Transcript of A Finals Pick, Greatest Knicks Ever, ‘Made’ N.Y.C. Stars, and Big NFL Trades With Max Kellerman

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by PayPal. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we put up a new rewatchables on Sunday night. It might have been the best one we've ever done. It's at least in the running. It was 2001: A Space Odyssey, me, Sean Fantasy, and the one and only Steven Spielberg. Just an incredible episode. Uh, we thought we were gonna have him for like 75 minutes. He stayed for 2 hours and, uh, just put on a film school clinic for us. What a rush. What a great time. Uh, claims he's coming back to do Jaws next year. We'll see. But we loved having him. Really proud of that episode. So go check it out when you have a chance. We are gonna have another, uh, Rewatchables episode this week. We have a mailbag coming on Thursday, so stay tuned for that one. I am going to be doing a podcast right after Game 1. Tomorrow night. Uh, that's gonna be live on Netflix, so get ready for that as well. Uh, the Knicks are in the finals. Had to have Max Kellerman, uh, to just talk about football trades, the Knicks, Wemby, what should OKC do, greatest Knicks of all time.

Uh, we tried to cover as many things as we possibly could, and you can check out Max as well on the Game Over podcast with Max Kellerman and Rich Paul. So that's Coming up next, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna bring our friends from Pearl Jam and then 2 hours with Max Kellerman next. 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.

Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut. Sehr gut? Wieso, Steuer ist sehr gut.

Das sagen ganz viele.

Cool, wer sagt das?

Stiftung Warentest, Computerbild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztipp, such dir was aus. Mega, aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö, einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig.

Klingt sehr gut. Ist sehr gut.

Hol dir dein Geld zurück mit WISO Steuer. Max Kellerman is here. We are recording on a Tuesday morning Pacific time, a day before the New York Knicks are in the NBA Finals. A day you never probably thought you'd see again in your lifetime.

Had you given up? Getting to the Finals? Possible. Yeah. Winning the Finals, something else.

Impossible. We're going to talk about that. I have a whole bunch of Knicks stuff for you, but I want to talk about football first just because I didn't get a chance. The NBA, every time they think they have the stage, they have Wemby coming in vanquishing OKC. We have a Knicks-Spurs wet dream finals.

The face of the league. Everyone loves him. Oh my God. Worldwide sensation.

And the NFL is like, hold my beer.

Versus the biggest market and like center of the known universe that is basketball starved. And that is, by the way, a basketball town above all things. Yeah. Perfect for the NBA and they can get bumped off the back page.

Hardest ticket in probably the history of New York sports. And the NFL is like, two monster trades for you today. How about this? We're going to take it for one day from you.

A buck 35 per seat. The first seats that sold. $270,000 for two courtsides.

I was thinking about that. My dad was always in this, but like my dad in the '08 Finals, you know, he said season tickets in '74 for the Celts. But it was bad for, I don't know, 15 years. They made, they had one like decent team and then the '08 Finals, they play the Lakers and it's like, it's a lot of money I could get for these tickets. I could basically pay for the last 7 years, but it's like, well, what's the point of having the tickets if I'm not going to go to these games?

Got to go at least one to do the mental math for it. You got to go to at least one.

I feel like you got to go to all, but I would understand if people sold.

Yeah, we never had season tickets growing up. It was always like Yeah, I got box seats. And I'm like, well, what are we doing up here? Well, when I was a kid, box seats meant sat down there. So, so like I, I was a bleacher creature. Yeah.

Football, Miles Garrett. Yeah. For Jared Verse, a 1, a 2, and a 3 in 3 different years. In a lot of ways, a, a much bigger trade than Parsons. 'Cause Jared Verse is awesome. Yeah. I was, I was kind of stunned by this one. The Rams, They're zagging every year. They're always trying to— they're— everyone's doing this, we're doing this. We don't care about first-round picks, whatever. We'll just try to pick up guys later in the draft. We're gonna go in over and over again on these guys in their prime. And it's mostly worked. They got— they won a Super Bowl. They're always relevant. They always feel like they're one of the 5 or 6 best teams. I wanted to hate this trade for them because it was like, man, Verse is really good. Like, is that Is that upgrade worth all you're giving up? But then I kept thinking back to all the Browns games I watched the last couple of years, especially last year. He's just— Garrett's getting double teamed and the line is just going backwards anyway.

He makes everyone better. Yeah, but versus— look, when I first heard about the trade, I just assumed it was draft picks. Yeah. I'm like, oh, they gave up this, this, this. Oh, wait. And verse. And verse. Got to do it if you're the Rams. Yeah, you must do it. First of all, Myles Garrett's wearing the crown, right? So there's a lineal champ in football too on the defensive side. It went from J.J. Watt to Aaron Donald to Myles Garrett. This is the Myles Garrett defensive era right now, and he's in his prime.

That's a fun championship belt, by the way. Reggie White had it for a few years.

LT. Reggie White. Bruce Smith popped in there maybe between those two. Yeah, there's like— it is. And every era has that guy. Occasionally it's like, well, Khalil Mack never had it, this guy never had it, but actually it was really always Aaron Donald's. And maybe you can find a few years, but by and large, J.J. Watt.

Yeah.

Aaron Donald, Miles Garrett. And I'm sure that that's not the first thing they had in mind. Hey, let's make Verse into an even better player, right? Yeah. But if the opportunity presents itself to get a special player, you go all in. You figure out the rest later.

If you— especially with how close they were last year.

They were. That was a Super Bowl. Like, you know, no offense, Pats fans, but like, it was very clear sometimes.

I take no offense. I'm not even sure we should have been in the Super Bowl.

Out of the, out of the, out of the AFC, you're saying?

I was talking to my buddy Gus Ramsey yesterday, who's a huge Broncos fan, and I was just like, I can't believe you guys didn't beat us. Like, that Bo Nix thing was such a crazy—

Yeah.

End of the game fluke. And I just— they get— Denver gets to 20 points if they have Bo Nix in that game. That's not a 10-7 game.

No, but that's a pretty evenly— it's pretty even match. It's like the— it's like the junior varsity Rams-Seahawks, right? Pretty even matchup, could go either way.

We couldn't block though. No. The further I get away from the playoffs, I'm like, I can't believe we thought we were going to win the Super Bowl.

Yeah, you went on it.

Both sides of our line couldn't block, and then Seattle was like, oh, well, Campbell, we're gonna go attack this side too. And they just destroyed us.

And Drake May looked like a deer in headlights in the Super Bowl, but there's the J Brown. Okay, first things first. So, so this is what I love about what the Rams did. Yeah. Is your faith misplaced? Yes or no? Or have you put it in the right place? Hey, I know what we'll do. We'll trade for James Harden. That'll win us a championship and we'll give him everything he needs. Right? Misplaced faith.

Especially when it comes out they could have Drew Holiday instead. Oh, that is brutal. How did they decide on James Harden over Drew Holiday? That's insane. I couldn't believe that.

So the Rams trade— let's back up before Stafford. Yeah, they used a lot of draft capital to get Jared Goff. Yeah, Jared Goff's not just like we had the number one pick. Jared Goff represents multiple high-level draft picks in order to move up to get Goff, and it worked. You made a Super Bowl. Yeah, but you didn't win a Super Bowl. So then You put even more draft capital, multiple high-end picks to turn Goff into Stafford, thinking that is the difference between making and winning a Super Bowl. And it worked. And they were right. And it almost worked twice. Right. So like, is the faith placed in the right place?

Matthew Stafford. Was that second?

Yeah.

Yeah. It wasn't.

Yeah.

No.

I'd have to check that.

I think it was signed.

No, they signed, they signed Davante. They signed Davante. I knew it wasn't a first. They signed Davante. But, but like, that is when you think about what that took to get Stafford, the draft capital, people would say you're insane. They won a Super Bowl. They came this close to winning another Super Bowl. So you have a 2-year window right now. And who knows if he'll be good 2 years from now.

They also really, they draft well in the later rounds, which I wonder, like, when you know you don't have picks, You're basically crossing off the first 30 guys on the board, right? And you're spending way more time on the next level of guys.

If you're good at that, like Puka Nacua, if you're good at that, you can trade draft picks. Yeah, right.

And they've been good.

They've been real. And then even the McDuffie thing is like, they'll be better there.

I forgot they did that.

They'll be better there than they were. Like, the real, the real separation. Okay, special teams, Seahawks had a big advantage. Going into the Super Bowl and the secondary Seahawks had an advantage. Well, the secondary is kind of shored up now. And then you add Miles Garrett, like even if it doesn't work, it's worth the shot. Like take a swing. That is a swing worth taking.

Well, I also like, we're old enough to remember when this moves like this over the years, when you put a guy that couldn't get over the hump and also wasn't getting enough attention for how great he was, and then you put him on the right team. In a big city with a chance to win, you always get the bump.

You get the bump. With Stafford, it was so unclear. It was like, he's always considered top 5 arm talent, right? But then after he got to the point in his career where it really wasn't clear, you know, usually a great quarterback, even in a bad organization, keeps you at a certain level.

Yeah.

And he did for a while, but not always. And it was like, well, is Stafford a little overrated by the real football heads, or is this just a bad situation for him? Stafford is—

that's Trevor Lawrence now. Yeah, it was the same thing where the nerds were saying he was better than he was, but the eye test was like, all right, well, where is it? And then he finally made the playoffs. But Stafford, I could never figure out because he was on the Lions, the worst football team of, you know, run franchise. But he did have receivers, so it was always like, what is this guy? Yeah, it always seemed like he was getting the shit kicked out of him, but he put up numbers. He did. Yeah. But there was a point, I remember when it was like, he's going to be a Hall of Famer someday. And the counter was like, really? He's Matthew Stafford.

I mean, now surefire Hall of Famer.

Now he's a surefire.

And even to win that Super Bowl, you think about, I think we've discussed this here, but when Brady is defending the title in Tampa. Yeah. And he leads the team down and scores at the end of the game. The reason Brady wins all those championships, the reason, like, why guys like Kobe and these guys won a lot of games— like, you think about, like, the Sacramento game with the Lakers— is because everyone on the court believes that that guy is destined to win. Right.

Kind of what the Knicks have with Jalen Brunson stumbled into with Brunson. They just feel like, if we can hang around, he can win for us.

That guy. But does the other team believe it too? Because when Brady's on the field, everyone, both teams believe it and are like, okay, Here comes, like, they win now. And Stafford drove him right back down the field and won the game and then went on to win the Super Bowl. He's a special guy. Like, to overcome that kind of stuff, that's, uh, it's like, like Curt Schilling. Whatever you think about Curt Schilling, should be in the Hall of Fame, obviously. And, and when, when, when guys like, uh, Brocious and Tino hit home runs at the end of the games, that signals this ain't your year, especially 2001. 9/11, and in New York, and the Yankees are destined to win. But a guy like Curt Schilling's like, not so fast, right? Right. What was it? Destiny, whatever. In destiny, or what do you have? It was like we're strippers or whatever. Mystique and destiny, or I forgot what two words it was, but everyone was using that in New York, that the Yankees are going to win. Yeah. And the retort was, those are, you know, that's all they are.

I kind of still can't believe they didn't win that year because part of it was because Rivera got dinged up in the 9th, which was inconceivable in the, in the moment. Actually, I know it was even worse than that.

Rivera, who's one of the best fielding players at his position of all time. Yeah. Turned around, game was over, double play ball, turned around and threw into center field. Right? Like, stuff like that happens. And then you bring the infield in, you get a little and pop out. But the point is, when you have a guy like that on your team, it, it, like, all that kind of team of destiny stuff on the other side goes away. Stafford's that kind of guy.

Yeah.

He had to overcome Brady to do that. That's why I, when Stafford has the ball late, I thought the Rams were going to win the game late in the game, even though Seahawks, you knew, were a little bit better than them. But it's like, they got Stafford.

The Miles Garrett piece. I don't think most people know what he looks like. Now, you could say this for most football players, but like, if, I don't know, Karl-Anthony Towns walked into a restaurant, most people know what he looks like because we see him on a basketball court. And football players, for the most part, we don't know what they look like. I think people know what the quarterbacks look like.

You don't think they know what Garrett looks like? I think so.

I don't know. Like, would my son know what he looks like? I'm just thinking, like, the recognizability.

Well, he's had his helmet off on the field. We know famously.

So I think there's just a level of fame that he doesn't have that this Rams thing is going to immediately solve. He was this underground— he's playing at Sunday, 1 o'clock ET, getting the shit kicked out of his team, getting the shit kicked out of them every game basically. He's on one Thursday Night Football game a year, probably against the Steelers, and maybe a crappy Monday Night Game. And then everyone is telling us how great he is, but sometimes this happens. I remember this happened to Moss in the mid-2000s when he just became irrelevant for like 3 years. When, when you're just on shitty teams year after year.

Moss went from, is he gonna challenge Jerry Rice as the greatest wideout ever? To which, oh, I guess debatable. Yeah. At the time. And then it was like, well, I guess that didn't happen. And then it was like, oh wait, maybe it did happen when he went to New England.

It was, We got him for a 4th round pick, but that's how bad he was on the Raiders. That's— I have him— we might have talked about this. I have him 2nd.

Yeah, who would be 2nd over Moss?

I, I feel like Rice 1, Moss 2 is kind of set in stone.

No question.

People try to push the Terrell Owens case every once in a while, and it's just like, doesn't team murdering matter?

I love T.O., but he murdered at least 2 teams, right? Well, the thing— Ateo gets a little bit of that.

The chemistry stuff has to matter a tiny bit when you're talking about the greatest of the greats.

Fine. But then you also have to give him credit for— and this was—

tripped me out when he plays in the Super Bowl hurt with a broken leg.

He is the best player on his team.

I think he had 8 catches, 7 or 8 catches.

He is arguably the best player in the game.

We couldn't cover him.

And he was criticized heading into that game. It's— he's a selfish player. Yeah. And I was thinking, wait, this guy's rep is so bad in the media that playing with a broken leg, he's criticized for being selfish, and then he's the best player on the field.

Was tough. It, it spoke a lot to how annoying he was in the 2000s, but also how great he was. The AJ Brown piece has just a whiff of that because he was unhappy with the Eagles. But watching from my TV in LA, he should have been unhappy. I didn't understand anything about their offense. So the Pats get him.

Not last year.

Rumored for I don't know, 3 months. It was pretty— once the Eagles started drafting receivers, it was pretty clear it was gonna happen. They gave up a 28th first. I wish they had top 10 protected it, but they don't do it in football.

Yeah. Why don't they do it? Is that a— they don't do it. Are they allowed to do it in football?

They are allowed to do it. They just—

you could have done it where it's like, make it top 15 at least, right? Because if Drake Maye gets hurt, something happens, you wind up in the middle of the pack. That's the NFL.

Well, it was interesting that they didn't make it 27 because I think If I'm the Patriots, I wouldn't have because of the schedule. Super Bowl hangover. If you're going to stink in 27 or 28, 27 is probably the safer bet.

You think that's the Pats? I figured that's the Eagles.

I think that's the Pats.

I figured that's the Eagles saying, all right, we don't want a late first round. It's practically like a second round pick. Why don't we roll the dice and see maybe something happens in the next year or two?

I think it was the Eagles. Because they're playing the percentages of what happens to the team that loses the Super Bowl and gets the first-place schedule and everything.

Go right here before you think it's the Eagles wanting the next. Yeah, I agree.

I think the Eagles want not this year, but I think the Patriots wanted it to be '28 because of some fear of '27. What could happen? If I was the Eagles, I would have wanted '27.

Really? Yeah. No, I want '28 because the thing about AJ Brown, and this happened with Jalen Hurts. What was Hurts' big problem before they got Brown was that he couldn't see the middle of the field. Yeah. Right. Then you get a guy who— and like, is AJ Brown a little past it? Yeah. He's probably not as good as he was a couple of years ago, but he's never— we don't know.

They didn't throw him the ball.

Yeah. Right. You don't know. But he's also his— it's his age. It's the whole thing. He's never a guy who relied on speed. It's not like, oh my God, AJ Brown is a one-on-one matchup nightmare because he gets all this separation. He's a nightmare because he doesn't need separation. He's going to catch the ball. Right. So a guy like that who's tough, who can go across the middle of the whole thing, makes a guy like Jalen Hurts go from, hey, is he going to work out, to almost 2-time Super Bowl MVP. And you got a guy like Drake May, who was in a version of the situation Hurts was in. He looked lost in the Super Bowl. You get a receiver like that and that could make him, that can easily have him taking the next step, especially in the moment of truth.

There's a lot of good stats with AJ Brown against man-to-man where he's basically like the most unstoppable guy in the league.

Yeah.

Because that was the biggest issue with the Pats. Like they, none of the receivers could get open. And as the year went on, you could feel it. And then in the playoffs when they start going against these awesome defenses, you know, not to make excuses for Drake, 'cause he, you know, he, I don't think he was healthy, but he was also really bad in the Super Bowl. But then they do that all 22 shots and you watch what he's looking at.

Yeah.

And everybody's just, blanketed. But they would have like the straight line guys open, then every once in a while Diggs. But it really— the second half of the year wasn't open as much.

But, but that's the thing about AJ Brown. He's kind of never open, but he's always open. Yeah. Like wherever he is, you can throw him the ball and there's a good shot he's going to catch it. And that, that is like the perfect player for a young quarterback who needs to take a step forward.

He had 145 targets in '22 and 158 in '23. And then the last 2 years was 97 and 121. And it added up when you watched it because, and I, I get it, like they were doing that weird math thing with the possessions where it was like, we're gonna shorten the game because we have a better team. Every play felt like it was 35, 40 seconds and the pace of the team just seemed way off. But if I'm AJ Brown, I'm, hey, like he clearly got fed up with it. Now he's on this Patriots team that desperately needs him. He's gonna have Dobbs next to him. They have a bunch of young receivers. The offensive line's okay. It's going to be slightly better.

The Eagles just had— their offense was ridiculous last year. Yeah. Right. There was no real reason for— I mean, you can, you could try to rationalize it was a bad idea. And empirically, it was a bad idea. Right.

Well, which part? Like how? Because to me, it's like you're going to pay $50 million a year to Hurts and you're going to pay $60 million to two receivers. And then you're basically going to walk the ball up the court.

Like, you've built this team that's supposed to do this, that dominates both sides of the line. Yeah.

And then, and now you're playing a different style than the team you built, which I never really fully understood. I know it's frustrating with the Philly fans. So the best case, and he's a Vrabel guy, which we, you know, is a big piece of this. Vrabel loves his guys. Vrabel needed this, by the way. He needed something good to happen.

He got AJ. It was all worth it.

Yeah, you know, it's been 2 weeks without a story and now he's got AJ Brown.

But that's good. When coaches should get— go get their guys.

Yeah, well, I was looking at the wide receiver trades because best case was Moss. When it gets in trouble, when you give up like big capital, like a first-round pick— the Cowboys gave up 2 for Joey Galloway that year and he immediately got hurt. Roy Williams, Percy Harvin, people like that. That's where you get into trouble. You don't get into trouble when you're getting one of the best receivers in the league.

Actually, everyone thinks that, like, for forever now, it's like quarterback's the most important guy, obviously, right? And then everyone's thinking, well, then his protection is the— so left tackle. Yeah. And then it's defensive end off the right side, or pass rusher, because that— and that— no, it's actually quarterback 1, 1A. Is a legit elite receiver, right?

At least one.

A. Yeah, that's, that's so much more valuable than every other position. It's that, that's what the league is now. And like, by the way, you bring up, um, Randy Moss. When the Giants got Plaxico Burress, they won the Super Bowl. Then the next year, he literally shoots himself in the foot, right? And they don't have Plaxico Burress. And I'm thinking at the time, well, no one receiver. No, it was night and day difference. Right? Like when you have an actual elite top 5 guy, top 10 guy, it's other than the quarterback, the most important position on the field.

But a lot of those guys— the 11 Giants, so annoying to me. You didn't even have that. Their second Giants Super Bowl.

No, we didn't have that. But, but we had, we had some good receivers.

Terrible loss. To me, that loss is much worse for me as a Pats fan than '07. Can I tell you? '07. They beat us.

That second one.

11's ridiculous.

That second one was so amazing as a Giants fan. I was more exhausted after watching that game than I remember at any point in my life because—

when I could have stole a Super Bowl, I didn't have a better team.

I could imagine a little kid growing up in Boston somewhere watching that game, and all he knows, his first memory is that they somehow, the perfect season, They're about to be anointed greatest team in the history of sports, right? Yeah. And they somehow lose in the most unlikely way, like the Tyreek catch. It's happening again. Again. It's like a train wreck for a Patriots fan unfolding like that. I did not.

I went to that game.

I was in LA for that game.

From the moment Brady had the safety on the intentional grounding that I still don't know how that was the call. And the game was just off. We had Gronk on one leg. The Giants, I, who was it? Brandon Jacobs was like, it was just a weird Giants offense. The, it was a lot of like, the score was always weird the whole game. It was like one of those games where it was like 15 to 12. You let 'em score intentionally to try to, yeah, it was every, every piece of that game was kind of off.

The, and then the Manning hit, like you hear Belichick say, and this is what Belichick did at his best. Take away your first and second option. Beat us with your third option. And he did. Like, that's okay.

I was in the end zone where Eli had that throw. Yeah. The throw was incredible.

Yeah, it's one of the, it's one of the best throws ever.

I think he, what was he on, like his own 8 or his own 9, or I don't remember, but he just like, it was a fucking frozen rope.

It was unbelievable.

75 yards catching the guy like this in the one spot where he could get it. And that's, if you're making the Eli Hall of Fame case, Which I did. It's whatever he was doing on that last Giants drive, even though he tried to throw it to us 3 times.

It was right.

He was scrambling for his life and just creating shit, and it somehow worked. And then that Manningham throw.

The same reason that Peyton, a lot of his career was bad in the playoffs. Yeah. Is because when you are the chosen one and you are expected to be perfect, right, man, there's a lot on the line in those moments. When you're his kid brother, It's like, there's no, what, what, like if I fail, big deal. So why not go for it? Right? Like there's no fear of failure for a guy like Eli.

Do you think now that, now that we have Dart, it's the face of the Giants. Does he get compared to Eli or is it, is it too far gone now?

He's more talented. Yeah. You know, it's a different game now, but no, I mean, I, the Giants, Eli's just kind of over here. He's a Hall of Famer. Look, first of all, he had an Ironman streak. He was playing in Bad Weather City, like, for the— with the wind and everything, at like Meadowlands was not—

so that's the real Hall of Fame case, is him in the playoff games. He was freezing cold in Lambeau, the Candlestick twice.

Yeah, against Favre and Rodgers, and taking huge, huge, huge punishment in those games. Tough as nails.

The toughest motherfucker. And that's— I don't See, I have trouble with the Hall of Fame in general because I feel like we've just increased the capacity of the restaurant to ridiculous.

Yeah, it's just, well, it's inevitable, ruined now, but it's inevitable because once whoever the worst guy is who gets in, that will now be the benchmark. And people say, well, he's better than this guy, why isn't he in?

All due respect to Michael Cooper, but that's where the NBA Hall of Fame is now. Like, Michael Cooper's in. So if you go through the Knicks team right now, it's like, who could make the Hall of Fame from the Knicks? It's like, who Who wouldn't make the Hall of Fame from the Knicks?

So maybe you got 3 starters who could do it.

Yeah. I mean, Towns is probably a Hall of Famer at this point, and it's nuts, but it's Brunson.

Yeah. And then the question would be OG.

OG could stay healthy for a couple more years. And then it's like, what if Mikal Bridges plays 1,700 games and is the number 4 guy on a title team?

Yeah.

I think, I don't know anymore. I don't know what a Hall of Famer is.

But, but you have to, like, Cooper, you could hang your hat on something that defined him.

At a certain level. He was an awesome role player, right?

Like, you know, so, but although if Bridges, if Bridges keeps playing, like he's two different guys, regular season, playoffs. He's like during the regular season, it's like, you 5 firsts on that? Are you out of your mind? He's a nice 3 and D guy, but that's it. 3 and D plus.

Halfway through the Atlanta series, it seemed like a catastrophe.

Every playoffs he's like this though. Yeah. Like his defense is unbelievable. He's hitting shots.

He was great on Maxi. I love how he figured out how to play with Brunson and Towns in the playoffs. For some reason it clicked. Like he's just popping the right spots.

Well, because they changed the way they use Towns, really. Yeah. That's the whole thing.

We gotta talk about that, that Finals. We're gonna take one break and hit the Finals. Okay. All right. The 2026 NBA Finals is here. New York, San Antonio. We're gonna make some picks. I am going to probably share picks for at least a few of the games on my Twitter feed from FanDuel Sportsbook. For this series though, since we're doing this on a Tuesday, I like the Spurs to win this series. I like the Spurs in 6, which is 5-to-1 odds, but I think the Spurs would be my series pick as well. I wouldn't mess with the— Wemby Diama is almost definitely the Finals MVP. You're just better off taking the Spurs moneyline at that point. So. Game to game, I would definitely take San Antonio in game 1, and then we'll see how it goes. Usually home team wins game 1, game 2 becomes a little bit of a tester out slugfest. When I bet, I bet with FanDuel. It's a brand I trust. Easy to build NBA bets on FanDuel as well and find futures, all kinds of things you want to do. You're getting great odds, payouts on your parlays, boosts every day.

Get your winnings instantly. FanDuel, play your game. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. Family vacations are great. My, uh, favorite family vacation ever, I went to cover the 2012 Olympics in London and I brought my family. My son was 5, my daughter was 7, and we were in London for 3 weeks and we went to Paris for another week and it was just awesome. Uh, our kids were the right age to travel. That's my number one family vacation I've ever had. But we've had plenty of those trips where everyone's excited, but you hit the planning part, suddenly it feels like there's too many moving pieces. You start talking yourself out of it. Can't find the right flight, can't find the right hotel. That's why Expedia is a total game changer. Flights, hotels, vacation rentals, cars, activities, everything's in one spot, which makes the whole process way easier. And the bundle and save feature is huge. The more you bundle, the more you can save because you can book what you need now, add more later, keep saving on the way. Book your flight today, attach your hotel tomorrow, and you're still good. So if you're thinking about your next family getaway, bundle your flights, cars, hotels, vacation rentals, and save.

Savings vary, members only. Book your next trip with Expedia today. Who you picking for the finals?

This close to taking the Knicks.

They check a lot of boxes for the nobody believes in us pick.

They're like maybe one guy short on the bench right now, but it doesn't—

I wish we don't know the Robinson situation.

That's the whole thing. He's really their sixth man. He doesn't— but he's really—

you've seven guys. Yeah. Including Robinson. Yeah. Shamet and him off the bench. McBride, we'll see. We'll see what McBride looks like again. I know, but we'll see what he looks like against San Antonio. Yeah. Um, but Robinson, you need for, 'cause you need fouls and he's also a great playoff performer.

Yeah. Like he really is a great, he defensive guys you don't always think of like that, but like watch him play in the playoffs, you go championship player. I want him on my team.

He's Wemby kryptonite too, because Zach and I talked about this a little on Saturday, the way to kind of hit, and Hardenstein did a little bit in the last series, but when Wemby's playing that box-in-one zone, whatever the fuck he's doing, and he's, especially with Brunson, where they'll have guys on Brunson and then Wemby kind of shifting over, and you leave the back of the basket open, and that's like Mitch's specialty. It's like, you're not gonna box me out, I'm just gonna get 10 offensive rebounds. That was what OKC, anytime they felt like they had momentum, it was on the offensive boards. So they need Mitch for that for anything.

Knicks are good on the offensive glass. Yeah.

Yeah. OG would be the other one. Knicks seem like they're healthy except for Robinson.

Um, the, the game 3, game 4 crowds have been crazy. That's a huge part of it. Like health this time of year. They happen to be very healthy right now.

Well, not playing basketball always helps.

No question.

You just like getting the 9 days off.

And as the, as the road team, the long, like if you have a long layoff, I hate to have home court because you're going to, you could give it up game 1 before you get that out of your system. You know, the rust gone. But if you're on the road, so what? You lose game 1. Now you're rested. You have a good shot at splitting on the road and taking home court. So it's like kind of working out in their favor. And they beat 'em in the Cup on a neutral site. They came a possession away from beating 'em in San Antonio. Right. They have a way of playing this.

I watched the game. Their teams are even.

They're even. Yeah. And because the Knicks slow it up and be, when they have their version of the death lineup on the floor, they can hit shots late in the clock. So they're slowing up the pace and scoring late in the clock, and that's kind of stymies the Spurs offense.

I think here's what I'm gonna pick the Spurs. Here's what I think really hurts the Knicks in this series is all the layoffs between the games. 'Cause they have this 2-2, 1-1-1 schedule and they've spaced stuff out. And I think that's really helpful to Wemby. 100%. I felt like in the OKC series, it was a constant battle of You know, there were just games where he just seemed like he, he was dead.

Know why they won the series? Because they could play him 28 minutes in Game 6. Right. Right. If he had to play 34, 38 minutes in Game 6, they may have lost.

That trip, that double overtime game in Game 1, which just wreaked havoc on both rosters, but you could really feel it. I just think, especially after seeing him in person a couple times, and you've seen him in person too, right? It's just he's not really meant to run up and down a basketball court. Like, that's not what God created a 7-foot-7 guy to do, is just run up and down on a wooden floor like that. And he does it, and he's about as graceful as you can— like, him and Kareem are the two tall guys I've ever seen who seemed graceful as they went up and down. But you start throwing 42, 43 minutes, all the stuff he has to do defensively, all the hard rolls they do with him to kind of create 3-point shot, and it's just Even the way he closes out, he'll close out, the play is lost.

The guy's going to hit the shot. But just because Wemby gives the effort to close out and put his hand up, I think there's shoot— I'd love to know what the numbers are. I'll bet you shooting percentages get cut in half. You have a guy shooting the 3. Wemby's just, he's not in position. He's not going to get there in time. But just the fact that he can kind of blot out the sun, like you can't see the basket at the last second. Guys who you expect to hit the shot don't hit the shot.

There was a great clip that somebody took of Chet in Game 6 where in the same possession he tried to challenge Wemby twice and just kind of bailed on it the second time. It was like, okay, like he was gonna take a 3 from the corner. And part of the problem with Chet in that series was his— he's got one of those long developing jumpers and Wemby was always able to come out and challenge it. So then he decided, all right, I'm gonna take him off the dribble. And he beat him off the dribble, did a spin move, and it's like, oh, I— he's gonna block this. And he just kind of bailed and Chet's 7'1".

He's not used to be— like, he's not— it, you know, it's like, why can't a lefty hit a lefty? Because they never see the lefties, right? Right. When does Chet see a guy who's him but 3, 4 inches taller? And, and you gotta credit Wemby. I love this about Wemby. When he threw that elbow— exactly, exactly. If a guy's hitting you low and the ref doesn't do anything about it, hit him low back. Do it harder, right? He'll get the message. Wemby swung that elbow and it changed a little bit the way they were playing him. Oh, excuse me.

And the other helped. And then when he ordered his team and he ordered his code red.

Yep. Code red. He did.

It was a little fuck you from Wemby, which I think was great.

You want him on that line? Yeah. So, yeah, you can't handle the truth. And then he has this thing in him where he looks at everyone's like, well, it's come from the— we were kids and Chet got MVP of this tournament. Wemby sees Chet. He sees the team he's on, he knows, that's my guy, that's my rival. And he let him know at every chance, I own you. To the point where Chet started believing it, right? Like, everyone's writing Chet off now, but I don't know, he could learn from this. He could actually grow from it. But he got his heart— like, Wemby took his heart, and everyone, the whole world saw it, right? He did that intentionally. He knew, like, that's my guy. Gotta— I gotta make sure he knows he doesn't have a shot.

We talked about it on Saturday night about the Drexler-Jordan. That was a little like that too, where Jordan, you know, the people like, these guys, who's better? And that was a real thing that was happening for about a week. And then Jordan was just like, all right, I've had enough of this.

He took it personally.

Um, yeah. So the reason I'm picking all due respect to the Knicks, and they do check a lot of my nobody believes in us. The Robinson thing worries me. I do think they have a really good team to play the Knicks. Like, if you were creating a team to kind of stop Brunson, especially in the fourth quarter, you would say you'd want these defensive guards and swings that could switch combined with this big tall guy in the back to challenge all like the 12 to 15 footer stuff. I just think it's a bad matchup. So the way, the way for the Knicks to beat them obviously is hope Wemby wears down, hope the Spurs' 3-point shooting isn't there, hope the crowd is going to come through in your home games, and then just get an awesome OG Bridges combo.

Um, if Josh Hart is hitting some threes, if Josh Hart is hitting from outside, Knicks are hard to beat.

You know that's going to happen one of the games.

Josh Hart will have some good nights. The question is how many times is it going to happen?

And then can you get the offensive rebounds? Like, I see the path for it. I just think this is like a generational thing now, and I'm not going against it. And I felt the whole year, I was like, are the Spurs really since December, are they the '90 Bulls or the '91 Bulls? And I think they're telling us they're the '91 Bulls.

Well, first of all, the '90 Bulls were the best team in basketball. Pittman got a migraine in Game 7. Yeah. Right. Like, you know, otherwise they probably, they, everyone's like, oh, Jordan had to win. No, he didn't. He needed one other all-star with him. He didn't, and then in Game 7, he didn't have them. You can't beat the champs by yourself.

But they weren't dominant in the playoffs that year the way they were. They took a jump. The next year they fucking destroyed everybody.

But that was also baby Pippen. Like, Pippen made his first All-Star Game, but he wasn't what he would be the next year. He came into his prime, right?

100%.

I would say that I agree with you 100% about your analysis of why the Spurs would win. What got me thinking the Spurs, like, I was, I said all season, but from, from like the middle of the season, I said the Spurs are the best team in basketball. They're going to win the championship. But by the time the Knicks were finished playing them the third time, I thought if the Knicks come out of the East, they would have like a 40% shot of beating the Spurs. I think 40% is the right number for what you identified, which is, and it occurred to me in Game 7, actually, really the number one name is Castle. Castle and Harper are puppies. And they're even, like, out in front of themselves, like a puppy gets out in front of himself. Yeah, but, like, they're purebred puppy. Like, these guys are already dogs, right? They're already a problem. They don't even know what they're doing yet. They're overly exuberant on defense. They can wind up in foul trouble because of how they're bumping around out there. Right. But because of Castle's size and his tenacity, it's like you kind of don't want that overgrown, eager puppy at his size on these smaller Knicks players.

Like Brunson, they could also put Champagny on him and they're big and strong. Who's taller.

They're also like big strong guys. Like Brunson, yes, he's strong, but he's short. Mikael Bridges is not built like those other guys. It's like there's a lot of kind of size and strength and, and like youthful exuberance on the, on the perimeter defender types on the Spurs that I think are a bad matchup for the Knicks.

We talked about on Saturday night, mentioned on the podcast I did with Zach, we were like, what is Castle? I don't even know what he, who is, who's the Castle doppelganger? So a bunch of people sent emails. These were the candidates. This is what got sent to me. Guard Kawhi.

Yeah.

Kawhi. More defensive Dwyane Wade. More explosive Jrue Holiday.

That's a good one.

Springier Artest.

Ooh, that's— I hadn't even thought of Artest. That's a good one. Yeah.

Early Artest.

Like, Artest could shoot for his time better than Castle can shoot for— like, I don't know what the league averages are off the top of my head, but Artest was a better shooter in his day than Castle is in his.

Jimmy Butler. Another good one. Latrell Sprewell. Didn't really see that one, but it made me think, well, Sprewell was a good defender.

He was energetic. Yeah. But he was, and I guess I see that because he was also athletic leaper guy who didn't shoot it especially well. But I just get the feeling like Castle's going to be a shooter, a good enough shooter when it's all said and done.

Better offense Marcus Smart and Hines Ward. Those were, those were all the comparisons I got from all these various basketball players. Just like Hines, how Hines Ward was just like, he's a football player, athlete. I'm physical.

He's not just a receiver, he's a football player, right?

I can do in traffic.

I like, um, who did you say who was second to last?

Uh, Marcus Smart.

That's interesting.

If Smart were bigger and I think he's a better offensive player and a better athlete than Marcus Smart was. But I like, I do too, the way he, the way younger Marcus Smart, how balls to the wall he was all the time, which I think Castle has. I also, one of the things I love about Castle and the Spurs team in general is they don't seem to wear mistakes or like bad shooting or get psyched out or value possessions. They just kind of go.

They're not true. Short memories.

Yeah. When you're talking about like puppies, purebred puppies. Like they're just kind of running around and they don't, they don't really carry their past with them.

And it, it, it, it's like, that's why you say they're the '90 or '91 Bulls. And my, like, the way I interpret that is, is that short memory and like, is that gonna go too much on the side of not valuing the possessions in crunch time? 'Cause they just go. Yeah. Or is that actually good for them? 'Cause they don't worry about it. And if they don't score on that possession or they turn the ball, live turnover and it leads, to, to, to 2 or 3 points, they're fine. It's gone and they're gonna do it again. And because they're so aggressive, sometimes it's gonna work.

The other reason I think I'm taking the Spurs, and I don't feel great about it, but the competition in the East, it has to be said, like they beat, they fall 2-1 to Atlanta. They changed their offense. I love the way they played. They, to me, they looked like the 2014 Spurs crossed with whatever Brunson's doing. But that Atlanta team, when you look back, it's pretty brutal team. Like they had like 5 guys like that were playable. They had one center, couldn't really rebound. McCollum died as the series went along. They had no kind of guy who could come around.

They won 2 games by a point though.

Yeah. And they could have, probably should have gotten swept. They play Philly the next round and Embiid's already done. Embiid put one week of the season, he was done. Right. And all you do is shut down Maxi and you were good. And then that Cleveland team, they're just a mess.

Well, the, yes, but the Knicks weren't—

that game 1 loss was just one of the most egregious blown—

you knew it was a sweep after that. After that, it's a sweep.

It's when you lose like that, the coaching combined with like them not running back and they, they just rolled over. So you go from that and meanwhile, here are the Spurs. Who are just going through this gauntlet. Even Portland was like, you know, they probably would've been like a 5 or a 6 seed in the, they're a tough team and they showed up. Yeah. And I don't know that OKC team they beat. I just, I take that seriously. I thought OKC was an incredible team missing one of their best guys. Yeah. One of missing one of their best guys.

It's missing their second best player. Yeah. That's a lot. It's a lot to miss your second best player. Like if, if the— well, the Spurs don't— if the Spurs didn't have De'Aaron Fox, they'd have lost, right? Like, the live ball turnovers were killing them.

That's the thing. So the Spurs didn't have Fox for a couple games, and then he didn't seem right really until Game 7. And then the Harper thing— Harper in the middle of the series is just useless, and then kind of came back as it went along. But, um, but so, so I think the Spurs are 9-1 both, so I'm I'm going Spurs in 5.

The thing about the Knicks is, I think it's going to be a long series. I do think that. But the thing about the Knicks is they're not beating these teams by 10 or 12 points.

I get it.

You're feeding everybody into a wood chipper, right? They are destroying teams. They have 2 losses each by a point, and they're beating the brakes off of everyone. And the team that they are not compared to enough is the 2016— they did lose in the Finals— Warriors. They have a death lineup. Yeah. Except it's a better shoot— they don't have the two greatest shooters of all time in the death lineup, right? When Josh Hart is hitting his shots, that's why I say if you want to look at a few key things, if Josh Hart is hot more often than he's cold in this series, the Knicks are virtually impossible to beat. Because everyone, like, all 5 guys are killing you at that point. Right. How do you guard that? Especially with the offense running through Towns, who's, like, not only the best shooting big ever, maybe, but he's also, like, kind of Jokic in a way that I didn't understand. Right. I'm not saying he's as good as Jokic. I'm saying he's doing some of that stuff there.

It was impressive.

So I think that's really what it comes down to. If Josh Hart is hot in this series, this is going 7 games and the Knicks might win.

You're probably right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna amend to Knicks in 6.

Yeah, to, to the Spurs in 6.

I'm sorry, Spurs in 6.

Freudian slip.

I'm gonna amend to Spurs in 6 'cause you're right. I forgot to factor in the one Josh Hart game.

That's it.

And if there could be 2 or 3, 5 for 7 from 3 or something stupid. Right. So correct score, Spurs in 6 is 5 to 1. That also sets up for the, the devastating everyone at MSG trying to send the series to a 7th game and just the all-time gut punch of, by the way, this is, and I, I think, so what did you have, Knicks in 6 or 7?

If the Knicks win, it'll be a 7-game series, I think. But, but, but by the way, what you said about Wemby, when you said about what you said about Wemby is the thing about him, 'cause he's so big, so everything's magnified. You can see all the detail is it's very apparent when he's fatigued. Right. He looks uncoordinated all of a sudden. He's like the most coordinated big guy you've ever seen in your life. First of all, you've never seen a guy that tall, right? But he's so coordinated at that size. And when he is fatigued, you can see, oh, where'd the coordination go? Even on lobs and stuff, he can't get a little—

almost like a little kid where little kids start falling down and you know it's time for a nap.

Yeah. But the guy's physiology is just like, this is unexplored territory. And he is doing everything in his power to make, to give himself the best possible shot. But that schedule where there are essentially no travel days was brutal in the Western Conference Finals for him. And more rest is—

it's also why—

good for Wemby.

It's also why guys like LeBron, as they hit their late 30s, it just becomes impossible to put together 4 straight rounds, right, to win a title.

Definitely on the defensive end.

You have to have younger players. And that's been the thing over and over again that we've seen this decade. Is the, the combination of how the regular season got much harder. It became harder just for guys to carry big minutes, but then you get into that every other day in the third round.

Brutal.

You have to have the younger dudes for that. So you have Knicks and 7, that would be 8 to 1. Let's talk about—

I, I, I have not yet made my pick at the— I do think, like, I, I think—

Are you gonna make it on Game Over with Rich Paul?

I think I will make it on Game Over with—

Do it, do it.

Make it, make it, make it. I, I would say that it's the, if I had to handicap it, I think it's a 60-40 type series favoring the Spurs, but 40's a pretty damn good shot for the Knicks. And I have to think if I like their chances.

I, so I bet on the Spurs for, I had the Spurs before the series and before, after game 5, I did a hedge on OKC for game 6. 'Cause I thought the Harper-Fox thing, I just didn't think those guys were there. And of course San Antonio won. Then I doubled down and bet on San Antonio game 7. Smart. Just because of the Wemby piece. And I think ultimately, like, I was thinking about it. I was like, I just think Wemby's the best player in the league now, and I don't want to go against him in a game 7.

I've been, I've been saying this since like the all-star break.

Yeah. But you still, you have to do it in the playoffs. Yeah. It's a different level. You gotta see like the ebb and flow of the games, the fatigue. The how do you handle foul trouble? How do you handle when the, handle when the refs aren't giving you calls?

But you know what he has now?

I think he's, now I think he's there. He's tasted it. That OKC thing was such a good seasoning for this Finals.

It, look, it's a hunch until you see him do it, right? My hunch was he's the best player in the league, but you're right. You have to see him do it in this circumstance. But the thing about Wemby that I love, that like I, and I thought middle of the season, he's better than Jokic, right? He's better than SGA. I don't think SGA's in the conversation with Jokic and Wemby, but he's better than Jokic. Is there's a floor to Wemby's game because of the defense, right? He can't really have a bad game ever. He's such a defensive presence. So when his offense is clicking, it's like, well, he, he, he might, he's a very good chance if he stays healthy.

It's right. If he hits a couple threes and a couple turnarounds and gets some fouls, this is, that's all it takes.

Yeah. But, but there's a good chance he winds up the greatest player of all time. But health is going to be a big thing just because we've never seen a guy this size before. Right. So, and the other thing about Jokic, Bill, is you're down 2 possessions in the playoffs, your season's on the line. There's like 2 minutes left. Okay. Overcome it. Right. And Jamal Murray was taken out of the series, who's normally a very clutch player, because you have a 6'8" wing defensive specialist who's doing an unbelievable job on him. So now you have Gobert, who's also a great defensive player on Jokic, and it's like, Okay, Jokic, do it though. It's 2 possessions. Can you make up 2 possessions in 2 minutes? We've seen this from super great players throughout history. And Rich and I play a game nowadays on the show where it's like, do you, does this player need to win or does he love the game? So for example, or love to play, need to win, love to play. For example, the player that best epitomizes Needing to win and loving to play on the highest level possible is Magic Johnson.

That dude, like Larry Bird, needed to win more than he loved to play. Same thing with Michael Jordan, right? There are other guys who love to play more than they need to win. For example, Kevin Durant, right? Clearly loves to play. Does he need to win? It doesn't seem that way, right? Or he would really— people who put him above Bird, and they should not, it's because of that. No, he doesn't need to win like that.

This was the LeBron issue for years.

Yes. He loved to play more than he needed. I think LeBron does need to win, but not as much as he loves to play.

He does love the Finals.

Then he flipped it. Yeah. Jokic, I don't know if he— he's a basketball genius. I don't know if he loves to play or he needs to win. I don't know if he has either. I know Wemby has both.

Jokic ripped through everybody in '23 because he's got to get credit for that.

He's among the greatest players of all time.

I'm giving him loves to play. I think you guys are wrong.

Does he?

Yeah, I think he does.

He seems so pissed off at the press conference.

He just wants to go ride his horse. He's from fucking Serbia.

He is. Listen, his basketball brain could be studied. It's ridiculous. He's LeBron James, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson.

I'd move him more toward a problem that was a problem for Shaq. Is it fun to be you when you play? Shaq was immensely frustrating for me because I never felt like he was in shape the way he should have been. I never understood the free throws. It always felt like there was more there, but he still ended up being one of the best 15 ever.

Yeah, do the Rick Barry. Come on, do the grandfather.

Just figure it out. But I also think it would have been incredibly unfun to be Shaq for 8 months a year playing basketball when everybody's like, we can't stop you.

So we're allowed to do—

we're just going to— the refs are going to be like, yeah, this isn't fair. Do what you need to do. Bang him in the back, pull his shoulders down. And I honestly think with Jokic, it's becoming a little similar where the way he's defended. Wemby, we're starting to see it, like some of the stuff OKC was doing against him, I just don't think is legal. I don't—

I—

you should be able to—

elbow in the previous series.

You should be able to run to your spot without somebody like pushing back like they have a blocking sled. But it's because he's 7'7", they let it go.

I've had a big problem with the officiating, um, all series. I feel like they officiated it straight up and down. At San Antonio and gave the Thunder the whistles in OKC. I agree. And there's already a rule on the books about it's a non-unsportsmanlike tech if you flop. Come on, ref. Everyone can see it on TV in real time with SGA Sideways 3. 90% accuracy, you know, maybe not every time, but, like, and then go review it afterwards.. And where did I— someone, maybe you said this, someone said, maybe Zach said it.

I had a flopping points.

That's what I wanted to review it after. Oh, yeah, you did. But I really think just it's a tech, two of them, and you should be suspended a game or like a yellow card.

Yeah, like yellow card in soccer. Just like, I didn't like what you did there. Yellow card.

Yeah, one more of those and you're out, right? And then it would just stop and the product would get better. And also, you're right, any kind of a guy who's seen as having an unstoppable physical advantage, like Shaq, or like, I'm sure this happened to Wilt, but I didn't see it.

LeBron happened to Wilt, who started— that's when he developed that awful turnaround he had. He'd have this little spin because he didn't want to get fouled and he was tired of getting hit.

By the way, with Kareem, they were just like, no, you can't dunk. Right? Yeah. No dunk. And so he comes up with—

Kareem would be interesting now because if you're allowed to do this stuff, in the '70s and '80s that we can do now with shoving a guy before he can get to his spot. Mikhail would've been in trouble. Hakeem would've been in trouble. It's this new thing that I don't really know why they've allowed it the way they've allowed it.

I hate it. And it seems so fit. So to legislate out tanking is difficult, and I don't know, they're trying to address it. I don't know if they did successfully. We'll see empirically whether it works or not, or it helps. But this is like, There's a problem. The fans don't like what's happening. There is a— there are like a million easy solutions and they just refuse to do them. Right.

All right. The real reason you're here is coming up after this break. Kaffee in seiner besten Form. Mit Qubo wird jeder Kaffee auf Knopfdruck zum Genussmoment.

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And now it's time for Embracing the Era, brought to you by New Era, the official cap of the NBA. Take a trip back through some of the most iconic, court-defining moments with the New Era NBA Hardwood Classics Collection. We're going to talk about the 2000s, Today, some amazing players, unforgettable teams and logos aging quite nicely a couple of decades later. I really love those Steve Nash Suns teams, especially as the years pass when the league was getting very physical, not as much fun to watch game to game. And yet the Suns were playing a lot like some of the style that we have now, fast breaking, freewheeling, unselfish. So when I think about 2000s, I think about them. I think about the 2008 Celtics winning the title, obviously, uh, the Pistons shocking the Lakers, and then those 3 straight Lakers ones, uh, in a row, 3 titles that I still have trouble swallowing because I don't like the Lakers. But the best team of that whole decade was the 2001 Lakers, uh, which almost swept the playoffs. They came within an Allen Iverson overtime loss of, uh, of actually sweeping the finals. So anyway. That was quite an era.

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Okay.

We need to— I have a nice big pitcher of Settle Down juice for everybody. Head in the fridge. It's nice and cold.

It just happened. This is the moment we became old, right? Like, it just happened.

Well, but we used to do this when we were younger and we were kids. Where you just think what you're seeing recently has to be the greatest thing that ever happened.

A pitcher of settle down juice.

A big pitcher of settle down juice.

Did this happen in your house? Was this an expression in your house? Yeah. Picture.

Bill, if you don't pipe down, you're gonna have a big pitcher, big helping glass with ice cubes. Jalen Brunson. Jalen Brunson. There's two separate things happening right now. There's two paths for him. One is New York immortality. And then the other is, where do you rank in the greatest Knicks? He's not the greatest Knick yet just 'cause they made the finals. Of course. I don't think people— there's people out there that are like, he's the greatest Knick. They made the finals. It has to. So I want to go through some of the history of the actual greatest Knicks, but let's move into the New York side. Who is—

can we, can we establish a criteria for greatness and before we do this?

Yeah, I'm ready to do whatever you want.

So I want to just establish a criteria for greatness.

Well, do you want to do the New York side first or the Knicks side first?

Any way you want. But let's establish what we're— I think part of the problem is when kids— it's not just recency bias, or you give a guy a book and he reads the book, it's the only book he ever read. That's everything he knows, right? There's a conflation between better and greater. Right. And kids correctly, intuitively understand everyone now is better than everyone before. That is correct, kids. You're right about that. Everyone now is better, just about more or less, than everyone before.

It's the cars analogy. If I had a 2026 Porsche, it would drive better than a 1982 Porsche because you built that new platform on what came before. Yeah.

You didn't just invent it from whole cloth. Saw it, you improved, you improved, you improved. Okay. If you, in the one sport that can be objectively measured, track and field, you can put a stopwatch on Jesse Owens and the stopwatch on the 10th best sprinter in the world today and know objectively that Jesse Owens is not as good as the 10th best sprinter.

But I don't think that's how— this is why I wrote my book. I don't think that's how you can think about it. I think you have to measure greatness by how you compare it to everybody you were going against.

Correct. Because I'm talking about better. Yeah. And the conflation is between better and greater. The reason it sounds ridiculous to say the 10th best sprinter in the world whose name you don't know is better than Jesse Owens is because, yeah, duh, no kidding. That's not what we're talking about.

Does boxing work this way, though?

Yes, but there are influences in boxing. For example, the number of fights and stuff like that and the number of rounds. That and the number of participants in this country that selected out for different characteristics once upon a time than it does nowadays. You needed to be tougher. You needed to be more resistant to cuts. You needed to have a better chin. You needed to, you know, like, there's 15 rounds of fights and yeah, but the, but the point is that we are talking about greater everybody. We're talking about how you did against your contemporaries. Now, does it matter if you're playing in a league with 8 to 12 teams as Bill Russell did? Do you discount him? Yes, you do. But then do you discount Babe Ruth?

I disagree on the 8 to 12.

But how much of a discount? Even when you discount Babe Ruth—

Babe Ruth gets a real discount because he was not playing against any minorities, basically.

And he was a Black player on top of it.

Or Latin American players, anybody. Right. He played against nobody other than whites.

But no one who ever lived in any league ever dominated that league nearly to the extent that Ruth dominated his league. So even with the discount, he comes out number 1. I think with Bill Russell's discount, he probably comes out 4, something like that. I would say Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Bill Russell. If you want to argue Bill Russell—

it has to be those 4 in whatever order you want, but those have to be the first 4.

I think Jordan has to be 1. And then you can argue the next.

I have Jordan 1 as well.

But, but that— okay, so that gets— so, so first of all, we're talking about greater, not better. Let's establish that first. And we're talking about you do take discounts on the Babe Ruths and the Bill Russells. The question is, after the discount, where is their greatness? Sometimes it's still number one, sometimes it's no longer. Now the next thing, are we mostly valuing career or mostly valuing peak? When I got Bill James's Historical Baseball Abstract Volume 2 as a bar mitzvah present when I was 13 years old, it taught me comparative analysis really in a new way. And the thing I loved he did is he separated it into two lists, peak versus career. Right. Sandy Koufax's peak or Nolan Ryan's. How do you compare Koufax and Ryan if you just weigh their value? Nolan Ryan did a lot more. Is that really what we mean though? Or are we talking about as long as they sustain their peak for a reasonable amount of time?

Peak.

I favor peak. I think that's what we're really talking about.

I had, when I made the Earl Monroe, trying to figure out where he ranked. Yeah. I called it the Bill Walton corollary. If a guy peaked for just 2 or 3 years as a truly great player, that's more appealing than someone who never peaked at all. That's the difference of Bernard King versus Ewing.

Okay, agreed. Then the question is, how close— so we both value peak over career, right?

So Bill Walton peaks for a year and a half and then as a sixth man on the '86 Celtics, and that's it. I still had him in the top 35 of my book because at his best year, he was the best guy in the league and took it to Kareem.

I had a, I had a, um, this is not exactly the same thing, but I had a producer, John Crystal, at HBO. We talked about Roy Jones in his prime and he said, I know what I saw, right? Like, you watch Bill Walton, I know what I saw. Well, what was that?

The Tony fight? What was that?

'94? Yeah. And he beat him with one hand. No, he beat Hopkins with one hand. He beat Tony with both hands.

But so, so, well, that's Aaron Pryor too.

Aaron Pryor's peak was absurd. So this is the LeBron Jordan argument. If you just weigh their win totals, right, their win shares, LeBron played twice as long. I don't think that's what we're talking about. At least it's not what I'm talking about.

A good question is, okay, you can have one guy who played for 20 years, or you could have another guy who played for 13, but the 13 years and the peak of the 13 years was better than the 20. What would you rather want if you were starting a franchise?

What would— well, what kind of fan are you? Are you the kind of guy who wants to be a powerhouse team for 20 years with no championships? Or would you like to maybe not be a powerhouse team for 20 years, but you wind up with 3, 4 championships? I'll take the championships.

Like, Bird was— Bird came in the league in, in October '79, and for the next 9 years was either the best or the second best player in the league every single year, and then was the best player 3 years in a row. You were always in the finals or near the finals with him. That's basically what Jokic is doing now.

No, Bird really was. And no one really, because their styles weren't the same. He more than anyone was the original Michael Jordan, right? Because their styles are so different and also racial, obvious. Like, there are differences in the style of play. One's a white guy, one's a Black guy, the whole thing. And Bird was compared to Magic, and Dr. J seemed to be the guy who Jordan was the evolution of. No, there was Larry Bird who ran shit. And then there was Michael Jordan who ran shit like that's, that, that's, and honestly, I think Wemby's going to do that too. It seems to me that that's the case.

Especially when you think this is probably the worst he's going to be over the next 7 years unless he gets injured. It just feels like the way when you're impacting every part of a game, that's kind of the last level. I do feel like LeBron got there when he was on Miami. No doubt.

Unquestionably the closest I've ever seen in terms of value of a player to a prime Michael Jordan, like the one who made me think, hmm, that's getting close, was years 2 and 3 in Miami.

The '20s. I really, I've talked about this before. I love the 27-game winning streak in a way. Like, I like that more than either title for them because they started slow. I just thought it was such a cool streak because it was just so atypical to, it was in the middle of the season. It wasn't like Like the Warriors had that 24-0 or whatever they, they had to start. I think when you start a season with continuity, it's a little easier. When it's just the middle of the season, when you're just ripping off wins and you get a bullseye in your head around 16 and you can't rest anyone, and it's the rhythm of the schedule, you're playing 4 and 5 nights. I don't think we're ever going to see that again.

That was LeBron defending, defending, not just switching on, defending all 5 positions. You put LeBron on all 5 positions on the defense. 60% shooting. He knew exactly where his spots were on the floor. He's a basketball genius. He was— when— but, like, you— that's an unsustainable style of play for your whole career, I think. Right? I think. But you could do that for 2 or 3 years.

I had this thing, the wine bottle team, where it's like, pick a greatest team, but you have to pick the vintage year of what bottle of wine you'd want to order from that player's career. 2013 is the LeBron year, clearly. Like, you could put that version of him on any team with any teammates and he would just be the most additive player possible, right?

No player ever could take a lower level group of guys farther than that LeBron James or fit in with a better group.

To me, it's like with other all-stars because you always think about who are the best guys you could just put together. And you kind of have to have LeBron, Bird, Magic, and Jordan on that foursome, and then just pick the fifth.

I love Magic Johnson. I love Magic Johnson.

You would just worry about the defense?

No, the shooting.

Because to play without any error— I know, but I have shooting better.

The shooting would get better. I would put LeBron at point. I'd have LeBron run the point, Jordan at the 2. I'd probably wind up putting Bird at the 4 and Hakeem at the 5. And then maybe KD at the 3, because he doesn't need to really tight. He just kind of gets in the flow. He could defend. He's tall. He's, you know, if I'm trying to win. Yeah.

Duncan would be in the conversation for me.

Right. Duncan or, but not over Bird because I want the shooting.

No, but if you just gave me Duncan, Bird, LeBron, Jordan, and Magic, I'm pretty confident.

The thing about Duncan is Hakeem needs the ball a little more, number one. And Duncan, for more of his career, was a better passer. Hakeem wasn't a good passer till later. The problem with Hakim is, because I've done this before, and every time I take Duncan, someone's like, Hakim. And I'm thinking, yeah, he just made my team a little bit better. He's just like, by the time Hakim, if we're talking prime, not just career.

Yeah, the two-way stuff with him was nuts. I just feel like the '03 Duncan gets slept on. Like, he basically beats the Lakers by himself.

He was unbelievable. He was, you know what Jim Lampley told me?

Just crushing everybody.

That if you want to know who Bill Russell was. He's Duncan, but not as good a shooter. And I never, I never saw Russell play or Wilt play. So I was like, oh, okay, I get it. That's pretty damn good.

Well, that's another thing with Wemby, 'cause I think Duncan had it. Everyone said Curry had it. And it feels like, feels like Wemby has it too, of this culture they create, like the leadership. And I always called it with Duncan, it was always the arms around the shoulders. There's certain leaders where they're just— when he does that too— touching their teammates, and they're just very inclusive, and, and they're like den mothers almost. And he has that already at 22.

All right, he's a serial killer. You realize that, right? No one's just perfect.

No, like, like, when you say he's a serial killer, yeah, like, he kind of is as a competitor. I, I do think he has that side of like, I think he wants to destroy everything.

What he did to Chet. Yeah, but I mean, like, Wemby is so perfect in terms of what he's doing, how he's preparing himself, how he's going after it, how he's using his talents, the whole thing, that it's like, there must be something really wrong with this guy that I don't know about yet because he's perfect.

Well, when was the last time you saw somebody celebrate like he did after they won Game 7 where you felt like it was completely authentic?

Jordan after he won the first championship, maybe.

Right. Because this is one of the things that's been terrible with tennis. And I don't know who started, maybe it was Agassi, but it was like, you win and then you just sink to the ground. You have to do that whole thing. And now it's like this whole performative thing.

And you never— because people are self-conscious. Everyone, even—

he's not self-conscious at all.

I don't feel like he's not. He knows. Yeah, there's nothing not to love about this guy. That's why I'm suspicious. No one's this perfect.

Okay, so greatest Knicks. So we've established the peak versus sustained career, but we're also, and then also we about the greatness has to be when you're comparing to the other people in your era.

But we should take a slight discount if you get past a certain, like I'd say modern NBA starts obviously absorption of the ABA teams, 3-point shot, right? So you want to say '79, '80, you want to say '76, '70, you could pick. I'd say '79, '80 is the start of the modern era.

That's fair. But I, I had, when I did my book, which was '09, did the paperback in 2010, Willis was the highest Knick I had at number 30. I now have him 38, but Willis was 2-time Finals MVP, '70 MVP, went like one of the things that one of the—

he was 2-time Finals MVP, but, but Frazier should have been the '71.

It's fine. One of the things I value with him, he's, his prime is right against all of these great centers. He's against Kareem coming in the league. He's against Wilt, and he's going head to head with all these dudes for a couple years there.

And I'm not saying, I'm not saying that he's like this player. I'm saying the position he occupies and the way history has recorded him, uh, unfairly in terms of where he's ranked. Is similar to Moses Malone. Moses Malone is higher, right? Moses. But Moses Malone was the best. Like, we talk about Larry Bird, how amazing he was in the very beginning. Best player in the game was not Kareem or Larry Bird.

For like 5 years, Moses is the best guy. '79, '83.

2 or 3. He's among the 2 or 3 best for 5 years. And at least 2 or 3 years, you're like, that's the best player in the game. Yeah. And, and, and like, kind of the guy you want. Even though, yeah, Kareem is better, we get it, but he's kind of the guy you want. Willis Reed was sort of that.

So he was also the biggest enforcer of that era, which you need. And then the Game 7, playing with that injury he had is one of the— I did a whole thing about that. I had him when I did my book, when I did all the work, I thought he was the greatest Knick because of the titles more than what he did. Game 7, I put Clyde right after him. I had Clyde at 32.

I would flip that. But you're enough years old. I'm 50.

I never saw you there on play.

Okay. All right. But you're still a little closer to it. I have this theory that the weakest knowledge base that one has in terms of history is the era that occurred in the 20 years before, 10 years right before they were born, because that's not history yet. So people assume in the world, the world just assumes, you know, all this, that everyone knows this, but you don't know it. You didn't live through it. So like the '70s, I was born in '73. That Knicks era is kind of my weakest era of sports history in a way.

I had, I saw Clyde probably last couple years in the Knicks and then when he was on Cleveland. But I did have my dad who went to all these games.

My dad, my dad, listen to this. This is embarrassing for me. My dad used to root for the Celtics when they had Bird and McHale and Dennis Johnson and Robert Parish and Ainge. And I was to be like, I hated the Celtics. And I was like, what are you doing? He'd just be watching TV. He didn't go to the games. He'd just watch. He'd say, they remind me of the Knicks. The way they play reminds me of that Knicks dynasty. And that was over. It wasn't coming back. And the closest thing he could get to it was watching the Celtics.

So my dad, um, had Jordan and Frazier. This is in 2010 as his all-time backcourt. And he said, Frazier killed us. He was an assassin. You didn't want any part of him in a big game. He was always been the best guy on the court. I've never been happier to see anyone retire.

Isn't it amazing? Like when you think about if—

and he's just gone now. Like people just know him as the announcer.

And he, and also, well, there's so many things about, well, first of all, his style was so flashy off the court. Yeah. Right. He was the, he was him and Joe Namath. Right. But on the court, he was textbook by that, by the standards of that era.

He was one of the best big game guards ever. What?

Okay.

He was the best defensive guard in the league of, for the first 35, 40 years of the league. And then Game 7, '70 Finals, Willis comes out and he is done after a minute. 35, 36, 19 and 7 and 5 steals and took it to Jerry West.

To Jerry West. So, and Wilt was playing.

So whether you wanna go Willis or Walt, I go Walt. They're right next to each other. I had Willis slightly ahead just 'cause center was more important, but Frazier's fine. But those are the top 10.

That's interesting. Like now guard play is so important, or backcourt is so important.

Backcourt and center, you had to have a center to have winning anything.

But I just feel like it's like Magic Johnson. I guess Kareem is greater than Magic. I get it. Clyde Frazier did in Game 7 against the Lakers in a more unlikely situation, what Magic did in Game 6, right? Against Philadelphia. Right? Like you look at the, even the lines are similar, 42-15-7 versus 36-19-7-5, whatever it is. Both guards missing their big, the iconic guy in the big. And, and I guess, I guess you're right. Kareem is ahead of Magic a little bit. Maybe, maybe Willis Reed's ahead of—

it's definitely an argument I had. I wrote about this in my book. So they had Game 7 of the 1973 Eastern Conference Finals, Celtics-Knicks. Havlicek separates his shoulder halfway through. It's the best of all the Celtic teams, even though they won in '74 and '76. Everyone says '73 team is the best team. Havlicek gets hurt. Celtics still have Game 7 at home to win, and Frazier just murders them in the second half. But the, the NBA had This is crazy. They don't have the game because there would just be games that would just— they just don't exist. But they had a game with no audio, and they sent me the game for when I was doing my book. Was it just a DVD of the game with no audio?

Whole movie or something?

Yeah, it's like a home movie.

That's the only way I've seen Sugar Ray Robinson fight it well, to make home movies.

And it's just Frazier coming down, backing down whoever to, like, 18 feet away and just hitting jumpers. And it's the whole second half in silence. I was just like, Oh my God. So anyway, Brunson. So Frazier was— is it—

but by the way, isn't it amazing how you, like, your dad puts Frazier in the backcourt with MJ, not even blinking, right? When you are— if someone says, who's the most clutch player I've seen, it's always going to be the guy on the other team who killed my team, right? Like, you can't tell me— if I'm making my all-time baseball team, George Brett is playing third base. George Brett. I don't care. You tell me whoever you want. I'm taking George Brett at third base. The DH is David Ortiz. These guys killed me. Right? So those are the guys I want on my team.

Well, I had— I wrote— this is what I wrote in 2010, and I'm interested to see who you would add to this list. In my basketball watching lifetime, only 7 guys were crowd killers. Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isaiah, Andrew Toney, and strangely enough, Vinnie Johnson. And those are my 7 in 2010. Who would you add to the crowd killer list since then?

That's a great question because I think—

I don't think LeBron always had it, but he could summon it every once in a while. But I don't think it was usually going to be a shooter. It's usually a shooter who's like, oh, fuck. I feel like SGA is right on the border of having it but hasn't really crossed over yet. But the funny thing, the reason I bring this up is I think Brunson's on this list.

The closest thing today, I think, is Brunson.

Right over— and I think Durant would be another one on paper, but I don't know if I'd put him on this list. It's a guy who, you know, rises to the occasion, and Durant didn't always have it.

And also, like, a guy who rises to the occasion, but physically, well, how can— why is it him? Why he's rising to the occasion? You know, like Durant's 7 feet tall.

So I think Brunson's on that list.

I think so.

But anyway, the point is you have somebody like Frazier who was first team All-NBA 4 times, second team All-NBA twice, was all defense basically from— they created the award in the late '60s. He was all defense for the rest of the time.

I'd have him one and Willis Reed two, but okay, those two are the top two.

So Brunson wins the title.

Yeah.

They win the title, he beats San Antonio as a 2-to-1 underdog. Would you have him ahead of those two guys?

No, not, not.

But he'd be third.

He'd be, he'd unquestionably be third. He'd be third. One chip, third. Those guys won two. And also, when you mention All-NBA back then, you're not talking about first, second, third team. You mean like he's, he's one of the two best guards in the league. And by the way, he's contemporaries with the Logo, right? That's the other best guard in the league every— like, you know, that's the level he's on. And the one thing I will say is that in a league where two-thirds of the team are still playing when the season is over, yeah, right? There's no point in a regular season award. The only season that matters is the very long and very high-leverage playoffs, right? Postseason. And when you say a guy, and this is like the Jimmy Butler rule for me, when every year you're like, when the playoffs start, you're like, you know, Jimmy Butler is one of the top 5 guys in the playoffs. What you are really saying is Jimmy Butler's one of the top 5 guys in the NBA, right? That's really what that means. So Brunson is not first-team All-NBA, but he is first-team All-NBA at least this year.

But if you ask any basketball fan, who would you rather have in the playoffs going forward? He would, he wouldn't be one of the first 3 picks, but he might be 4 or 5.

But when you look back at it and see what actually happens, it may be that we say, well, that's how we felt at the time. But in fact, he was the number 1 guy you'd want. Like I did this on the show the other day. How many guys in the NBA are you taking over Brunson right now heading into a series? Who do you want over Brunson? Brunson or SGA? They both— SGA is taller.

I'd rather have SGA.

SGA is taller. He's a much better defender. I would rather have Brunson. I would rather— this is not— oh, it's Knicks bias. I'm just telling you.

Brunson could flip that for me in this series.

Sure.

I think SGA, like, he won the title last year.

He wasn't good just now. I mean, he wasn't awful, but he wasn't that good in this series.

He wasn't.

And when we talk about, like—

I thought he was awesome in Game 7, even though he died in the fourth quarter.

I think he died. Yeah, he kept the—

but I just thought what he was doing that game was sick. He—

the difference between SGA and I'll say James Harden too, and let's say MJ or Kobe, when they are looking like when they get the whistle, is the priority for MJ and Kobe were hit the shot. And if I get the whistle, fine. The priority for Harden And to a lesser extent, SGA is the whistle. And if I hit the shot, fine. And it's not the same thing.

Brunson, second team All-NBA 3 times in a row, 3-year peak of 27 and 7, 4-year playoff peak counting this year, 29 points a game, 4 rebounds, 7 assists, 46% field goal. 29 for 4 playoff years is really good. I mean, that's, So the case for him now is best player on a Finals team, which I value. I have to do my pyramid at the end of the year. I want to—

I always redo it every year after the playoffs.

Yeah, he's sniffing around now in the top 100 because of the peak. I mean, he'd have to do it for a couple more years, but this is, this is, uh, pretty special.

There's also something about winning a championship for a franchise that hasn't—

well, that's 53 years, but that's where you get the Wilton I mean, the Willis and Walt, that's why you have to value those because of what that team meant to the city. And Patrick Ewing, I have third. I had him 40th in the book.

Now, because Brunson hasn't won a title yet, now I have him 47th. Yeah.

I mean, Ewing was top 5 once, top 10 6 times, playing during an era with Hakeem and Shaq and David Robinson.

David Robinson was better. I get it. I also felt like Ewing Ewing maybe had the edge in that matchup when they played each other. Just experiencing those games, I thought it was close, but maybe Ewing had the edge. Obviously not against Olajuwon or Shaq, but who could against Olajuwon or Shaq?

The '94 Finals is tough for him. If you're talking about Ewing big picture, where he ranks, like, he just got his ass kicked against Hakeem. He was 18.9 points a game, 36% in that series, 7-game. They just needed him to be better. And it came down to like, he was very good.

He was very good defensively. Like, people forget he was, he was, he had like some like 6 blocks in one of those games. The offense never, he was, he had the best, he had a guy who's in the conversation for greatest defensive player of all time. True. On him, on his, at his best. Like, that's the best Olajuwon ever played.

But it's a good example of like, if he flips that and they actually win game 6 or game 7, and he wins the title, then Ewing's the best thing of all time.

Well, how about this? Olajuwon doesn't get his fingertips in Game 6 on Starks' 3.

Yeah, but you think that shot was going in?

I don't know. I have no idea. Like, Olajuwon blocked it.

My theory at that '94 Knicks team was always, you didn't win the title because the ball was in John Starks' hands in the biggest moments of games for you. And that's That's the reason you weren't a champion.

But the bigger issue is John Starks is a sixth man. Yeah. Pressed into action because they didn't really have an all-star caliber squad.

'Cause you didn't have Doc Rivers. Well, you didn't have the— Doc Rivers would've been the— he didn't need to tear his ACL that year.

Yeah. But even—

or was it Blackman? Even one of the years was Rivers.

There was Harper. Harper. That was Derek Harper.

What was the year?

Rivers was pre-Harper.

But Doc told me this whole story about how he was hurt. And then they could have put him on the playoff roster and they didn't.

He might actually have— But that's like post-prime at that point. Let him have a chance at the Knicks. He's a good player, but he's a Knicks.

They were, they were a guy short.

He, no, they were in, they only had one all-star scorer. Yeah. Like John Starks was an all-star sixth man type. He's like a, he starred in the role of sixth man. He should not have been the starting shooting guard. He had to be 'cause the Knicks didn't have Reggie Miller or Allan Houston at that point.

Right.

Yeah. If they have that guy, they'd probably win that series. They didn't have that guy.

That was the flaw of the team.

That's why I said this starting 5, this last year, best starting 5, starting 5 of my lifetime watching the Knicks. In other words, there's no— all the players are at least league average, and you have a couple of all-stars, and you have a guy who's the next thing to an all-star, and multiple players have an offensive game.

So I have Willis 1A and Frazier 1B.

Okay.

Ewing 3, DeBusschere 4. Okay.

Bernard 5. DeBusschere over Bernard.

Because the Bernard, he just wasn't on the Knicks long enough. I mean, and his peak where he's the second best player in the league, the Pistons series, taking the Celtics toe to toe for 7, which was an awesome Celtics team with multiple guys to throw at him. Didn't matter. But the peak was—

here's, here's where you're gonna—

okay, here's the DeBusschere case though. Okay, best defensive forward of his whole generation. Um, too early, born too early, 3-point shooter, but they didn't have a 3-point line. So if you put him in a different era, it's actually more interesting. But everyone was just like, this guy was just the all-time winning player to throw on your team. And so it's tough because I love— as you know, I love Bernard more than anybody, but I just don't think it was a long enough thing to put him ahead of Dabusha.

Here's the thing that you'll run into with the Dabusha pick. It was a different league. It's pre-modern basketball in the sense that it predates, as you say, there's no 3-point shot. And Carmelo Anthony was on the Knicks long enough at a point where he was still among the 10 best players in the league. I don't know that DeBussche was ever considered one of the 10 best players in the league. Like, is he the role—

he made one All-NBA top 10, '69, all defense 6 times, right? But like, best player on 2 title teams. Yeah.

He's kind of of that team, the OG Anunoby, who you love having on your team. But I don't know that 50 years from now we'll have OG Anunoby ranked 4th on the all-time list.

So I had him 4th, I had DeBussche 46th in my book. Re-ranked to 57.

You love DeBusschere. I mean, my dad loves DeBusschere.

That's the thing. I was really riding with what the old guys were telling me, and DeBusschere was the guy over and over again that they talked about, like, reverentially.

You got it. By the way, one day, years from now, someone will look at Draymond Green and be like, right? Yeah, but Draymond Green changed basketball, right?

Yeah. The Carmelo thing, I think, has been overblown and Um, you could pick it apart pretty easily. I would not have him in the top 5.

I think we have to make, uh, allowances for Carmelo and for Kobe, who tend to get underrated. They're overrated by some and underrated by others because the game changed from under, uh, like underneath their feet. The, the ground was moving and because they were featured offensive scorers, The analytics will tend to underrate them. You know, they didn't, like Carmelo didn't evolve his game the way Vince Carter did, let's say. Not that they're the same kind of player, but like Vince Carter evolved with the league and had a 20-year career and Carmelo didn't. But the analytics are gonna underrate Carmelo because the game changed out from underneath his feet.

Like he was, he just never had the one run. The closest was '09 against when they made the conference finals.

He won on the right team.

Well, part of that was his fault, though. I got to ding him on that. Like, he could have waited to sign with the Knicks, and instead he made them trade a whole bunch of shit for him and goes to a team that— and then he has no help. And he's like, I don't have any help. It's like, yeah, because you forced them to trade all these dudes to get you when you could have waited.

Well, by the way, Dolan didn't need to intervene. Donnie Walsh was going to get him for a lot less. But the argument that convinced me about Carmelo is what if Detroit just has a normal draft and drafts Carmelo Anthony? What are we saying about him now? Right? I know it didn't happen. I know, but nothing had to change about the kind of player he was. He just needed to be in another situation. How many times has Carmelo all NBA?

I would, oh, I have that. I was a big Carmelo defender because I always felt like the best thing about him was that he thought he was as good as LeBron and Wade. So if I, and Kobe, so if I had that in a series, at least I know I'm going to war with somebody who's like, I'm as good as these, whether it's true or not. He believed it.

He, he, he was as, he was as good as like back end of the career Kobe, like the, the more kind of post-up game Kobe that Carmelo was as good as that.

Carmelo, 2 first team All-NBA or 2 second team All-NBAs, 3, 4 third teams, 7 times one of the, yeah, it's pretty good.

I feel like he wasn't a defender, you know?

I thought in, uh, maybe 2013, he was the third best player in the league, right? It was him and Durant and, and LeBron. And LeBron and Durant were above him.

He just had a game that was tailored to the previous era. Like, you don't have to go back 3 eras, just go back one half an era.

2-2 in that Nuggets series. Yeah. Nuggets-Lakers in '09, right? Series tied at 2. He's playing really well in the playoffs and then last 2 games, whatever. And then the Indiana, which everybody blames on Tyson Chandler, but Carmelo was in that series too. He just kind of never had the moment.

I agree. I don't know. I'm just saying like DeBusche over Carmelo is, you can argue it. I don't know if you win the argument. I don't know if you win that argument. But by the way, the Knicks fans, like who actually lived through the DeBusche era will agree with you.

Yeah, I really trusted the old guys because I wasn't— it was what we talked about earlier. And there were a couple guys that they were just fanatical about, and DeBussche was one of them.

We're talking about greatest Knicks. If you say greatest players, hard to argue DeBussche over Carmelo, but greatest Knicks, you could argue DeBussche over Carmelo. Yeah.

I got to say, I don't 100% understand the romanticism with Carmelo and the Knicks. Like, was that, was that an incredibly fun time that I missed? Like, even Linsanity was probably the most fun part of the entire Carmelo experience.

By the way, I was defending, and he drove Jeremy Lin outta New York. I was defending Carmelo to Knicks fans that whole time. Like, oh, when Carmelo gets back, he's gonna stop the ball. I'm like, no, Carmelo's a winning player. Look, I listen, I was hearing about TJ Ford all that year. Yeah. And I saw Carmelo Anthony play for Syracuse once and I said, they're gonna win the championship. That guy's the best player in the country. Not close, Carmelo Anthony. And they did. So I thought of him as a winner. I mean, he had little McNamara and winning players on that team. And then he doesn't get drafted by Detroit where he probably would've won multiple championships. And then when, but so I'm like, no, he's not going to stop. Well, he did. And he did drive Jeremy Lin away. In the end though, was Jeremy Lin going to win you a championship? No, he was not.

The Denver stuff isn't great either when you go back and there's just a lot of first round exits and You know, he basically, until the '09 Finals, that's like his 6th year in the league. And then round 2, just not enough—

Carmelo was unlucky and then was a victim of his own hubris later on.

And made the mistake, which the other guys didn't do, of signing the longer contract in 2006.

Oh, believe me.

And those guys all had the outs, but he didn't. He was stuck with the Knicks for that extra year. Well, the second part of this conversation is the keys to the city conversation.

All right.

Guys who just minted in New York. Namath, Jeter.

In order?

No, no order. Namath, Jeter, Eli, Reggie Jackson.

Yeah, he is. There's a but with Reggie, though.

What is it?

Thurman Munson.

Well, I had Munson next.

Was so beloved that that the fact that Munson couldn't stand Reggie because of what Reggie said early on, even though he didn't need to make it about Munson. Reggie showed up with a baseball bat after the Yankees had been swept in the World Series by the Big Red Machine and said, no one will ever embarrass the Yankees again as long as I'm holding this in my hand. Yeah. And then hit 5 home runs 3 of them in a row in the deciding Game 6. Then they gave him the candy bar because he had said the thing, you know, Baby Ruth. He thought it was after Babe Ruth, and it was actually after Teddy Roosevelt's kid, Baby Ruth. Right. Ruth, his daughter. But everyone thought it was named after Babe Ruth. So he said, if I ever play in New York, they'll name a candy bar after me. So after no one did embarrass the Yankees with the bat in Reggie's hand, They gave him the Reggie bar, and on opening day at Yankee Stadium '78, after they won the championship, he hit a home run. They had given out Reggie bars and everyone threw the empty wrappers on the field like confetti.

Like, I know Bill James and others will argue that it's either very difficult or maybe clutch hitting doesn't exist. Look at Reggie Jackson's record in the World Series. It's a big sample size.

That argument is ridiculous because how do you explain Ortiz then?

Right.

Did you think Ortiz was getting a hit against you when Ortiz came up?

You did. Every time. He's still getting a hit somewhere.

I have Reggie and Thurman. I have Mariano.

But there's a distaste. As much as people love Reggie, unlike everyone else you just mentioned, there's an undercurrent.

There's a but.

Okay. Because of Munson.

Not with Mariano.

Mariano, come on.

And I think Messi is there.

No question Messi is there.

Is there a Met?

I mean, I would say Tom Seaver once upon a time, probably. He's not around, but—

Seaver was the one I had. I didn't know if you'd want to— if there was an '86 Met.

I'm trying to think of who the '86—

Hernandez was close.

That's the the Gary Carter.

And by the way, not on the level that Gary Carter just ripped off.

You know what the real is? Here are the two guys.

Gooden and Strawberry.

Gooden and Strawberry.

Yeah.

Gooden and Strawberry were the biggest stars in New York at the time.

Would you have any other Yankees from that '96 to 2000 run other than Jeter and Mariano?

Well, I mean, I have a personal favorite.

No, but for the city, this is the exercise.

Paul O'Neill. Paul O'Neill got the keys to the city. Paul O'Neill is beloved in New York. Okay. And then the other guy who people have a love for in New York, like other people outside New York don't understand, is Bernie Williams. Bernie Williams on my all-time clutch team. Remember, if you're all-time clutch team, a lot of times didn't play for your team because they— but like, if I was the fan of another team in that whole era, in fact, of everyone in baseball in that era, the last guy I'd want to see come up of everyone in any situation in the clutch would be Bernie Williams. Because he was a switch hitter. He was patient. He was clutch. Look what he did in the playoffs. He was calm.

He was calm.

He fouled off. He always wasted the good pitches. Bernie Williams, he had plus power. He would hit.300+ every year. And he's a switch hitter. He always had the matchup. So Bernie, I would say Bernie. For me, it's Bernie. And for the people I know, it's Bernie. Hard for me to talk for all of New York there, but he's up there. Jalen Brunson wins this thing.

Forget it. Reed and Frazier would be the two Knicks.

So many young people don't understand the reason that, right, Brunson is going to be the greatest of all time is because they don't One of the most treasured memories I have in my life is bumping into Clyde Frazier downstairs the day of the decision. Yeah. And having breakfast with him at this little place across the street from Madison Square Garden. And while we're lamenting the state of the Knicks and the fact that all I can think about is having breakfast with Clyde Frazier on the day that LeBron disses the Knicks and goes to Miami. Oh my, I'll tell my grandkids about this.. But I don't think a lot of younger fans in New York care.

I think there's, for a specific generation, Bernard is on that list, but it's only like, it's an age window of like 15 years. Yeah. But the Bernard in '84 and then the first part of '85 was like, go watch. I love Bernard.

She's Gotta Have It, right? He's arguing Bernard King. Spike Lee in She's Gotta Have It is arguing Bernard King over Larry Bird. That's who we had in New York at the time.

Yeah. So Brunson has a chance to elevate to that level. No other Knicks from this team.

Oh, I'll tell you another guy with the keys to the city. Who? Don Mattingly has the keys to the city.

Without the title?

Without the title. Don Mattingly is the hitman. He is so beloved in New York, like between Jeter and Mickey Mantle. He was probably the most universally loved Yankee, and that includes Reggie and Thurman, even though those guys won World Series and he didn't. And Lawrence Taylor, just because he was the best ever, right? Like, Lawrence Taylor is—

LT is a good one. I should have had him.

You can't tell anyone in New York anything about Lawrence Taylor.

He's the best defensive player I've ever seen.

Best player. Yeah. Best defensive player of all time.

Yeah. I think he might be the best football player I've ever seen. Yeah, probably.

Like, if we're doing if we're doing a draft to try to—

him and Jerry Rice and even Brady, like, I'll divorce myself as a Pats fan, but just like, got non-Patriots. Jerry Rice and Taylor were the two best players I ever saw.

The thing about Brady is if we're choosing up an all-time— let's draft an all-time team, right?

Yeah.

If you take Brady, I'll take Montana. I'm good, right? The two players I don't—

the drop-off of LT to the next guy, it's LT.

And the other guy for me is Deion Sanders. If we're strategically, like, if we're drafting shortstops and catchers because there's going to be a run on them, Like, there's no— I, I know, I know the advanced metrics like other guys better than Dion Sanders, but I know what I saw. Like, I don't think there's anyone close to Dion at his position. I don't think there's anyone. You can't approximate that. You know, you want to take Reggie White, I'll take Bruce Smith, or I'll take, you know, I'll take— I can— you want to take— I can take Aaron Donald if I just want a guy on the defensive line. If you want to take Jerry Rice, I could take Randy Moss. Yes, I would much rather have Jerry Rice, but Randy Moss is You know, basically, you know, but I don't know what to do if you take Lawrence Taylor.

I'm like, well, you're looking into Derrick Thomas. Like, you're already over there.

Outside linebacker who can drop into coverage. Like, forget about the pass rushing.

John Hannah's like that for, for guard. Yeah. It's like, if I get John Hannah now, it's a huge drop-off.

That's true.

That's—

and by the way, that's the strategy. You always go for like the scarcity at the position.

Um, what should OKC do? I had in my notes as well for you. Zach and I talked about this for a while. There's— I was thinking about this, um, and I don't know if it's the time we live in now where you have to overreact to whatever happens at all times, right? And how if that had been the case in the '80s like the, would the Lakers have traded Magic after the '84 Finals?

After tragic Johnson?

Yeah.

Especially when he wanted to trade.

The Pistons, when Isaiah, the Bird steals the ball and they blow it in Game 7, it's like, what do the Pistons do? They gotta blow it up. They gotta do this, that. It's kind of the mentality we have. The more I look at it, I think the move is just to ride it out. You won the title last year. You went against a crazy freak.

Without your second best player, you didn't have your second best player.

You had a big bullseye on you all year. Just like, let's take a deep breath. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It makes me think of what, uh, what Riley said when he was trying to Jedi mind trick right before LeBron left to go back to Cleveland. And Riley had that press conference and he is like, winning's hard. Only one team wins every year. Like, the hard part is now when you don't win, can you stay together? And he's basically like sending this coded message to LeBron.

Well, Jordan ruined, ruins basketball. Ball that way. Yeah. The problem with the standard that Jordan set is he's the greatest of all time, and people know that they're going to be compared against that. And when you dig into the numbers, it says that Jordan's the greatest of all time. And when you dig into the analytics, it says Jordan's the greatest of all time. And when the analytics get more advanced, it furthers the argument that— remember, real box plus minus used to say LeBron had a slight edge over Michael Jordan. As it's become more sophisticated, Jordan now has the edge even in that stat, like a kind of point guard stat over LeBron James. So he set that bar. How do you beat that? Well, you at least— he also never lost a championship, right? He was 6-0 and three-peated twice. And the only times he ever lost when he had another All-Star on his team, even one, was The year he played baseball, came back and didn't have his legs, and the year Pippen got the migraine against the Pistons. Otherwise, if you gave him an all— so LeBron and everyone is being measured against that, and they're aware of it.

And if you look at the stats and the advanced analytics and everything, like, shit, not quite. I got to get him in shape.

You can beat him on game and duration of career is the way LeBron's trying to beat him now.

Well, I mean, you just do what you can. Kobe was like, I'm going to do MJ better than MJ. And he took the number 24. He should have taken the number 22 because he got super close, right? But not quite. So it ruined— because before MJ, you were allowed to lose championships. Yeah. And if people— and it's like what Harold Bloom, the literary critic, wrote about Shakespeare, about how there's an anxiety. And stop me if I've done this with you before, because this is from my Greatest Hits Volume 3. It's every writer since Shakespeare, because writers, great writers, are always aware of what came before them. And in fact, they're kind of having a dialog with what's come before them, right? Or they're involved in this dialectic as time goes on. And every writer understands that Shakespeare covered it all. There's nothing new you can do. So you have this anxiety of influence. And that's Michael Jordan. He has created an anxiety of influence in basketball that has warped the way we think about basketball. In terms of Chet Holmgren, he has shown that at this point he is at best the third best player on a championship team.

And, but he's very young. He ran into a guy who may replace Jordan one day as the GOAT, if he can stay healthy, maybe. And he can grow from this. And I compared it to, Oh, are Warriors fans mad at me right now? But I just mean in this way, when LeBron blocked Steph in Game 6 and screamed on him and Steph kind of hung his head in 2016, I was thinking, ooh. I mean, not in retrospect. At the time I'm thinking, that's not how you react to that. Right? Like, he knows he's better than you. You know that too. And then in Game 7, yeah, I know Steph was hurt. I know he was tired. Everyone's tired. It's Game 7, 73 wins at home, fourth quarter, 5 and a half minutes left. You can't score a point. You can't set up a teammate to score a point. You're throwing the ball out of bounds behind your back and you lose like that at home to LeBron James. He told you he was better than you and you believed him. There's something about that. I believe that. And Wemby did that to Chet. He's been prepping it this whole time.

He, at every instance, I own you now. Steph, I think, consistently underperformed in the Finals earlier in his career. In '15 and '16, I looked and I thought, this is not the same guy as the regular season. It's slightly worse.

Different. You're seeing a guy every day for 2 weeks.

Okay.

You can start to shift stuff against them. And it took them a while to unlock that.

They shifted against Jordan. They shifted against Larry Bird.

But in '22, he answered that one.

Even before then, I started to see him turn the corner against Kawhi. I saw him win games where it looked like, okay, Kawhi is telling everyone I'm the best player in this series. Look at this, look at this, look at this. And Steph answered him right back and won a couple games at home. Yeah. And then by '22, he's the best player on each team. In other words, he got where I wanted to see him get truly as the best player in the world.

I think Durant kind of screwed it up too, in this way. I kind of wish Durant had just gone somewhere else. Of course. Even though that '17 Warriors was the most fun. Or the most successful team we probably had since '01. But I thought that robbed Curry of like his Rocky III moment, if you know, coming off the '16 Finals and coming back and beating Kluber Lang. Yeah.

But yes, maybe, maybe. But the fact is, this is how it happened. But my point is, Steph matured and figured it out, in my opinion.

And yeah, I got to push back slightly in the block. I remember the moment. I just, I don't, I just don't think Steph, I think that team was banged up and tired from going for that 73 wins from winning the year before. I just thought they were running on fumes. You watch those games and it doesn't even, looks like a, it's like Draymond has 35 in game 7 and they still lose.

He was going to be the MVP of the season.

They were going to lose that game by 20 points if he doesn't do that.

I saw, yeah, I saw that moment. Maybe you're right.

Because I thought the key to me with that series is Game 4. Cleveland brought it. It, that's an awesome game that's been lost in NBA history and Golden State won the game and at the tail end of it, Draymond got punched in the balls. But I think Golden State was going to win that series in 5.

I, I, um, well, I think that's LeBron goading. Like he knows this guy, one more tech and he's out.

He won't admit that he did it.

I know, but I don't know why. It's to, it's to his credit that he did it. It's super smart. It's like Muhammad Ali level psychology. He should say like, yeah, I knew maybe I could get to Draymond and the game was over. And, but I would say this about your pushback.

'94, the Achilles heel of that Warriors team was Draymond's.

100%. When you have that kind of Dennis Rodman type, what side of the line is he going to be on? And he fished and he got it. But I'll say this about your pushback. It could be that I'm confusing correlation with causation. Like, for example, if I saw a dark cloud and thought, oh, there's going to be an earthquake, and then there was an earthquake, the cloud didn't cause it. Hard to tell me when my great-grandfather told whatever it was that this in my family, we always knew if there's a dark cloud, it's going to break. Hard to tell me that that's not the case if it happens. Right. Whatever. It's a bad example, but you get the idea. Yeah. When I saw that moment, I thought, oh, right. That's my reaction to it. And then so that I linked it to The last— but Bill, it wasn't the last minute. It wasn't the last 2 minutes. They didn't score 6 points and the other team scored 8 points with 5:22 to go. I believe it was 5:22 in the 4th quarter of a Game 7 at home. They didn't score a single point. So maybe you're right, but hard to tell me that because it's not like I looked back and connected those 2 things at the moment.

I'm like, What is this?

It's funny. It's such a fascinating game because the Warriors, the Bogut injury happens, and then Harrison Barnes over the course of that series basically just dies and becomes unplayable.

Right. Unreal. Couldn't hit anything.

If you go back and watch, it's like an all-time game 7 rock fight. Curry doesn't really have his, just doesn't seem like he has his mojo in the same way. Draymond's keeping them in it. And they have Azili out there with like 6 minutes left.

Who was also not good, by the way.

Who I don't think ever— I'm pretty sure he never played another NBA game.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm almost positive that's true.

No, that was an all-time choke.

But they had to have Azili out there. He didn't know who to play. He needed to buy somebody minutes. And LeBron sniffed it out. And the first time he got— you've got Azili to fall into him for 3 free throws. And the second time Azili was afraid to come out on him, he hit the 3. I always felt like that was the game. It's like, you have Festus Azili out there with 5 minutes left in a Game 7. Because your team is this depleted or whatever.

I mean, and then also that was it. And then, yeah, maybe. I mean, yeah, sure, sure.

I mean, obviously I just think they ran out of guys as that series went along and, you know, they weren't that deep to begin with.

Fine. Hit a shot. You have 5 and a half minutes. Is the greatest half-court offense—

Kevin Love guarding Curry is the worst moment of Curry's career.

Hit a shot or use your gravity to create a shot for a teammate. Like, or try this. Don't have an unforced turnover, like throwing the ball, value a possession.

But that is the only Finals he ever lost.

Well, okay, except the only reason they won in '15 is because LeBron's second best player was Matthew Dellavedova. There is like— we look, two years ago, last year, the Pacers were better than the Knicks. Clear. It was clear they're better than the Knicks. Two years ago, the Knicks were better than the Pacers. But injury allowed the Pacers to win. We all saw 2015. That was injury. That was injury. Now we are in a time in the NBA, and maybe it's always been like this, and I don't know, and I'm not remembering.

I don't chalk that up to an injury finals.

I know that. '15?

No, I thought the Warriors were good that year. I think, I honestly think they would've figured it out.

Bill, so if you think the Cavs are good that year, it's because they have LeBron James and Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. Yeah. And if you took Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving off the team, you'd be like, well, they're not so good.

Right. But, but they had to change how they played in that Finals in a way that I thought actually weirdly helped them a little bit with what they did with LeBron.

The difference was, in other words, LeBron, because he didn't have his two guys, they played in a way that got the most out of the rest of the room.

I thought it fucked the Warriors up. And then when the Warriors figured out the lineup of death thing, that flipped the series back. But there was something about how that series, it was so weird that I actually thought it kind of— I still feel like the Warriors, if you're just putting that, those 15 teams together and the newness of that team and what was going on with Kevin Love, that, you know, the Kevin Love thing was weird those first 2 years.

Kyrie was a big game player though.

He was, but he never, he'd never really done it before the—

and he couldn't have a chance. Like, that's, that's LeBron on the '07 Cavs. He basically took the '07 Cavs 6 games against the Warriors.

I feel like the right team will eat. So if you're going to go 15 and 16, going 1 and 1 was probably the right outcome.

Yes, but right. But you have to flip them.

Yeah, but it's just like each team probably should have won one.

Okay, here's the best argument for Steph Curry, for all the Steph Curry fans. Not only are the individual stats great, but he created an environment, both a culture and in terms of the space that he provided every, and, and the way he could play off-ball, on-ball, the whole thing where, where it's like in chess, if you dominate the middle of the board, yeah, all tactics will tend to favor you, right? If you have Steph Curry on your team, if you have Steph Curry on your team, all these situations will tend to favor you because of the structurally what he creates, both in terms of the culture and in terms of the spacing on the floor and all that kind of stuff. Fine. I would not take that away from Steph. I still think that he is an example of how a player can mature in the clutch. And, and not that Chet is Steph Curry, but I wouldn't be so quick to move off Chet. Here's another, unless you just think at his size, we were worried about the longevity anyway, given his frame, blah, blah, blah. Maybe even then you're still selling low. If you look at a guy like Iguodala, who was miscast as a number 1 in Philly, right?

Eventually he's a number 4 in Golden State, but you still want Iguodala on your team. Yeah. If Chet is a 3 or a 4, I get he's a very expensive 3 or 4, but he, like, it seems to me he's one of the things that makes that team really good.

That's the biggest part of this though, is can you afford 3 expensive guys if you're not sure about one of the 3? That's, that's how, well, could you turn him into, into a, into a, well, let me ask you this. If they called the Clippers and said, give us the 5th pick for Chet, what do the Clippers do? Because they have the cap space to make it work.

I think the Clippers would.

I think the Clippers would. I think they would too.

Would Milwaukee do it?

I'm not, Giannis isn't answering the question. The question for me is. Would OKC want to turn Chet into the 5th pick in the draft, making $30 million less? Then you bring Hartenstein back, you have Hartenstein and J-Will as your centers, and then try to go get—

or someone like that.

Or maybe you try— yeah, or you try to get Robert Williams in free agency. Um, maybe at 5, then try to trade in the top 4. Maybe you could talk Memphis into going back 2 spots, or Chicago. It's just, that was the most interesting fake trade of all the Chet fake trades for me. Could they get to 5 for the Clippers, a team that has Kawhi, Darius Garland, some urgency, not knowing what the aspiration settlement's going to be and all that shit without running plays for Chet Holmgren?

He's giving you 17, what, 8, 2 blocks, 19 and 9.

19 and 9. He was the second best defensive player in the league this season.

I mean, like, Chet's a lot. He's— and also, you want—

you're just— you're paying $41 million for him.

For him, and he's a year, he's a 3-4 really. Like, like, like Wemby's really a 3.

He's playing 4 or 5 because he's very tall, but he plays kind of rim protection. I don't know. I would think about it. Yeah. Um, but that, that's it. I, I would have to get major salary cap relief and I would have to get, um, some sort of big chip.

The Warriors are going to, sorry, the Warriors, the Thunder are going to have to do something is the, is the general feeling about things because of the way Chet came up small.

And the money.

And the money. Sure. Right. Of course, if they have Jalen Williams, maybe they win this year. They went 7 games without their second best player.

That's, I think, where you land after the wounds, after you're licking your wounds, cleaning up the blood off the floor. You're like, fuck, would we have won that series if Jalen Williams was 100% healthy?

We probably would've. It's more really preparing for what the Spurs are likely to become.

So that's the big concern.

You win the Super Bowl in Madden. And then the next year all your young players are rated 10 points higher, right? Like all of a sudden, Steph and Steph Castle and Harper and everything start to blossom and it's like, we needed to do something then.

Here's the— you'll love this analogy. I love to bring in boxing with you every once in a while, just so, you know, it puts the hair on your arms standing up. Frazier couldn't beat Foreman.

No.

Frazier was awesome. Put Frazier against anybody else, it was a great fight. He was the worst possible guy to fight Ali. Something about Foreman, he had no chance. Yeah, it's rock paper scissors. He did it twice.

Rock paper scissors.

He said no chance. I don't think Frazier at any point in his career would have figured out what to do against Foreman.

No, Foreman would have knocked him out every time.

And the question is, is that Chet against Wimby? Is he Frazier against Foreman?

Probably, but styles make fights. So Ali, the boxer, has a hard time with the volume pressure fighter Frazier because the guy who wants you to miss, yeah, you make Frazier miss 5 times, who cares? Here come another 10 punches, right?

Yeah.

Hard for Ali. Frazier versus Foreman, the pressure fighter has to come inside against the puncher. He gets clipped coming in. He's knocked out. Hard for Frazier. Foreman, the puncher, trying to swing one at a time against Ali, the guy who can make you miss. Bad for Foreman. Right. So it really is rock, paper, scissors. And if you're saying that the problem is that The Rock is going to be sitting there in your path every single year, that's true. But again, who's going to match up with Wemby?

You're not going to find that match up. That's what we said Saturday night. It's like everyone's going to have this problem. So do you just accept that there is no Wemby answer? And maybe you did the best job you could have done against him, but every team is going to have this issue. So just put your best possible team together.

Yeah. If I'm the Thunder, I don't think I'm looking at that matchup. I think I'm looking at it. I think we're better than them. We were missing our second best player. If we have him, we're good. Yeah.

And one more shooter, I think, is the other thing. It was a team that when they couldn't hit threes felt like they could lose to anybody.

Well, if they lose Dort, then they're going to, you know, But could they make a run at somebody who's just a more reliable heat check 3-point guy? That, but I think really what you're preparing for is not when Wemby's going to, Wemby's always going to be better than Chet. Even if Chet does better, he's still going to be better than Chet. You're preparing for the evolution.

This was different though.

This was, yes, he, he, he, he didn't huddle. Yes, he was.

I didn't realize when we did the pod Saturday night, Chet took both of his shots at the beginning of the game. He went like 28 minutes without taking a shot.

It was that late possession where he, he thought about shooting, he didn't shoot. But I think really if you're the Thunder, you're thinking, how do we counteract the evolution of Castle and Harper? Really, that's really what you're going to have to deal with. And that's— I wouldn't worry about—

I mean, also, what if Carter Bryan all of a sudden is good in 2 years?

And he's good now.

I know, but could be like a 35-minute-a-game guy. It's pretty rough. It's rough. I think they're set up— it's so funny because we were saying this about OKC last year. And somehow San Antonio is set up even better. And it's really just, can Wemby stay healthy at 7'6" or whatever it is?

I was thinking, I said this on the—

Because we remember when Sampson got hurt and Wemby plays a much—

he's playing in space more than Sampson ever did. It's a different time. But Sampson didn't train with the Shaolin monks either.

Or train how to fall. That's another thing. Wemby actually works on how to fall, how to land, which I don't— they just didn't know this shit. Like Samson 40 years ago, nobody was working with them on here's what happens if you're starting to fall, right?

So he has a 3-year prime, and that's what people are thinking.

He fell in the Boston Garden. He was never the same. He fell on his back, led to all this other shit. All right, Max Kellerman, you're going to go to at least one Knicks home game.

I got to go do the show in a minute. I don't know if— let's see if I can get into a home game. I think I might have to catch him in San Antonio.

Hot ticket. Yeah. Good luck though. This is— ever since I've known you, this seemed like an inconceivable conversation that the Knicks might have the greatest Knick ever on their team, that they might win the Finals.

It's not like when people say '99, it's so annoying. They didn't have a shot in '99.

Yeah. Ewing was like—

Ewing didn't play. And then— and they were an 8 seed, like, you know, Camby and And Camby's kind of a forgotten name. He was excellent. That was a great trade.

He had a great run.

That was a great— but like, it's Sprewell and Houston and those guys. But they didn't have a shot. This is the only shot they've ever had since '94.

So I said this on a pod a couple weeks ago where I said this Knicks team had the best chance to make the Finals since the '94 team. And people were like, what about the '99 team? They made the Finals. And it was like, they lost Ewing. Like, it was a miracle they beat the Pacers.

They wouldn't have won with Ewing, but they would have gone 6 or 7 games.

Yeah, like, that was crazy that they even got out of round 3.

But I would say that in a way, this Knicks team is playing with house money that that '94 team wasn't playing with. Because in Jordan's absence, it's like, okay, now, like, we were taking the Bulls. No one in the West took them 7 games. We were taking them 7 games. We took them 7 games with Jordan and Pippen and Grant. Right now is the time. And this is Patrick Ewing's time. Here we get to see the parallel universe with no Michael Jordan. The Knicks are going to win a championship. So it felt you weren't playing with house money. You were, like, destined to do it. And it was so bizarre when they didn't. It was like, wait, what? They lost the— how is this possible? This is house money. The Knicks were not supposed to be here, right?

Like, they became this new team in the playoffs. I agree and I disagree. Cause I also think this is gonna be your best chance this decade to win the title.

Yeah, it's the best chance.

You're probably not gonna have Mitch next year. He's gonna leave cause he, I, I just don't think they can pay him $20 to $25 million. You had no Indiana this year. You had Boston with Tatum coming back. You're gonna have other teams in the East getting better. You don't know where the next challenger's coming from. You have younger Wemby who's only gonna get better or OKC.

Like this is, if the Knicks can, this is it. I think it's not as much about they didn't have the gauntlet as it— because I think they would have.

You have all this rest.

Based on what I've seen, they would have beaten all those teams. Based on what I've seen these playoffs, they wouldn't have swept everyone, but they would have won. I think they were— they like—

Indiana had your number though, if it was the same Indiana team.

But they're not winning by 12. They're winning by 40.

I get it.

The Mavs. Who knows? But that's my feeling. I feel like they're really, really good. The question is, is it sustainable for more than a year or two? Yeah, right. Like, so is this it?

And they're firing it all. So you have guys that— I wrote about this, the Pat Riley disease of more, which was one of my favorite things to write about in my book. You have all these guys sacrificing this year because they're trying to win the title. Once you win the title, you're not as excited to sacrifice. Towns is like, yeah, 8 shots a game. I don't know. I'm ready to take some more.

You know what? I don't think that's his problem. I think he has the other problem. Towns, shoot more. I think that's really— he's such a team guy. It's like, yeah, I just think it's the— when you say the 2014 Spurs, they had largely the same cast, but it never came together like that year.

It was awesome.

Right? And so this is— now it does seem like they caught lightning in a bottle. They didn't have to run the gauntlet. They're rested, they're mostly healthy. We'll see if Mitch can play. They just happen to be— and maybe they're catching the dynasty the year before it becomes a dynasty. Right, right.

I also, I'll do Spurs in 6. I don't feel great about it. You'll talk about your pick on Game Over with Rich Paul and Max Kellerman.

Correct.

Good to see you.

Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Always good.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Max Kellerman. Thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Gahal as well. Don't forget, I'm going to be coming back right after Game 1 of the NBA Finals tomorrow night. We're gonna be live on Netflix. And new Rewatchables mailbag coming on, uh, on Thursday. And then I'm not sure if I'm doing another podcast that week after the Wednesday night pod. We will see. Don't forget about the new Rewatchables with Steven Spielberg and Sean Fennessey as well. 2001: A Space Odyssey. So I will see you tomorrow night. 21+ in President Select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President of D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope Is Here, visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.