bob Lanman was, because I actually know this and I thought it was great. So what did you tell him?

I said, I want to make a drama with Bad Santa running an oil company.

And he was like, I'm in.

He's like, that's the greatest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, let's do it.

So when you, when you're coming up with these ideas, do you have a piece of the idea? Do you have the whole thing played out? Or you're just, is it just as simple as that where you're like, Bad Santa runs an oil company. Okay. That's something. Or is it like, are there cases where you're like, oh no, I'm way more into the, it's always a lightning bolt, right?

Every time it's a lightning bolt. So for Landman, A buddy of mine from high school worked out in Odessa Midland and he was essentially— some type of site manager would be the term, right? The title. But essentially he's just a problem solver. He's a crisis manager, right? Of which there are— and I'm watching TV and some guy, some wingnuts driving through the streets of Odessa. Shooting off a gun, shoots like 7 or 8 people before the police run him down and kill him. And I knew my buddy was in Odessa and I knew he's always driving around, so I just called him and said, hey, just making sure you're good. He said, good, what are you talking about? And I said, well, there's some lunatic running around Odessa shooting people and it's all over the news. And he just starts laughing and he says, that happens here every day. Every day. He goes, it just happens out in the patch. He goes, this place, you don't understand what this place is. He started telling me stories, and that's when I got the idea for Landman. And then coincidentally, not 6 weeks later, uh, so I pitched the idea to Paramount, um, and not 6 weeks later, this podcast drops.

That Christian Wallace from Texas Monthly had done. And I, and I listened to it and my partner, you know, hey, have you heard about this podcast? I said, I'm listening to it right now. It's awesome. And he said, we're worried that someone's going to try and buy that and make a competing show. And I said, well, then you buy it. I mean, this is endless stories we can explore. Let me talk to this Christian guy. So I talked to Christian. Who had been— he had been a roughneck, uh, and, and was a very thoughtful, good writer. And, uh, he didn't know how to write a screenplay, but I didn't need him to. I just needed— I, I just needed someone to help me manage the authenticity and make sure that we tell the story. I'm a big believer in holding a mirror up to the world and writing down the reflection and not having any judgment on it and making it truly, truly authentic. Like, this is what it is. If I make a movie about a ranching family in Montana, I have to make that movie for professional cowboys, right? They have to sign off on it first.

Uh, if I make a movie about, uh, the military and the CIA, those guys have to watch it and wonder, uh, how did this guy know about— it has to feel that real. So the same thing with this. I need experts. I need experts. That can help me get immersed in the world to deeply understand it. Uh, so yeah, no, it, it— but it did start out, and that's kind of why it's tonally so schizophrenic, Landman, which I like. I like a show to make me think and then do something that's almost vaudevillian, right? That's cartoonish, because all of our lives are kind of cartoonish if you think about it, right? Um, so these ridiculous dinners that are, that Angela's fantasy of what a— and they're so preposterous and nobody wants to do them, which is a repeating theme, but she keeps doing it because, you know, it's her fantasy of what a family's supposed to do, but her family's so non-traditional, it's so ridiculous, all these strangers living in this house together. So, it's a lot of fun to do that show.

Well, you also— another thing you do that I've never seen anybody else do, you'll grab these really good actors or known actors, and maybe their schedule won't allow them to be in the show as much as you need them in the first season, or maybe you want them for season 2. Like, how you use Demi Moore in Landman, it was like, she's one of the stars of Landman and she wasn't in it that much, but your whole idea for her was season 2 that's when you were gonna need it.

And I told her, I— when I met with Demi about that, I said, look, here's the thing. You're gonna be an extra in this show for 7 episodes. You're an extra. And the critics are gonna fuck— they are gonna come after me. I'm underutilizing this, can't write for women, all this nonsense. And then I'm gonna kill your husband and you're gonna have to run the oil company. But, but I said, but, and I, and I, I have a very, you know, the critics in me, I don't care what they think, and it, and it annoys the shit out of them that I don't care. And I'll be the first to tell you that I, there are things I do that, that rage bait them a bit, and this is one of them, right? Um, and episodes where they could have watched it and realized that flip, but I didn't. I just sent him the first 3, um, because fuck them, honestly, right? And, and so, uh, with, with Demi, I knew that when we put it all on her shoulders from an audience standpoint, you've just seen her in little snippets as this housewife, right, in the background living this fantasy.

So we've, we've set her up by omission, to be someone that the audience is already predisposed to believe can't do this, capable of doing this job, right? And so not only does she have to overcome, uh, overcome every character in this world's opinion of her, but now she has to overcome the audience's predetermined opinion of her. And I let her do it in the first scene of season 2. Right. I give her a monologue that basically says—

You gave her two.

I'm meaner than my husband. Yeah. Yeah. Where I say, you know, I'm essentially— I'm the bigger bear and you're about to learn it. Ami questions it at times, but she's a true wildcatter like her husband, betting everything on this impossible drill, which is what— And that's actually based on an actual— There's a woman who runs an oil company in Texas, a wildcatter. And, and she— that was her rig that I filmed, that shallow rig. And the story of that rig blowing, uh, and then that insurance money being used to double down, that, that actually happened. And, and she's risking $2 billion she does not have, both the character and the real person the character is based on. On a lottery ticket. It's insanity. But if the lottery ticket hits, you're talking not just generational wealth, you're talking— I don't even— it's hard to comprehend the numbers you're talking. And that's the riverboat gambler addiction that these wildcatters have. It's fascinating. Think of the fortunes that it— think the Hunt family, for example, You know, that's in the 1920s, did the same thing, wildcatting. And, uh, and 100 years later, you know, the family's still this institution in North Texas.

So you'll throw— because I felt that you were doing this— there's sometimes you'll throw stuff in a show specifically as like a diss to the critics or just to mess with them. And it does feel like you're tweaking sometimes.

Pagan, Pagan, uh, roommate, right? That's one of the few times that the network and even some of the actors called me and said, you sure that you don't want to compress the resolution of Pagan and Ainsley? You know what you do in episode 10, uh, where they become friends, and you don't want to put that in episode 9? I said no, no, for, for exactly for the reason that you're asking. Yeah, I want to piss you off a little, and then, oh, how dare I? And then you watch the next week and go, oh, uh-oh, got me. The Judge, what? And I— yeah, that's the difference between TV and a movie, right? The TV show's not over. So to sit there and treat an episode as though we've completed anything is ridiculous, right? It's not done. I'm not done storytelling. You just saw a little sliver. You can't judge the thing till it's done.

How—

it's not like a movie.

How many seasons are like— you're doing Landman, or I don't know, pick a show. Are you planning how many seasons ahead?

For me, 5 years.

5 years?

5 years max. Then, because beyond that, now it's just problem of the week, right? And, and go back to— remember that show Beverly Hills 90210? I love that show. That show way back in the day, right? So think about that show for a minute. So Jason Priestley's the big heartthrob, and he's this— he's the guy, and, and, uh, they take him on this story arc, and then everyone gets a little tired of Jason Priestley, so then they're dying out. He's the heartthrob, he's this, and then that kind of peters out. And then they take Brian Austin Green, it's his turn, do the same exact thing we did with the other two. So your lead characters that you've been following have fallen back, and this next one takes place, and Ian Ziering's next, and now it's just romance of the week, right? Because it went too long. So if you go into them knowing this is the, the length of time that, that we're gonna, we're gonna explore and then have the courage to end it at that point in time, now you have a completed thing and it stands up and you can rewatch it.

The amount of people that rewatch 1883 and 1923 and these, in these, these basically long-form movies that are, that are just designed to be digested over a short period— Madison is the same way. It's a 6-episode season, right?

Yeah.

So you— I mean, I, I know where that I know where every show ends. I know how they all end. And I think you have to know how they end. Or if you don't, how do you know where you're going? You may not have the ending, but you need to know thematically, how does this world resolve? What are you— what are you— what are we saying? Right. Right. And, and if you know that, then you can write toward that. And, and, you know, With Yellowstone, Kevin was only supposed to be in the first 3 seasons. That was in his contract. Um, in, in my mind, that's, that's when, uh, when his youngest son takes over, and then we have to watch those and, and lose that ranch over, you know, or, or not lose the ranch, whatever the case is going to be. Um, but the network was so scared of not having Kevin be a part of it, even though Kevin was ready. He was ready to go. He had other things he wanted to do, but he stayed on for another 2 seasons. Um, and, and that was just because the show was such a behemoth.

It was such a huge hit that the, the notion of, of giving up a hit before it had run out of, of, of juice to squeeze is very foreign to a network. And there was even pressure from some of the cable companies wanting to put it in their deals that they were going to get an X number of seasons of Yellowstone to re-up with whatever this cable company is. I mean, that's the power of a really big hit show. But creatively, uh, that can run in opposition. And, and finally Kevin hit a point where he's like, I gotta go do my own thing. And I'm like, I gotta do my own thing too. So, so But we had originally conceived it together that it was 3 seasons, and then the baton is handed. I wonder if that wouldn't have been better for the show, because we had to tread water for a bit there. I think it was pretty evident.

Well, I think COVID ballooned that show. It was already a big show, and then I felt like in COVID, when everybody was trying to catch up on stuff and, "What the fuck am I going to do for 4 months? I'll watch another show I haven't seen yet." And all of a sudden it felt like Yellowstone was somehow growing. It was crazy.

Yeah. Oh yeah, they— yeah, I mean, that— what was there to do? Everybody was stuck at home.

Nothing. Yeah.

And then, and then whenever— which was different in different places, you know, the big cities were shut down for, you know, LA was shut down for over a year, um, at New York for maybe 6 months or more. I don't know how long. I didn't go to either of them, but I, you I had, I had friends in New— in LA still driving around with a fucking mask on in '23, you know. What are you guys doing? It's over.

We called them lunatics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was driving my daughter to Arizona for soccer tournaments because they wouldn't let anyone— even in the fall of 2020, they wouldn't let like any sort of high school club soccer stuff happen. So you'd have to drive across the line to where it was. So, like, the good news is we got to spend a lot of time together.

It was an interesting disease. It's, you know, it's the first disease in history that doesn't spread at protests. I don't know if you're aware of that.

Yeah, we found that out. Yeah. Um, wait, I had a couple more questions for you about actors. Cole Hauser, who I always loved— you seem to find over and over again these people where I'm like, oh, I always liked that person. Like, Kathy Riley was— she was, she was unbelievable in Flight. She'd been in some good stuff, so I wasn't surprised she took off. But Cole Hauser, like, he was in Good Will Hunting with Affleck and Damon, and he was in School Ties. Like, he was around for a while and nobody unlocked him, and then you unlocked him. So how'd you unlock him?

The movie that I saw that made me And I remember him from Dazed and Confused, right? That was a great role that he did. But it was— he played in Pitch Black with Vin Diesel and Gretchen Mol. And he was so good. And he was such a heavy actor that understood nuance. And what I mean by that is there's actors who could convey emotion. There's actors who can— just their essence feels believable. And then there's wordsmiths, someone that understands which syllable of a word you stress changes the meaning or the emphasis. And there aren't as many that have that. Right? And to have that and have an emotional presence, those are the great ones. Right? And he has that. And maybe he has it— he's not a traditional-looking, pretty boy leading man. And that may be one of the reasons that the business— because he's a dude. He's a man's man. And at a time— he came up at a time when they were buying sort of pretty and androgynous. They didn't want, right, that in a man. And our business didn't foster that. They didn't, they didn't develop that. They really wanted something that they felt was a little safer or more relatable, whatever the case may be.

Um, and he felt a little more throwback. He felt a little more '70s as an actor, that style. And, uh, which is what I grew up with. Right. That's what acting that I was always drawn to. And so he didn't even audition. We just knew it was it. I just knew.

So when you're approaching, like, a TV show or a movie, because I always feel like the best way something's going to succeed is like you're bringing me into a world. I don't know anything about this world. Like, Landman Zizi's example of this, it's like, I don't fucking know anything about how they make oil in Texas. Like, so you're just pulling me into that. It seems like you're the best at this. Every, every TV show or movie you do, you're pulling me into something that I don't really know that much about. So is that intentional or is that just the outcome?

For you, you have to understand, for me, the, the landscape is the main character that everyone's reacting to. So what's the star of The Madison? The Madison River, this idyllic place that has this incredible ability to heal, right? Which is— it is the land. It is land that's so that people would kill for, that they would die for, right? It has so much value and, and is so grand. Same thing with 23, same thing with 83, uh, with, uh, the story of the Mayor of Kingstown's the opposite, right? Here's a, here's a place that is broken. It's a, it's a, it's a complete failed society. When your last business— cling is human incarceration. As a city, you're done, right? That's it. Attracting prisons— if that's the business you're getting, then look what you're attracting with those prisons, and now you've sunk your city, right? So even though it's— the city is really the antagonist in that one, it's still the main character. With Lioness,— it is the— forget good or bad, it's stated constantly— the main character of that is our societal survival as perceived through people who do not apply morality to those decisions.

Morality is another agency. Their job is to make sure that the United States remains the United States, period, end of story. Someone else's job to interpret if the way we do that is good or bad, you know. So those to me are really interesting landscapes, uh, to then— for, for, uh, Lioness, for an example, we've seen that, a version of that world a number of times. I just juxtaposed it and made the James Bond character a woman and, and let's watch a woman deal with having two daughters that she's not present to raise and, and that the, that the husband has to, to be the one that stays at home and, and be passive and question why she has to do this. And let's watch that discussion and that debate from a different perspective.

Yeah. And another thing that I love about your shows is you find yourself like my wife, loved 1883 and 1920. We loved those shows. But my wife was always— we would watch 1883 and my wife was like, I would have been really good in the 1800s. I just think that that could have been my best time. I would have, like, known how to make stuff. I could have defended myself. Like, I just would have owned 1883. And I'm like, yeah, that's part of the greatness of these shows. You just put yourself in. I would have done terrible because I have bad eyesight. I feel like I just would have been killed. I just would have been done immediately. She would have been great. She probably would have been running a small town. But it's funny, like, watching these different things and being like, how would I fit in in this? Where would I fit in Yellowstone? Where would I fit in the Landman? Um, just because I don't know anything about those worlds. But I'm sure you get that all the time. People like, I would have been awesome in the 1880s.

But we all— I mean, isn't that part of great joy of, of storytelling and witnessing it, whether it's— whether you read it in a book or whether it's a TV show or a movie, and— or wondering what that character's life is like right after the movie's over. What did they do after that? Like, that's a fascinating thing. And that's the greatest compliment you can give the storyteller, because they successfully built a world for you, right?

Well, you also—

you com—

I mean, you also flip something like in 1880— there's stuff in those shows that you always knew but you didn't really think about. So like in the 1880s, there's really no rules, right? You go somewhere and it's, it's not like they have a set of laws or anything in place and people can just fucking go nuts. And so you're defending yourself on a totally different level at all times. I just never really thought about that that much. And then I'm watching the show, I'm like, fuck, what would I do?

The only— it was completely self-policing, right? You had to determine what your own boundaries were. If, if you, if you as an armed gunman, you know, you're traveling across the plains and you come across weak man and his wife and 2 daughters. The only— there are no consequences of actions other than losing the gunfight, which you can assess pretty quickly whether you're going to do that. So what's going to keep you from killing the dude and robbing him blind, killing the wife, raping the wife, selling the kid? What's, what's going to keep you? Only you.

Right.

That's it. There were— there was no law.

It's great.

Fascinating and a pretty terrible time because there were plenty of people that didn't have— there was no boundary for them, right?

Um, did you ever think in your wildest dreams Yellowstone would turn into what it turned into? Like, not only a massive— probably the biggest show of the last 10 years, but also a universe that went backwards and forwards? Like, when did you realize What the fuck?

Look, when HBO— when I, you know, I sold this show to HBO first, and I told them in 2015, show on television, I told them that.

You told them?

And I told them it's gonna be the biggest show on television, period, end of story. And, and when, and when the executives at Paramount read it They couldn't believe it was available. Couldn't believe it. They were shocked that no one saw it and it scared everybody. And I had the argument many times that they said, look, they just tried to do this. They made that— they made that movie Cowboys and Aliens and the cowboy genre dead. What's dead is dumb movies about cowboys and aliens. That's a bad genre. Maybe don't do that.

Right.

But every time someone makes a good Western, it's a fucking hit. Every time. Unforgiven, 310 to Yuma, Silverado, they're all hits, right? Because it's a very uniquely American thing to explore. That period's fascinating to us to look at. It's the closest thing that we had to a medieval times, right? That is our Dark Ages, our medieval period. Was the mid-18— post-Civil War 1800s.

Are there, um, any shows in the last 10 years that you've been jealous of?

I gotta be honest with you, I haven't seen anything. I haven't watched any other shows.

Oh, you're just locked into all your— well, you're doing 7 shows, you probably have to concentrate.

Well, I mean, look, here's how I explain it. You're a dentist. Okay. When you cough, do you look at pictures of teeth? Right. You know?

Yeah.

I don't want to watch anyone. I don't want to watch my own shows when I come home. I got to— you know, I don't. So, so no, I haven't seen anything.

We have to end because I know you're running low on time. We have to end on Sicario, which is an incredibly important movie in the Grantland Ringer universe that I am in. That's my Yellowstone universe. We did it for Rewatchables, um, this movie podcast we have, a couple months ago. It's a movie that people really liked when it came out, and it feels like it's, it's gaining steam and growing as the years pass and has become, I think, one of the best movies of the 2010s. When— I'm sure you knew it was good when you were doing it, but did you ever think it would have a tale like it's had?

I mean, and I don't want this to sound arrogant, um, I've never taken a movie out. I've never, you know, all my scripts are specs. In other words, I don't get hired to write them. I have an idea, I sit and I go sell it, and, and sell it with the intention of making it. So typically with my projects, there's I either put into them a penalty, which makes it like, if you're not going to make it, I'm going to make it really painful for you to not make it, or I'm going to mandate in the contract that you make it, that you have no choice.

Yeah.

And so I don't take something out if I don't think it's going to be a hit and it's going to be really, really impactful, then I don't make it. Then, then for me, it's not ready to be taken out. I can't. And there's a lot of people— I'm very fortunate in the fact that when I first started screenwriting, I didn't fall into the dangers. There's traps in any business, right? You could say that if you're an actor, the big trap is getting on some sitcom that goes for 10 or 12 years, and you may have— yeah, you made money, uh, and you had a stable job, job, but is it fulfilling you creatively? And are you going to have to overcome that typecasting when you get out? I was having a friend of mine who called me for advice today about this, where she got offered this job. It's a money job, but she doesn't really want to do it, right? But she was conflicted. What do I do? I've got two kids. And I asked her, I said, okay, are you behind on your mortgage?

No.

Will you be behind on your mortgage in 6 months? No. Okay, then you don't need to take a money job, right? None of us got into this to make money. The fact that it pays well is pretty shocking to all of us. None of us— nobody got thinking— I certainly didn't get into screenwriting for the money. I got into it because I was tired of compromising and I wanted to control my own destiny. I had no idea that it paid well. Right? I got my first residual check for Sicario, I was like, oh shit, I wish I'd have done this 15 years ago. Um, but, but so with Sicario, I wanted to write something that was unique in every way. I wanted the structure to be unique. I wanted to really play with who is the protagonist, and I wanted to give the one character with, with a moral compass, no power. And then it's probably the first time that I was already fucking with critics because I made that character also a woman, which, which means instantly they're going to assume the reason I did that is because I think women are powerless, when it is actually morality that froze her.

It wasn't gender. It was the fact that she believed in right and wrong. She believed in playing by the rules in a, in a sphere where there are no rules. No one is playing by the rules. The cartels aren't playing by the rules. The cartels don't even have rules. They may have their own codes amongst themselves, but they have no rules. And so now the federal government decided that they were going to play with no rules, which would not be the first time our government's decided to do that. You can ask Maduro about that. And, and so here's what it looks like. What if they treated criminals like enemy combatants? And so I, I wrote that script on a 5-act structure instead of a 3-act structure, um, to, to play with the— you're, you're pre— you have a preconceived— you're conditioned when you watch a movie to know 17 minutes in, there's going to be a big revelation, and I'm going to know what this movie's about, right? And then we're going to go off on the journey, and, and about an hour and 10 in, we're on the mission. We found the villain, we found the gold, we found the thing, and we're on a mission.

And for the next 15-20 minutes, we're going to see if we, uh, if we can achieve the mission, whatever that is. And we typically know, even though it's exciting to watch, we know they're going to get the girl or they're going to win the fight or they're going to conquer the hill or whatever it's going to be. We know, right? But if you start playing with that structure and I don't really tell you what the goal is until the, the end of Act 3, Act 4, well, that feels very different. You know, the shootout that happens on the border is really in the end of the second act, okay? And I built that battle within its own little five-act structure. If you watch it, you could sit there and find the beats to it. And I did that to completely disorient the audience about how in the world I'm We're only 40 minutes in. I think everyone's about to die. I don't think anyone's safe. Frank, how can the movie be over? And then you've got an audience that's truly jarred and on the edge of their seat. And I knew when I wrote it that I had effectively done that.

And the way that you know that, you can read it and look at it yourself, but the reaction of the town Like, Hollywood went nuts for that script. It scared the shit out of everybody. Nobody wanted to make it. The producer who decided to make it was— his name is Basil, and he had made The Town with the movie that Ben did. Great movie. And again, on paper, that's a pretty dark film. It wasn't one that the whole world was running around saying, "We got to make this movie." People would read that script and go, "Damn, this is a great script. I don't even want to begin to think about making it, but damn, I can't wait to see it." And Basil didn't hesitate. And the first director we sent it to was Denis Villeneuve. And when Denis read it, he— I had to make it. I knew I had to make it. And when we had Denis, I knew I had a director that could execute the way that I had structured the script. He would get it. He would understand it. It, because he's very comfortable telling complicated stories. So when we had those pieces and then the cast just fell together, we— I think we all knew.

We all knew what it was.

Well, it's interesting. I mean, you have to think—

I was surprised. I was surprised that the way that Lionsgate released it— I think if it had been a bigger hit domestically, I think that they decided to make an awards play, and I wouldn't have done that. I would have treated it like a summer movie. And then you walk in and you think you're seeing this exciting thing, and it slaps you in the face, and you walk out of there going, what in the world did I just see? They did that with Platoon, which was brilliant to treat that, to not tell the world we're about to punch you in the stomach.

Right. Well, it's interesting cuz obviously you made all your success and you bet on yourself in all these different ways. But, um, you know, a little, a tiny bit of luck helps every once in a while, right? Like you get the director for Sicario who turns out to be one of the best directors of the last 15 years and he likes the movie. I can't think of anyone else who would've directed it. Like looking back, it's, he was perfect.

It's 4, I would say it's 4 fortuitous. You make your own luck, right? Right. Um, lucky is when—

Fortuitous is a better word.

—onto your shitty script. Yeah, he signs on to your shitty script and, uh, and now it's great and it goes out and it's a hit. And through no— through nothing that you— now you're lucky, right? That's lucky.

Here's another example. What if you had just gotten a job acting on some show that locked you down in 2010 where you were doing well? Like, what if you were on, I don't know, CSI New Orleans, and you were the third lead, and that's just what your job was? Would you even have written?

Well, remember, I quit Sons of Anarchy to write. Okay. In 2010, I was on a show. And thank God that they had so little respect for me that they offered me garbage. Right. Garbage. They made it really easy to walk away. Because it was easy for me to sit there and say, "Okay, I'm gonna do this for the next 6 or 7 years, and I'm still gonna have a second job with this junk they're paying me, and I'm gonna miss my chance to be a creator, a chance to tell a story." That's also— if they hadn't treated me so disrespectfully, I would have never— They hit me over the head with a mallet that made it so clear that the only way I was gonna get to be an effective storyteller was if I— because actors are storytellers, uh, yeah, it was if I told my own stories. I was never going to get the opportunity as an actor. And, and look, I'm not saying I'm— was a good enough actor that I deserved it. I guess I didn't, right? I guess I didn't, because 15 years in this business and I never had that opportunity.

So I guess I was doing exactly the acting I— that's all the acting I should have doing. They helped me see that.

Was there a fork in the road role that you came close to getting, or you think like, man, if that had happened, maybe I'm going this way instead?

Yeah, there was one. There was one. Uh, I, I was— I was a couple. Um, but there was, there was this movie called American History X with Ed Norton. Um, And the role that Stacy Keach played was written as Ed Norton's character's best friend. And they had tapped me for that. And then either the director or Ed or whoever made a decision that if it was his friend betrayed him, And they're not wrong, by the way. But if the friend had betrayed him, it didn't make a greater statement about what they were really focusing on, which was this racism at an extreme. And so, if it's just, "How does his best friend being a fucker and betraying him lead to this epiphany that everything that he believed about race was a lie, right? So, so they, so they, as a storyteller, they rightfully, uh, went back and addressed the script and, and changed it to make this character much more of a leader and a father figure and, and not so much an equal to, to, uh, and, and more part of an organized racist white supremacist as opposed to a bunch of skinhead drug dealers, which was what it was originally.

Right. So probably the right decision for them from a story standpoint. But, but it, but it cost me a job. Have you, have you ever— the other one was, I got pretty far down the road on Walking Dead. And, and Bernthal beat me out of that role. Really? Yeah, yeah. So he was on— when he did Wind River, you know, we were talking and I'm like, you know, you saved my ass, dude. I was damn near— I was gonna— I was damn near still an actor.

Oh man, luckily. And then he ends up in Sicario too.

Yeah, yeah.

So you never thought about— I mean, you've popped in— you popped in Yellowstone, but you never thought about writing one thing that you would be like one of the stars in, or you're— that bug is gone?

The funny thing is— oh no, I play a character on, on, uh, and he's sort of one of these career ground banshee, just a, um, just a, just a hammer. He's just a, he's just a hammer, uh, and yeah, and it's fun to do those stunts and to run around and, you know, shoot the guns and play, play that. It's— and I get, you know, if I do an episode a half of that a season, then I've scratched that itch. But I've ironically been offered roles, uh, you know, since, and, and I've, I haven't— I've turned it all down. Yeah, I don't have any interest in spending 4 months.

Would you have interest doing Rewatchables if you're ever in LA? Because we would love to have you talk about one of your favorite movies. I feel like you'd be really good at it. If you ever do Rewatchables in Fort Worth, Texas, I'll do I might have to come. You bet. I might have to get like 5 choices. I'll come.

I'll come to you because I think you'd be really good at this because I've made it pretty clear, like, the only way you're getting me back to Los Angeles is if it secedes from the union and I'm drafted into the army to take it back.

It's the only way. All right, that's good. A lot of people feel that way about Los Angeles. My friend William Goldman, who's sadly not with us anymore, but never wanted to come back here. He was like, New York, New York. I never want to come back. That's it. Some people just, that's it. They're done. Yeah.

No, I love New York. I love New York. It doesn't, that city's way, way stronger than whatever political wind is blowing it in any direction. Right. Whereas LA's built on sand. It ain't strong. There's no foundation there. That's sorry sucker. It's right that way.

Uh, the book is called I Did Not Die in Prison. It is out. It's out on hardcover right now, June 23rd. I'm gonna have to come to Fort Worth to see you. America heard you say if I came down, you'd do a rewatchables. But it's great to talk to you. I really admire everything you built. Yeah, we'll figure out something. But congrats on everything though. It's been fun to watch from afar.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

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