Transcript of An NBA All-Star Fix, Kendrick Vs. Drake, and the 'SNL' 50th Anniversary Show With Van Lathan and James Andrew Miller

It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. The NBA season hitting full stride. Don't foul out on your chance to win with America's number one sportsbook. Bet on fun markets like live quarter player props and partless. Plus, enjoy our new NBA player prop pages, your one-stop shop for player props that include FanDuel's exclusive performance trends. Tracking the last five games for top markets. They even do that. The app is safe, secure, and easy to use. When you win, you'll get paid instantly. Download the app today. Bet with FanDuel, official partner of the NBA, The Ringer, is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help. Com to learn more about the resources and help lines available. Listen to the end of this episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus in President Succe States. Game problem? Call 1-800 Gambler or visit rg-help. Com. Coming up, we're going to try to fix NBA All-Star Weekend. Plus, Hockey? Snl 50? Hbo? Lots more next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have a new rewatchable. It's coming for you on Monday night. We did Wayne's World in honor of SNL 50. A little bit later, Jim Miller is going to be coming on to talk about the big three plus hour SNL 50 show and our biggest takeaways.

Also having Van Lathen on at the beginning of this podcast to talk about NBA All-Star Weekend. Can we save this thing? Is this just the sunk cost at this point? Plus, we have some other stuff we're going to cover. We're also brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. I didn't do great on my Super Bowl bets. I got seduced like a lot of other people with the Pat Mahomes thing. I'm trying to make it up to you guys. We have the seasons coming back after this All-Star break. I basically forced Fanduel to come up with a playoff prop for me. This is what we did. We are going to do Minnesota, Detroit, and Golden State to make the playoffs. Parlay plus 160 are the current odds. Fanduel is going to boost this for us because they're our friends. They're going to add a 30% Ringer Profit Boost token on all to make the playoffs and to make the play-in futures. So you could take that little Minnesota, Detroit, Golden State thing, which I love. It's basically, we can come down to Golden State, and I believe in Golden State. I'm with you, Draymon. One of the rare times I'm with Draymon.

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Here's Pearl Jam.

All right, I made Van Lathen come over.

We're going to talk about NBA All-Star Weekend, your new favorite sport, hockey. Yes. You're a true Patriot now?

Yeah, the hockey got me. It was a great watch. It was very intense competition on Saturday night.

It was the three fights in nine seconds got you?

The three fights got me. I missed the first two fights.

Me, too. I started getting emails after the second fight.

Right. Then I turned it on for the third fight. But then I watched two groups of players playing at the highest level who absolutely wanted to embarrass each other.

In an exhibition that meant nothing, that nobody even knew what it was. No one cared.

No one cared. No one cared in terms of outside of the world of hockey, but they cared.

The people of Montreal care. Do you hear how quiet it got the last five minutes of that game?

Yep, they were super quiet. They were despondent. I learned some stuff. Now, what is it called now? When a power play happens, the power play, and then after the power, when they-When they become even sides. When they become even Besides, what is that called killing the penalty?

They've killed the penalty successfully.

They've successfully killed the penalty. I heard this term. When they've successfully killed the penalty, the excitement from the crowd because they didn't give up any goals during the power play. I was on edge the whole time I'm watching the power play tick down, and I'm like, Oh, my God, are we going to score?

You're getting roped in. I can feel it.

Got roped in. It's good.

Well, we're taping this before all the Monday games. The Thursday final is going to be in Boston, USA against somebody. Hopefully, Canada because I can't wait to see USA versus Canada in Boston. It'll be awesome. But that's not why you're here. You're here for a few reasons. We're going to try to fix NBA All-Star Weekend and decide whether it could even be fixed. Is it a sunk cost? You have a theory about... Well, do your expiration theory.

Okay, so certain things culturally expire.

Game shows.

Game shows. For example, when I was growing up, Gilligan's Island and all of these shows from the '60s and the '70s were still in reruns, but they were still in reruns prominently. I still knew all of these characters. I still was aware of all of this stuff. Then one day, it just gets to a point nobody cares about Gilligan's Island anymore. Nobody cares about Three's Company anymore. These shows just evaporate.

Cheers is like this, and yet Seinfeld lives on and Friends lives on, but then family ties didn't. You I just never know when it's going to happen.

There's a bunch of buffer years there. Seinfeld and Friends made it to DVD. Because they made it to DVD, a DVD release that everybody was like, Oh, my God, it's coming out on DVD, and they lived a little bit long in syndication on TBS and stuff. They're these kids' version, and it sounds really bad, of Gilligan's Island, of these older shows.

I 100% agree.

So This is an old TV show. To a kid now, it's Friends. It's Seinfeld. That's an old TV show. But yeah, so things just they go and they never announced when they're leaving. They never tell you, Oh, my God, this is the last year that this is going to be relevant. It can happen. The question is, could it happen to... The NBA won't ever culturally expire.

Has it happened already to All-Star Weekend?

Has it happened to the All-Star Game. Has it happened to All-Star Weekend? Has that culturally expired?

A lot of it has to do with how being a sports fan has changed from the late '70s to the early 2000s to now. When I was a kid, the All-Star Game was amazing because it was like George Gurvin, David Thompson, people like that were never on television. To have some of my favorite Celtics in a game with people like Walter Davis. I was like, I never got to see those guys play. It really mattered. That peaked in '87. Best All-Star game we've ever had, though. You remember that, right? Where Lando Blackman made the free throws with time expired to send it to overtime.

I have no recollection of this in whatsoever.

It's the best All-Star game by far. I guarantee if you watched it, you would have a great time. Okay, cool. Goes into overtime. Tom Chambers becomes James worthy during the game. Magic's just feeding him. Bird's in it. Jordan's in it. Everybody's in it. It's amazing. I think the last good All-Star game was 2001. Because I did a Running Diary of the '03 All-Star Game, which was Jordan's last one. It went into overtime. If you just look at the basketball reference, you're like, Oh, that must have been a good game. It wasn't. '01 was the last one. I think what's changed. I remember I got League Pass in 2000 because I got a direct TV dish. I got to see all these guys constantly. Social media comes in, the internet comes in. It's just not special in the same way to see all these guys on a court. That's problem number one. Is there anything you want to add to that?

So funny, as much as we have in common, the different lives that we've lost. In 2000, I remember hiring somebody from the neighborhood so that I could steal cable. You were getting the direct TV.

Mine was more illegal because I lived in an apartment. I wasn't supposed to have a direct TV dish, and I had to lie and pretend I owned the house to get direct TV because it was literally illegal to have it if you just rented.

The cable guy literally knocked on our door and was like, Hey, I'm taking it off again. Don't have him come back up. I'm going to have somebody come out here. Here's the thing. The last All-Star game might have been 2003.

I can understand that. That It was MJ's last game. He wasn't good in it. He went in an overtime. It wasn't a great game.

But was that MJ, Kobe? Kobe has a red jersey on and him and MJ are going back and forth.

Yeah, it had a couple of moments.

However, the weekend endured for a little while longer because they were still such memorable moments from the weekend. There was Blake Griffin jumping over to- Well, that was 10 years late.

Yeah, that was the last one.

Then there was one of the greatest spectacles we've ever seen from the All-Star Game, the Aaron Gordon, Zack Levine, Dunk Contest. We're still having moments where there's It's still signs of life. It's still kicking. But it hasn't had a pulse now in a while. There hasn't been anything to make you go. As a matter of fact, the only thing I can think of was Steph Curry versus Sabrina, the shootout that they had, and they didn't even do that this It's good.

Yeah, because you can't even... Mac McClung is fun, but I don't care about Mac McClung. They might as well pull somebody from the stance. He's not an actual NBA player. He's in the G League. At that point, just go get people from YouTube and have them dunk. It's not like Mac McClung is playing NBA Minutes.

I You go against your own, huh?

Interesting. Well, it was a big weekend for the Whites. It was a gigantic weekend for the Whites. Three-point dunk, hockey, but you became a hockey fan. Yes, big deal. It's huge. Big deal. Snl 50, one of the whitest TV events?

Yeah, they tried to make fun of it. We know the truth, though. But so look, there's just no... This used to be something to where you saw all these celebrities and all of these people there, not because it was a corporate thing, which is how it feels now, right?

Kind of.

Right? Now it feels like every time you see somebody famous, they're at the Metta party or the Pringles event or whatever. It seemed like before that they just wanted to be there because it was the biggest party of the year or one of them. Obviously, Super Bowl Weekend and other things like that, notwithstanding. But now it all feels forced. None of it feels like fun. None of it feels grounded in basketball culture in any actual way. I actually went on Twitter and I asked what killed All-Star Weekend. The variety of answers was so wide, but they were also all plausible, which tells me that the NBA has not just one problem with All-Star Weekend, but several. There's a player culture problem as far as how they view the All-Star game.

There's a top- They don't want to get embarrassed.

They don't want to get embarrassed.

They don't want to end up on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, you name it, because they got dunked on because they missed the three, anything.

Endless highlight feed type of situation, right? There's It's a top-down NBA problem. Some people were saying with Adam Silver. There's the way we ingest culture, which is- The Enabler, Adam Silver? The Enabler Adam Silver. There's all of these different issues that's going on with the All-Star game.

Well, the three-pointers are the other big thing.

Three-poignant. Not one clear way to fix it. Not one clear way to say, Hey, this will bring the magic back to the weekend.

The game itself has turned into just a terrible pickup game with no defense. Now, that's the way it used be for two and a half, three quarters. But the great thing about the All-Star Game was it would settle into being an awesome game. It was always a nice little snapshot of who mattered that season. You'd see the five guys on each side, East versus West. You have a feel for, All right, these are the guys now. This is it. Everybody else got to play now who are 10 guys that really matter? Once they started messing with the teams and doing... The thing they did this weekend, and I flagged it from the beginning, the rising, the four teams, and one of them is the Rising Star. That's just stupidity. It really is. Nobody wants to see Zack Eady and Stefan Castle, all these dudes who I like, but we don't see them on Sunday night. This is where you promote the biggest stars you have. There's nothing fun about watching these guys who have been barely in the league against Steph Curry.

They're trying to make the All-Stars play, and they figure if they put the young guys out there that they won't- In that fire, LeBron didn't play.

Lebron's like, I'm good. Do you think it's weird he just decided not to play five hours for the game?

It's incredibly weird.

It's just a rare loss for him because there's no way you're not taking a loss and taking shit for that. So why?

Everybody wants to see him. We don't have too many more All-Star games to enjoy him. So everybody wants to see him. Everybody just wants to see him out there. It's an odd thing. As I tried to make myself watch it, I didn't try to make myself watch it.

Well, you love basketball, we should say as the way. I love basketball.

I'm going to watch NBA players doing cool stuff.

Where the audience?

There just wasn't NBA players doing cool stuff. That's what the All-Star Game is about. It's about NBA players doing cool stuff. Even the Dunk contest. You have Mac McClung doing cool stuff. He's not an NBA player, though. It's still not NBA players doing cool stuff.

The closest is Castle, who is probably the third or fourth best Spur. The Spurs have their five games under 500. He's a rookie. He was by far the biggest star in the slam dunk contest. That's not good.

He should have won, maybe.

He's pretty good.

He's pretty good. It's tough, man. There was a clip going around of the Thompson brother from up there in Detroit flying. Did you see this clip?

Well, I mean, those guys are the best athletes probably in the league right now. He flew from the restricted in area and dunk the ball.

It looked almost superhuman. I'm like, that energy and stuff is what you see happening in dunk contests. It used to be one or two stars, and then two or three Oh, my God, this guy's a crazy athlete guy. That mix of guys was enough to make that night electric, and it's just gone. Now we're hoping that they don't fail. It just doesn't feel the same anymore.

Can I give you a dunk idea? I just thought of this as you were Are you talking? What about Dunk Battle?

Okay, what's this?

It's just one guy challenges another guy at All-Star Saturday, and it's just one-on-one. The Thompson twins are like, Dunk Contest, two of us, let's go. The Dunk Contest is just four one-on-one, just for pride battles. Yannis is like, You know what? I'm tired of this Wembenyama shit. Let's go. Dunk contest right now, you versus me.

I would love it. My thing is, I would wonder whether or not these guys could take the loss. You know what I go back to? Do you remember when LeBron was adamant about hiding the video of getting poked on at his camp when the Crawford Kid- I don't remember that story.

Which Crawford Kid was it?

It was- Jordan Crawford? It was Jordan Crawford.

I vaguely remember it.

Oh, my God. Jordan Crawford dunks on LeBron at his camp, and they hit the video. They deep shadow protocol Midnight It's pew pew. They deep shadow protocol video.

Wow.

I just remember at that time thinking, this has been made into such a big deal. Getting dunked on is something that happens. Anyone can dunk on anybody. You get caught from behind, you get logged, backdoor, whatever. But to me, that vision of yourself as a player and yourself as an entity is the same reason why these guys can't let their hair down a little bit and have fun in an All-Star game. Because at an All-Star game, for it to be fun, somebody has to lose. It's competition. It's fun. Somebody's going to lose a three-point contest. Remember, Allen Iverson goes out there and has one of the worst performances in the three-point contest that we've ever seen, he laughed about it. He goes, Maybe I should have practiced a little bit more. Now, with what you're going to take on Twitter and how these guys are looked at, nobody wants to be that God, that's AI. That's one of the greatest ever who went out there and wasn't a three-point shooter and ended up with 10 and laughed. He laughed about it. I just think they take themselves a little bit too seriously. We take ourselves as fans a little bit too seriously as well.

It's a pastime to complain about All-Star Weekend. It's been 20 years of it. This was especially bad, though, because it was so over-the-top, overproduced. I just want to see basketball. I don't need to see... I don't need games stop for a half hour. We don't need to honor the TNT guys forever. We don't need all these different... We don't need a slam dunk. Let's remember, Vince Carter in 2001, whatever that was, and we got to do that for 10 minutes, and then he comes out and has to talk to the crowd. I don't know who that's for. It's not for you and I, but it's also not for teenagers. It's not for eight-year-olds. I honestly don't know. People just want to see three pointers and dunks and a good game. Just go back to that.

Can I ask you this? Is it possible that the basketball nerds have a hand in having ruined the All-Star game as well?

In what way? With the three pointers or something else?

You and I talk a lot about the differing style of basketball that we like. I like seeing a motherfucker get dunked on.

I think they're not like that. I get it.

I think the league misses a Blake Griffin. I think the league misses a DeAndre Jordan at his high. I think the league misses some good old power basketball to get people up out of their seats. You know what I mean? I think the fact that we don't have as much of that anymore doesn't really translate to the All-Star Game being Good, because what the All-Star Game then looks like is a regular season NBA game where they're shooting so many threes. But when you have the best players on Earth all on the same court, you don't want to see them do that. What you want to see them do is is dominate each other. You want to see them get into each other. You want to see all the different styles of basketball that they play clash. The old All-Star Game was fun because it would be in a situation where you had the best players and everybody would have that little one-on-one thing. It would be like, Okay, this guy is going to go against this guy. Then KG is going to go against Tim Duncan. Then Karl Malone is going to go against Charles Barkley.

You're going to get all of that stuff. But that's not how they play the game anymore anyway. You're really not going to get that in the All-Star That was one of the most famous All-Star games ever.

It was 1977, the year after the merger and Dr. Jay's first NBA All-Star game. Now is when he... I can't remember if he dunked on Kareem or Bill Walton. He was one of them. It was one of his most famous punks, but Tomahawk threw it down. He was just awesome in the game in general. It really meant something. It was cool to have all these guys in one game. That fated out by the time Jordan retired the first time. To me, there's two issues. One is the competitiveness and two is the style. I think you can fix both. I'm going to have a fix for you that I'm going to throw right after this break. All right, Van, it's time. We're fixing the All-Star game, and this is the best I've ever felt about a fix.

Oh, wow.

I actually really feel like I have it. Saturday, slam dunk, and then the first All-Star game, and then Sunday, three-pointer in the second All-Star game. I'm going to explain. We need the All-Star Week and have coherence again. It needs to be East versus West. We also need stakes. The whole thing about, well, homecourt advantage for the finals should go to which conference wins. You can't really do that when you have all these guys who could give a shit about... I don't like it. Trey Young is not... Just wait, I have a fix. Trey Young is not going to care if the East wins because he's not going to be in the finals. If you make home court the prize, you You go to a 40-minute game, go FIBA rules, so it moves faster and feels different. You have eight-man teams from the East and the West. We picked 24 All-stars total, but only 16 of them play in the big game on Sunday with the homecourt advantage at stakes. Here's the catch. Only players from top five seeds can be in the All-Star game.

Oh.

So everyone who's in the Sunday game is actually going to care about homecourt advantage. So I have it seven on each side, plus an eighth person who's a commissioner pick. So eight versus... We start everything at 07: 00 PM. We have the three-point contest, first round of it, first half of the game, three-point contest at halftime, and then the second half of the game. Here's what the teams would be. We would have... The West. These are all top five seats. Okay. Jokuj, Jaron Jackson, LeBron, SGA, and Harden as the starters. Jalen Williams and Schengen coming off the bench, and Curry as your exemption pick, so it's eight. East, Tatum Towns, Yannis, Brunson, Mitchell, Mowbley and Jalen Brown, and then the exemption pick would be Kate Cunningham. We're just fucking going for it. Whoever wins gets home court advantage. Everybody who's in that game is actually going to care. Because this is like, we might get a game seven at home if we win this. Certainly. Then you move to the other thing, the Saturday game. You take the remaining all-stars. There's eight: Wemby, Cee Ockham, Trey Young, Garland, Dame, Anthony Edwards, AD and Hero. You have them play the eight best future guys, Castle, the Thomson's, The first, second-year guys, they play those guys.

$2 million prize, $250,000 per person if you win. 8v8, same thing, 40-minute games. You have the slam dunk after it.

That game is the Sunday game or the Saturday?

That's the Saturday game. Okay. That Saturday game, slam dunk. That's Saturday. Sunday is three-point. Then this homecourt advantage, finals game with all the top five, all the best players in the league with actual stakes.

I like it. Here's the deal. You still have the Rising Stars game. Do you have the Rising Stars game?

I don't have the Rising Stars game anymore. You don't have the Rising Stars game. I have the eight best Rising Stars against the eight remaining All Stars who weren't top five seeds. Then we would have to change how we picked the All Stars game a little bit. We'd have to have at least seven from the top five seeds to be in this game.

What happens you get a vet in the consolation against the Rising Stars game who doesn't want to be there?

Then guess what? You don't get to fucking play in the All Stars game anymore. That's the other thing with this. That's my next wrinkle.

What you're going to I got my next wrinkle.

Oh, the game's not good enough for you? Don't fucking come next year. You're not eligible. That's it. Adam Sover, the enabler. Let's start hinting people with a ruler. Let's go.

Okay, so the Lakers are the 5C this year, right?

Yeah, so they make it.

But in the past, you might be looking at a situation where you had a team with LeBron who was in the playing.

Lebron, you're playing on Saturday night or next year. He's not going to want to play. Okay. Or next year, you're not in the game. This is it. Once you diss us with this weekend, you're out. You don't get to play for home court advantage after that. Let's put real pressure on these dudes. It's like this is an honor and a privilege to be in this game.

How much leverage do you feel like the league has to do that? I'm asking, seriously.

Well, this is an Adam Silver question because Stern would have been able to do it. Adam wants to be everybody's buddy. That's the difference. Again, I'm going to read you the teams.

Okay, go for it.

East, Tatum, Towns, Jiannis, Brunson, Mitchell, Mowbley, Jalen Brown, and then Kate Cunningham as the exemption pick versus Jokage, Jaron Jackson, LeBron, SGA, Harden, Jalen Williams, and Schengen, Curry as the pick. 8v8, 40-minute games, Three subs, that's it. Everyone's playing. We're fucking going home court advantage for the finals at stake. I'm watching that.

I'm watching it, too. In your revamped All-Star game, is Victor Wimbinyaman not- He's playing on Saturday in this one.

But it's like, guess Victor, still a privilege to be here. Go whip on all these future stars. And by the way, next year, get a top five seed so you can be in the Sunday game. Because then it would lead to some top five seed jockeying. It's like, oh, shit, there's a week to go until they pick All-Star. We got to get in there.

Well, it would also lead to something that I think the All-Star Weekend needs is stakes and hierarchy. Because if you're a top five type of guy and you're playing in that game, not only are you an all-star, but you're almost like a more all-star-y all-star because you're playing on a team that's competitive.

You've grabbed a carrot, which is I play for a top five team, so I am in our biggest profile game. Here's the other I forgot to mention. This is what they lose with this stupid, Oh, guys from different teams, and you have Jalen Brunson playing against towns. I like when teammates are on an all-star team together. This team I laid out, Tatum and Brown get to play together. Mobile. Mowbley and Mitchell get to play together, and then Brunson and Towns gets to play together. That's an advantage in a game like this, right? You have SGA and Jalen Williams get to play together.

Those guys are playing harder because they're incentivized because Because they.

Yeah, and it's like, Hey, it's crunch time, man. We're the two seed. This could be like a game seven in the finals. But everybody who'd be in that game, including LeBron on the Lakers, has at least a puncher's chance to play in the finals. Then you go down to the runner-up dudes like, Wemby, sorry. You're not a top five seed yet. You don't get to be in the Sunday game. Here's the thing- Work your way up there, buddy. I get it.

These are the only two things that are going to stop the idea from really shining. Number one is the NBA is going to want to promote guys like Wendby, whether he's on a winning team or not.

Saturday night. Huge audience right after the slam dunk. Right.

Number two, I guarantee you, you get pushed feedback from a surly vet, from a Steph, from a guy like that who happens to play on the team that's not contending right now.

$250,000. Your team wins, you get $250,000.

That's your carrot, and then your stick is, you can't play in the game next year. You would really be that draconian about- I would.

I think they have to be that. But do you think it's that important? It's not like you're taking money from these dudes. You're just saying, Look, man, you didn't give a shit about this weekend, so we don't want to have you back. It's a privilege to be here. You're representing the league. We're trying to build new fans. Because the other thing with this, if I did that Sunday thing, I would start that at seven o'clock. I want kids to watch it. I want kids to be up at 10 o'clock.

You want some little... So you seven o'clock Eastern?

Seven o'clock Eastern. Okay. I want kids to watch it. The way they started last night, kids, it was almost 11 o'clock at night, and there's some stupid thing, and they're playing to 40. It's just like, what are we doing?

How important to the NBA is All-Star Weekend in your estimation?

I can't tell because I know they make a lot of money from it. It's a corporate event. That's what they do. If it were up to me, it would be a two nights, that's I think it's too many nights. I think this break is... Right now, there's no sports. We're taping this on a Monday. If this hockey thing wasn't happening, there'd be nothing happening right now other than college basketball and people put down mock draughts.

Spring training. Spring training is coming back.

Spring training is coming back. I saw the new Red Sox double play combo. I got a little excited about it. We got Breggman. No, I think they need to some juice or really seriously think about not doing it anymore. Those would be my two options at this point. Because here's the thing, it's bad for the league. It's bad to have a bad weekend where every type of fan you have is like, That sucked. I didn't like it.

It's particularly bad this year where everyone was talking about the death of the NBA, the whole ratings discussion, the conversation over the product on the court. It was particularly bad this year for them to have a dud of an All-Star Weekend. They needed to have a good All-Star Weekend.

Well, and then you have Jereamon, too, on the announcing team, just killing it.

Yeah, but that's part of it, right? That's part of the criticism. Part of the criticism is about guys like Draymond who are in those positions who criticize the product of the league. You hear a lot of people talking about the inside, the NBA guys and all of that. I don't know how real that is. I do know that I personally enjoy not being baby. I want to hear what people that are that invested into basketball culture actually think about basketball, so it doesn't bother me. But I can't see how Draymond shitting on that idea to have the younger guys on Sunday night, how that puts a preconceived notion in people's mind that those guys shouldn't be there on Sunday night.

So two things. One, he was right. I give him credit for saying it. Two, you don't want somebody who's on TV when it's this thing you're trying to push, and so do your fans just shitting on it, which I think is a real problem for them because football doesn't let football people do that. When the football guys are out there, everything is very like, let's go to so-and-so who talked to Pat Mahomes, and it's this glowy, glossy light set. Mahomes says nothing for three minutes. They throw it back and Gronks talking about what a great guy is, and it's just how they football, but I don't know, I like it. I don't want to see critical shit when I'm about to watch a game.

What about something that our friend Charlamagne the God said? Yeah. That the game is just suffering from it being too close to the Super Bowl, being too close to so many other gigant... I was at the Super Bowl in New Orleans that there's no possible way that I was going to be able to make myself get up and go to an All-Star game with all those events.

Right. Four days later. Four days later. You would go if it was a good event. You would go if it was East versus West with finals home court at stake and people actually giving a shit. I've been at All-Star games when people gave a shit, and maybe It's just for a fourth quarter. It's fucking cool. It was one of my favorite things.

But what about the idea that as the NFL season stretches out a little bit, that- That they have to reconfigure. They have to figure out a way to move their game away from the Super Bowl a little bit, or else it's in the halo and the glow of the Super Bowl and the Grammys and the Oscars.

The real week to do it is that dead week between conference Championship games and Super Bowl, where they could maybe do it then. But that's also a good week for basketball because that's the one people drift toward watching games night after night after night. The question to me is, do they care? And they claim they do. It also feels like, who's deciding this? Because whoever decided the structure of this last weekend, I don't understand it. It's not like an entertainment person. It's not somebody who can look at basketball objectively. So who is it? Is it the owners? I wonder who's spearheading this.

Well, When you look at the things that they try to do, to me, it always looks like they're trying to appease the players, which I get. They're a league that is run essentially by their players. The players have a lot of power in the NBA. They're the face of the league. The league pushes them in a way that a lot of other leads don't push their players. But it seems as if they're afraid to make the players step out of their comfort zones, because at this point, forget about everything else in the All-Star Game. Forget I'm not about the game, forget about all that stuff. If we just hone in on the dunk contest. The dunk contest used to be such an electric event, even more so than the game for me. Such an electric event.

Then 20 years ago, it started a shift, and then they would have a couple of good ones, but people forget the bad ones.

But even if you get... This is another thing. If there's a decade span and you get three good dunk contest events.

You go one out of every three.

One out of every three. We can actually ride them.

That's a win for you.

That's a win. The years that Nate Robinson won, they weren't spectacular, but they were memorable. Then if you get something that you can actually...

They were. I Because he- I remember leaving the stadium for a couple of those, being like, never again. Never going again.

Right. I'm saying is- Dwight Howard. But Dwight Howard, that was great stuff, though.

Was it? Yeah. You weren't in to it. I don't like watching Center's Dunk in the Dunk contest.

Oh, but he was some different type of freakish situation.

He jumped. Should Wemby be in the Dunk contest? How tall do we go?

Wemby wasn't going to be able to get to the point. Dwight was still short enough to where he could take flight. Remember the Superman dunk? He threw the ball in there. It's crazy. It was nuts.

Have I told you nobody should be allowed to use props in the dunk contest rule?

I feel like I'm going to hear it now.

Well, just like, what the fuck is a car doing on the court? And also we've already seen it. Like, come on.

But in a lot of dunk contests, people Is a human a prop? Could you not jump over a person?

I think that's about it. But I think the human has to be facing you like they're a defender. Just make it look at least a little like basketball.

What I'm saying is something as... And look, there's even cultural conversations around the dunk contest. I can watch on Instagram right now, like Jordan Clingon and One Foot God and the rest of these dudes that I watch on the internet Dunk and do dunks that are so fucking filthy.

Bring them on Saturday.

Now, that's an interesting thing to me.

I always thought- What's the difference between them and Mac McClung? He doesn't fucking play.

I know. But my thing is I would make the NBA guys dunk against them. I would say, Hey, the NBA guys, if you want to... There's guys out there, and all they're doing is dunking. All these guys are doing is dunking. They're just dunking. But there's a guy, he's like a seventh-grade teacher or something like that. He's like a DJ Clark or something. I think his name. All they do is dunk. I would have a dunk contest with those guys and then make the NBA guys dunk against them. Because when the white boy, Jordan, Clingin, or whatever his name is, gets out there and starts shining on Saturday night, they're not going to want to be embarrassed. I will put some stakes on it.

I either want real stars or just find me the best dunkers, three-point shooters, whatever. I think they made a huge It's a mistake not putting a couple of WMBA players in the three-point contest, too. I think people like the WMBA. Caitlin should have been in the three-point contest, just period. I would have had an Escu. I would have had at least two WMBA players, and I would have made the three-point contest longer. I think it would have been more interesting. They own the WMBA. It's not like it would be this crazy... It's basically like what NBC used to do in the '90s where they'd be like, Now, the Friends stars are going on ER. They do those crossover shows. Just fucking bring Kaitlyn. Why can't she be at All-Star Weekend? I'm into it. She's the biggest under-30 star in either sport.

In basketball, I think that's an Obama era idea. I don't think people are going to be down for that now. That's going to start a real, real, real dialog.

I know where you're going. Right. Counter. Are you turning the channel? That's where we have to go back to with all this stuff is, are you turning the channel? It's Andre Jackson from the Bucks is dunking. I'm pretty sure I can go get a T right now and maybe come back for a Mac Mccong trying to jump over at Keia. But if it's three-point contest and Tyler Hero just went, and now here comes Kaitlyn Clarke. I'm fucking watching. I'm not turning the channel for that.

As much as we're talking about it, is it just over?

I don't think it's over. I think there's real fixes.

Is it just over? Because if it It wasn't over, it's like the married couple that goes to- They're in counseling for 20 years.

They broke up, got back together, got an apartment.

Now they're trying to be the SM. You know what I mean? To figure out their relationship when really what they need is to go out and be back on the market. Just date somebody else. Yeah.

You think the All-Star Weekend is at BDSM stage?

I think some of this stuff is really getting it to have a key party.

This is why I'm telling Adam Silver has got to dress up like a dominatrix and make these motherfuckers play hard again. I mean, seriously. I don't think it's that dire because I think if you have stakes and you have stars, you can still win with a basketball sporting event. Here, to bring it full circle to the hockey, we just watched all these Canadian USA dudes really give a shit. It wasn't just the three fights. That game was like a game seven. It was physical. Mcavoy had that awesome check on David. Nobody hits big David like that. They were filling each other. They really cared. You can't tell me that these guys in the NBA, you can't pull that out.

They're playing for something, though. I get what you're saying.

We know it's there.

You got to pull it out. I know.

Wow.

They're playing for something in that thing. I don't mind your idea. I don't mind your idea because it would be interesting for me. This is the thing. A lot of these things that we're talking about, they make the game interesting for me. That's important for you. That's important.

Well, I would really care if the Celtics had a chance to get homecourt in the finals because they won this All-Star game. Certainly. Now I'm watching that with Celtics friends.

What are you doing to make it interesting for them?

For the players? Got to be money. Homecourt matters. Homecourt matters for the top five seeds. That's a real thing. Then for everybody else, money. Throw money at it. Throw money at it. It worked for NBA Cup. They threw money at NBA Cup, and the guys that played gave a shit about it.

Yeah, they wanted to get out there and play. I mean, look, think about it, man. If you win $250,000, I mean, that's one Donate that to somebody. One night at Onyx for James Harden. I mean, that's a Tuesday at Onyx for Harden.

That's great. It's a big win for him.

Look, I remember baseball in the past. I remember them, if I'm correct, they went to doing home field advantage for the All-Star Game for a while. They stopped after a while, though, didn't they?

But it had the problem that we're trying to fix with this. You have guys in the game who don't care because they're not going to make the World Series. What do they care about where a Game 7 in the World Series is? In this case, if you had all the top five seeds, they're not going to care. Let's take one more break and we'll get to Raph Beats. Okay, cool. Kendrick versus Drake. Day 280. I don't know. It's like the Iron Hostage Crisis. Day 310? Still going. Kendrick's having... This has driven Kendrick to 8 plus plus levels. He's just dominating, coming off Super Bowl show. Drake still seems like he's interested in continuing the beef. He keeps coming out of his corner. The trainer is like, No, I'm going to throw the towel. One more round. Is this the last wrap beef ever for you?

No.

The last huge one?

No.

So this is just going to keep happening? Yeah. Okay.

There'll always be one. There's just not enough room on the mountaintop for everyone. There'll always be one. The moment that wrap beef beefs in, there's no more hip hop.

So it's fundamentally, we need this in the deal.

Fundamentally, you have to have it. I hope everybody's paying attention right now to what Kanye West is doing. Kanye West made it like he had all of these philosophical reasons for hating Drake. During that whole time, back in the day when me and Kanye were going back and forth or whatever, when we went back to the teams, he actually emailed Kanye, and then he emailed me back. He went through this whole rant, and in the middle of the rant, he just mentioned Drake for no reason. This is 2018. He just mentioned Drake for no reason. It's because the radio was playing Drake. Drake ain't talking about nothing. I was like, This guy must really not like Drake. But really, the reality of it was that the only reason why he had a problem with Drake is because Drake was on top. It's because Drake was threatening him.

Now you see Kanye- That's why most rap beefs happen.

Yeah. Kanye is sniffing around a little bit, and he's acting like he wants it with Kendrick now. There's always going to be that one- That's like, he's like the crazy guy in the street who's just yelling outside somebody's window. But there's always going to be this competitive thing in hip hop, just like there is in sports to where some guy is going to want to take with some other guys.

Well, the reason I asked why is this going to be the last big one is because Drake lost it so decidedly, I wonder if it becomes like NBA All-Star Weekend where it becomes not worth it. The risk-reward thing is almost too great because Drake would be this casual that everyone look back at. Other people think he's just going to He'll go away for four months, come back, and it'll be fine.

Well, the problem with that is that the rat beef, you don't have as much control over because somebody can decide that they're going to dish you for any reason. And once they do, you almost got to say something.

Well, if you're on equal footing.

If you're on equal footing. Sometimes if you're not on equal footing, sometimes you can let it slide. Some guys don't choose to let it slide. With this one, it's particularly interesting because I'm starting to think that this rat beef is going to do irreparable hard to hip hop.

Okay, explain.

This is tearing rap apart. It's one thing to... If you take any of the other beats, if you take Jay-Z and Nas, if If you take Big and Park, if you take- Big and Park both died. Yeah, but not because of no rap beef. That was a conversation. No, but it- Tied together somehow. Yeah, it was just messing around, but that was really over some other shit. I can go to vladTV. Com if I want to, he got the whole scoop over there. I got the whole scoop. But this has become such a flag planting by each side that But the seriousness of the allegations, and there's always been serious allegations and some hyperbole and all of this stuff. But right now, it says something about you if you're a Drake fan. It says something about you if you're a Kendrick fan. It's this weird hip hop version of the Democrats and the Republicans and the division that we see politically and culturally in America, in music, That just means that everybody can't party together. You have Kendrick who's actually saying, It's time to let the party die. Then you got the girls that's going, Well, we still want to shake our asses.

Is it okay if we shake our ass, and then we don't really know if it's okay. Is it okay if we don't care about some of the social causes and issues that Kendrick cares about? I personally don't think you should care, but there's always been a part of hip hop that was just about the fun. This is casting people in such a distinct and it's so vicious. Maybe I'm getting older. I could be getting older, but this one is so particularly vicious with the fans going at it and really trying to sabotage each other that it feels like it's time for everybody to take their foot off the gas a little bit.

Just relax. The internet in full bloom, we've never had for one of these, the way we have the internet and the shape it's in in 2025.

Particularly this post-Elon, every no holds barred version of Twitter and social.

No holds barred. No holds barred internet in every respect. You can go as personal as you want. You can do AI stuff now. There's all these different ways you can make the other side look bad.

Right. Right now, it's getting to the point to where, okay, so Drake dropped It came out. It was very successful for them. Wasn't my favorite music in the world.

The one Friday?

The one that just came out, Sexy Songs for You, Drake and PnD. Wasn't my favorite music in the world. However, you could listen to that and tell that somebody going to like it. It doesn't It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you an asshole if you like Drake. It doesn't make you righteous if you like Kendrick. They're both two entertainers that represent and do different things. While I probably gravitate a little bit more towards, but not don't probably, I gravitate a little bit more towards what Kendrick does. I think he's a very important artist with really something to say and really represents something. I like a lot of Drake records, and I've always liked Drake, and I've always liked listening to him. I just think it's being taken a little too far now. A little too far now. I take your foot off the gas a little bit.

My son Ben Simmons, not the Clipper's Ben Simmons. He says it's over. Drake's dad, nobody cares. That's his 17-year-old LA take. I'll be honest with you.

Drake was beaten in this as decisively as I've seen any rapper ever beaten in any week.

Was it like a Forman-Fraser?

Wasn't a Foreman-Frasher because that joint was two rounds. But I would say it was- Pacquille Marquez IV? See, not It's not Mayweather Goddy because Mayweather Goddy was- Ali Cleveland-Williams? Oh, hell no. If you guys ever want to see a killing machine, go watch Ali versus Cleveland-William. It was No, you know what it could be? It could be a Hagler-Herns. I'll tell you why.

So it's a short fight. It's longer than three rounds, though.

Longer than three rounds, or short fight- With a lot of action. With a lot of action. However, at the end of it, Hagler brutalized Tom.

One of my greatest boxing photos ever. Hagler like this with his hands up and in the back, you can see Herns being carried back to his corner. Yeah. Fucking classic.

Yeah. Hagler brutalized. At the end of it, it was clear. They both went crazy, but it was clear, very clear and decisive who the tough for a motherfucker that guy was.

Do you give Massachusetts credit for Hagler or no?

I thought, oh, well, yeah, Broxon, All right.

Rockton. Half hour from Boston. Broxton is a box in a box.

Is that Boston?

Oh, yeah.

That's why he was so mad because he grew up Black in Boston, so he had to beat the- Why did I open myself up for that?

Why did I How did he do that?

God damn it. That's why he was so pissed off. That's why he was beating people up like that.

That's why he had to do it. That was the hardest fight for me because Sugar Ray was my guy, but Hager was basically a Boston team. So I picked Sugar Ray because Sugar Ray was my favorite from the '76 Olympics on.

Sugar Ray won the fight. He won the fight.

I thought he did. It's one of the great arguments, though.

He eat it out.

There's other people who are passionately convinced Hager won, and they get really mad if you bring it up. I just think he was sloppy and wasn't landing, and he was off balance the whole fight. I didn't think he fought a good fight.

This is going to sound so crazy, and people wonder about these conversations I've had. I've watched two different broadcast of the fight. I've watched the broadcast.

I'm not surprised. See me blinking?

And then I've watched the I've watched the fight with the Sound Off as well.

Sound Off is important because the crowd was really behind Leonard. And the anunciors, too.

He made a couple of tactical mistakes, but I was doing all of that stuff for a podcast. But he made a couple of tactical mistakes. He came out, I think, Hagler came out Orthodox in his softball. He tried to box with Leonard a little bit. He made some mistakes in the fight. I do think that had there been a rematch, that Hagler would have fucking destroyed Leonard.

Well, he went to Italy. There was no rematch. Yeah, he couldn't. Hagler wasn't the same after the Mugabe fight. He had a lot of boxing miles on him at that point.

Wasn't the same going into the Mugabe fight either.

Early '80s, Hagler against that version of Leonard, he knocks him out.

Yeah. I mean, once again, this is Leonard middleweight. Leonard had come up from 47.

But he was smart. He planned out he would steal the last 20 seconds of rounds. He really figured out how to win a scorecard against Marvin Agar. Anyway. Anyway.

But look, I get it. Drake lost the rap beef. It's over. He lost decidedly.

Yeah, but what do you do after you've decidedly lost the biggest rap beef, at least in the last 10 years, right?

Oh, this might be the biggest rap beef.

Last 12 years?

It's certainly the biggest rap beef of 20 years.

21st century?

I could make an argument and look, you'd have to get Ninth Wonder, you'd have to get sway, you'd have to get Ebro, Charlemagne, all of those guys that live and breathe hip hop. I can make an argument this is the biggest rap beef ever. I can make an argument this is the biggest one ever.

Yeah, it's It's tied to the generations too much, though. Why would you- It's almost like arguing about different areas of basketball.

Well, but the only reason why I say it is- Because Biggie Tupac was like, the whole art form was still evolving as that was happening.

It was so tied into this incredibly influential decade.

I get it. I was there for that one, too.

Here, we're already set. Music is music is what it is. Everybody's figured out their versions about it. It's almost amazing that it got to this point. I I didn't think it was possible anymore.

But that's what makes it different to me. So Big and Pot come out. And remember, there was also some personal stuff that was going on in that beef as well. There's some here, too, but not quite as much. This seems to be different to me. Because it's almost more akin to Jay and Nas, because this is the culmination of an entire generation of hip hop work. You have two guys that come out roughly around the same time. Jake beats Kendrick by two or three years as far as on the national scene. Then for a decade, a decade plus, they dance around each other. They poke at each other. There's disses on records, there's references on records, there's interviews, there's all of this stuff. But these two guys, along with Cole, are recognized as the two biggest stars of their era. These are the two biggest guys in their era. And then they essentially fight or spar or battle for the kingdom of that era. They battle to decide who's music and who's more influential, who matters more There's so much behind it. You're talking 10 years of work. You're talking two different outlooks on hip hop, two completely perfect foils, even down to the fact that one guy represents this long legacy of hip hop that comes from Southern California, from Compton.

Think about all of the Compton artists.

Post OJLA.

All of that stuff, right? Then you have one guy who is an upstart coming from with a new style of hip hop.

The grassy high zone, Drake.

The grassy, all of that stuff, but still has roots in Memphis. It's almost like it was, and I don't want to overstate it, it wasn't just a hip hop battle. It was a cultural cultural litmus test in a way, which is another reason why I think people are taking it so seriously. It was like a battle of what the truth of hip hop and hip hop culture is. So it was very, very high stakes. And the song that won was obviously a song that accused Drake of a lot of things, but the one thing that accused Drake of more than anything was not being a part of hip hop. It just ended up being incredibly high leverage in a way that I don't think that I thought it was going to be. I can make an argument that because of those reasons, that this is the most consequential one that I can make.

Well, the other way to help your argument is the best song that came out of this whole beef becomes one of the best songs of the decade. At least most famous, most influential, will be most discussed 20 years from now when people are like, The 2020s, what were the big songs? It'll be one of the first ones mentioned. All the other rap beef songs, none of them hit the heights at this It's a bit different. I mean, this is basically, I'm not going to say Michael Jackson thriller territory, but like that one level below.

It was going to be difficult for, first off, Fuck your bitch in a click, you claimed to really, really go pop. It was going to be difficult for that to really, really go pop. But I would say that culturally, Hit 'Em Up was being played in the club. This is different.

This is a number one. They weren't playing Hit 'Em Up at the Super Bowl. They weren't going to play Hit 'Em Up. It's like, Aaron, it's halftime of Chargers Dinos. Here comes Hit 'Em Up.

Here comes Park. Oh, he's got a lot of red on. But they weren't going to play that. But this one, it went everywhere. And that was also, once again, it was Kendrick saying, not that he hadn't had a hit records. It was Kendrick saying, I can make a hit record that dances on your grave. You're known for making the people dance. I can have those same people dancing on your grave. And he did that.

It's a tough one. I don't know how Drake bounces back from it. It's Also, there's a talent issue, too. He's successful and great as Drake, some of his stuff has been. Kendrick's just levitating at a slightly different level. Whether you... How much you like his music, whatever. He's the best artist that the genre has produced in the last 12 years.

Drake is insanely talented. Kendrick takes himself.

Kendrick is- Kendrick's a one-on-one. He'll never be recreated.

He makes more important music. I think the music that he makes is probably a higher difficulty. I don't want to take anything away from Drake's talent, but he's insanely talented. Kendrick, you can't make that many great hits without being talented. Dodd is something that we ain't ever seen. We knew this. It's almost like He didn't want to... He's something that we ain't never seen before. To me, and a lot of people would feel that way about other artists, about Drake, with it. Like, Kendrick's ability to communicate, but also to be relatable, all of that stuff. He's just different to me.

You think Drake... Because Kendrick's short. I think Drake really missed that. I think his disresponse could have just been an entire short song.

He talked about the fact that he's short, though.

But he didn't really go after it. I think that's his one move left, and it'll probably be clumsy and not work well.

He should have sampled Short People.

Just a whole short song, just like just mocking Kendrick for being short. It's like his only move left now.

The problem is that you'll do that, but the reality is Then you look thin skin. No, it's an extra thing with Kendrick because Kendrick, on one of these records, Kendrick says, it might be on Dodger Blue, he says, Have you ever ran a fade then ran three more back to back? If not, then shut the fuck up and keep it wrapped. And that's basically he saying If you want to fight, we can fight. You know what I'm saying? If you want to fight, we can fight, too. The thing is, with how psychotic we've seen that he is, you just don't know the level that he won't go to. The best thing All you do is just to rap about it.

Just rap. Well, Kendrick's going on tour.

Going on tour.

And this will just keep going and going.

It's time to let it go.

Kendrick doesn't want to- Kendrick's not letting it go.

He doesn't want to make the mistake of orienting his career around Trey. No. You, one, get back to pushing the culture forward like you always have. You've done the victory lap. There's no bigger victory lap than the Super Bowl. Get back to doing the same shit.

All right, so you're Jake's Tom Hagen, your conciliar. He hires you for a week. What are your two pieces of advice for Drake.

Okay, two pieces of advice. First of all, Tom Hagen, not a wartime conciliator.

Well, how about this? Maybe he was. They just didn't give him the chance. Or maybe Sonny was- They just decided he wasn't because he- Maybe Sonny was just a terrible term. Let me tell you what, my crout, McFriend.

She was the best, and I've had them all over the place. Now, you get your ass out of here. He doesn't get that movie. What would I tell Drake to do? Number one, the first thing I would say is just remember that you're Remember that you are literally the artist of the decades of the 2010s. Number one, it's going to be okay. Take a breath, go to Booby Trap, chill out for a second. Also, remember why people love you. They don't love you because you are the most devastating battle rapper of all time. They don't love you because of that. You already current out of one battle. They love you because you make hits. So come back with some fire. Chill and come back with some fire. I'd say something else. I said this on higher learning and racial disagreed, and the entire audience disagreed.

Oh, I can't wait.

If I were Drake, if this is possible with Jay-Z running things, because I know they don't have the best relationship. If I were Drake, I would do the Super Bowl next year.

Interesting.

If I were Drake, I know it seems like he's coming behind Kendrin, but let me tell you what if Drake does the Super Bowl next year, let me tell you what could happen. Number one, he do something, he can answer the Lil Wayne question because Lil Wayne wants to do the Super Bowl, Lil Wayne and Drake could do a whole set at the Super Bowl. Then Drake looks like for the entire south, which likes Drake anyway.

Now it's almost like politics. You're trying to win the South.

Now it looks like Drake is the one who... It looks like Kendrick took the Super Bowl stage away from Wayne, and Drake is the one who gave Wayne his due. You can do the young money thing. Drake could do a whole Super Bowl, whereas Kendrick did a Super Bowl that was very dedicated to his audience and didn't have some of the hits that he knew before. Drake could do a whole Super Bowl of just hits. It could be just hits. If people are talking about they love hits, Drake could do such a low-stakes Super Bowl. I'm talking about Nice for what? Hotline Bling, miss me. I'm talking about so many joints. I'm talking about all the joints. And it could be hip hop because he could have Gunna and Lil Baby out there. If those guys will be on the same stage, he could have Thug out there. He could have a Super Bowl full of hits and pop records. People would like it, and he could leave reasserting- But that's 11 months from now. I know. For that 11 months, you got to...

I You do the Will Smith?

You chill.

You're just gone?

You chill. He already dropped the album, so he's probably gone. He's on tour.

Ben Simmons thinks he's dead. He's not dead. He said it's done. He's like, Nobody cares about Drake anymore. Ben Simmons quote, My 17-year-old son who knows everything.

That's That could be true, but I don't think it's true, but that a lot of people care less than they did. But even his back catalog, even his back catalog is enough that Drake will never be out of the public.

I like your idea of him attacking different parts of the country correctly, almost like he's running for an election. He's like, All right, where's Kendrick Week? I can get him in the south. Can I get him in the northeast? Just start picking different pockets culminating in the Super Bowl show.

Also, I'll just say this. His support was cratering a little bit before this because Drake had, in my opinion, made some really weird moves. The decision to support Tori Lane and dismayed the Stalian, when Black women had been the ones that had been supporting Drake, and even when other Black men would be like, Oh, Drake too soft. I like the way it was Black women that held Drake down and really kept him at the superstar level. I just remember when he made the decision to make light of me getting shot and to outwardly support Tori like that, a lot of women were like, What is he doing? What's the deal? A lot of the insulation that he would have had from getting his ass lit up like he did was gone for a lot of different reasons. He had decided for some reason before all of this started to go heal a little bit.

Yeah, but it's almost like wrestling. I always feel like pop artists, different musician, different genres. You got an 8-12 year shelf life. Yeah. Then you got to start figuring out next act. You think about even somebody like Hulk Hogan comes in, hits big in the '84 range. By the time we get to when he turned in WCW-96? Yeah, that was 11, 12 year mark because it was like his character had run its course the way he was doing it. It's got to flip it. Now I'm going to dark my beard and become Hollywood Hogan. Think about how many musicians have been able to even hit musicians, make big hits, have been able to last longer than 10 years. It's not a lot. By the way, another one is funny actors, like comedians, like comedians in movies, churning out funny stuff that we care about. It's like 8-10 years.

But those comedians- Then they have to audible. Then they start- You make a drama.

Start doing drama. Now, all of a sudden you're on a streamer show. You got to start. I think it's really tough to stay relevant in music for that long because eventually the new kids that are listening to it are going to determine who's hot. They don't want to root for... They don't want to like their dad's music. They want their own music.

But once again, another reason why it was smart that Kendrick did it, the timing. Drake was at a little low, a lower point. He's still making hit records, CLB for all the dogs, all those things still sold really well, and he hit him when was down a little bit. We'll see. But everybody is okay to like Kendrick and Drake.

It's okay- Van Lathen, just trying to heal America.

Hey, it's okay to put on not like us, didn't listen to Family Matters. It's okay to listen to Pushups, like A. N. Euphoria, You can listen to... I listened to Nonstop this morning when I was walking the dog. It's okay, you guys. You guys can like both guys. It's okay. It's all right.

If you have your Kanye playlist, maybe roll the windows up as you're jamming along to it right now.

Some of the records are going to get played. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Some of the records are going to get played.

It's tough.

He's a lot of great. The guys are... It's tough.

It would have been nice six years ago if he just moved to Australia and just started raising cattle and just moved to a different point in his career.

You know what? I don't want to talk about... He's an anti-semite. I don't want to piss anybody.

It's rough. It's not great. Not great. Meant a lot to my family over the years.

Not awesome.

Not a great turn of events.

It's just weird. You can't. You can't.

But then- You're not cranking it at a July fourth party.

Yeah, it's all of the lights.

Hey, I got seven Kanye songs in a row here for everybody.

What about all of the lights, though? What about streetlights?

What about- That's the thing.

That's why you roll the windows up.

Roll them out. Vin Nathan, good to see you. We're doing rewatching Rewatchables. Van is going to be on rewatchables on Monday, and then higher learning in Ringerverse as well. Thank you. All right. We couldn't let SNL 50 go by without an appearance from our friend Jim Miller, who has been on here many times. He wrote the oral history of SNL. He is an even bigger SNL student than I think I am, which I don't even know how that's possible. But we just had a three and a half hour Sunday night show last night that featured almost everybody ever who's been involved with the show who's still alive. What was your biggest takeaway away from last night?

Well, listen, I think it was pretty good. I loved Adam Sandler, Eddie doing Tracey Morgan. I could watch all day, particularly given Eddie's torture history with S&OP It was just great to see him back. The world's a difficult place when things work out between people and there's not contention and people forget about things. Bill Murray saying something nice about Chevy Chase. It's time. It's all good. I missed Bill Hater. I wish he had been there. Tina continues to be terrific. But there was enough good stuff going on that made you feel like it was worthwhile.

I think one of the coolest... Sandler, I thought, I don't know if anyone wins a three and a half hour SNL episode with that many people in it, but Sandler's thing was great. When you saw him, it was like, Is this going to be funny? Is it going to be poignant? It's going to be both. But he really nailed it. Then for To me, the highlight was just seeing Eddie Murphy and Wolf Farrell on a sketch together because I think those to me are the goats. Those are the two best people in the history of the show.

By the way, with Adam, let's not forget that Jack Nicholson introduced him. Jack hasn't been seen in, I mean, unless you're in certain parties or whatever, that's a big deal. It was wonderful for that to happen. But Eddie Murphy being on the NNH is just incredible still. You and I have discussed this before, but Eddie saved the franchise without a doubt. I don't think if that 19-year-old Eddie Murphy hadn't come along when he did, we're not talking about SNL 50.

There's no question. Not only that, but I think he was the only person who was probably overqualified to be in the show. Hey, he ascended out of it. It was like he was like, Moonlighting on the show almost by the end, where I don't know if that phenomenon has ever been recaptured.

Well, I will say, though, Kristen Wig, I told her, she gets big, big. I don't know. I mean, she came on after Bridesmaids. She stayed on the cast after Bridesmaids. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah, you're right. A couple of people have done that, I guess.

Kristen and Kristen got one of the great send-offs of all time. Do you remember that? Yeah. Mick Jagger singing to her and her dancing with Lauren. Not everybody gets that send off.

The big people missing, Hayter, and we don't know why they didn't come, but Hayter and Ackroyd, I think were the two that jumped out to me the hardest.

Colin Yeah, but I think Hayter would have been involved in multiple sketches because you'd think like, Molly Shannon was in multiple sketches.

The way they were using different people and how great Hater was as a glue guy, I just think he would have been all over the place.

He would have been all over. Fred Arbison was in a lot. I think, look, I don't know. I didn't talk to Bill and ask him exactly why. The awkward thing was a little suspicious because at one point he said, It depends on who asks me and what they want of me. It seemed like there was a bill of particulars attached. As Lorne has said many times to people, we don't negotiate with terrorists. So maybe he was unwilling.

Then Dana Carvey was the other one that I was surprised by because he's been on the show this year and he had said he was looking forward to being on it. So I'm not sure what happened with that, but I think he would have been involved.

Without a doubt. Particularly given... I mean, Martin Short was visible, very visible, and I think data would have had a lot to do.

Do you feel like part of it was SNL 40 felt like the original version of this and the 50th is... They're basically rerunning a lot of the stuff they did in SNL 40. With 10 years of newer cast members, only a couple of whom have come even 20% as close to hit in the heights as some of these other people.

You may be onto something. Look, I was there at the 25th, and that was outrageous because nothing like that had been done. Remember, last night, they did not have a dress rehearsal. This is the equivalent of Lauren and the writers flying blind because one of the great luxuries, You go in, eight o'clock, you throw everything against the wall, you see what sticks, you can figure out what belongs in the show, what doesn't, and also, more importantly, sometimes, the order. You get a real sense of it. Occasionally, they'll screw up and Wayne's World at 10: 01, the first time it air. But they had no dress for herself. I think maybe it wasn't that it was derivative build, but that because they had done the 40th the way they did it, it was like there was It's a muscle memory. We can do this. We'll still have the monolog. We still need a big music act. We still need a big closing music act. Then, of course, it's the emotional art that you just referred to with Adam, which is you're going to have uproarious sketches, then you want some poignancy, then you want some memory.

I thought one of the great things about Adam also was that they snuck in a memorium in there, too. It wasn't just like a capital M Oscars or Emmy Memorial. You saw Jan Hooks, you saw Phil, you saw the people that- Norm McDonald. Unfortunately, couldn't... Of course, Norm. Yeah, I mean, that couldn't be there. So that was an elegant way of doing it. They did that in the 25th in terms of recognizing people who had passed in. I think that they... I'm not saying they used the same playbook, but it certainly felt like there was that DNA of 40th anniversary there.

Yeah, there was some stuff that didn't surprise me. You knew Paul Simon was going to lead this show. That was just the way it's going to go.

Paul and Paul, open and close with two of Lauren's best friends.

Yeah. But Paul was like, he hosted the second show, which was basically, it turned out to be a Simon and Garfunke Reunion. The sketches were shoved to the side. I think Lauren was so worried after that first show. What would even be in the second show? He geared it towards Simon, and then Simon became this guy that's been on over and over and over again. Now. It's pretty striking how old he looked and how old McCartney looked. He'd be like, That makes sense because this show has been on for 50 years.

Yeah, exactly. But you bring up a good point about the second show. I feel this way about the Sopranos. There's actually somebody We should really... It would be a really cool article. You get the first show and you're spending so much time thinking about the first show. Then all of a sudden, it's like, Oh, shit, we got a second show. The Sopranos didn't find its way until episode 5. Yeah. Satana Five, really, I mean, two, three, and four, good stuff and everything, but you still didn't understand the DNA. The broth wasn't fully simmered. And I think that, particularly when you don't get an order, Like nowadays on streaming services, you get an order, go do eight. So you're thinking about that. A lot of times when you're just doing one by one, you need to get them on their feet before you can really learn things. And so Paul signed in on episode Two, if people go back and watch it, man, it's an experiment. It's like, let's call my friend Paul, let's see how we can stitch together 90 minutes.

Yeah. And it was basically a musical show with a couple of sketches in it. That second episode thing. I've thought about that a lot because when you're creating a show, especially if it's a drama, you're spending a year plus on the pilot, right? You're getting notes from all these people and you're billing back, and then finally you cast it. You're casting these people who have never played the characters before, and it could be a year long process. You make it, and now all of a sudden you have to make eight more episodes, nine more episodes, and you're doing that as fast as it took to do the entire process for the pilot. It is something that I always think about when I watch new shows.

Well, it's an incredible thing because also in the first episode, you're establishing the characters. You're trying so hard to introduce the character that you're spending all that time on that. That's why I would like the Sopranos, not to get off track from SNL, but the Soprano I was the biggest fight David Chase ever had with HBO was in episode 5 was, were they going to watch Tony kill somebody? And Chase is like, Dude, this is what the guy does. He's not a hallmark salesman. He He kills people. We got to show it. It hadn't really been thought of before that because it hadn't come up. I think, particularly for SNL, episode 2, episode 3, episode 4, it's a cocktail, right? Getting down How much of Albert Brooks, how much of a movie? How many commercial parodies are we going to have? How much time are we going to do two musical acts or just one? How much time does that lead for everything else? Then, of course, what is Weekend Up? They going to be because We Can Update had this huge advantage. Chevy was the only one who said his real name, I'm Chevy Chaser or not.

He got all that time by himself. Other cast members were a little resentful of that, trying to cut back on that. It takes a couple shows to iron out those arguments.

Yeah, and it probably wasn't until the prior episode that the show really knew where it was going and what it was, which was the 11th episode of the first season. There's a couple other good ones until then, But about midway through that season, the show became the show. But they ran the first episode on a Saturday night in the 11: 30 spot. Yeah, that was great. Carlin does three different monologs. The Muppets are on there. That show's all over the place. They have no idea what it is yet.

Well, part of it also is though, Carlin was stoned out of his mind. You can see it. He was unavailable at certain points throughout the show. The other thing that is worth mentioning is Like, Chevy, 15 minutes before the first show, said to one of the producers, Hey, what do you think I should do after this? Because he was convinced it was going to be a failure. And Lauren kept that. Lauren is Lauren. I mean, he's telling everybody, Oh, no, we're It's a hit. We're going to be a hit. We're going to be a hit. Even before the rating suggested it, even before anybody had written about it. But by the fifth time when Gildas is walking down Avenue of the Americas and starts getting stopped by people like, Oh, my gosh, you're so great, and whatever, and she's like, what? The show changes when people know it's a hit, even though SNL wasn't going to pander to people and it wasn't going to try and become a hit. They were just going to do what they thought was cool, and it caught on. That also has, I think, a real impact on the trajectory of the show because then all of a sudden you're like, well, we don't really care whether somebody thinks this is going to work or not.

We're going to think We're going to have Beethoven at a piano playing something. Lucy, go ahead, do it. We think it's cool. There's no time to... I mean, they address this, but there's no time to really test that out. So that became a real powerful force.

Yeah, and they The amount of people that watched the show as it was happening in the '70s versus how it's consumed now, which says so much to do about the choices we have now and just how we consume entertainment. In 1978, if you didn't see the show live, it wasn't on again until they ran the reruns in the summer. That was it. You missed it. You just heard word of mouth, Oh, my God, they had this sketch last night. Now it's like you can miss the show, and if there's something amazing in it, there's a big moment. You just watch it the next day on YouTube.

Miss the show. Most people watch clips. Most people get, maybe they'll get YouTube clips or they've customized it somehow on X or something else. But I think a lot more people, obviously, are watching it during the week than are sitting down in their Barker Lounge or had a 735.

Yeah, the surprise of, I'm watching this, I don't know what's going to happen. That's just shifted into something completely different. But what's weird is the show, at least from an audience standpoint, in 2025, is still big. I think it's probably the biggest non-sports property that exists.

Well, it's the highest rated non-sports entertainment show on linear television.

Yeah, which is nuts.

Which is incredible. That's why you get to spend nearly $100 million a season doing it.

Well, we'll see how long that last. Some stuff from the show that jumped out to me. Meryl Streep, who had never been on the show, never hosted. And how many times do you think they asked her?

A lot.

A lot. We heard that she never did it. She seems pretty fun. She lives in New York City or she lives in Connecticut, I think. I'm just surprised she never did it.

Look, they asked Tom Cruise a lot. He never did it.

That makes more sense to me.

Because it Fluxy in the Q-Cards?

No, because he's Tom Cruise. He's weird. I don't know what to make a Tom Cruise. Going any direction with Tom Cruise, I don't know.

He's a big movie star.

He's a big movie star. He's more likely to jump a motorcycle over some mountain that he would be to host a live sketch show or anything could happen.

Actually, you know what? That'd be a great question. If I get him in an interview again, I think what would be more terrifying for you? Going over the Grand Canyon in a motorcycle or hosting Saturday Live? And he might say the latter.

Oh, I think he would definitely say the latter. So he never did it. Meryl Streep never did it. And then the other one who never did it was Jack Nicholson, who was partying with all these people in the '70s, especially. He's in the Balushi books.

Early and often, man.

By the way, so is De Niro, who was there last night, too. De Niro finally broke and hosted. But I think Nicholson and Streep are the two biggest stars that never hosted this show, right? Two most famous actors other than Cruz.

Other than Cruise. Yeah, I would say so. That's it.

Those are the three.

Yeah. De Niro did a couple of walk-ons from time to time and then eventually hosted.

Well, he did the Joe Pesci show. Yeah, that was the best one when Jim Brewer was... Jim Brewer, probably his best thing when he was doing the Pesci things. Anyway, I love seeing Meryl Streep with Kate McKinnon, even though that Alien Encounter sketch, which is great, but it's the same sketch every time. They're just rerunning all the beats. The Meryl Street ad was fun.

The ad was fun. Kate is one of the few people that can pull that off. Even though you know it's coming, it's still fun to watch.

She's just trying to make everybody else laugh. We had that. We had Black Jeopardy with Eddie Murphy playing Tracy Morgan next to Tracy Morgan, which was... That was the first time I really laughed in the first, I don't know, 30 minutes where I was like, Oh, my God, they're doing this. It was super It was exciting.

It wasn't just Eddie coming on doing Eddie or doing so. He was actually impersonating Tracy, who was standing right next to him. It was so good. That was a rough add-on with Tom Hanks. But I will say the Black Jeopardy sketch that Tom Hanks did do back then was legendary. It just was really hard last night after Eddie.

No, you didn't need anything else with Eddie. Yeah, there's no question.

That was tough. By the way, Eddie was good doing that. Eddie was good.

Eddie was one of the big winners last night. They tried the Lawrence Welk thing with Scarlett Johansson and Kim Kardashian, Gasthier, Kristen Wig. That's the same sketch every time. The Q&A from the audience was captivating, especially with the nice nice TV, nice wide screen, because every time they cut to somebody in the audience, you could watch, you could see everybody who was in a specific section. I wasn't even really listening to the Q&A. I was like, Wait a second. Oh, there's that, and there's that person. I I almost feel like they intentionally do that, right? So we could just see who's there.

That was the whole purpose of it. They did that in the 40th as well. You get to show off the where's. Because unless people are watching the red carpet or whatever, A lot of those people, like Jerry and Larry, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, were in the audience, obviously, but weren't in the show. It's a great way to show them off. Not only that, but Tina and Amy are really the only two that could handle that because you got to rip on it, you got to tease. I mean, it's much harder than it looks.

Really smart way to get a bunch of people involved in the show. I got to say, the most surprising person, I don't know why Kevin Costner was there because he's never hosted the show. It just felt like they needed a star. He seems like he's pretty available in general. Like he was at UFC last month. But Letterman being there was shocking to me. That was somebody that's never hosted the show, and I never felt like had a real connection to it in any way, but maybe he I'm missing something.

I hate to say it, but it's like driving a Porsche 40 miles an hour. Because why point out to us that Dave is here? And then not using him for anything. I kept on waiting for him to do something or say something from his seat even or whatever, and it wasn't anything. I don't know. It was weird. Julia, too. Julia is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, even though she had a hard time when she was an SNL cast member. She She could have done anything. She's fearless and she's terrific.

I was surprised by that. I was surprised Bill Murray ranked the Weekend Update people and started with Colin Quintent, who wasn't there. That just felt like a direct shot, But it actually felt like old-school Bill Murray. His pace and his timing was really good, I thought.

Well, I thought it was brilliant that he did this Black Anchorage first, got Che out of the way. Then what it wound up really doing was just being a real dig to Colin Jost, who didn't make any of the spots. I think the Colin Quinn thing at the beginning was just to make Colin Jost think that he was going to be on the list because it was Colin, and then he waited a bit. I mean, Bill Murray's timing is fantastic. He was Friday night at Radius in a Music Hall. He was awesome as well.

We had Mulaney's New York Tribute, which was this big, giant movie that moved through the eras of New York that I actually thought was really well written and interesting. I'm not positive it 100% worked, but I liked it. They ran back, Don't Look Back in Anger, one of the great pieces of content that show's ever produced. Thank God. From start to finish, they didn't just run a minute of it, they actually ran it, which I thought mattered.

No, thank God. It was really the irony, of course, that Balushi wound up dying first. But also when he mentioned Gilda, the whole thing is just perfect. It's I think it's one of my favorite SNL moments of 50 years.

No question. I was watching with my wife, and my wife didn't totally understand why she's not a big SNL student.

You guys got married.

Well, she was like, Why did they run that? That was weird. I was like, Well, here's the back story. They ran that. Balushi lives in it, and he was actually the one that died first. She was like, Oh. I think she was half paying attention.

But that's what I meant, though, in terms of the rhythm also. Lauren, I think, pays more attention to that that he talks about. When you have something boisterous or something supposed to be really broad and loud, and then you come to something like that, it's a really interesting symphony that he's conducting there.

We had the stage hand. The In Memorium thing I thought was probably my favorite part of the show when they did the In Memorium, of all the times they've crossed the line. I'm like, Are they going to show Uncle Roy? They got to show Uncle Roy. Then they, Uncle Roy, the most I'm going to say, this is an indefensible sketch, probably the history of the show, but it was the '70s, and shit happens. The lecherous babysitter trying to creep on Gilder Radner. But they went through all of it, and I loved it because it's like, you know what? Comedy changes. The definition of what's funny and what is funny changes. You can't go back retroactively and litigate it. This was stuff that ran.

And not only that, but it's incredibly shrewd because for all of you thinking that we're going to hide from it and you can go and write about it and take us to task for it, we're going to own it. We'll own it right now. Here you go. And with perfect context. I thought it was the shrewdest part of the entire show.

Then Debbie Downer, which I think has belatedly become one of the most famous sketches in the history of the show. It was funny when it happened, but I think as the years have passed, it's one of the go-to ones people mention.

I think there are Debbie Downer societies. There are people that literally talk about it themselves. They talk in therapy. There's a whole big online presence. I was wondering whether or not, Rachel and Will were going to do the lovers sketch, and Will was going to start cracking somebody up underneath the hot tub, which would have been terrific. But that also is logistically difficult.

If they had asked me, I would have had Neil Diamond Storytellers with James Brown and just brought Eddie and Will together and just had them do. I just think that would have gotten the biggest wow from me out of basically Basically, anything they could have done if they had just done those two together.

Yeah. I think the one thing that might have worked against that is that requires another level of knowledge on the show just because it's not in the zeitgeist as prominently as some of these other ones or more as recently. By the way, how about Sabrina- But that doesn't help the Lawrence Welk sketch.

Lawrence Welk isn't in there. That's the thing. If you're going to do Lawrence Welk, I would rather... Anyway, what were you going to say?

But how about Sabrina Carpenter's line to Paul Simon about my parents? Oh, my God. That one line, I think it shocked the audience and it set the tone for the whole night because you're going to see a bunch of people in their '70s and '80s.

There's some Lawrence stuff with this. There's five years where he's not on the show, and Ebersol is running the show, and that's been fraught. And Jean. Yeah, Jean Dominion, initially, she gets fired. Ebersol takes over. You've written about this a ton. It's been talked about a ton. It's always been a little icy with the two of them, but credit dating back to '75. It was notable to me that Eddie was really the only person from that five-year run that was prominently involved in anything. There was no Piscopo at all. Julie Lee Dreyfus was in the Q&A, and that's it. It was a show that just pretended those five years. Billy Crystal wasn't in anything. Martin Short was in it, but Martin Short has become an honorary host/cast member along the lines of Steve Martin. But he was a big part of that season 10 cast. But for the most part, he pretends that doesn't happen those five years.

Billy Crystal was in the audience.

Right. Never went to him.

Could have been used. Could have been used.

Not used at all for anything.

Without a doubt. I mean, listen, given what happened to Billy on the very first SNL, where he and his manager stormed out because he wasn't going to get enough time. That's a complicated history, Billy Crystal and SNL.

Right.

All the way through '50.

The cast after, Carvie Not there. Hartman, not with us, sadly. Same with Jan Hooks. Myers was really the only one. They went to Lovitz pretty briefly, but the show was a little geared toward those basically last 30 years. The other notable thing to me, the last 10 years of cast members, Pete Davidson, Bowen Yang, they got attention. Marcelo got in on one of those sketches because I think out of anyone on the new cast, he seems to be the one they think they might have struck oil on a little bit. But other than that, that show was not a big win for the current cast, which I think was different from SNL 40 when the current cast was a little more above.

Well, one of the things you and I have talked about before is that over recent years, you don't have a lot of reoccurring sketches, reoccurring characters that you can draw back on. That's when it really comes to haunt you because you can't all of a sudden... It's not like the cheerleaders were the past 10 years, so you throw them up. I guess we could go back to the Californians, but you can't do the Californians without a hater. They were in a box. But I think that's part of what was going on. Look, Davidson Maybe you'll argue with me on this, but Davidson isn't there because of what he did on SNL. He's there because he became a cultural force with his many popular- Very right.

With his social His social game. Yeah, no. He basically became a weekend update guy. He was never like, let's build all the sketches around him like he would with Will Farrell, somebody like that. No, but if you- I think the show's in a weird place.

If you ever get a moment, Pete's first show appearance was on update and he crushed.

Yeah.

He did a great... And so you think, whoa, wait a second. And then it just didn't... I mean, I'm not saying he's not successful. But we know, most people know Pete Davidson because of the incredible runway of beautiful popular women he dated rather than what he did on the show.

And a couple of movies, too. The Lorne piece of this, I'm assuming there's not going to be an SNL 60 with Lorne Michiels. That would be insane. People always thought- Well, you could show up for it. We could show up for it. No, but he's not going to be producing. Last night, he was sitting in an aisle seat three, four rows up. He was He didn't seem like producing it. He actually seemed like he was an audience member for it. I'm sure he decided every sketch and who was going to be there and who was going to sit where. But it felt like he was a little more detached than he was probably. He was Friday night, he had a great seat at Radio City.

He sat there the whole time. I mean, look, last night, they had everybody come in. They had some of the top-notch. The Varsity was in the writers' room. They went over that. Lauren was very, very, very involved. I think he geared it so he could actually, God forbid, not be under the bleachers, sit in a seat and enjoy it.

Right. What happens now to Lauren? What's your prediction?

I think he's going to stay. Whether or not there's an emeritus attached to him or not. I mean, but right now, he's already cut back on his schedule. He's not in every single day and night like he used to be. I think that what you probably see is more people. It will be interesting to see, though. I mean, obviously, if Tina or Seth comes back to the show, Lauren's a Meredith. Lauren is, by definition, going to be saying, I'm handing over the reins. But without that, it'll be interesting to see what happens next season. Originally, he had said he'd like to make it to 50 and then walk away. But I don't think he said, I don't I'm done. I don't think I'm done.

Were you surprised, A, Chevy Chase not featured in anything? Was that because of physical health or something else?

I think it falls under the rubric of something else.

Okay, that's it. That's all you got?

Well, Friday night, Jimmy Allen did something very nice, which was, it may have been a commercial break or something, but he leaned down and he said, Ladies and gentlemen, I haven't watched the air copy yet, so maybe it was on air. Ladies and gentlemen, Chevy Chase. Chevy stood up and took a big bow and was expecting a big hand. I don't want to diss him, but it wasn't huge. I think that the powers that be were aware of that and felt like maybe that wouldn't happen if he was part of the show.

Interesting. Well, he certainly has burned some bridges over the years, I think he's- He knee-pumped him. I think it's safe to say. Yeah. That one was weird. Then the Conan O'Brien, not involved last night. Is that still going to the... When he took the Tonight Show and didn't include Lauren and his version of Tonight Show, which people have always said that was one of the reasons Lena was able to double cross him and try to get the show back because he wasn't protected by Lauren. I don't know. Where does that stand?

I don't think Konan would be that petty. In fact, I'd like to give him a get-out-jail free card in the sense that two weeks from last night, he's hosting the Oscars. It's just like, I can't. I don't No. I mean, very few people would be going to be hosting the Oscars and then rehearsing a sketch.

I'm not talking about Konan be petty. I'm talking about, is there still some Lauren pettiness with that whole thing? Because I had always thought there was. No. No? No. Okay.

No. I think Lauren is at the point now where he's really too powerful, too rich, too everything. Who's he petty with? I mean, it- That's true.

It's a victory lap.

He's declared victory. If you're petty, that means that you're in the trenches fighting with somebody, and there's no one that's going to fight with Lauren. I mean, unless it's Shera Madonna, who's got even one name to mention? He's going to be, I don't know, with Konan? No, I don't think so.

Do you agree with the David Stern theory with Lauren that I think we've talked about before about the moment you give up this job, you give up this power and influence that's just never going to be the same? And that's one of the reasons you keep it for as long as you can. Everyone's returning your call the moment you call them.

I always thought that theory said more about David talking to himself than him giving advice to others. Because he was so crestfallen. I mean, you must have seen him. When Adam took over, he was like, he was just a man without an island. I think Lauren... Look, Lauren is always going to have agency and the keys to 8H, no matter what, even if he retires. He can go back there and do whatever he wants, and he's got a million other projects. I don't think people are going to stop calling Lauren. The cast may stop worrying about whether he loves them or not, but that's about it.

Amazing relationship. All right, so your final grade sounds like it was like an A minus.

I think so. It's good to see. I mean, look, whatever. Again, I miss Bill Hater. Certainly, every time you have one of these shows, the idea that Balushi, Gildo, Phil, and now Norm and Jan Hooks. I mean, you can go on the list. It really makes it because they died too young. Chris Farley, I mean, how ironic is it that Balushi was Chris Farley's hero. He tried on his clothes when he got to the show. Then he winds up dying at 33, the same age that John was when he died. I mean, all the sadness surrounding the show is really sad.

Before we go, any predictions for the second half of the decade for ESPN, another place you wrote a book about?

Well, we'll see what happens this fall, right? I mean, it's one of the big chapters in ESPN's life, going direct consumer. Let's see how much they piss off the cable operators. What are they going to charge? I mean, that's a wild calculation. I mean, Jimmy's done his job. He made nice with the NFL. They got the NBA. Maybe they'll improve the NBA shoulder programming. But I know you're dubious about that.

They've had it for the last I don't know, two plus decades. But how is it going to be different with this contract? It's going to be the same crap. It's always a work in progress. I feel like it's just getting louder and dumber, the coverage around it.

Yeah, but this is going to be different now. Direct to consumer. Look, when I wrote that book, it was 100 million homes. Now it's, what, 67? And you times that times $8 a month. You're talking about real money. If you're Disney, you can't buy Pixar, you can't buy Marvel, you can't do in any of that with the current financial equation. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens in the fall when they decide to price that out and see how many people follow them.

How do you feel from people working there happy to be working their standpoint in 2025? Because you always have a good vibe of workplace happiness.

I think most of the people I talk to... Freud had one of his definitions of maturity is the ability to handle ambiguity. So I think there are a lot of people becoming mature or else they're drinking themselves silly on the weekends because it used to be, you know this, I mean, particularly because ESPN is in Bristol, Connecticut. You got to move your ass up to central Connecticut, you put your kids in school. Everybody's there for 25, 30 years. I mean, if you're at CBS Sports and you don't like it or you get recruited to NBC, you're just going to cross town. So a lot of people are there for 25, 30 years. It wasn't those jobs aren't as safe as they used to be. A lot of people were having a very difficult time, particularly since some real legends were laid off during these layoffs. I think there's a level of insecurity, a palpable level of Security Bill that's never been there before.

That's what I'm hearing as well. Hbo, another place that you wrote a book about. New series coming out March third, Celtic City. Nine parts, Celtic's DocuSeries. It's really good. But wait, how are you feeling about HBO these days in the Time Warner Empire?

I think there's a branding issue with the whole universe that really hurt HBO. This idea that I mean, those three letters are worth just as much in terms of currency and pedigree than any three-level letters there are in the ecosystem. They dialed back on it. I think Casey Boyce has done the Lord's work. He is without a doubt, one of the best creative executives in the business today. I wish they had more money. I know that they could have done unbelievable things if they had more money, which wasn't always the case, but I think that the brand has really lost a lot of its halo, not because it's turning out shit, but because it's gotten messed up in this whole discovery plus HBO Plus, Max, and this, and that. It was HBO Go, then it was... I mean, it's a lot to go through for a brand. Even though they have some great people working there, I think they deserve better.

Yeah, I think with the Max app, it just shouldn't be that hard to find the best shows HBO has ever done or the new shows. You feel like you're wading through all these different choices. Sometimes somebody's going on there like, I just want to watch Sex in the City.

I feel like there's a lot of politics gets involved with that homepage. I mean, look, at Netflix, it's almost like Darwinian. It's survival of the Finist. But it's because you got that algorithm and like, don't mess around with it, man. We know what we're doing. But with Max, it's It's objective. It's like, wait a second. And there's this whole big thing with entourage. Where's that? I mean, been deep six, too. And you can't find this, you can't find that. It's really complicated on that, Max. Homepage.

Well, the best way to fight off any weirdness is to just keep putting out good stuff, which it seems like they had to push a lot of stuff to 2025, and it seems like they are going to have a bunch of good content this year. The question will be, how can they push it in the max app the best possible way?

Good luck with the Celtics, man. That's awesome.

Thanks. It was a lot of time. Anything else you're working on before we go? Got a secret project you want to tell us about? No?

Just writing, writing, writing.

What are you writing?

Stuff? Things? Yes, just stuff. Yeah, writing stuff.

New project?

A couple of new ones, yeah.

All right. Misterious Jim Miller. Thanks for your S&OP 50 recap. Good to see you as always.

Hey, thanks for having me, man.

All right. Thanks to Van Lathen and Jim Miller. Thanks to Kyle and Sereudia Gahal. As always, you can watch clips and videos from this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can also watch this as a video podcast on Spotify. I hope you did. We will be coming back on Thursday, actually, after the big Austin Live show. We're going to run that on this feed. It's going to be good, I promise. Don't forget, a new rewatch was coming Monday night, Wayne's World. I will see you on Thursday..