Transcript of An NBA Mailbag, Belichick’s Snub, Pats Disrespect, and Half-Baked Ideas With Zach Lowe, Kevin Wildes, and Joe House

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All right, Zack Lo is here.

He actually used my studio for his podcast, The Zack Lo Show, today.

I didn't break in.

Then you're going to be on is on tonight. So I was like, Well, you're here. Let's do some mailback questions. You and I watched Rockets Spurs last night, and Castle was the one, I know you probably talked about it in your pop, but Castle was the one taking it to Durant in a really unusual way. We were trying to think last night, all the times we've seen somebody do that to Durant, it wasn't like he was doing it for two hours, but there was a moment in the fourth quarter when he turned it up. And just in general, how comfortable the Spurs seemed against the Rockets. Now no Steven Adams. Now Van Blede, obviously, gone. And then on the other side, you have very comfortable against OKC. I don't think the Spurs are going to make the finals, do you? Yet, they're comfortable against the two teams I'd want to be comfortable against, other than Denver.

Yeah, I think they could. I would still slot them behind Oklahoma City and Denver, assuming Denver gets healthy. I think they could. To win all those playoff series in a row is hard, but they're legit, really good. I mean, last Last night was a very good Dylan Harper game. He's been in a slump for a while. So when everything clicks, they can beat anybody. But it's hard for a young, mostly an experienced team to click like that every single game in the play.

Could be like an okay, see two a year's ago where there's a lot of we're ready, but there's also some we're not quite ready. I give you my theory about Keldon Johnson being the electric socket guy in that team. I like that theory. Every once in a while, a team has a guy that the other teammates love so much. When he does well, it just supercharges of the team, and I feel like he's one of those guys. And Yann is who you talked about in your pot as well. But we just feel like this is a holding pattern now.

Any time in the next week, just get your phone, keep your phone alerts on, or it could drag again into the summer? Who knows?

I got a couple of emails about this because I'm going to do some mailbag questions with you, and I can't even find the one I want to use. But there was a couple of versions of the same thing. Miami can only trade two picks because they have this weird 20, event situation. Why couldn't a team just trade them another pick that could substitute and make it so that they could actually do the four first? We don't see it that often, but it does feel like there's some chicanery in play that they could do.

That could happen. What was it last year? Phoenix traded one of their unprotected picks for three pics from Utah.

To give them more flexibility.

Yeah. And so you could... Bob and Mark mentioned that. You can see that.

Because it feels like Miami and Golden State are the two that would have the urgency to maybe try to jump in now before it gets to the summer. And Miami's problem is the pics. Golden State's problem is they don't really have the interesting player to put in there. I could argue Miami. I don't know if Tyler Hero is interesting either, but maybe there is. Does Bam need to be in that trade?

He's not going to be in that trade.

I don't think so. What if I'm Milwaukee? I'm like, Cool. I'm glad you want Yannis. Let's talk about Bam. Well, we're not trading Bam. Okay, good luck with everything. Thanks.

Look, I don't think Bam makes a ton of sense for Milwaukee if they pivot and do a rebuild unless they think they can then flip Bam for other stuff, which is easier said than done when your contract is as big as his is. Same with Kat.

I wonder if we could all lead to my dream of having Bam, Monk, and Fox on the same team again. Wow. It's been one of my- Kentucky? One of my deepest, stupidest NBA dreams is just to get those three. Yeah, they had the tough loss in the tournament. Get those guys back. All right, here we go. Wow.

I didn't know that about you, that you had- I have some dreams.

Nailbag.

I have no idea what's coming. This could go just to make clear.

This is your worst nightmare, being completely- No, I'm free. Well, this is true. Yeah. Well, you're fresh off. Confidence boost. We taped a rewatchables with you yesterday. Not even going to say what the movie was. No, it was fun. It's lurking. So you're going on Amazon tonight? I'm catching you in a good time. Paul Peters writes, we've always heard about... I thought you said Paul pierce for a second. Paul Peters. We've always heard about the first team get 100 as a marker for likelihood to win the game with the current scoring influx, is it time to rethink the benchmark? I agree with this. I think Lawler's law is dead. So what's the number?

I think, first of all, I think you have to just... Lawler's law is so good.

But it's bumping.

But you have to just... Every time a team crosses 100, you have to just hat-tip Ralph Lawler, who's just the best.

So does it stay Lawler's law at 100, and then we give somebody else?

Lawler's law is always going to be 100. And then the new benchmark- It's not Allah, though.

It's Getting the team score, everybody's scoring 120 points a game.

I understand. I'm just saying we can get Ralph Lawler on the pod and ask him what he thinks about this. If we should amend, there should be a Lawler corollary.

I'm good if we move it to 110. I guess what's the number?

I think it's got to be 115. Without researching, 120 seems a tick high, 110 seems a tick low. I'm going to go 115.

Every single team in the league, I think, is averaging at least 113, 114, except for It might be like one.

So 115 might be too low. Well, I'm going with 115.

Because think about when he did Lawler's Law in the hundreds. For a hundred, teams were averaging 94, 95 a game. So if you got to 100, it was like, oh, yeah, we're winning. We're at 100. So I think it's at least 115.

But what do we name it? Your point is, do we just amend Lawler's law or do we have Lawler's law and a new law?

I think Lawler would have to- He gets to weigh in. Have a press conference.

He gets to weigh in.

It's like, Thank you for your consideration. In this time. I'd like to now amend this to 115. We're like, Good. Lawler's law, new.

Maybe I'm in rewatchables mode, but we just have an aside on Ralph Lawler.

What is it?

Opening scene of drive is One of my... Drive, is that the Ryan Gosling movie? Yeah. One of my all-time favorite scenes in any movie. I just love that he's listening to a Clippers game and not a Lakers game. It's just such a great touch of like, this guy is a Clippers fan?

Probably written by a Boston guy. Trey from Scottsdale. He says, I've been seeing the Warriors front office get a lot of shit across fan pages for how they couldn't extend the window, and I'm unsure how that could have happened. Was there a Trey staring them in the face they didn't make. Was there a player they passed out for someone else? Sometimes windows closed with a slow, steady decline. This one had an uptick in the middle, so it feels different. Of course, if they get you honest in a week, this is moot. It's the two draughts I think people point to and then not trading the Picks, not trading Kaminga or even Weisman during the one and a half years, who probably had value. Just not springing in action with assets the way if LeBron had been on that team instead of Curry, I think LeBron would have pressured that team. What are I'm doing, I'm running out of time. You've got to turn these guys into something. They did the opposite. They tried to do the two timelines. The only trade I've heard of that pretty confident is true is that they could have turned Kaminga in a Caruso around the time of Gidey.

I don't know if it during the February before the Gidey trade or that summer, but that was Kaminga's value for a while. It was in that. Teams that would trade a really good role player for a young up and coming guy. But did you hear anything else? What else could they have done?

They were definitely in on Caruso. I'd have to go back and dig into the-Dig into your Zodiac notes?

My Zodiac.

But this is like, I've had this conversation with Warriors higher ups several times, including several times in the last few weeks. What's the missed opportunity? And I wrote the city of Spain. They've floated the number two Bic. They tried to see what they could get for it. It's COVID.

Nobody wanted to trade.

And it was like, could they have gotten in the Bradley Beal sweepstakes or the Ben Simmons sweepstakes? I mean, are those things changing your life as a team? They tried to get Siakam. They tried to get Ananobi. They were in. They had the Markanin-Paul George thing that they were trying to do. I think that one's instructive because they didn't have enough to get both of them. And then Paul George had a little say in that himself because it was a lot of balls in play. But could they have traded everything for Lowry Markanin? Maybe. It's everything. I think that was too late. Kaminga Pajewski, four picks, whatever. But if you trade everything for one guy and he's, what's Larry Markin, the 22nd best player in the NBA, 18th best player?

And also, does it make them a title contender?

That's what I'm saying. So I don't know that there was the move or moves that are out there other than how your life changes if you get the Weisman pick right and what that trade-I can't hang it on.

I think that COVID draft, everybody was wrong. The next draft, we can kill them on. They had these two awesome picks, and they both times picked the wrong guy. We both know they were split in the draft room for who to take. They took Kamingo over Franz Wagner, and they took Moody over Trey Murphy, and there might have been some Schengen buzz in there. They went over I think the biggest thing you can kick them on, because drafts, whatever, you can always go one way or the other. The pool extension is the worst thing they did in the five years. That was the most indefensible one because they didn't take care of Draymond. So they took care of pool. They had the Draymond thing looming that they didn't really do anything with. Could your daughter have figured out that that was going to be a problem? How young of a child do you have to be to figure out this is probably going to go badly that you did this?

And yet you yourself last night were remarking on how Jordan pool hurt the Celtics, your beloved Celtics, in the finals.

Killed them in the finals. But they didn't need to sign him for $30 million a year when they did. They could have waited. He could have been a trade asset. They could have seen if this was real or not. They could have maybe used him in February. I think that was the biggest mistake they made, and that's the one I think they can get ding done. Tom Adelaide in South Australia.

Okay.

Who's the guy you don't want to see come playoffs? For me, it's Kawhi. If he's healthy, he can win a series or two with that I assume he doesn't mean Jokuj or SGA, probably like next level.

Yeah, I was going to say Jokuj, but I guess we can't say that.

But hold that because this leads to the next question. This is from Jamis and Drake. It's a Clippers related question. Jamis and Drake. That's the fake. My favorite thing every NBA season is the Clippers roller coaster that the media goes on. There reaches a point in the middle of every season where the media fully buys into the Clippers and the way they are playing. This is an obvious case of amnesia. They They will inevitably lose the series in the playoffs that they shouldn't for three reasons. One, they're the Clippers. Two- Did you write this email? I didn't write this. James Harden always disappears when it matters most. And three, you cannot count on Kawhi's health. On the roller coaster, is this the peak of Clippers hype right now?

We're getting close. I mean, 16 and 3, 17 and 3 in the last 20.

So we're almost at the top before we're about to have the fun part.

The shoe dropped soon. I mean, history would say, are you die in it? You said there was a second best team in the West going to the playoffs last year.

The Kawhi thing, I don't... Last year was my last time ever trusting a Harden team in the playoffs because watching him not look at the rim for the first half of game seven, that was my never again moment. Never Again. Never Again.

Did you pick them in that series?

Tom Hankson cast away when he gets mad at Wilson. Then he finds him in the water. He's like, Never again.

Is he mad at Wilson?

Well, he got mad at Wilson. He thought Wilson was talking back to him. Wilson was a volleyball who could not communicate.

I understand, but I just remember Wilson falling off the... Oh, I thought he fell off the raft. That's right. He throws him off and then he gets granted immediately. That's right.

Never again. That was me with James Harden watching him.

I can't believe that you were still holding out.

I thought they were really good, but I made...

They were really good.

My weakness as an evaluator is if I see a game in person, I overrate the game in my head later. If I actually see the matchup and I catch one team on an awesome night, the other team on not a good night, my brain can't properly calibrate that. So I'm like, The Clippers, they play awesome against OKC, and you just got to get carried away with that. With that said, I thought they really could have beaten Denver in that series. And Denver, it took everything they had, everything.

And yet it ended in exactly the way.

And yet it ended the Clippers way. So we agree it's close to the hype, but not totally. All right, next question from Randy.

Randy.

If the owner of the Brooklyn Nets offered you a six-year contract to be the GM position of the Nets with all powers of decision-making, would take the job. You can continue all podcasting. That would go great. And or even encourage... Yeah, that'd be awesome. Or even encourage to regularly talk about life as a GM on your podcast. Whoever you'll be judged for life based on your success or failure as a GM. Here's the key question. Is there any NBA team you would not accept this offer from? I think both of us would probably take... We could be talked in a GM job. It was a six-year contract?

Six-year contract. I'm not taking a six-year contract, ever.

Not even to be a GM?

The only reason I would take a contract to be a GM is for the money, and then it would have to be a two or three year contract. That's it. Unless I intentionally get... Am I serving all six years, no matter what, or can I get myself fired?

You could just emulate some of the GMs we've had the last 25 years.

But I want all my money.

You'll get all your money. It's a six year guaranteed deal.

I don't think being a GM is fun. I actually don't think it's fun. I don't think GMs really like their jobs unless their team is awesome and they have a chance to win a championship. People think the GM GMs are like... The idea that you could continue podcasting while being a GM is insane. It's not possible. It's a 24/7 job, and not as much of it as anyone thinks, not nearly as much as scratching out trade ideas on the whiteboard and calling Darryl Daryl. I mean, there's some of that, calling Darryl more. There's also just so much of like, Oh, this is the agent of my 15th guy calling to complain about shit. And this assistant coach wants to take a job over there, and I got to put out that fire. Sounds like my life. You don't see your family or traveling all the time. It's not worth it. I'm out. I'm out unless it's a three-year contract, then I get paid a lot of money.

I would only take one job if it was to help run the expansion Seattle Supersonics. That would be it. I love the Celtics too much to want to take another job.

I think you would damage the Celtics. I think it would go badly.

No, I couldn't take the Celtics. I would never do that. Because if you fail running your favorite team, where do you go from there?

This is what we're hoping doesn't I've been with David Sterns for the mess.

Well, true. But Seattle, the chance to be on the ground floor with that and basically try to do a pressee, I'd at least have a combo.

Here's another one. I've had this conversation with a few would be or currently are in demand, big team executives. Someone has to save the Bulls. I have a question about this. You're talking about you'd be a hero in Seattle if you revived the Sonics. If ownership would ever just get out of the way. Whoever saves the Bulls, it's like a hero. You revive one of the brand name franchises in all of sports. It's just been more... So that one I would consider.

So destitute Bulls fan Shane wrote in, I have less of a question, more of a plea. We desperately need the national media to start coming down on Jerry Reinstopf the way they do on the other bad owners, Reinstopf. I don't think everyone is aware of the magnitude of Bulls fans' desperation. It took so to fire Garform and John Paxon. Bulls fans raised $8,000 in a GoFundMe to put up a billboard that said, Fire Garform. Six years later, we hate this front office even more. Reinstopf, allegedly, once advised another GM in baseball to always finish second because it keeps the fans wanting more. I never heard that story. I never heard that either. This guy sucks. The Bulls suck. The White Sox suck. We have to pay extra to watch them lose on a private steaming service. It seems not happy. Wow. Yeah. This is Chicago Bulls, man. Every Bulls fan I know or even peripherally know feels exactly the same as that guy. Everyone hates the Bulls front office.

Yeah, they're the most unhappy fan base. Sacramento's fan base is just beaten down to the point of I can't even sermon Rage anymore. The Bulls fan base is the angriest.

Sacramento is the most damaged. You could probably do a pretty good documentary about how dark it is for them.

He didn't have a question?

Well, the Chicago fan's question was, why don't we hammer them? Randy's question was, is there any NBA team you would not accept this offer from? Assuming both of us wanted to be GMs, is there a team we'd cross up? I thought the same thing you did at Sacramento. I would also not accept New Orleans.

No, I would do Sacramento. I would do Sacramento, but I would negotiate in my contract. I'm allowed to write a tell-all book after I get fired.

That would more than the money?

That I'll do it.

I can't imagine running the kinks, and you're working on a trade for two days, and then Vivek comes in with whoever his right-hand person is at the time that he inexplicably listens to. And you lay out the trade, and they're just like, No, we don't like it. What about trading for Zack Levine? Should we do that?

What about the Bulls? Should we just get all the Bulls, the former Bulls, and try to make that work?

They should just trade rosters. Quick one from Brett W. Here's one. Porzingas is traded at the deadline. He's waived by a new team at the buyout deadline. And then the Celtics sign him on a minimum, send him to Germany for some treatment, and he's miraculously healthy enough to give them 20 minutes a game off the bench during the playoffs, and Tate was back as well. Possible? I did get excited when I read this. Because if Atlanta does make a big move and Porzingis ostensibly is in it, it's probably to a team that then waves Porzingas, I would guess, and allows them to buy a contender. At that point, the Lakers probably come flying in, I would guess.

Do you have any faith that he's going to play?

I don't. But if it's a minimum last two months of the season, you got to think about it.

You and I were talking about this last night, how I sound like an old man sometimes now talking to NBA people who are like, Well, Anthony Davis should get traded here and Jeremy Grant gets traded here. I'm like, They never play. I sound like my dad. He doesn't play basketball. He doesn't play.

I want my players to play. Getting close to that Yana's point. Talked about that with legs on Tuesday. Are you playing 75 games? Another one is Kam Johnson. Great guy. Everybody loves Cam Johnson. Can you get on the basketball court? How many games are you going to play?

Jalen sucks.

These guys in these 40 to 65. Yeah. Honestly, some guys are more durable than others. We were talking about Jalen last night. I literally can't remember a Jalen injury. Do you?

When When you said that, I said, knock on wood, because people said the same thing about Tatum right up until.

Right. But two of the more durable young guys we've had, but they also really take care of their bodies. This is a good one from... I don't know how to say this because it's an international name, J-N-N-E. So maybe Jan, Johnny. East versus West, All-Star Game. Winning conference has home court for the finals. The coaches and players would The counterargument should be that team records are the fairest way to determine home court. But is it? Conferences have different schedules. They're unbalanced. Would this work? No.

Didn't baseball tried this, right? It just immediately was like, This is not a good idea.

I don't think it would work either. But you know what would work? Just getting rid of the All-Star Game. Yeah, I'm out of- 20 years of ideas of how to save the All-Star Game. Maybe the idea is to just not have it.

I'm officially just out of the conversation.

It's not going to happen. I don't want to go. I don't want to watch it. They don't care. They're going to have it over the year.

My only contribution would be, if you want to expand it to 13, 14, fine. Just East West. Just scrap all this other shit. Have a 48-minute game. I can't even... If people ask me if fans, actual fans are like, Hey, how's the All-Star game working this year? Like, Oh, it's interesting you ask. So first we split them up in international versus US, but there's two US teams and one international team. Then team A plays team B in a game? No, a quarter. And then team B plays team C in another game? No, it's the second quarter of the game. Then the third. I'm like, if this is what we're doing- It is a great point.

If it takes more than a sentence to explain something, it's a bad idea.

If there's a loser's bracket within the game, it's like, let's just call it a day.

I give up. I'll probably go this year because it's in LA. So we missed this last night. Cleveland Lakers, after Jaron Tyson in the postgame Lakers interview that this is Donovan Mitchell's City now, the look on Mitchell's face was the same as Vito Corleone when Sonny talks out of turn during this LASA meeting. I have a settlement of weakness for my young teammates, and I spoiled them, as you could see. They talk when they should listen. But it is funny. What a quick email into the mailbag. Where there's a freeze frame picture of him saying that, and then Mitchell like...

It's good because he's taller than... Jalen Tyson is taller than Mitchell. So Mitchell's like, Did you see Jelen Tyson issued an apology? For real? For that- He clarified afterwards. I wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes or disrespect anybody.

That's funny.

We can't even have any fun.

We got to apologize for that. No, I don't have opinions anymore. Bill H. For any trade combo, you always hear things like, Team X can trade two first rounders today after the draft, they can trade four because of a step being rolling, all that stuff. My question is, could teams have a handshake agreement to trade a pick later? I'll trade you Kat and Bridges for Giannis right now, and on draft night, I'll trade you three first rounders for Gary Trent. Is this legal? And why wouldn't it be? What would they do if this happened? They do a trade. They just keep everything else quiet. And then the night before the draft, three first rounders for Gary Trent. And they're like, Was that related to the Yannis trade? Not as far as you know.

Just love Gary Trent. Just been trying to get him for years.

Two first rounders wouldn't get a value. Yannis really wanted him. But what would they do? Would they block it?

It's a great question. There would definitely be an uproar from the other teams.

Considering they can't figure out what to do with the Terry Rozier contract.

It's not similar, but I don't know. If there's a pre-existing agreement that can be documented in any way, seize the cell phones, it's probably against the rules.

Almost like Breaking Bad, a remote location where there's almost like a desert where they're drilling for oil and you'd have to just meet out there, not bring your cell phones.

I always wonder, what was I watching where there was a meeting like that? Oh, one battle after another. How much time do people have? I just got to drive. Are those places just so accessible? Like, Oh, it's 30 minutes. I'll just be in the middle of nowhere.

California, you just go towards San Bernardino, and you could find a lot. 45 minutes? Yeah, 45 minutes. Okay. John from Georgia. Last question. I have a theory that the NBA A. A. 'S top brass engineers the draft as some market correction in terms of karma. Prime example is Pelican's getting the number one pick in the AD draft after the Benson family buys the franchise. You could also throw in the Kyrie Kav's pick the year after LeBron left.

I thought that was coming in the email.

He said the math is securing the number of pick in the Cooper flag draft after trading Luca. Obviously, this is spurious. If this theory holds this year, I'm Are you curious who you think has the best case for the number one pick in the '26 draft. Based on all the times this has happened and we've gone, huh, so who would that be this year? Would it be Milwaukee trading Yannis and then somehow getting the number one pick?

I'm a little confused by the definition of what karma is it.

Just some like...

Because Dallas should not have been rewarded.

I don't think that's the case for that one.

They should have had That's bad karma.

But the case for that one is the league's like, holy shit, we have to save basketball in Dallas. They might actually move out of Dallas if we don't throw them a bone. There's been a few of these. There was the Zion Williamson one was another one where it's like, oh, interesting. I didn't have that team won. And maybe the karma team isn't there yet.

I'll tell you. How about this?

Oh, you got one?

Well, I mean... I'm excited. I'm going good karma. I'm going like, No team who's sitting guys left and right for fake reasons. No team who's been just incompetent for a long time, like Washington or the Kings.

It's tough to rule them out.

I mean, I'm just ruling them out. How about Charlotte gets the number one pick?

So Charlotte, I used to do the lottery karma rankings, and Charlotte would be the number one candidate this year because they've tried hard all year, probably not making in the playoffs.

They're not far from the play-in now. If they get in the play-in...

But that's not this question. This question is the league is either trying to send a message or trying to do somebody a solid. Okay. And I think the answer is, okay, so you're getting the number one pick from the Clippers. As the aspiration penalty to the Clippers. That's really good. It's like, we couldn't find anything, but... And then all of a sudden, OKC gets AJ DeBança, or whoever they get. Darren Peterson, I'm cooling on based on the Ben Simmons. I'm not positive you like basketball because you're not playing basketball. What's going on with you?

So this relates to one of my rules of I'm the Commissioner. If you've traded a pick outright, you should still have to be on the lottery deus with the team you've traded it to. You have to sit next to them.

Oh, for the humiliation? Like, Searsy doing the shame walk?

You should still have to be out there.

Last question, because I got this a bunch. Last question beyond the last question. People keep asking me, would the Warriors actually trade Steph if it was that bleak and he wanted it? Also anecdotally, people ask me this, too, because everybody loves Steph. Nobody wants to see him in the Kobe last four years with the Lakers, just lottery death spiral. Nobody wants that. And maybe he just wants to stay and he doesn't care. And he's got a great house and that's where he wants to live. But do you think if he went to them and said, You know what? I actually want to chase a title. Is it just off limits? How would that play out?

I think that's the only way it could ever happen. And I think even in that case, you would have to be completely publicly transparent about it. Steph would have to give a press conference where he talked about, look, I love Golden State. I just have two more years left. I want to try for a ring. And Mike Dunlevy Jr. Would have to be at the press conference. We didn't really want to do this, but this is like, we love this We love each other. This is all done out of love. And that's the only way I can see it happening.

Well, can I give you a scenario? Sure. Let's say Charlotte does stumble into a top three pick on top of the team they have. And two years from now, they're okay seeing 2023 range. And the Warriors, it's just dark. And Steph's like, You know what would be cool if I could just...

Go home.

Go home, join this. And everybody's like, Yeah, that would be pretty cool. The reason I don't think...

And the Melo to Golden State, and they undo the Wiseman pick.

Or he gets bought out. However they have to do it to make it easier. The reason I don't think it'll happen is I do think we're in a Kobe, Dirk scenario with this. Dirk was never leaving Dallas. There was no scenario he didn't want Anyone who's tight on it is fine.

Well, I was going to say, you're looking back on the end of the Kobe years as being disappointing, wasted, etc. But then you can't do that. I'm not saying you, but you can't do that and then also say, well, how cool is that he's a one-team player. And same with Dirk. You can't have both. Sometimes this is just how it is. I think one-team players are rare and cool. I think it's cool that Devon Booker has publicly said, I want to be a one team guy. It's hard to have both.

It'd be funny if Tatum and Jalen both said that, and the Celtics were like, Yeah. Sounds great. Wow. No, I hope they're both one team guys. I love I love those guys. Conflicting reports about Tatum this week. I would like to say for the record, I still think he's playing this year, and I feel really confident about that, unless there is a setback, which I don't think there's been.

I hope there's not a setback. Well, can they make the finals without them? Can they make the finals? You're closing the door on them making the finals.

I don't think they have enough. You saw last time we were watching the Atlanta game. If their threes aren't going in and they're playing the right team, literally 20 teams in the league could beat them.

I think they could I think the East is so bad that I can't slam the door on it. But A, their health has been perfect, which tends to regress at some point. And B, I do think their margin fairer is like nothing.

You know who's going to tell us to answer this? It's the Celtics. Because if they keep Simons versus trading him will be the answer. They're going to do something. If they try to trade Simons just for somebody who makes less money and it makes the team worse, we have our answer. Yeah, it's true. Because Simons has been important to them. But I also, as I've said many times, if they could turn him into Malik Monk, I would still vote for that.

Why do you want Malik Monk? What is your Malik Monk thing?

Well, first of all, you're not allowed on the island.

I don't want to be on the island. I'm not even trying to turn my boat around. He's fine. Malik Monk is fine.

26 years old or 27. He's either 26, 27. How old is Simon? 40% shooter every year. Well, he's making 18 million and Simon is making 27. I still feel like he's a guy in big games that I trust. We saw it. That guy is still sitting He's just on the worst dumbest basketball franchise we have. That guy still exists.

Yeah, I agree.

By the way, that's somebody I would go for the Lakers.

They had him.

He rehabilitated his career with the Lakers. Maybe he would have wanted to go back. But I just think that dude, he's going to go to a team, I'm telling you, he's going to go to a contender and people are like, Oh, shit, he's really good. I totally forgot.

You got to de-kings them. I wonder if there's a machine that you have to step in.

It's like a soapwood shower?

Yeah, a bunch of lasers hit you and just have to get the kings out of your soul and then you can play, I guess.

You remember the movie Soakwood with Beryl Street? I never saw it. She got contaminated. It was like a nuclear reactor site and they had to do the Soakwood shower. It was like this chemical shower you had to take. Maybe that's what has to happen. There you go. All right, Zecla, see you on Amazon today. Boom. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The interim lightweight title is officially up for grabs this Saturday. If you're looking to get on the action, you can do it with America's number one sportsbook, FanDuel. Taking your fight net experience to the next level, giving every single customer a profit boost token to use on any parlay this weekend. Moneyline, round betting, method of victory. Build your parlay however you want. I like a little parlay. Bsd is fighting. He's fighting Dan Hooker. Always enjoyed BSD. I want to throw him in a parlay. Volkanovski is fighting Diego Lopez. Beat him a couple of years ago or a year ago, I can't remember, but he's had some losses since then. He's in his mid-30s now. I like the revenge. Lopes is plus 118. Put him together with BSD, that's plus 182.

And that is the one that I like. So there you go. That's finndo. Com/bs. And you can opt into the profit boost and get ready for this weekend's matchups. You must be 21 plus, President Select States are 18 plus and President DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Opt-and-required bonus issued as non- withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook. Fando. Com. Game problem, call 100 Gamble or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connect. All right, Thursday This afternoon, the K-Man Kevin Wilds is here in the fanciest set up he's ever had. He's on the set of his show. Thank you. Joe House is here, as always, on Thursdays. I am wearing my authentic Tony Simmons jersey that I bought in 1998. House knew me back then because we've known each other for almost 40 years. Drove to the Patriots Pro Shop because they drafted a second-round receiver named Tony Simmons. I'd always wanted the Patriots to have a receiver named Simmons so I could have the Simmons on the back of the jersey. He turned out to be a bust. This jersey has been in my attic for a while, but I'm bringing it back, came in because the nobody believes in us pats are back.

Nobody's picking us. Nobody thinks we're going to win. Belichick's getting snubbed from the Super Bowl. We're underdogs. Joe House thinks Sam Darnold's going to run a mock. We're back, baby. We're so back. I don't know if I think that. I'm wearing retro jerseys. I don't even know what year it is. Is it 2026? Is it 1998? I don't even know.

I need to ask Wilds. I'm not sure this is a great idea. You pulled out a jersey, Nobody believe in Tony Simmons, and with good reason. So you pull out that jersey for the Nobody Belives in this Game?

Guess what jersey I wore a lot during the 2001 season? Tony Simmons right here. There was some good luck in this jersey.

Wilds, your thoughts. Good luck in it.

Bill and House's relationship goes back So far, that the concept of a personalized jersey that you can get delivered to your home in Anchorage, Alaska in 22 hours. If you wanted a personalized jersey, you had to scout the newspapers of the NFL draft predictions and hope there was a coincidence of your last name lined up with your favorite team. And the fact that it worked for you is fantastic. It's so much easier now.

And when it happened, I had to drive an hour to Foxborough to buy it at the pro shop because that was the only place I could get it specially made and then do it. And then I had no money. I just love it. But yeah, those were the days. Anyway, Wilds, why don't you stand by here while House disparages the New England Patriots and says why they don't have a chance on Sunday? Yeah, I love it. Go ahead. We're no good. God, you have the floor. This is outrageous.

No, I know you don't think we're going to win. I'm absolutely not doing that.

You thought we were going to win any week. Go ahead.

I do want to call to mind amongst this group that we have done this. This is a reunion of source. Now, Wilds and I haven't seen each other. I admire from afar his daily television turn. It's wonderful. First things first. All of the best takes. Me too.

We've even talked ourselves into liking nick Wright. That's how much we love you. He's great. Nick Wright. Have you heard of him?

I'm in.

Had a great podcast with him a couple of months ago. I like him. Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, it's great. The only question nobody's ever asked nick Wright, is anybody ever asked him why he won't just get a haircut?

This is his look. It looks cool. Yeah, it looks cool. It's his intubal look.

Yeah, it's his look.

Is it?

It's his look.

Okay.

Everybody can't have my haircut.

Fine.

House, you were compared a week ago to... You were in the backup band of an early '90s boys band with Thou For You Were on last week's podcast. That was an email I got. That's great. I didn't share that with you.

I have no regrets.

I'm a guy in my mid-50s wearing a game worn, not even a game worn, authentic Pats jersey. I'm not here to comment either.

I mean, that's not a look though.

So what did we do in Indianapolis? We did Half Baked.

We did. But the true highlight of that, one of the highlights, there were many highlights because Wilds came in and he was firing, as is always the case. But you chose during that show to share with Wilds and I how proud you were that you possessed a Starbucks card, like the Starbucks reward card. You remember this, Wilds?

This was like a half hour. We talked about this for a half hour. That every time I got I was at Starbucks. I was one step closer to a free ice coffee. You guys were dumbfounded by this.

No, it wasn't a loyalty card, Bill.

What do you mean?

You were just getting the card just to carry the card because you liked giving a gift to yourself. There was no loyalty component to it.

I did that as well. Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that. I forgot about that. It made no sense. I had a $50 card.

Jonathan Kraft was on that podcast, too. Shout out to the patient.

That's right. That's true. That's right. And by the way, this is one of the topics I had. That was the last time I went to a Patriots Super Bowl. I sat with Jamie Horowitz, a. K. Suit. We were supposed to get our revenge to the Super Bowl, the Giants' Home of Catch Game. Listen, I'm fine with losing the Home of Catch Game. The second Giants' team never should have beaten that Pats team in a million years. It didn't even play well. We somehow lost anyway. It was like leaving your own murder scene for 45 minutes. The problem with the Super Bowl, if you go and your team loses, you also can't get out. You're just trapped when half the fans are happy for the other team, I was just recognizable enough that I was getting a lot of, Hey, Simmons. How'd that one work out? I wanted to fight everybody, and I was just like, I'm never going again. I've been to Super Bowl, it's just not the Pats. Some people are asking me, Hey, you're going down? When are you going to get there? I'm like, I'm not going. I'm going to be watching on my couch.

I'm going to have my son with me and my dog, and I'll do a podcast after. But I don't want to go to the game because I'm really scarred from the two Giants games. Do you think this is Fairwell.

We were favored in both of those Giants games.

Yeah, well, heavily favored.

So I think the let down was even harder. But now that we're four and a half point underdogs, we're supposed to lose. Now, the let down would still hurt, but the world thinks we're going to lose. I think it's worth the risk to go because the high is going to be extra high this year. I'll fire back a question to you, Bill. Out of our six Championship rings, where would this one rank if we pull it off?

Wilds and I say we and are like we're on the team house, just in case you're wondering. Of course, you do. Nothing will ever be 2001. I would rank the Deflategate Super Bowl number two for me. That's fair. Just all the shit Katie took that week and then being able to beat Seattle and come back. Also, honestly, there was a little bit of some curse stuff lingering that Spigate had put a curse on the Patriots, and that's why we'd had bad luck and we weren't going to win again. So that one, I'd have number two. This might be three if they did this.

It has to be high up there.

I mean, We were dead. We were the freaking Browns. It was over. We were the Jets. We were the Raiders. There was no hope. There was nothing. You don't agree with this, Wiles?

No, I agree. It might be two for me.

Wow.

Yeah.

So you have 0-1 first? 0-1 has to be first.

0-1 first. 16, just the game against the 28-3. Yeah, sure. It's on its own island. But I can also make an argument because I was an adult for all of these, but I wasn't a father. Or like a father, that this is the first one that my kids are super into the Patriots. This has an opportunity to be one.

I think that's fair. I completely agree.

It's also Drake Mays first, potentially.

Could be Drake Mays first.

I love the way you're talking house.

I love As if we didn't have enough obstacles first. Well, as if we didn't have enough obstacles. Now it's like, Drake Mays shoulder limited in practice today updates. We have Dr. David Chou, breaking down in slow motion, Drake May hit in the turf, and all these things I was not expecting on Sunday. I don't like any of it.

Question. A little bit of gamesmanship?

I certainly felt that way with the Stafford back stuff before the year that threw off House and I when we went to bed on the Rams. House, we just got immediately scared off with the old guy with the bad back thing.

Yeah, except I think they were telling the truth. I don't think it was gamesmanship for the Rams. I think they were genuinely concerned about Stafford's back. They had nothing to gain going into week one. Like, oh, we're going to rope a dope bar, a week one opponent.

Darnold, are we sure there's something wrong with this oblique?

See, that one I like. I like this. This is conspiracy Bill territory.

It looked fine, wing in the ball around. Threw for 40 yards. I never know what to say about it. We found out Josh Allen had a broken foot today. They're supposed to release this stuff.

I was on Josh Allen's broken foot. His foot hurt for weeks, and all of a sudden, he's on crutches in a walking boot.

Right. But they're supposed to report this stuff. That's the rules.

He ran for 66 yards against the Broncos.

Well, he said, I would still be able to... If push came to shove, I could play right now. I'd just play through whatever. It's exactly the opposite of certain NBA players. It's a hero. I love that guy. I don't feel like... I'm trying to think who's the NBA player who would say the opposite of that house?

Zion Williamson.

Zion Williamson, yeah. All right, so the kids thing you're buying that house, when you can share it with your kids, when they become fans. Because I remember Ben and I watched the 28 to 3. Whole family watched the comeback, and that made a little extra special that I had the next generation there.

Yeah, for Absolutely.

See, you're never going to know because nothing with the Wizards will ever happen with you and James.

The Washington football team was in the National, the NFC Championship game last year.

Did your son care, though?

Then you fired everybody.

You fired everybody.

Well, everything went weird. It was all weird this season. Fired everybody. By the way, that can happen.

So Wilds, as a long-time take person, long-time follower, I've been surprised. Not only is everybody picking the Seahawks, it feels like. But now people, now it's becoming like evil, caneival. Now I can jump this canyon with the pigs. I think Steve and A said he thought they were going to lose 60 to nothing. Was the thing said this week? They might lose 60 to nothing. But we're doing that.

He toned it down today. He walked it all the way back today.

Cam Newton was comparing to Trent Doepfer or Drake Bay. I don't know what... Drake Bay idolized Cam Newton. Why is he doing this? It was like his hero.

Okay. I want to have a solution to this Cam stuff.

Great.

Because I think it literally, personally hurts Drake May's feelings. It's his childhood hero. He went to the Super Bowl. He's got Panthers stuff. It also hurts my feelings as a guy who loved Cam and appreciated everything he did in that COVID year. He moved. He was by himself. Yeah. He was in a new system, and he made that post-Brady era interesting, free Mac Jones. So here's what I want to say to Cam.

I hope this is really nice for you to even call it interesting. It was interesting.

We were close. We had a few fumbles, but it was good. It was interesting. We didn't immediately stink.

I enjoyed it.

Okay. Here's my take on Kam, and I hope this gets to Cam. Cam, if we win the Super Bowl, and if Drake may plays well in the Super Bowl, you had a part in that. Josh McDaniels made all of his bones in the Super Bowl with Tom braided, who could not move mobily. God bless Tom braided, but he's not a running quarterback. The one year Josh worked with Kam, 592 yards, 12 touch downs, 55 first downs. This first year with Drake and Josh, 450 yards, four touch downs, 38 first downs, to the point where the bootleg against the Broncos, I'm like, Did Josh get that from Cam? Josh was not a guy who designed running quarter scrambles or sneaks or anything. He never did that with braided. That's you, Cam. You are responsible for Drake's greatness, not just when he was a kid, but the fact that you put this into the playbook for the Patriots. You're winning. If we win, you win, Kam Newton.

Yeah, he gets the W.

We can talk to the parade. We watch you at the parade.

Right. House, what do you think of this?

Who was the terrible quarterback for the Raiders when McDeanals was the head coach?

I mean, Which one? He had a few of them.

I think he had to be in a car.

I feel like he might have- Their car. It undercut some of what we're talking about here.

The thing... I just don't get it. I get why people have to do these stances and do whatever. But Jake May was really good this year. You can't compare him to these quarterbacks that were along for the ride. The weather thing, this is another thing that I've been arguing with people about. I don't know if you feel like you're John It's no defending the wall here with the Patriots, but it's fine. If you think they're going to lose a game, I get it. Seattle's really good. But they haven't played a normal weather game in a month. And Stafford was in Chicago that game that went into overtime that they almost lost, and they went 20 to 17. They scored 17 points in four quarters and then got a field goal in OT. They didn't look like the Rams at all. Puk, I think, had 55 yards. They didn't really have any explosive plays, and Stafford looked creaky for most of the game. And afterwards everyone was like, Man, really tough weather game. The weather really affected both teams. This has been the entire Patriots' playoff run. They haven't played a normal game yet. And even if San Francisco is like 55 degrees and not raining, it's the biggest win the Pats of Bad weather-wise over a month.

So I don't know. Does that sound like an excuse to you, house?

Yeah, the weather for the Chargers and the Texans' games was like regular New England weather.

No. Texas game was freezing. No.

It was freezing. Texans game was cold and rainy snow.

That's New England. That's what happens up there. It sucked. We're saying that all those players because of how new they and the system, none of them are acclimated to what New England weather. It doesn't confer an advantage.

No, it's just when you compare Stafford and Darnold's performance with a guy who's playing in a blizzard.

Yeah. And look, Drake missed a lot of throws, and I don't know what was going on with his shoulder. I thought that was the worst throwing game he's had since the Vegas game. But he made some stuff happen with his legs. He put together a 10-minute drive that effectively gave them the lead for good. I didn't think he was good by his standards, but we've seen a lot of quarterbacks be up and down like that. The problem is the next game, Darnold and Stafford were both awesome. Then you watch that first game, then you watch the second game. You're like, Oh, my God. There's also the Sam Darnold piece that I think people have just slept on. The Patriots, I would say, is it fair to say, ended his Jets career? That was the tipping point.

Is that fair? The IC Ghost game Unrecoverable. Probably hurt his career more than was fair, more than I think the NFL films team realized when they just had a random sound bite. They're not trying to hurt people's careers. But that one just... It was so... He was actually penalized, Bill, for being creative.

For being thoughtful about a circumstance. But he's...

Yeah, just because he was a good writer.

The sports movie version of this is, well, now he gets to exercise the Ghost and play the Patriots again. His career has come full circle. The Patriot fan side of me is like, it's fucking Sam Darnold. We're still paying interest on that guy from when we owned him a couple of years ago. And I'm trying to talk about some of that. House, what's your case for Seattle just easily winning this game and covering? Because I feel like you're leaning that way.

I don't think anything is going to be easy. The case is they have the number by DVOA past defense, and they will put pressure on Drake May, and the pressure that they're able to put on him, they're super fast in the middle. They'll take the middle of the field away. It's not like the Patriots possess absolute burners on the outside. So the case would be that they put May under so much pressure. It's the version of what we saw with the Texans, except for the Seattle will not be giving New England the ball on 30-yard line five consecutive possessions. So that's the case.

All right. Seattle is not going to be home. Neutral field. I think both teams are really good. I think the pats are better than people realize. I think Seattle is cruising on the fumes of those first two games, especially. I go back to week 18. I was sending this to Mina. Mina and I, we're getting along. It's a little bit of a tap dance, but it's fine. But I was saying week 18, Seattle was favored by one and a half at home against the Niners in a must-win game for the win-seeing. They beat San Francisco, they beat them again, then they squeezed by the Rams, and now they're being treated like a different team by the oddsmakers. I personally think this line should be two and a half. I don't think it should be four and a half. I think it should be two and a half. It seems like there's an extra two points in here because there's some Seattle steam. You know what I mean, They have some steam. They're the team.

We pulled a graphic today. The last seven teams that were favored by four or more, two and seven outright, and none of them covered.

Yeah. I'm trying not to get too excited about it, but I really do feel like we're back. When you go back to 1773, guys, who was the first place that really stood up to the British? Boston. 1775, Revolutionary War. Watch the Ken Burns documentary. Who really put their foot down and kicked the British the fuck out Boston. And ever since then, go All the Way Through, all the way through. All the nobody believes in us stuff. You go to Gem in the Town. You can go all the way through. It's the DNA. But the title has shifted it where Boston won a lot, and then you lose that. But now being the the underdog, the disparaged underdog, I feel like the Pats are back.

You want to be the underdog. Can I say something and ask House? Because I think you're going to have a visceral reaction to this film.

Yeah, let's hear.

As a fan of Sport House.

Yes.

Kind of rooting for Sam Darnold as I disembodied my Patriots fan.

Removing the Pats fan. Yeah.

I'm not rooting against him. Well, no, I understand. It's a one-of-a-kind story. We We really don't have anybody we can point to in our NFL experience that has a career like this. Not only do we have the redemption arc that was the Viking season last year. I mean, he really transformed that Viking's organization, put them on the precipice of being a potential run for them. Their defense is so good, and they had all those skilled players. But he went and replicated that with a whole Another team, a whole 'nother situation, a brand new offensive coordinator and skilled players that everybody at the beginning of the season, they were question marks because they kicked out D. K. Metcalf. They let the other receiver go. Lock it. Yeah, lock it, right. But we came in with a bunch of question marks with the Seattle team, and all he did was kick ass and take names all season, Kevin Wilds.

The other thing is, I forgot this. This is pretty unusual from a Super Bowl ad standpoint Because everybody's so good at doing odds now. You don't really get a lot of future value. There is, ironically, Fox Sports had this tweet, Top 10 longest preseason odds to win the Super Bowl since 1977. The '99 Rams were famously 150 to one. The '01 Patriots were 60 to one. And the '81 Niners were 50 to 1. The Patriots were 80 to 1 before the season. The Seahawks were 60 to one. Either outcome would be the second biggest future odd that we've had since 1977, which that house, that's not supposed to happen anymore. We do these over-unders. I remember I love Seattle, but their over-under was eight and a half. I wouldn't have picked them to win the Super Bowl. I wouldn't have picked the Patriots either. It was another team I liked, but this is pretty crazy. But it goes back to a pretty nutty season. Do you think the Belichick stuff is good for the Patriots or it's a non-factor?

I I don't think it's a major factor. I don't think it's a minor factor. I don't think it's a little factor house. But the Patriots' legacies in the building of being discredited, doubted, and disrespected. Erased. Not nothing.

I'm just so happy it happened. I'm just so glad it happened this week, because if it happened next week as the lead in to the game, people would be losing their minds. Thank God we're going to dispense with this. And the stupid Hall of Fame is going to change the rules, right? Isn't that the way we're leading now? The dummies will fix it because it's like, well, we made up the stupid rule that led to this result. They certainly can make up, can fix the stupid rule and just usher the man in for God's sake.

I mean, the football Hall of Fame, especially, as you know, I hate all Hall of Fames. And in 2009, wrote an entire book devoted to blowing up the basketball Hall of Fame and starting over making a pyramid. All these Hall of Fames have been screwed up.

I always- Did you want to actually make a real pyramid? Was that the- Yeah. Is that the- Five levels. You didn't have architectural drawing.

Yeah, it was a pyramid, and the top level was the Pantheon.

Yeah. You can't see me.

Where do you think nick Wright got Mahomes Mountain from? The fucking Hall of Fame pyramid. You could tell him I said it.

Doesn't it look like a pyramid now?

What do you mean? The Hall of Fame? Well, the concept of the pyramid- Yeah, the physical building. The concept was you go to the Hall of Fame and as you go up each level, and this original person who had This idea was my buddy Gus's dad, Wally Ramsey, one of my great English teachers of all time, was the concept as you go up and you go up to another floor and now the players are getting better. Then by the time you get to the top floor, it's like the best of the best. That's the whole concept. It's very good. It's really good. Very good.

Not a half baked idea, a fully baked idea.

No, that was a great one. Then the basement had all the people that couldn't make it, but all had their little stories, like the people, the comments, the drug guys, all that stuff. Anyway, the Pro Football Hall of Fame guys, I always felt like they were the most annoying because it was 50 people, and they carried themselves like a fucking fraternity at Harvard, where it's like in Social Network, where Mark Zuckerberg and his roommate are trying to get in that fraternity. It's like, oh, we made the second round in these douchebags and put a robe on. We all hate all that stuff. That's basically the NFL Hall of Fame, how they do it. It's 50 guys, you're not allowed to talk. We argue about it in the room. Let's get the fuck out of here. Whatever your process has led to the best coach in the history of the league, not making the Hall of Fame the first thing. I never get mad about this stuff. This actually made me mad. At some point, there should be a shit detector part.

I got mad at a visceral level.

It feels like everyone got mad. It made Belichick a sympathetic figure, which was impossible. What were the odds of that? That was 80 to one, like the fucking Patriots.

It was probably a win for him in the end.

This is great. Oh, an amazing win. Are you kidding? An 11 out of 10. Speaking of redemption arcs, we're all going to go into this coming summer, and he has a free out yet to preserve his legacy. Is he going to go to stupid North Carolina and try and do that again? Is he really going to go do that?

The team's going to be great. I'm buying stock.

It doesn't make any sense, especially with the gift that he's just been given. He's just been giving an immense, unexpected Windfall lottery ticket here with this outrageous Hall of Fame nonsense. Just ride on off into the sunset with this.

Wilds, if Buffalo out of nowhere announced, We've hired our new coach, and it's Bill Belichick. How would your feelings have been? Walk me through your first 30 seconds of that.

First thought, total fear.

That's exactly what my first thought would have been as well. I would have been like, Fuck.

Second thought, bring it on. Third thought, a practical who are the assistants? Who's the OC? I think he's lost his Without Josh or the whole Matt Patricia's OC thing, I feel a little bit calm.

So you would eventually calm down from it. Okay. What would your thoughts have been, House?

I want to ask you guys this. There are still two teams that need a head coach. What if Tom braided hires Belichick to be the head coach of the Raiders after all of this?

It seems like they're getting Clint Kubiak.

I think that's- That is what makes a ton of sense, by the way. He's a total badass. But Arizona, Arizona is so irrelevant and has done nothing but cover itself with the opposite of glory with the way it's conducted its affairs. Why not one last run for the old man in the year that he was- Turn it down. Undeservedly, exactly. Exactly. One more time.

I was thinking the Browns, and then they hired Todd Malkin, and you're like, that's the team that definitely should have hired Belichick. Really, you're going to hire that guy? They had Jim Schwartz, who's, I think, worked with Belichick in the past. But if I'm hiring Todd Malkin, I'm just hiring Belichick instead and let him figure out Shader Sanders. He comes back to Cleveland.

He brings back his Cleveland Brown starter jacket.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. There's a lot to like there.

We have unfinished business here. They took the team away.

Yeah, that's right. It's pretty good.

But I think he's smart enough to know I have to go where the quarterback is.

That's basically what Vrabel did. Vrabel was in all the mix for these jobs last year, and he was like, I want to coach Drake May.

That only makes sense if it really matters. He's not going to go in and immediately transform a situation. Bill Belichick at this point.

No, I'm saying if you're him, you want a quarterback. I would feel that way if it was me and I was an NFL coach. I'm not going anywhere that doesn't have a quarterback. Who's my quarterback? It's like, Keep your fingers crossed.

That's why I like the Signetti to the Raiders. I know he poured cold water on it, but I love that idea of the Coach College combo, a little Jamar Chase, Joe Burrow action.

Be really sexy.

Let's take a break, and then we're going to do half baked ideas with Wilds, unless there's any more '98 Patriot stuff you guys want to do. Are we done? Want to talk about the team? Nothing? Okay. All right, we take a break. Hey, there's a massive fight coming this Saturday. Interim lightweight title on the line. Fanduel wants to make sure you're all locked in. They're hooking up everybody with 30% profit boost for fight night parlays and SGPs, the perfect way to boost your winnings. My favorite, BSD, fight in Dan Hooker. I'm in. Let's throw him minus 340 money line with Diego Lopez to get his revenge against Volkanovski. That's plus 118. You put those two together, plus 182. You can add the little profit boost to that, and you're ready to roll while you watch Saturday night. Go ahead and place your bets on FanDuel Sportsbook. Fanduel, play your game. All right, so ever since I've had a podcast, which states back to 2007, the worldwide leader, ESPN, Kevin Wiles would come on and do half baked ideas. I did one on Dave Chang show. I went on Dave Chang show and gave him my idea for a restaurant that only accepts credit card roulette and forces the customers to play credit card roulette with each other.

Then they videotape everything and they cut it into social video to promote the restaurant. That might have been a fully baked idea. I don't even know if that was a half baked idea, but I was really proud of that.

It was almost too good.

It was too good. I probably should have figured out how to I'll do that up somehow. Anyway, Wilds, usually you have two big ones and two smaller ones. So what do you got?

All right, so I'll start with a big one, and we'll do four total. Since house is here, and I'll piggyback off of your restaurant idea, went out to dinner, said, Oh, let's get a seafood tower. Love the seafood tower. You got your oysters, you got your clams, you got your shrimp. It's great. But I'm always thinking about the food.

Can I just tell you, nobody loves the seafood tower more than Joe House, probably in the planet.

This is an amazing start, Miles.

Perfect. The guy I'm with says, I don't want the little clams, which are the Junior Varsity kids table of the Seafood Tower. They're gross. They're like, Eh. He says, Let's just get this one. It's called the Tableau. I should have had a red alarms going off in my mind. The waiter brings over a bowl of seafood. It was a disaster. It had no altitude house. I'm thinking, Oh, it's very obvious. I always thought the shrimp and the lobster tail was the star of the show. It's not. It's obviously the height. I know that's right in front of me, but I needed to be punched in the face with it. Then I'm thinking, You know what? I need more towers in my life, period. Just off the top of your head house, I'm going to say a Waffle tower. Wow, is there a No, there's our Waffle tower over there. Oh, you want a cob salad? Do you want it in a bowl? Do you want it in a tower? We got lettuce, we got your bacon here, we got your blue cheese. And as it goes up and up, however tall, we got the bacon bits up top.

Anything can have a tower option.

It works so well. It's an incredible concept. This is the second restaurant. We're opening two new restaurants. This is the group right here. We have the credit card roulette, and we'll have to come up with a clever name for it. But the name of the restaurant is The Tower. Everything you order comes. Too many towers. Yeah. Too many towers. The Burger Tower is immediately the number one for me. You can have regular American cheese burgers at the bottom, and you're climbing all the way up to your most decadent, however funky, whatever you want to have on it. You want to have foie gras and your fanciest cheese on the a top burger. It could be a lobster burger. It's an incredible concept.

Well, could you have- I've also studied the tape on this, though, Bill, and I'm like, I got a self-scout. Am I underplaying the value of crushed ice in tiny things of Tabasco? It's on the board.

Well, part of my head immediately went to, could the tower also only accept credit card roulette? You just merged the two ideas. It's a one plus one equals three. You could obviously do that. I was trying to think with towers. Sometimes when you'll do, I don't know, when you're at somebody's house and they're making cheeseburgers, and then they have the extra plate that has lettuce, tomato, and onions. And then there's another plate with the cheeses. The cheeseburger tower would be perfect for this, right? Because you would have the burgers at the bottom, and then it would go up, and then the top, as house would have all the cool extra things. Why is it seafood is the one that works the best with this house? Could you do a pasta tower?

The ice definitely plays a role because it's visually stimulating. The temperature change when it comes to the table, it changes the gravity of the table. It's so visually appealing. It's so interesting. The The variance you get between what a shrimp looks like, what an oyster looks like. Even the clams. The clams have, oh, is this a clam or is it an oyster? Well, it's a little smaller. Okay, I got it. Some folks will take a tiny bit of doing a tiny hamachi and put some slice stuff on a tiny plate and slide it. There's all kinds of room for creativity with this.

That's the Sushi Tower. That's a great one. The Sushi Tower, of Seafood Towers is a great one because you could have different levels. The ice.

I've worked at a few restaurants. I've never worked at a place that sold or offered seafood towers. But if you get a Diet Coke I feel like it's out of bounds to ask, Hey, I know you've got seafood towers on the menu. Can I have the crushed ice from the tower in my Diet Coke? I think I would be shut down. I was like, No, If that ice is for the tower exclusively. We can't start handing out this ice all over the place. Then the tower is not special. We built that- You get two different things of ice. They got two ice machines back there.

This reminds me, we built this little bar in the back of my house that had an ice cube machine that has the big ass cubes. Not just the crushed ice, but like those big fat ones. Spectacular.

Love those.

You say overrated. I present to you the- They're like Bocce ball ice? No, they're just like big ass ice cubes.

Square cubes.

The joy of people's faces when they're offered a big cube, you can't really put a price on it, including Joe House.

I have my hand up.

One cube? People like... Although sometimes it'll be like the two big cubes. They're like, Look at these two big cubes in my glass. I feel like so... I have something to confess. I like to chomp on the ice. Oh, no house.

I have something to confess. For Christmas this year, my wife, she says, It's impossible to shop for you. Give me some things. So I gave her three or four things. One of the things that I asked for my wife for Christmas this year was square ice cubes because you can make them. And Bill has a machine that makes them. There used to be in Washington, DC, I don't know if the place still exists, a curated ice, a place where you could go to buy because there's a machine that will make the perfect ice. Obviously, Honestly, I'm going to get a lot of feedback from people saying, You just pour some water into a tray in the shape of that giant ice cube. But no. No.

I don't want to do work.

She ordered ice that was delivered to my house that was made by this machine in the perfect shape that I like. I can put four of those cubes in my giant 30-ounce water, and that's what I drink.

That's a confession. Get on board with the ice, Wiles.

I didn't realize that you're ordering the ice. I know. Yeah, I am. Just the packaging and the styrofoam alone. Sure.

Yes.

It's good for the environment is what they tell us.

I thought that she would go to the local place, and she did not go to the local place, and it may not even exist any longer. Instead, she did order it and it was shipped here. The shipping costs greatly exceeded the cost of the ice. Yeah, I don't know about it.

As you would expect. I can't go sign that one.

I'm not recommending that.

I have another one.

Go.

It's similar restaurant theme. You know those Cosmo places? I think it's called Cosmo. It's like an IMAX for sporting events.

Oh, yeah.

There's one in LA.

It might not be called Cosmo.

I forgot what it's called. Yeah, there's one in LA, and people go, and it's like the giant screen. They feel like they're at the game.

Yeah, and it's like you're there, right? It's cool. Immersive. Combine that with a video I saw of a Packers fan who was watching his game outside in his Packers' Jersey through the window. And his wife was like, What are you doing? He's like, If they're cold, I want to be cold. I'm like, This guy knows what it's about. And me and Billy went to the Texans game because part of it, we wanted to be miserable with the players. We were in it. We're all one. So a bar, if you can't be the Packers guy in Green Bay, but for LA of the Patriots. Oh, man, it's a disaster in Denver or it's terrible in Foxborough. Coming in this place, get out your old North Face. It's freezing. It's raining in here. It's a disaster.

A bar that controls the elements.

But if the elements are of your favorite home team, and you can be different places. If the Patriots are playing in Miami, it's hot as hell down here. My gosh, darn it.

Right. It's like 98 degrees in the bar.

Yeah. You want to go see the bears Get your jacket.

Sounds like it's more expensive than shipping in ice. How can you get it cold enough? How do you make it as cold as Chicago was? I don't know.

My son plays hockey. It gets cold in those places.

That's true. I like that idea, too.

I like that idea, too. I like that idea, too.

Really, you get a cold place and make pockets a bit hot.

Yes.

I think it's one of those ideas that it would take a while to build the restaurant and get all the elements right. I think there would be a lot of PR when it launched, and I think people would go for about three weeks.

And then- Why else does it have a name?

Oh, in the elements?

Yeah, elements, something- Elemental?

The elements. I'm going over the elements.

It's pretty good.

He didn't see- It's getting cold in here. What's your next one?

I got... This is... Viewer submitted. Micah Adams, who we used to work with.

I remember Micah Adams. Big research guy. Yeah, he's a great guy. Yeah, he's a great guy. Yeah, good guy.

Sent me a full paragraph for a half baked idea. I didn't ask him if I could use this, but I assume he would be cool with it. I'll just read it verbatim.

Okay.

You're going to be in immediately. Nba Royal Rumble. It's either one on one or knockout, but not just current players. Bring out retired guys, college players, whatever What do you want. The fans have no clue who comes out next. 30 names, a king of the hills survivor, but stealing the idea of the Royal Rumber, where dudes just sprint out the tunnel. There's a belt and everything. Tell me that's not the best All-Star Saturday event. That's a free half-baked idea. Thumbs up. Crushed it.

All right, so two guys are out there, and what do they play to, three?

Play to one. I think so. Play to one?

Play to one.

So the guy who comes out- Get the F off the court. No, it's like- The guy who comes out has the ball.

Have you played Tennis King of the Court? You have to get... The person who stays on gets one, but the person entering needs to score two. Oh, okay. Because by the time, it gives you an advantage if you've played 10 games.

Okay. I'm so glad you said Tennis King of the Court and not Pickleball King of the Court, because I just want to end the podcast if you said Pickleball. I'm glad you used the sport where we use athleticism.

It's unbelievable.

All right, so two guys come out. It's Anthony Edwards and Zion. Anthony Edwards wins. He's the King of the Court. Now, Khan Kanipal runs out, and he's got to score two baskets before. But if Edward scores one basket, he stays on. Khan Kanipal has to leave. He's got to score two times in a row.

Yeah. Then guess who comes out next? Hakeem Olajuwon.

Yes. Yes.

Oh, my God. It's Angel Rees' music. What is she doing here? She's number five.

Why not?

My God.

Let her play Dennis Rodman.

Is that Christian Laitner?

Christian Laitner.

That's a pretty good one.

Oh, no. The music is so good. Oh, you just hear the Bulls music? What's going on?

Steve Kerr?

What the heck? Steve Kerr thought we were getting Jordan.

That's right. They play the famous Bulls music of Steve comes out. Jed Bush comes out.

Then number 30 is LeBron, and everyone gets mad that they rigged it. Of course, he's number 30. Of course, they just wanted LeBron to win. Then we talk conspiracies. This all sounds great.

You don't know the guys are injured. You have all like, is Kyrie going to be available for All-Star? Oh, here he comes.

Can I tweak this a tiny bit? All due respect to Mike Adams. It's a two on two. So it's a tag team, where I rumble, basically. So you'd have 30 names. I guess 4 into 30 doesn't work. Maybe it's 28. Maybe it's 32. It's eight teams.

Okay.

And you have it goes a little longer. So basically, if you score Or if you get to five, you stay. How are we doing with ones and twos on this, though, house?

Well, do you choose your teammate is my first question.

No, because you want the surprise of the rumble. That's the best thing with the rumble.

Okay, good, good.

Good. But if you played to 11 with twos and threes, then you won. No, there's too much basketball. Too many basketball, so you'd have to play seven or five?

But then I need people coming in and out.

The entrance is the star.

It's a five-point. I agree. It's a five-point. It's a five-point. It's a five-point. It's a five-point. I agree. It's a five-point.

Keep it. Keep it.

I really like it.

It's phenomenal.

Here's the other thing. It's a Timer like the Royal Rumble. If you guys are playing hard defense or people miss, tough luck. Here comes Kevin Durant. Oh, my God. Why? There's three guys on the court now? Durant, boom, putbacks.

Everybody's gone except for Durant.

The best part would be like, he's number 27. Who's it going to be? My God, it's Anthony Davis. He's running out. Oh, he pulled a calf. He's not going to be able to play. Sometimes the greatest financial victories aren't the huge flashy contracts, but the mid-level moves that maximize your cap space. Just like Tax Act, helps you get a great return by finding every deduction, even the small ones, to minimize your refund. And great returns presented by Tax Act, we look back at the best decisions GMs have made to land an inexpensive player who paid huge dividends down the stretch and owners that have seen their team valuation skyrocket. So I always think of the warriors with this in the mid-2010s with the combination of having Curry on this amazing contract that somehow wasn't a max contract, even though he was a two-time MVP, having Draymond Green as a second-round pick, and then anticipating the cap spike that was coming in the summer of 2016, which allowed them to let Harrison Barnes go and then sign Kevin Durant. And all of a sudden, they had Kevin Durant Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Clay Thompson, and Andre Aguidala all on the same team.

I mean, hard to think of a better great return than that. I ended up winning them two titles in a row. Great returns presented by Tax Act. This tax season, simplify your moves, maximize your refund. Visit tax act. Com to learn more. Conditions apply. See tax act. Com for details. All right, what's your next one, Wilds?

All right, hold on. I got to go back to it. What do I got here? This is a dumb one, but I already got this one shot down by Greg Jennings, but this is a good idea. I don't care. There was a point where Drake may was in shotgun to buy him time because our offensive line was a little bit porous. I also thought Justin Herbert could have done this. You guys need to take a deeper shotgun snap to buy some time. Combine that with Caleb Who ran back 26 yards from the line of scrimage to make a largely normal play made me think the pocket needs to be deeper. Our center is out. A long snapper is in. I'm taking the snap 15 yards back. I buy myself two extra seconds. I can look around. It's a revolutionary idea. I don't know if the league is ready to hear about this. But once I saw Caleb run 26 yards back, and he needed four yards, he's like, this is the best way for me to get four yards. I want to go back 26 yards. But if he had a long snapper, he would just have it there.

So the problem would be the snap would have to be pretty on target for 16 yards.

But every time a long snapper snaps to a punter, it has to be on target. It's not often the case that the punter is running all over the world. The punters have to jump. They have to move in response to the ball. But most of the NFL quarterbacks can move in response to the ball. They can see it coming. There's enough time to adjust.

I have a small half baked idea. I was thinking I was thinking about icing the kicker when teams ice the kicker at home before a big field goal. Call time out, give the guy two and a half minutes to think about it. I was thinking about this during... For some reason, my wife and I were watching Bohemian Rhaps, the Queen movie. I was thinking about We Are the Champions. It was such a brilliant song by them, and I don't think it was the intention of the song. When they made it, I think they wanted a big arena song, but I don't think they realized it would be played in sports for the rest of their It's perfect. I think we've even talked in the past about how we don't create enough songs for sports moments. There should be an Icing the Kicker song. Some band should create it, and it should be ominous and dark, and it should fuck the kicker up. It's almost like what David Fincher, a song he would have put in seven in the last 30 minutes. It's just blaring in the thing, and the whole crowd is chanting like, Your career will never be the same.

Just singing these lyrics that are just infecting the guy's head right before he kicks it. Really dark. Almost like creep, Radiohead, right? You hear creep and it's like, Man, that's a pretty dark song. What's the Ice in the Kicker dark song that would fuck with the guy?

Can I tweak this house and put it to you? Please, let's tweak it.

I'm listening.

Everyone's trying to figure out how to use AI, and there's a lot of data. Run this data through the AI. But you also have AI taking these deep fakes. Oh, it's time.

We have deep faked video in the video screen?

Oh, no.

Don't do it. Of him missing it. The crowd's celebrating and he's sad. That's a relief. He fakes up his teammates being like, Oh, no. Then privately saying like, I never believed in him. They He's on the bus home.

Yeah, I love this.

His wife's like, We got to sell the house. I'm genuinely relieved because I thought-It's like a for sale sign in front of the house. Simmons was pushing us in a dark direction, and then you said AI and deep fake, and then I started thinking of really dark things that you could put on the screen to mess with somebody. The parents are hostages. Look, your parents are hostages right now. Not that dark.

It's an ethical AI.

Ethical AI. Very good. I won't even do it. Yes. Great job.

I have been doing mailbags. People have been sending great emails. They could send them to bspodcast33@jmail. Com. David Haynes.

I love that mailbags are back, by the way.

Mailbags are back. Well, when the emails are good, mailbags can come back.

They shouldn't have gone anywhere.

I know. It's my fault.

Yeah, I don't know why.

Listen, it's my fault. We all can't bat 100. We can bat a thousand. A hundred or a thousand.

We all can't bat a hundred. It's like McDonald's. I'm going to take Happy meals off the menu for a few years.

They'll do that sometimes. We all can't bat 100. How did I come up with that? David Haynes.

A hundred.

Here's his pitch. You love your new child, but don't you miss the nightlife of the city, cozy up to the bar for the 1: 00 PM games. Maybe you loved attending a mat day before you had a little one. Well, with the baby weight, you don't have to give up the former pleasures of your social life. You can leave your child at home, enjoy hours free of your child without any worry of them getting into the pantry, calling over stairs or really getting beyond the one to two foot radius where you left them. The baby weight is a weighted diaper that strengthens the will and the physique of your child. They won't go far, but you can. I thought, obviously, not a great half-picked idea, but I really admired how fucking crazy it is. Wait, you're at the bar? Hold on. Let me get the baby weight.

I don't understand. Is it to restrain the baby? Yeah, I think it's almost like a weight harness. Well, you could also just take a 25-pound weight and handcuff them to the weight. What's the difference?

I would say that was not even a half baked idea. It bummed out Wilds.

No, that wouldn't make it through our sensors.

It didn't make it?

That's not ethical AI.

What was the last one you had?

Final one. You guys will like this one.

Baby Wait. We can recover from Baby Wait. He spelled it W-A-A-I-T, which I read.

It's pretty good. The best part of that is the name. I think that was the genesis of it.

Baby Wait.

He's like, I'm back into that one. Bill, when Sean Payton went for it on fourth down instead of kicking the field goal and making it 14-0, Broncos, and you saw that they were coming out and the field goal, the unit was staying on the sideline. Were you happy or nervous?

I have text threads praying that they were going to go for it. Exactly. I thought it was our only chance.

It was like, please go beyond belief.

Because even if they got it, it wouldn't have necessarily been a countdown. They would have been first and goal from the eight. Wasn't even guaranteeing them anything.

If we stopped it, which we did, that will be the momentum to carry us through the game.

I thought we could stop them. It's Jared I did them. Please go for this.

We're locked in. As part of your analytics team for an NFL, NBA, baseball, if you want to pull a pitcher, did you leave them in? You have one super fan of every opponent you play on your schedule. And you've got them watching the game in your building, but they're hooked up like a F1 racer. And they're seeing their heart rate and they're measuring sweat. And your data guys can figure out like, oh, hey, before you make this call, Payton, we've got three Patriots fans sequestered away. And I just saw their dopamine shoot up till 99. Call a time out and get the field goal kicker on. Let's see what happens. Oh, it just dropped. They don't want you to kick the field goal. They want you to go for it.

But the fans of the other The team wouldn't want to participate in this because they wouldn't want to affect the outcome negatively. I mean, what really should happen?

I don't understand.

You couldn't kidnap the Patriot fans to study their dopamine because they wouldn't want to help the other team.

No, but we're looking at like, pupils dilating. You're not just saying, I want you to go for it. You're hooked up to a machine. I still have to choose to be hooked up to the machine.

You're getting paid a handsome salary.

To turn on my team, I'm helping Sean Payton. I'm not putting the machine on.

You're getting paid for it. It's $20,000 and you get seats right on the mid 10 rows up and all the nachos and beer.

That's my price for helping the Broncos?

Well, that would be my price. I'm watching the game.

See, I think it would be the technology of a camera from far away could zoom in study the pupils of the fans in attendance. That's true. Unwittingly, they're participating. You have everybody miced and you hear the Patriots fans going, I hope they go for it. I hope they go for it. That's how you do it. There's something here, though. I do feel like nobody knows. There's no more honest reaction in sports than people rooting for their own team instinctively being like, I hope this happens or I hope this doesn't happen. I would still take 100 times out of 100 over the analytic charts. I like analytics, and I've obviously used them a lot with stuff. But that was a perfect example of misreading this situation because no Patriots fan wanted them to go up 10: 00 when we're in bad weather and there's snow coming and it was just like, this is a disaster if they go up 10: 00. Please go for this. 14: 00, 10: 00, I don't even think it mattered.

That's a perfect idea.

That's a perfect idea. House, do you have any golf to have baked ideas for us?

No, I didn't come in prepared. I didn't even that this is going to be the thing. Most of golf has half baked ideas. That's the thing. I could go look at golf gadgets. It's a very simple Google will send back to you 15,000 ways of improving your swing, improving your posture, improving every aspect. Remember, golf has three different kinds of techniques that you have to be good at. You have to be good at driving the ball. You have to be good at hitting irons. More than that, chipping the ball, putting. So Every one of those activities, those disciplines, has 10,000 suggestions for getting better at them.

They're all half baked. I have one small one. First of all, SNL had a sketch about making fun of Spotify wrap, then it was your Postmates wrapped of all your orders, and you just got them all delivered of everything you've ordered on Postmates or Uber Eats. Any delivery app?

I already look at my DoorDash order.

I thought it was a great idea. For pleasure. Everything in there It's just like how I did in 2025. I thought that was great. Can we talk about... So people, if you have dogs, some people have dog walkers, some people walk their own dogs, some people have help if they have work. Why don't we have Postmates dog walkers? 9: 30 at night, Murf just has too much energy. I'm like, Oh, man, Murf probably needs to go out and walk around, but I'm wearing pajamas. I want to I watch this Clippers game. I don't feel like taking them out. I'm going to go outside. That dialog exists.

But certainly not at the level that it should.

Postmates dog walker, I call in, and somebody just shows up, walks the dog 20 minutes the same way they would deliver food.

I love this. And DoorDash, at least in my area, now has expanded to where you can order stuff. You can order running shoes. You can order a computer mouse.

They're basically like a personal assistant.

That's it. So you add to the menu of things that are available, DoorDash Uber Eats, whatever, Postmates, a personal assistant that is also available. This person will be at your residence in 30 minutes.

Maybe they have a bunch of people in the neighborhood, so they have 15 people that they're on call for, like doctors. It feels like this is where we're all heading. We're just never going to leave our house is where we're That's the thing.

Convenience is the enemy. It is a good idea. You could probably tie it into an exercise app, too. It's like, Hey, get your steps up and do it with a dog.

Well, let me ask this. Wilds, we just went through an enormous snowstorm here on the East Coast. I know you got walloped. Did you shovel your own walk?

I definitely did. He definitely did. Several times. Yeah, there's no way. Wilds is a self-starter.

Just what?

I like doing it.

Yeah, Wilds, it's right in his way. I get that.

I like it for when it's about two inches and it takes a half hour to do one portion of one walkway. There's No chance for what Washington DC received, the DMV received, which was five inches, five, six inches of snow, and then hours and hours of sleet on top of that snow that made the snow weigh each shovel full, 214 pounds. I mean, I might be exaggerated, but I waited until Monday. All the snow was done Sunday night. I waited until midday Monday, and I went into my Task Rabbit and found a couple of enterprises young fellows. Because you know what we don't have anymore, Wilds or Simmons? Kids that come to the door and say, Hey, can we walk for 20? I was one of those F.

E. Kids. I was going to tell my kids, Hey, there's money to be made out there today.

Yeah. Yeah. What do they say? The society is different. We did the Zodiac rewatchables on Monday, and there's a scene in Zodiac when the guy's flashing his lights behind the lady who's got the kid in the car, played by Oni Sky. She pulls over and he's like, Hey, your back tire's loose. Let me fix it. She's like, Sure. Thank you. Then he loosens the tire even more so it comes off because he basically wants to kidnap her. People were just way more trusting and friendly back then. We We've lost that. Nobody would shovel your house now. We're all afraid of the guy coming behind you, flashing his lights. That's the problem. You know what?

House, next time, call me. I'll get on the M track. I'll do it. I appreciate. I like it.

It's like a workout. Thank you, Wilds. I do appreciate that.

Wait, House and Wilds, before you go. I had one last tiny... I don't even know if this is a half baked idea, but it's about my son. It's almost like a parent corner. My son started drinking coffee.

Love it.

Happened about two months ago. I had never tried it before, never really understood it, and just decided at some point... They have those Zins. They have all these different things, those little nicotine things. Not for him. Wanted some a little caffeine boost. That was a big soda guy, but finally had a coffee and was like, This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I had a coffee in the morning.

Yeah, I don't think he needs it per se.

Well, because I had leftover coffee, had it in the morning. I had a great day at school. He's like, I can't believe you didn't tell me how great coffee is. I was like, Well, you saw me and mom drinking it. You know how much I care about it? We make it every day. It's My favorite thing of the day. I don't know what you were missing. You've been here the whole time. He's like, Yeah, but you still, you didn't tell me. So now he's really into coffee. Today, he made a coffee and made a little in the espresso machine, little espresso to top it off. I'm wondering, here's my half baked idea. Should I just do PSAs for people, where we used to do the don't do drugs for when we were kids in high school? Do I do PSAs about how great coffee is for high school use? People like eighth grade and up. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I want to tell you about something called coffee. It changed my life. I have it twice a day. It's really great. Do you feel a little sluggish at school during the mornings? I have an idea for you.

Coffee.

I How did it feel drinking coffee in high school? It felt like you were an adult.

It was validation.

Well, you're carrying around like you and the teacher is like, I hear you. I got a coffee, too. I'm at Duncan Donuts. It's fantastic. It's the best drug.

How old are your kids now?

Hi, I'm Joe House. Every afternoon, I have a Trenta Ice Coffee. Well, that's true. And they add an espresso shot to I'm able to do podcasts for three hours at a time. Please try coffee.

Are they teenagers?

Thirteen and 11. When Russell comes down, I ask him, Hey, I'm going to drink coffee. I'm like, Hey, do you want a coffee? He says, No. Obviously, he's 13. But I ask him every day, waiting for the day where it's going to be like a field of dreams moment. It's like, Hey, dad, can I have a coffee?

Age 16. If I could do it over again, I would have started Ben at 16.

I would have been like, That's my question. You're 16, you can drive.

I have to introduce your coffee. The other day, we went to see my mom on Saturday, and we were driving him back and Ben's like, looks at me and goes, Starbucks drive-through? I almost started sobbing tears of joy. I was like, I've never felt closer to you in 18 years.

It's appropriate. He is college-age, and it is part of the college experience. And that's really where you experiment, you find your thing. I mean, the coffee experience is so much more sophisticated now than what we grew up with, what we had available to us. It was purely a matter of function back when we were in college. It was not like, this is delicious. It was like, I need this for fuel. I need this to power through.

No, it was like putting gas in your car. Because on the Zodiac pod, I said, one of the most 1970s thing about the movie is somebody comes over to somebody's house and the cop has to wake up and his wife goes, Let me make some Folgers. I said, that's the most 1970s-70s thing. Instead of saying coffee, she said Folgers. Then I got some emails from people like, You're a snob. They still make Folgers.

Yeah, Folgers still pumping.

Yeah. I personally don't drink Folgers because I'm a coffee snob. I like to buy really douchey $16 bags. We get stuff from Miltas from Hawaii sometimes because I like the Kona.

Well, you don't have to confess all that. You could just say, I like my fine coffee.

I'm just telling you, I really like coffee. I enjoy getting like- You don't have to be go full douche. I'm going full douche. I like trying different coffees. I like trying different beans. And Folgers just seemed like that was what you bought in a store 50 years ago, but apparently it's still being made.

I'll drink coffee as a drink and deal with the caffeine, even though I know it's bad. Nine o'clock, want an espresso after dinner? Oh, do I want to be up till 3: 00 in the morning? Yes.

A lot of times, I will get a decaff because I love the warm I love the smell of it. I love how reassuring it is.

It's comfort. I don't think it's...

Yeah, I know.

I don't really have a lot of vices. I like to get up on football. I'm not like one of those, Oh, I got this great $300 bottle of scotch. You guys got to try. But I really do like coffee. Also, when my wife makes it, she never may... I'm always a little off. I feel like I'm like an F1 car. My engine needs to be perfectly calibrated. You Not too much coffee, too much caffeine, I feel a little off. Not enough caffeine, my head hurts. I know what my engine is. Do you guys feel that way with coffee? No? Am I the only one like this?

Supposedly, the guy who gave up coffee, was it Michael Pauline, who's written all those health books?

Yeah, Pollian.

Yeah. He gave up coffee and his brain started to try to get him to places where there was coffee. You need to go run this, Aaron. But his brain was telling him to go over there. Really? Because there was coffee. So he gives up coffee for 30 days. And the question he was discussing was, is his normal self, caffinated? When your normal self is actually not Cappinated, right? Your normal self is your normal self. But I view my normal self as caffinated, but it's not true. I'm actually on the stimulant.

Is it a stimulant or is it just a drug of the gods?

It can be both, can't it?

It's the best drug.

We don't have to choose.

Everyone's like, We got to legalize this.

I gave up sugar in my coffee right after Christmas, and I missed it for two days. Now, I don't miss it at all. If anything, it makes me taste the coffee even better. I know. House is like, he's blacker than black with the coffee.

Yeah, I don't put anything in it.

He pours tar in his coffee to make it blacker.

That's not true. The other thing that this Poland was talking about, he quit for 30 days, and he said that first taste of coffee was...

Didn't taste good.

Out of this world.

Oh, out of this world.

Out of this world. That's right. Oh, yeah. Exactly.

That's right. To the point where I was like, the way he I was describing it, I'm like, should I quit coffee just to hit that high? Because now I'm drinking coffee and it's not hitting. I got to...

I feel like if I was...

I got built up too much of a tolerance.

There's a half baked idea in here.

If I was Tom Hanks in Castaway, the coffee thing would be a top three thing I'd be the most upset about on the island. No humans, not knowing what sports is going on or with anybody, my family's alive. And then what the fuck am I going to do about coffee? Can I find a coco bean on this island?

If you would want that before having food and water salt.

Other people would have been looking for food. I'd be walking around like, Is there coffee? Wait, does that look like I could grind that with some rocks?

I can grind that.

Then I'd figured how to spearfish and maybe wean myself off. But I really love coffee. Anyway, Wilds, thanks for hanging around. Just for people to think. Thank you, guys. Wilds had to hear an echo in his ear the entire time, so he's probably half insane at this point.

The poor guy.

All right, house. Way to fight through it. Great to see you as always. I'll see you on Tuesday. We'll do some Super Bowl stuff. Super Bowl, let's do it. Don't forget about Wilds on first things first with nick Wright and Brousard.

Every day, three o'clock.

Every day. How much taunting is there with nick Wright? Because he was like such a fucking pompous Chiefs fan there for a while. Like, oh, the AFC runs through us. And guess what? It doesn't and your coach is old.

At some point, nick is going to get mad at me for how pompous I've been. I'm going to pull a line from that old drug commercial. It was like a PSA. It's like, you know where I learned this from? I learned it from you. I learned it from watching you.

I remember that commercial.

That's a great one. Let's dig that up.

Kevin Wilds, thank you. Thanks, House.

All right, see you guys. Thanks, fellows.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Zack. Thanks to House. Thanks to Wilds. Thanks to Eduardo and Gehow as well. Don't forget rewatchable. Zodiac was last week. It's up. You can also find Wild Things. It's coming Monday night, and you can watch that on Netflix over the weekend. Enjoy the weekend. I'm going to be back on Sunday night at 5: 00 PM PT, 08: 00 PM ET, live on Netflix, we're going to be doing our special Super Bowl Props episode that we've been doing since the 2000s. I'm not kidding. That's how long we've been doing it. Live on Netflix, and you'll be able to that wherever you get this podcast, including on Spotify, I hope. Anyway, enjoy the weekend. See you Sunday. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for a Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. Visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit rg-help. Com. Help. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelp-line-ma. Org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8 Hope-Ny or text Hope-Ny in New York.