The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I had new rewatchables that went up on Monday. We did Basic Instinct. Kindergarten Cop is coming next Monday. We also launched a brand new narrative podcast called La Gata. First 2 episodes are up. Please check it out. I was involved with this one. Uh, if you like Miami Vice, Scarface, the '80s, cocaine shows. This has it all, so please go check it out. I have a big podcast coming up. Doc Rivers, a dramatic return, and we're going to talk a lot of hoops with him. We're going to talk about, uh, the award stuff, the season, the best player he saw in person, playoff matchups, what happened with the Bucks season, Giannis. Uh, we go into all of it, and normally that would have been the podcast, but Nick Khan, um, a very important person at the WWE, in boxing, bull riding, all kinds of things. And somebody I've known for a long time, he came over and we did a wide-ranging talk on a whole bunch of things. So this is a massive podcast. Wanted to mention the playoffs are starting this weekend.
I do have FanDuel bet a little bit later, but I really wanted to take an upset. I love taking an upset every year. Every year there is an upset, and I don't see the matchup for the upset this weekend. Minnesota and Atlanta seem to be the two live ones to jump on, and I don't— I just think Denver and the Knicks are going to advance. The one I think is the most interesting for an underdog pick, if you wanted to get nuts, is the Lakers. Lakers in 7 is 10-to-1. Lakers in 6 is 22 to 1, and the Lakers to win this series is +530. I just feel like we're going to get Luka back before the end of this series. And if, even if it's 2-1 after 3, the longer that series goes on, I think the worse I think it is for Houston. I just think the odds are a little out of whack. I don't think Houston should be -750 against anybody, but we're probably going to go chalk for round 1, but that's the only one I would look at. The other thing I wanted to mention. We got, uh, word today that Cade and Luka are now eligible for first team All-NBA or second team All-NBA or MVP or whatever you want because they were peel, pash, process work.
So I'm just going to give you my ballot, um, with the adjusted Luka. Um, first team: Jokic, Wemby, Luka, SGA, Jalen Brown. Second team, Durant, Kawhi, Mitchell, Cade, Brunson. Third team, Chet, KD, Jalen Johnson, Murray, Maxey is what I'm going with for All-NBA. I have Luka as number 4 MVP, Jalen 5, Wemby 3. And I have not handed in my ballot yet. And I know I said on Tuesday I was voting SGA for MVP and we cut a social clip out of it. And I am just agonizingly talking about how I don't understand why I'm not voting for Jokic when he had one of the greatest offensive seasons I've ever seen in the greatest of his career, and yet also laid out the case why I think the vote has to be SGA. Blame the NBA, not me, because I should have already sent my ballot in. This appeal process dragged it out. I have not sent in my ballot yet. I don't know when the deadline is. I still don't know who I'm voting for, for MVP. I've changed my mind. I've had a conscious uncoupling with my original SGA thing. I just over and over again keep thinking, what, in 10 years, what am I going to think?
Am I going to regret doing this? Because there's been a couple MVP picks I've regretted over the years. I'm just not ready to make a pick yet. I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. I already said I was voting for SGA. I apologize to the OKC fans and SGA and his family. I don't know what I'm going to do, and I'm just going to think about it for the next 2 days. Um, but it's up in the air. So that's what I got for you. All right, we're gonna take a break, bring in Pearl Jam, talk basketball with Doc Rivers. Stick around for Nick Khan. Really good, action-packed, fun podcast next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA postseason is here and FanDuel knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team win is winning along with them. FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, and plays during their playoff run. Build the same game parlay or try live betting and jump in after tip-off. Don't forget, with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app now and play your game.
21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Alright, late afternoon Thursday. My friend Doc Rivers is here. We're back. We did it.
We're back. I did a little 2.5-year segue. You know, I told you this, but just gonna make your ego just humongous, Bill. But I don't know how many times I've even had guys say, hey, I like you as a coach, but I really like you on the podcast with Bill. You gotta get back. And I'm like, okay, okay, I got you. I hear you. So, so I'm back.
Yeah, I'm taking advantage of you during the playoffs at least a couple times. Well, the best thing is getting you right at it You just coaching. You went against all these guys. You went against all these players. I want to go, we could talk about the Bucs stuff much later. I first, I gotta talk about Curry 'cause you have real ties to that because your daughter married into the Curry family and you have special emotional ties. I was there last night. I took my son who had never seen, you know, a, a, a real Steph Curry stakes game. He'd never been in the, in the house for that. And the whole time I'm going, You know, they're down 8, they're down 6, they're down 10. I'm like, Curry's gonna make a run. The Clippers crowd is gonna get really nervous and it's gonna be awesome. Just wait. And then he does it.
Well, that's because you're a Clipper fan and you've seen, you've seen that. Like, I feel it's, I'm saying this because I've experienced it. I could feel the anxiety through the TV from the crowd. Like, you can literally feel it as, And it was great too, because for most of the game you didn't hear the Golden State crowd at all. And then all of a sudden Al Horford makes a couple of those threes. 'Cause he's as good as Steph was, and he was amazing. Al Horford saved that game.
Yes, he did.
Yeah.
And he, and Porzingis kept them hanging around. He was good too. There was a little Gui Santos, Gui Santos in there.
Yeah.
And then Curry did his stuff. And it was interesting that the way the, the way the into it is where they have the wall and it's all real Clipper fans, right? So the whole side of the arena is all Clipper fans. The other side of the arena was basically all Golden State fans 'cause they bought in on that side.
Yeah. I couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from.
It was, it was, it was to my right facing the court. And so Curry gets going and when he hits that shot with 50 seconds left, which you knew was coming, and the way he goes with Draymond now, it's like they have this crazy ESP thing and he hits it. People in my section left and they didn't leave because they wanted to beat the traffic. They left because they were like, I've been doing this with the Clippers my whole life. I know how this game's gonna end. I might as well leave now. It's like they were escaping like a horror movie house.
It was, it was rough. It was, you know, it, it was such an interesting game. 'Cause it was texting back and forth. Callie was at the game, my daughter.
Yeah.
And, and I text her at the beginning of the game, oh, this is the rough start for Golden State. And then at halftime I said, oh, they're hanging around. And then my daughter's last text was in the fourth quarter with about 8 minutes left, said, if they hang around long enough that Steph can see the finish line, he's gonna take it.
Yeah.
And that is exactly what happened. You know, it was an interesting game 'cause I really thought, there are 3 or 4 times where Golden State was close to letting go of the rope. You know, like it felt like, you know, man, they're trying. And then I'm telling you, the 4 threes that Al Horford made, it just changed the light. It changed the light. And once it got to 5 and 3, you knew what was headed. Now I will say this, And Draymond, I've gotten in more discussions about Draymond. It's amazing how many heated discussions I've gotten into about Draymond because I have fought for him being a Hall of Famer for 5 years now. Draymond's a Hall of Famer. To me, he is. And you hear people, well, he averages, What if he was on another team? What if he's a, he's a straight winner. Forget all the other stuff, you know, in last night's game, like he was, his defense was, was next worldly. I was surprised. I thought Kawhi would be more aggressive and all that stuff, but I actually thought at times he was, I mean, fighting to get the ball every possession, getting bumped off the floor.
I mean, it takes a toll. Kawhi probably very rarely fights or plays against someone that's bigger and stronger than him for a whole game. And I thought the game took a toll on Kawhi, and I thought it was Draymond's doing. So I don't think I have to make the case anymore at the last night's game because I thought Draymond's— it just shows you how important, you know, we we, we factor in offense so much, Bill. And there's so many like Hall of Fame defensive role players. And, and Draymond's a case. Dennis Rodman is one. You know, there, there's certain guys that can do what they do at a Hall of Fame level. And you know, Draymond deserves his flowers.
Yeah. It was interesting watching it in person cuz he was doing that from the first minute.
Yeah.
And he was so intense and so crazy that I was saying to my son like, I actually think it's 50/50 he gets thrown outta this game. Like he's too, he's too fired up. And it was like he was testing the refs early to see how far he could go yelling at them, intimidating them. But he was really wearing down Kawhi. And I thought Kawhi was tired at the end of the game. 'Cause he doesn't normally play minutes like that.
No. And that hard minutes, not throughout. And, and, and if you wanna be a great defender in the NBA, you have to be stubborn as hell. You have to be hardheaded as hell because at the beginning of that game, Kawhi was kicking his butt. Kawhi was scoring. He was— and Draymond, and what I loved about it is Draymond never wavered. It's almost like, okay, great, you scored, keep doing it. Okay, you scored again, keep doing it. I'm gonna be right here. And by the end of the game, it was, it's like, I guess how it would be like fighting Muhammad Ali after the 5,000th jab. You just, you're exhausted and you wear it out. And that's how it felt like Draymond just kept jabbing away, kept jabbing away, kept jabbing. And then by the end, Kawhi was worn out and it felt that way.
Well, you talk about the great defenders of all time. Draymond gets in your personal space in a really unique way, and he takes these little steps to stay with you. And Kawhi was trying to almost move backward and get away with them, and Draymond just follows him. And I was thinking, How many guys like that in the history? 'Cause the best two guys I've ever seen perimeter defenders are Pippen and Kawhi, ironically. Draymond's like just a whiff under there, but I still think for the non-centers, he's gotta be one of the 5 or 6 best non-center defenders ever. Right?
Ever. For sure. I do think Dennis Rodman was a good—
Rodman's the third one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would be, he would be the other one.
Like he, Would you put Iguodala in there?
No, because he was more of an offensive player when he first started.
Yeah.
You know, so I would not. But, you know, I remember Dennis Rodman playing and I was— and I actually used to say this, I'd rather have Pippen guard me than Rodman. And that's, you know, that's a hell of a statement because neither, neither one of them— your day's not going to go well either way.
Right.
But they both were just just gritty. And Dennis is more, Draymond's more like Dennis because Dennis got under your skin.
Yeah.
And just starved the hell outta you. Yeah.
That's great. He's probably fourth on that list. But it's a good, really good list if you're doing the non-premier.
Yeah.
So Curry, it was, you know, watching him, I don't think he's healthy. First of all, I think he's probably 85%, I would say, and kept readjusting his knee, which is a sign. —there was a couple, like, hard drives he did where you— and I don't know if the TV was picking this up the same day, but just watching his body language, you can really pick stuff up during the fouls when there's stoppages and the eyes aren't on the players. Yeah. And you could just see him, like, kind of stepping on it, seeing what hurts. I text Callie that.
That's how we got in the conversation. I text Callie and I say, Callie, is Steph okay? Right. Because you remember that drive, he hit the floor hard.
He actually left the game and went back to the locker room.
Yeah, I was worried. Actually, he didn't come back for a while and I'm thinking, is he coming back? And then when he came back, he missed a couple of layups. He definitely was laboring. But it just, I mean, it just tells you how these guys are built. And I always say these guys, meaning the 1%. and the rest of the league is not. Because I don't know where he went in the third quarter, but he came out in the third quarter and he looked different. He was playing his life. It's like the light bulb came back on. Now maybe because the Clippers didn't put the game out of reach and he saw that, man, we can get this. But even when you see that, very few people can reach what he did. I mean, he was amazing in the second half. And it was always— there's certain guys when you watch, you say, man, that's beautiful how they play. Like, he plays a beautiful game. That last play should be studied because it's a misdirection football play. You know, he throws the ball and goes right, snaps back left. By going over the top, Brooke kind of picks off the guy guarding Steph.
And so if you watch it, the guy guarding Steph, was going under Brook so he couldn't get back to him. And then when he steps back and makes the shot, you knew it was going in. But to get to it, listen, Bill, if I had a ball, if I was in a game and I did that, I would surprise the team because they were like, but the whole, everyone knew what Draymond and Steph, they knew exactly and you still couldn't stop it. It just tells you how great he is.
Well, I mean, it's stupid to say, but winning is a skill. It is. And I thought that's why they won the '22 title. I don't think they necessarily had a better team than Boston, but they just kind of like, oh, you're going to leave this hanging here for us? All right, we'll take it. And Curry just took it, which I think, you know, I don't know where he's right for historically for me when I have my pyramid that I do every year. And there's like this group of him and West and Kobe that are all next to each other. And I think they're very— they have to be in the clump together. And it's like the 9, 10, 11 range of the best players of all time. And each for their generation, they were the guy, right? And I don't even know how you calculate who was more important than who.
But the thing with— it's tough. It's tough.
The thing with Curry though, that I don't— even West was like Mr. Clutch. Kobe had a bunch of great moments. There's something about what Curry does to the crowd on the road that I think is unique to him. I can't think of any other players that, that do it. Like maybe Ray Allen, who wasn't even nearly as good of a player as Steph, but something about when they're going, the crowd kind of gets kind of staggered by it.
Reggie Miller had a little bit of that too.
It's a good one.
Yeah. When he got going and, and it's mostly the jump shooters. Yeah. But Steph demoralizes the other team more than any of those guys. When Steph gets going, he can turn a visiting crowd into a home crowd, which you don't see anybody, maybe Michael had the ability to do that.
Well, Michael definitely had the ability to do that. Yeah. I was kind of leaving him over here.
I was, yeah, yeah. I always do.
Like, yeah, yeah. He's, he's over here.
We're not even mentioning it. I know it. But I've seen it. Like, he takes the steam out of your team. Yeah. When he gets going. I mean, he's hopping around, you know, like you want to kill him. Like, if you, I always said if I was playing against him, I'd want to kill him because he does things that, that you, you don't see and they, it takes the wind out of your sails. It really does. That 3 was a dagger. It was a killer.
Well, he also had that, that dancing lefty flip layup. They're down 5. Yeah.
It's like, what the fuck was that? So nonchalant. Yeah. Like, it's, it's not, I think the most, the thing that people miss the most with Steph because he's this nice guy, right? He does all the charitable work. Everything he says is right. Like, he's the most coachable star. And one day we're gonna have a pod about that. Why Steph is one over some of the other guys. And because I'm a coach, I really believe a lot of it is because he allowed himself to be coached. Right. And I think that's part of it. But what we miss with him is he's a stone cold-blooded killer, just like Kobe and Michael. He just doesn't come off that way, but he's exactly like them. And people miss that with him. They misforecast him. His toughness and his grit. They really do.
Do you think it's not going to be this year's team? Is there a world where he's ever on a really relevant team again, or is it too late?
It's never too late. You know, it takes one move. You know, you just, you know how it works. You just never know.
So you still think he could be maybe not what he was in '22, but he could be almost like what you had with KG and Ray and Pierce.
Like one of the three. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But he needs help. Like, you know, I think the reason he's injured, been injured a lot this year is he's been carrying a heavy load.
Well, he's running so much. Even like yesterday watching him hurt, seeing the amount of running he's doing just to stop and start stuff.
That's what I'm so surprised at, that he's been able to sustain. LeBron, his athleticism, his size, you can see it. But because of the way Steph plays, I just— if you had asked me 6 years ago that Steph would still be doing it now, I would've said no way. There's no way. But if you watch his workouts, and I'm sure you've heard about him. Yep. Then you understand why he's in the condition. But even that, at some point you think even that's gonna wear him down. And so far it hasn't.
So who was the best player you went against this year? Who was the one, like if you had to stack 'em, who was the one that you were like, wow.
Well, that's never been asked, Bill. That's a good question. Wimby. Wimby would be—
Ironically, that was the best player I saw in person this year where I was like, wow, this is like, I haven't seen, anything like this.
Yeah, it's just so different and he does so many things. You have to prepare for him differently than everybody else. He can't get behind you. Like, he literally cannot. Defensively, he cannot get behind you in the paint. If he does, they throw it up and there's nothing you can do about it. You know, you have to shoot his recovery. You can beat him off the dribble at the free throw line, but you're not gonna get the shot off. You know, Manute Bol, if you remember Manute Bol. Yeah. Manute Bol had that kind of coverage, you know, where you thought you had him beat and then you got to the rim and you would try to go under the rim to reverse it to guard him and he still got it. Well, Wimby does that. His shot. He's not a— he's a really good 3-point shooter. Yeah.
And good free throw shooter too. Like you can't say— free throw shooter.
And he's found his shot now. Like at the end of the game, he knows if I can get to the elbow, kind of like Dirk, you just gotta hope. Like when you're guarding him, all you're doing is hoping he misses because there's nothing you're doing defensively. I do think the guards should get up under him and get into his body. The stronger lower base guys have a better chance of guarding them than the longer guys. He's just so talented and he's another guy that has the Kobe, Michael mean streak. Right. And I love that about him as well.
Did you, was he noticeably better this year than last year to you?
Yeah. I don't know if it was, yeah. Number one, yes. Because he was more sure of what he was doing. Yeah. But I don't know where it came from, but this killer, like he had it last year, but he's ramped it up. Yeah. It's almost like he's taking names, you know, like, okay, you got me last year. That's how you feel that he's playing, that he remembers everything that went on last year against him and he's turning that into energy.
Interesting. Cause the other guy that jumped out, when I saw them was Castle, who seemed— who I voted for first team, by the way. I have to ask you about my vote later 'cause I'm wavering on one, but I put Castle on first team all defense 'cause I'm like, what more do you want from a perimeter guy on defense than this?
That's what makes the Spurs, you know, Wimby is amazing, right? Yeah. But all their guards are guards, can guard like every single one of them. I think that's what people miss with the Spurs. That's how good they are defensively. Yeah. Now Wimby has figured out how to not, how to switch and stay in the paint without going out to corners and stuff like that. And you know, I worry like the one team that could make them struggle, maybe if you can get a guy that he's guarding that is really shooting the ball well from the 3 to pull him out a little bit.
You have a little bit of a shot. That's probably Denver, right? It's 'cause that's either Gordon or Jokic trying to pull him away from the basket a little.
And they're passing. But I tell you, their guards, they put pressure on you. It's real pressure. Like they're up into you. And you know, I had a couple years when I was a player early in my career, we had Tree Rollins and Dan Roundfield. And if you're from Boston, You know who Tree Rollins is, clearly Tree Bikes Man. You know, I felt my first couple years I could really be aggressive because I'm like, go in there, I dare you. I mean, that's how you feel they're playing. Like they're so up into you and they're pressuring you so much. It's almost like they're saying, If you want to, you can drive, but it's not gonna be good for you.
And they play that way. You told me, we were talking before the playoffs last year and you were telling me about Indiana. This was not on a podcast, this was just us texting about it. And you were telling me how difficult they were because of what they were doing, pressuring defensively and just people don't realize what a bitch it is to play against them. And I really started watching And I thought Indiana was my big sleeper to make the finals last year, 'cause it was like, yeah, they're doing something. I don't know if people fully realize it yet. And now you saw the league emulate it this year. And there are all these teams trying to pick up full pressure and it feels like this new wave of what, but you must have, being in the middle of coaching, you must have noticed like a difference this year, right?
Oh yeah, you knew it was coming. Like the league is pretty easy to predict, like where everybody's going. Oklahoma City, very physical on the ball. They reach, they grab, they hold, they slap, they strip, they won. Yeah. So every team is gonna try to do their version of that. And so you knew it was gonna go that way. San Antonio does it. It's easy for them to do. Indiana did it. There's a couple other teams. Detroit, physical, pressuring the ball, pick up.
Minnesota can do it too when they play Io and McDaniels and Ant.
All together. Yeah. They can be the same thing. And when they're sane, like, yeah. Right. Minnesota can beat anybody and lose anybody. Right. That's just who they are, man. But you know, that's, I tell you, if I'm Denver, that's a rough first round. Yeah. That, that, that just is because they've beaten Denver and I'm, and that's why, you know, I look at like Boston, New York, I'm like, no, that could be a scary thing as well because Boston, New York beat Boston. I don't care what you say. Confidence is just like you were talking about winning. Yeah. Like when you, when you win against someone in a series, you believe you can beat them no matter how good they are. You, you start believing that and it becomes hard. I'll tell you what ball pressure does though, in a circle about our conversation. Yeah. It shortens the clock, dude. It's all you have to think about. It shortens the clock. Instead of running your offense for 20 seconds and you're getting it, you're starting your offense at 14. You may not even start it with the guy you wanna start it with. You know, you may have taken the ball out of his hands and so you're wasting your time trying to get it back into the right guy's hands.
And now there's 10 seconds. Like if you can convince your team, if you have a team built like that, guys, if you pressure the ball, all we have is 12 seconds of defense to play every possession. It makes you a better defensive team. And that's why teams are doing it well.
And the, the, the talent pool in the league now where you can have a team like the Celtics that have Walsh and Hugo Gonzalez. Yeah. And Shireman and, you know, Pritchard-Waite, and they could just kind of keep going. And Ron Harper Jr., they're bringing in. It just feels like everybody's so— because that— we've talked about this before, but like your 2012 Celtics team, kind of the last hurrah team. Yeah. And you go back and you look at the depth on that team and some of the guys that were playing versus like the depth that teams have now. Like, Ron Harper Jr. is good. Ron Harper Jr. would, would play real minutes on playoff teams and he can barely get out there for the Celtics. And I feel like a lot of teams have these extra guys like that. And I'm sure this is one of the reasons they're thinking about expansion because the, the talent's there. I don't think they should do it.
Well, the talent's there. It's, it's, uh, it's gonna go away once they expand, you know?
Right. True, true.
Uh, I think about, you're talking to a guy that came in the league with 23 teams, right? And so each time it expanded, the talent pool on the benches got thinner and thinner and thinner. Yeah. But it also comes down to the front office, Bill, and management. Like Brad's done an amazing job. Brad was a really, really good coach. He's a better front office guy. Like he really is. Like he's, all the guys he had, anybody could have taken. Right. It's not like he's taking these guys. I'm not talking about the Jalen.
I'm talking about like Shireman and people like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Pritchard. Anybody had a chance to grab these guys, but they did and they keep doing it, you know?
And so they got Keita from the Kings.
He was like a second round draft pick of the Kings and wasn't playing. He played a little bit, but they're evaluating. They're spur-like lately, you know, like they're evaluating the talent. They evaluate the type of guys that fit. They know Joe. They know what Joe will stand for and won't stand for. And they're hitting a home run. That's a home run. Yeah. You got to give them credit.
They've been amazing. So Mazzulla this year, who was, I thought, incredible. I'm voting for him for Coach of the Year. Non-Homer pick. I just can't— I don't know how they won 56 games.
I still don't know what's going on. Homer pick. But I'm going to go with you on that one. A little bit on that one. Yeah.
They started at 0-3 and finished 56-26. And I still don't understand what happened.
He's done it amazing. I did tell you that I thought there would be a playoff thing. Yeah, but, but I didn't. I mean, come on. He's had— he's done— it's, it's, it's— he's done an amazing job. This, I would say, is the first year in a long time that there could be 5 guys that if they won Coach of the Year, maybe even higher, that you could say I can see that.
So you got Bickerstaff, Jordan Knott, would you put on there?
Jordan Knott is one. Mitch Johnson. Mitch Johnson is one. So who's your fifth one? Joe Mazzulla is one. Yeah. So that's four. And I can't think of my fifth, but I just told someone a fifth. So my point is it's that they just, it's amazing. It's been really cool to watch and The Jordan odds and even Mitch in a way like Jordan, it's really impressive to watch because they lost talent, right? And got better. You know, he came in and changed their way. Charles Lee was your fifth one. Charles Lee is my fifth one.
Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was listening to, but I was also like, who was the, yeah, the Charles Lee is the fifth one.
Charles Lee is the fifth one. Like we played them early in the year, we beat them 3 out of 4, right? Early in the year. And I came in our coaches meeting because we played them like on a Monday and then on a Friday and it was right during the mid-season tournament thing. And when we played them the second time and beat them, Peter Fagan, who was with the Bucks and then become a really good friend of mine, He said, "Man, they're going to be good." I said, "They are good." And he's like, "What do you mean?" I said, "They're here." I said, "They're here now." And he's like, "No, I don't see that." I said, "Oh no, they're here right now. They're coming." Now, I didn't know they were going to make the run that they made, but we played well that game because it was one of the tiebreakers at that time. We played well, probably one of our hardest, best played games, and it took everything to beat them. Wow. And, you know, I thought, you know, obviously I think Khan changed their culture. Like there are certain players that have the ability, Kevin Garnett, to walk in and change the culture without words, but with his actions.
And I think Khan has kind of done that. And now LaMelo and all the other guys are doing it as well. They've kind of bought in. To that.
And then I'm glad you said that because that— yeah, it's been a polarizing Rookie of the Year vote, right? And I voted for Khan. Yeah. And you know, part of me is I value the winning, even though I know you're not supposed to do the Rookie of the Year that way. But I, I think— I personally think you should. But I thought, first of all, he played a shitload of games and a bunch of minutes for them, right? Which he played like 2,500 minutes in 79 games. But I thought I was talking the other day about like the gravity of him out there. And he's really the only guy that moves and his constant movement sets up everything else that they're doing combined with like he rebounds, he plays defense, he's unselfish. He plays the right way. You have to have a guy like that.
You do. And if it's one of your better players, then your team is better. Yeah. You know, you can make a case early in the year, Charlotte was probably thinking about moving guys. You know, moving LaMelo, moving Bridges, Bridges. Yeah. And now you watch them, they're playing like winners. Miller is, should be up for one of the most improved players. Yeah. I mean, but all that is from winning and playing the right way. And they, what's great is they didn't do it early, but they kept at it. They kept playing the right way and then they caught fire. I thought the sneakiest move that Charles made was putting Diabate in the starting lineup. I thought he was like a glue guy defensively and he is as good as anybody in the league offensive rebounding. Like he's a terror on the glass. Yeah. He gives, he won, like I know LaMelo played great, Bridges, but he won that game against Miami. He kept giving them extra shots and that's invaluable.
This rookie class was spectacular.
Great.
Flagg, who I feel terrible not voting for Rookie of the Year, 'cause I think he's gonna be a possible generational guy, right? And it's not his fault. Yeah, he is. I think he's gonna be fine. Yeah. Dylan Harper, I was even in the preseason like, okay, I guess, I guess we're doing this, watching him. And he, I was saying a while ago, he reminds me of more of a guy like from your era, like that he's not really a 3-point shooter. He can shoot 'em, but he really wants to get close to the basket. He wants to bang bodies. He wants to feel dudes against him before he decides what to do. Like he's at like 85. Yeah.
Oh, he plays like a grown man. Like he finishes in traffic as well as anybody in our league. And he is a rookie. Yeah. Like he is gonna attack. Like he's another guy. You know how we were talking about Steph, you know, he is looking for this shot. Well, you know, when Dylan's coming at you, he's not looking to shoot a jumper. He's trying to get to the basket, right? And he's like, stop it, because I don't think you can. The toughness of that team, like, you think about those guys, you just, you know, they've added every guy they've added is tough.
It sounds like you think they're going to win the title.
I think they could. I do worry about, I mean, If you watched the game last night, Golden State won because they had a bunch of vets. Yeah. Then just know how to win. And that's the only thing that scares me with San Antonio. And then I did— only other thing is can they shoot the ball well enough when it's time to shoot the ball? Like they can shoot, they're a good shooting team, but can they shoot it well enough down the stretch? That would be the two. Defensively they'll be fine.
I have 3 concerns and they're all small. One is Wemby holding up for 10 weeks because he's 7'7" and I just, I'm always worried about him and I think people are going to be really physical with him. So that's one. Two is the shooting, especially when they're like up 10, 12 and they don't really have that inside outside. It's really Harper, but I don't think they're going to have him out there in these situations. But that guy who could just kind of create a shot. That's not a 3 or it's not a Wemby play.
Yeah. Fox, Fox can do that a little bit with the in-between game.
Yeah. So he's the third one is Fox. Yeah. Who's used to being the guy, but now he is on this team with all these different weapons and he's gotta step back and do the 1989 Isaiah. Yeah. Yeah.
And I don't think he's navigated, I think he's navigated pretty well this year. Like you can see in games he picks and chooses some games he's aggressive, some games he's not. Early in the year I was worried about it. And then as, as the season went on, I'm like, man, he's kind of, kind of accepted, right?
Because they started winning. They put together winning streaks on that side. I just wonder in the playoffs if it gets like to nut crunch time, I'm just gonna be, because they're gonna need him. He's gonna have to be the guy who's like, guys, I got this.
He's gonna have to be the guy. It's gonna have to be him at times. But they're sending the kitchen sink at Wimby. And, and, and so, uh, I, I agree with that. I think it would have to be him. For sure.
So, so do you believe in that, the old guys on the couch philosophy of you, you, the bright lights are really bright and you have to have played in a few of these to really understand that? 'Cause you could even feel that in the Charlotte play-in game. Yeah. It was like, oh, this is a different level of pressure, guys. These threes aren't going in now.
I mean, Khan didn't even get back in. No, no, he's 20. And he actually did have that look like, whoa. Right. But I don't. I just think there's something different about them. You know, we thought that about Oklahoma and then they couldn't win the first year and then they came back. So it's— if you just believe in history, you would have to say the history says no. But I think my eyes tell me something different is about them. I wouldn't be shocked if they won. and I wouldn't be shocked if they did. You know what I mean by that? Because of that. So, right. But they're fun to watch.
So they would have to basically beat Denver in round 2. Yeah. They would then have to beat OKC in round 3 and then somebody good from the East in round 4. That would be the case.
Yeah. And, and they're gonna have 3 physical series. Portland is— let's talk about Portland.
Yeah. They're, they're a little dangerous.
Portland is dangerous cuz Portland, has size. Yeah, they have size and they have real defenders. Like they can defend 1 through 5. So that, that series, San Antonio's going to win, but I'm telling you, it's not gonna be an easy series where Portland will struggle. Can they score enough? Yeah.
'Cause Portland kind of, yeah, it's Denier bust. You could feel that even in the playing game. He was awesome at 41, but, and I hadn't even looked at those head to head.
But my guess is what he does is drive to the basket. Well, that's what Wimby does too, defensively. You know, he's gonna have to get those same layups over Wimby. Right. So that's gonna affect him a little bit.
Yeah. 'Cause he's one of those guys, he goes right every single time and you're like, just play him so he doesn't go right. It's like, okay. And then he goes right again. It's like, why did you let him go right?
It's like Benny Johnson. Yeah. Benny Johnson of the Pistons went right. Yeah. Mike Fratello cussed me out 50 times and I'm like, in my brain I'm like, coach, I swear to God, I'm trying to make him go left. He just won't. He keeps going right.
Maybe it was like that the other way going left. Yeah. Going left. It's like, I know you're going left. I can't stop you, but I know you're doing that. Yeah.
I mean, I was like half of all those guys, but I was only going right. Yeah. And I remember late my career, a rookie walked up to me before, you know, the jump ball and said, hey Doc, you're not going right today. And you know what I told him? I said, well, I'm not going left. Right. And so something's gonna happen. And that's what these guys think. Like, I'm good at going left. You're not gonna take me away from it. And he thinks I'm good at going right. You can do all that stuff, but I'm getting there.
I wish Portland wasn't playing San Antonio cuz It's funny, the upset teams to me heading into round 1 were Portland and Atlanta. And then each of them ended up with a draw that you just don't want them to have, right? Portland, Wemby's just the Loch Ness monster waiting for them. And then Atlanta was all set up to play Cleveland and then effed up the last day of the season and now they have to play the Knicks.
Yeah, I still wouldn't wanna play Atlanta. They're good. They're long, they're athletic. What, what they've done right before trade deadline is bringing shooters in and adding shooting to that team with the size and the length they have is unbelievable. You know, Brunson is gonna, they're gonna put everybody on him, right? It's gonna be a hard, now Brunson has his numbers, he's killed Atlanta, you know, in the regular season. He probably will in the playoffs 'cause he's that special. But he's gonna get worn out. Like, that is not a team you wanna see. New York better do quick work or it's gonna be a dangerous series.
Yeah, that, like, I was looking at the odds for the series on FanDuel and the Knicks are like 3-to-1 favorites. That, it feels like a 7-gamer to me. Yeah. Maybe 6, but at least 6, maybe 7. The problem when you play the Knicks, This is my fear for the Celtics too, is you feel like, feel like you have 'em for 44 minutes and then it's like a 3-point game with 4 minutes left. And now they're in the Brunson versus your best guy contest. And he's really good at that. Yeah.
It's, it's certain teams, like if you're playing the Lakers, you know, when they're healthy, well, all you have to do is, is get the game to the last 5 minutes.
Right. And then it's Luka versus whoever you have.
Yeah. And, and, and then Reeves, like, yeah, there's certain teams like that, you know, when you're playing the Knicks, you know, if it gets to a single possession game, they got Brunson and then they got this guy Katz standing out at the 3, man, that will make a shot on you. They become very difficult. That's why the Celtics are tough, you know, they got 2 guys, you know, plus they do it all game, but they have 2 guys down the stretch that can take over a game. When you have multiple guys, it's tough. It really is.
What were you surprised that they were able to slide Tatum back into the minutes and juggle whatever? Jaylen's having this, you know, one of the great late bloomer borderline MVP candidate seasons and he's finally the guy. Now here comes Tatum. Now I gotta balance that. You know, that can go great or that can go terrible.
That could have gone, that could have gone bad, but right. Were you surprised?
What did you think was gonna happen?
I didn't know. I did, you know, obviously I talked to Sam all the time, but I did think they had the equity of a title. And so that kind of makes them wanna play right. Right. Right. I also thought Joe did his best work there. Like he made it clear, this is Jaylen Brown's team this year. And then you gotta give a ton of credit to Tatum. He just wanted to play like he, he just wants to play. He wants to be Tatum and he's gonna be Tatum. But you know, listen, I think in Tatum's mind is, I'm back, I'm healthy, I have a chance to win another title. And Jaylen Brown was the MVP of the last Finals, so it's not a big deal to me. I just wanna win. So there was a lot of things going for them, but it could have went really bad. And it has not. Now they haven't gotten into the playoffs yet, so if they get pushed, we may see something, but I don't think so. I think they are a made team. You know what I mean by that? Like they understand each, each guy understands his role and, and, and Joe does a great job of accountability.
He really does. Well, I said this the other day on a pod that it's his team, which is how this solved itself. It's not Jaylen's team or Jason, it's actually Joe Mazzulla's team. So we saw that that way. He's running the team.
That's exactly right. And he makes that clear.
It's, you know, it says a lot about where the NBA is in 2026. 'Cause I think those guys, those guys aren't best friends, but they're good. And I think they both want the same thing. But what can happen, and you, you had a lot of this happen to you the last 12 months with the Bucks, but it's all the people around the guys and it's all the insider and this guy heard this and that heard that, or somebody who you know is friends with one of the players. And they're saying something on a show or a pod and the stuff takes a life of its own that doesn't, it didn't even start.
It really does. You know, and like there's, if, if everyone wrote an article about someone having a blowup in a locker room, every team would be on blast. For real. You know, you know what I mean? There's so, people have no idea, Bill, how often and how much that happens. And honestly, I've always thought it should happen if you, lose a bad game, there should be some tension. There should be some tension. Like, that's part of it. Right. And the good teams get through it though. They look at it and they take growth from it. And the average and the bad teams let it hold them down. They still hold on to it. It gets out, you know, people talk about it that the player said this or coach. Those are the bad teams, right? Those are the guys who the good teams, you don't find out about it. They keep it inside. They make it part of their growth, their strength. All right, let's fight about this. Let's take another step. And to me, you can see it. I've always said the most beautiful thing in the world is the finals, because you have two teams usually that have committed themselves completely to the team.
They've literally given themselves to the team and they play that way. And that's why watching the Finals is so beautiful because there's no BS, there's no fighting. This is my team. And if there is, that team's gonna lose. Like, it's so obvious. I always looked at the first Miami year with LeBron, Wade. They didn't win because they played a team, the Spurs, who were completely Mavericks. Yeah, the Mavericks, who they were so together. Yeah. You know, DeShawn Stevenson, I remember, was a kid that was started and Rick put him on the bench and no issues, right? It was no issues. Like it was about the team and winning. And so then the next year they came back and they were like that, but they had the— that lesson was taught to them. You know?
And so, well, think about the flip side of that. 'Cause I think a good example for this is the 2019 Warriors, that third KD season. Yes. And they had that thing happen with Draymond and KD in the Clipper game, which were you coaching the Clippers that year?
Yeah. Yeah. I was coaching. Yeah.
And you knew that was different. It felt different on the court. It felt, you could see it on the bench. It was like, oh, this is a bad one. And it turned out it was a bad one. Yeah.
It was the first time it was real. Yeah. You know, like you remember that game, Draymond took that shot. Yep. That since the game in the overtime and they looked awful in overtime, we went on and won the game. Yeah. And then I heard afterwards, you know, it's so funny, like as a coach, you don't know any of this crap is going on. You're right. You're coaching your team. And then, then in the press conference, that's all they're asking me about. And I'm like, guys, I didn't know that was going on. I'm happy it's going on. It's the other team, you know? But, but that never left them. That stuck with them.
The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. NBA fans, this is your reminder to check in daily, and I mean daily, 'cause every day during the playoffs, FanDuel is serving up a happy hour, special drops you won't wanna miss, profit boosts, bonus bets, much more. The best part, it's every single day. Including today as we head toward the playoffs. I was looking at series parlay stuff. As you know, I love to pick upsets. I had Indiana last year. I love nothing more than a round 1 upset with a nice juicy, juicy underdog number. I don't see it this year. I really think the best series bet is a 4-series parlay with the Spurs and Boston moneylines along with the Denver moneyline. And the New York moneyline, and all 4 of those series would have to win, and it is +120 on FanDuel, and I think that's the one I would recommend the most out of any of these. I really wanted to take Toronto again. I just don't think Toronto's gonna beat the Knicks. I think that series is gonna be good and close, and I think it goes 6 or 7, but I think the Knicks win.
Anyway, check that one out, and I'm gonna be tweeting picks and all kinds of stuff. during the course of the playoffs and showing you, uh, your best FanDuel possibilities. We've been hot lately. Just, just check out what's going on on the, on the, uh, the last 3 Wednesdays/Tuesdays we hit, including Wednesday, um, or Tuesday, Wednesday. Told you Portland, take them against Phoenix, parlay them with Charlotte moneyline and Philly moneyline, everything we had. So we're, we have a little momentum right now. Check out FanDuel for a new reward every single day of the NBA playoffs. Don't miss your shot to get a little extra out of the action. Head to fanduel.com/bs to get started. 21+ select states or 18+ D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Countless hours in the gym, 1,000 shots before tip-off, day after day on the same court with the State Farm stanchion right there. That's right, the best players put in the work, and State Farm is the same way with insurance experts who put in the work as well.
Whether you get a digital quote or reach out to a local agent, State Farm is there to get to know you and help you select the right coverage that fits your life and your budget. Putting in the work is what separates the good players from the great, and that's why you want State Farm on your team. So get the coverage that's right for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. We didn't talk about Maxie and Philly. You love Maxie.
I love him.
Maxie was like one of your all-time favorites from day one. You've You've touted his virtues nonstop. He was awesome this year. I have him third. I had to third team All-NBA just 'cause I have to put a center on each team, but he's, it could have been second. And if they're gonna give the Celtics any semblance of a chance, it's gonna be because of him. And Zach, man, did a pod. Little guards bother Boston.
Like they struggle with the, the quick fast guys. And Maxey, it's just not that he's just so quick and fast. He's now finishing left or right. He's an elite shooter. Yeah, he's not a good shooter. He's an elite shooter. He's tough as nails. And what he's really done, and I'm so proud of him, he's become a leader. He is the leader of that team. There is no doubt about who's the leader of the Sixers. And it's really cool for a guy that young and such a great high character guy to have taken that step this quickly.
Yeah, 'cause that, so you mentioned they're not, Celtics aren't great against guards like that. They're also, 'cause they love offensive rebound and they're crashing the boards constantly. Yeah. And you don't get the board and the teams that just go, oh boom, we're off. It's like hockey. It's like a 2-on-1 or a 3-on-2. I think Maxi's the best in the league at that of like, oh, I have numbers. Boom. I'm, I'm going 700 miles an hour. Yeah.
He doesn't even need numbers, but when he has numbers, true, you're in trouble. And where he's really improved is his passing. Like, you know, in the year, 2 years I had him, he could get to the basket, but he couldn't see a lot. Now, you know, he sees a lot. He's making guys better. And I'm just watching him this year. There's games like when Joel and Paul George were really— and Edgecomb were playing well. He kind of— he's fine with taking a step back. And then when they need him, he takes back over. So his growth has been unbelievable. They're not gonna be easy to beat, you know? And I, yeah, I know everyone says Joel's not coming back. I don't believe that. I think he will play in the series and I, I have no reason to say that. I just, I just think it's too important not to.
I think we will see him at some point in the series, but probably a little later. And by the way, they might be down like 3-1 by the time. Yeah.
If you see him then you may not see him, but if it's right. You know, if, if you're Philly, you're thinking, if I can get one of these first two and then I can win one at home, it's 2-2. And then we get the big fella back. Right. There's pressure added.
Well, one thing, and you've seen that crowd in various stages of either just horrified or really great. Yeah. They love Maxey and they love Edgecomb and there's real energy. That's exactly right. These home games, like you could feel it in that Orlando game. Like they fucking love those guys. And I don't know, I think they're gonna be tough to beat in Philly. Boston can't lose one of those first two. But I honestly, if you lose one of those first two in this series to a Philly team without Embiid, then that probably says more about Boston. Like they gotta take care of business. You gotta win the first set. It does.
But you know, good teams, they, they can and still win. You know what I mean? Yeah.
No, I get it. It's just like, they the smackdowns.
They, they better play well cuz The longer the series goes on, it allows Joel to come closer to getting back. And you put Joel Embiid in that series, it's a tough series.
I got an email from a listener because I've been doing more mailbag stuff. Wow.
I don't dare listen to my mail. That's true.
Somebody asked if Joel is the unluckiest superstar in the history of the NBA. And I, I think you can make a case for Bill Walton.
Um, oh wow, that's a good, good answer.
But I think Joel has had more injury, more injuries to different parts of his body, and just things happen and bad luck and the orbital bone. And Walton just had feet issues. And Beats, like, it's like pick a year, it's a different something.
Like, I mean, I remember the first, you know, I had 3 years there, right? Uh, yeah, the first year Was it Game 5 against Washington? The closeout game? Yeah. I thought he tore his knee. I mean, that looked bad. The second year, and I'm messing him up, another knee injury. The third year he gets— no, the second year gets hit in the face. Right. And then he also hurts his hand. You remember he had the— Yeah. He had to have surgery on his hand. He breaks his face bone. So he has to wear a mask. Then the third year he had another, he had a meniscus injury. Yeah. I'm like, and then this year he has appendix. I mean, come on. Like, you can't make this stuff up. And so, yeah, it's really rough because I'm telling you, and I've told you this, he's as talented as I've ever seen. And I really believe, like, if I had had him, especially the first year in that Atlanta series and he was healthy, I do believe we advance. You know— Well, we talked about that before.
That's one of the all-time, what the hell happened in that series series. I mean, Ben Simmons' career was never the same after that. He literally died during the series.
No, it literally happened. You know, I was— we laugh about it. It wasn't funny at the time. I remember telling Sam Cassell in the Washington series, you know, they haven't fouled Ben at all. In the series. And I swear, game one, Atlanta, uh, or you're like, oh boy.
And now he's a, now he's a fisherman. Yeah, he's a professional fisherman. This guy was third team All-NBA. He's not even in his 30s yet.
Then that year he had with me there, he was amazing.
Yeah, he looked like LeBron-ish, a couple, like in the full court stuff. It's like, or magic-ish, you know.
You remember the decision we made was we put the ball in his hands full time. Yeah. And that was great until the playoffs. And when they start following him, then he didn't want the ball anymore. Yeah. And that crushed our offense. But man, is he, he's, I'm telling you, I, I'm, I'm shocked that he's not playing basketball. He's so talented.
We didn't talk about Detroit. What made them go up a level in your opinion? I have my thoughts, but what was different about them this year versus last year?
Boy, that's a good question. Well, I thought K took a huge jump. Number one, as good as K was last year, he's one of the top 5 players in the league now. Wow. Or in that area. Yeah. You know, there's so many guys. And then Durham took a jump that I didn't see coming. I never thought he would be able to score and play with the finesse game that he has played with this year. I didn't see that coming. You forget how young he is, Bill. And yeah, and so I think that those two things are the reason they are where they're at. And then the last thing, they did something that no team need to do. They bought into who they are. They really bought into their identity. You know, like when you hear Miami, you hear the Heat culture, right? And they buy into it. Well, Detroit basketball, they have bought into it. And I think that that carries a lot of weight for them. Yeah.
And the, one of the reasons I had him second team All-NBA, Duran, is I felt like the physicality and the attitude they have, it kind of starts with him. Like he's, he's outta like your era. Like you could see him like getting into it with Anthony Mason in game 5 of a Knicks-Pistons series. He's a complete throwback and carries himself that way. You know?
No, he carries himself like he is the baddest man on the floor. Yeah. And there's nothing you can do about it. And then they have the alternate guy off the bench who will fight anybody.
Literally, he'll come off the bench to fight. Yeah.
He'll come off and it's like, I love the comment he made in the one fight where he came off the bench and he said, what do you expect me to do? Right. Like, this is who I am.
And they have Ron Holland who's also ready to rumble. Yeah.
They, they have a bunch of guys that, that are just, they're ready to go. And you know, because he is one of my personal favorites, I'm just so happy for Tobias. Yeah. Because it was so rough for him in Philly and, and now to see him be a leader, be the vet of the team is really cool. Like I love when good things happen to good people and it's happening to Tobias and good for him.
And they actually need him cuz there's, oh, they need him without Cade. They, there's not a lot of guys who can create their own shot. And it's amazing how many times he had the ball with 3 minutes left, a minute 30 left, where he had to basically create a 17-footer from scratch and he was able to do it. I thought he was really good this year.
He's been great. And that's the only thing that scares me is they're, they're, can they shoot well enough? Even though they're high when they're looking at their offensive rating in top 5 or whatever. Yeah. I still worry about Can they play well enough offensively to win? That'll be the, that'll be the biggest question.
So what, what's your finals then? If you had, who's coming outta the East? If you had to, if your life depended on it, who would you pick? Well, Boston. If, how about if Larry's life depended on it? Yeah, that's easier.
I'm still going Boston, but The Knicks are dangerous. I know people want to, want to crap on the Knicks and I, you're preaching to the choir. I'm afraid. Yeah. I just don't understand why. Like, I get they didn't maybe play great every regular season game, but they're deep. They're deep.
And they can defend, they can defend wings, they can defend guards. Yeah.
And they can score. And I would not be surprised if the Knicks made it to the finals at all. So those are the two teams that I would have.
My fear with the Knicks is there was a game, Mazzulla kind of threw away the last Knicks game 'cause I don't think he wanted to show them anything. But he did have Tatum playing and he went, and Tatum needed to get over that hump of being at MSG, right? Which is the worst moment of his life. You gotta get him back out there. And Anunoby was just doing the Draymond thing. He was just in his personal space the entire game and really likes guarding Tatum and Tatum. Is 96% back, 94% back. Yeah. But the first step stuff still isn't totally there yet. I thought Anunoby was—
Yeah. The explosive stuff is coming back, but not 100% there. I just, you know, like that, like the Celtics destroyed the Knicks all year. Yeah. Right. And then they beat 'em that last game. Like, I know that doesn't mean much and it usually doesn't, but in this case, because the Knicks beat 'em last year, in the playoff series. The Knicks, put it this way, the Knicks, when they play the Celtics, if they play the Celtics, they will not— they will think they're gonna win. Yeah. Confidence, right? They won't be. And that's where Detroit, when you look at Detroit, they haven't been through a first round yet. So in a lot of ways, and they're really— people forget how young Detroit is. Yeah. Like people talk about San Antonio. In Oklahoma, but they don't talk about how young the Pistons are and they're really young and they've never advanced. So this is gonna be a big year for them to take that next step.
You know what the secret Celtics sauce is that they didn't do in that next game, and I think they've been saving it, is when they play Tatum at the 5, which I think they're gonna do. And I think Tatum, Brown, or Shooter and the two guards, I think is gonna be the lineup against the Knicks. 'Cause they were playing Keita in crunch time against the Knicks. I just don't think they're gonna do that. I think they're gonna go smaller and try to, and just basically have shooting and just try to attack them, attack Towns, try to attack Towns.
You put a smaller guy on Towns because he's away from the basket. Yeah. And one of the areas Towns struggles is when you get up under him. Yeah. He struggles with that. Now where I think, people should give Towns credit is he has learned now he goes down low way more and he's rebounding at an unbelievable clip. Yeah. And I'm telling you, their rebounding is a factor.
Right. Especially with Mitch and yeah. Yeah. We didn't talk about Cleveland. Did you see post, did you play them post Harden trade or no?
Yeah, we played them twice. We beat 'em once and lost to 'em once.
So defensively they're worse, offensively they're more interesting. Is it, Like, you know, obviously as somebody, I'm talking about me, that has just lost all faith in James Harden as a playoff guy, but maybe he doesn't have to be as much of a playoff guy on this team. But what is it?
Yeah, I think he's, I don't know, 'cause I, this is what I'd say about James and you know, this is what I said about him when I coached him. The one thing I loved about him is he plays. Yeah. Like he never misses games. And I know that sounds trivial, but All the other guys do. He doesn't. He, he wants to play every day and he does that. What I liked about him, Bill, is I don't know. And I always talked about that one year we had with him in the first half of the year. He literally was a scoring point guard and we were amazing. And then that second half he wanted to start scoring again and it kind of upset the rhythm with Joel and all that. If he stays in that role, where he's gonna be a scoring, like still facilitator. Yeah. But, but man, I'm telling you, his passing is so underrated. He, he, he's not just a, he's one of the elite passers in our league. And when he plays at that where he is still aggressive scoring but really setting people up, they have two rollers. Like James Harden plays well with bigs that roll.
You know, where he struggled with Joel is Joe would roll. Yeah, Joe was like, I don't need to roll, I'm Joel Embiid, just give me the ball. But he has two bigs that roll. And so it's gonna be interesting. I was surprised when I heard Kenny, you know, the press conference about their defense. I hadn't noticed it cuz we hadn't been watching them and, and I still haven't seen them enough to tell you how much worse is it. I don't know that. But if they don't play defense, you're not winning, period. Yeah.
The advanced metrics aren't great. Yeah. It's, it's teams. It's an up and down team now. I think it's harder for them to get stops. They're kind of a wild card though, because they're in the Detroit side of the bracket, right? They lucked out. They have Toronto who didn't beat any of the top 3 teams at all this year. And that's pretty easy series, I think. And then hopefully Detroit gets deer in the headlights and all of a sudden you're in the, the Knicks and the Celtics beat the crap out of each other.
Yeah, I think Toronto's another, I think Cleveland will win that series. But I, I, the one thing I'd say about Toronto is they're big and physical. And they're, they're gonna, they're gonna bang you up. They're gonna physically bother you. And even, even if it's a, a 5-game series, it's not gonna be a physically easy series for Cleveland. That's gonna be a very physical series.
What was your, your quick LeBron James take? Age 41, still doing it. It's amazing. Like, did this just stop making sense to you like 4 years ago?
No, it, it, yeah, it stopped making sense 5 years ago. You were coaching T-Mac at age 41. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy, right? Like what he's doing, a couple of great things about LeBron. First of all, just physically, come on. Like he had some dunks this year that half the league could not do now. Right. And it's amazing. The other thing that he's done that most stars don't do, the old adage in coaching is never coach an aging superstar. Yeah, they're gonna get you fired. I mean, every coach would tell, especially back in the day, don't take an aging superstar because they're gonna keep thinking they can do what they could do 10 years ago and they can't. And you're gonna have to be the guy that tells them. Yeah. You know, where I give LeBron credit is he did it himself. He kind of, he sees what Luka is. It's not hard to see, but he sees what Austin Reeves is and he gives them room. He's like, you know, when you need me, I'm over here. He plays the role. And I listen, most guys don't do that. And especially we're talking about one of the greatest players to ever play.
Doing that. It says a lot about LeBron James and, you know, people wanna knock him and, you know, it says a lot about him as a human. It really does.
So you're excited to watch him on Golden State next year with Steph and Draymond and Al Horford? Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think he'll be, you don't think he'll be back with the Lakers?
I, I would bet on Golden State. I think they're gonna do the old guy, The Sylvester Stallone Expendables. We're getting the our generation. Here we go. We're going to get everyone together.
Let's get like, uh, Carmelo, Gary Payton.
Yeah, whatever version of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the irony is the Warriors could have really used somebody like LeBron last night. Like, he, you know, he's feels he does a lot of stuff. So I'm watching. Who was your MVP? Just out of curiosity, who do you think should have won the MVP this year?
Well, it's a tough one for me. Trey will probably win and that's probably who I would've voted for. But Wimby, man, I keep going back to the defensive thing, like why we don't give guys enough credit for what they do defensively. Yeah. And you can, you can, if Wimby won it, it wouldn't bother me.
There was a moment when it seemed like he was going to, I don't think he, yeah. Like for me, I really— well, he didn't, and he didn't have the minutes. Like Jokic played like, I think, 400+ more minutes than he did, and he barely got the minimum. I didn't like that he skipped the last game of the year when they had beaten Denver. They moved Denver down in the 4 seed. Like, why wouldn't you want to do that? What do you want to play Denver for?
Yeah, I think that was more of a team choice, you know?
But that was a bad choice. Yeah.
The, the other thing though is, is the Joker, We have voter fatigue. Yeah. Because like, if you just went by numbers, he wins every year. You know, like, you know, there were a couple guys that won it in Michael's heyday, but when you go back and look at the numbers, you're like, what were the voters doing? You know, what were they, what were they thinking?
That, that was like the year Malone, when Malone beat Jordan that one year. Yeah. It seems like the stupidest thing that ever happened now. So I said the other day I was going to vote for SGA and I was agonized over it because I was like, I can't believe I'm not voting for Jokic. He had the best offensive season, like, not only his career, but one of the best I've ever seen. And now because we don't have to turn our ballots till this weekend because we had the appeals, I'm wavering. I might actually vote for Jokic because I'm like, I don't want to be 10 years from now like, how did I not vote for Jokic? The guy led the league in assists and rebounds.
People are gonna look at the numbers. It's like, who didn't vote for this guy? You know, having said that, that the numbers aren't always the whole story. Right. And what Shay does every night, he's good every night. Yeah.
Well, that's the Jaylen Brown case too, of like, when I know I'm getting 30 from my guy every night, my team can behave differently.
Yeah. An efficient scoring. And what Shea also does is down the stretch, he takes the game over. Yeah.
He's the best crunch time guy in the league. The stats say it. I test everything.
You know what's coming and you can't do anything about it. Yeah. So that's why he'll win to me because of that.
Well, it sounds like you're picking Wimby.
It's tough. I would probably pick Shea, honestly, but it really, it's tough for me not to pick Wemby because of the defensive portion. And as good as Shay is and, and Jokic, none of 'em play defense. None of 'em change the game defensively like Wemby does.
All right. We've come to the point when we have to talk about the Bucks season. Oh Lord. It seemed horrible from afar. Didn't seem like a fun time.
It wasn't, but it could have been. I will say that like the getting off to the start, you know, it's before the season, I said something to my coaches. There's two guys that can't get hurt. Giannis, obviously, and then Scoot. Because we don't have any facilitators. Yeah. You know, we're not like, we wasn't built like all the other teams where they had one and then a second star. We didn't have a second star. So for us to be a, you know, a good team, we wasn't gonna win anything. Bill, we're 26, in spending. Yeah. You know, so we probably outdid our record. If you match record for record versus teams who's going by spending, we probably were one of the better teams in that way. But at the end of the day, when you, when you start out like that and then the whole Giannis stuff, it was just not a lot of fun. It just wasn't.
Yeah. Because that started in July and just became a running narrative. I got a lot of podcast content out of it. That was a bonus.
Oh, I'm sure you did. But for me, and I don't want to go into this long because a lot of it, when you're around Giannis and then what you hear on the outside, it was two different worlds. And that's where, from a coaching standpoint, is very difficult because I talk to Giannis every day and you see these reports and I'm like, I wonder that any of these guys have one conversation with Giannis because I think a lot of people at the end of the day were talking for him. Right. I don't know if they necessarily were doing that in what he was actually saying. And it made things murky and it made things very, very difficult. And then to end the season with this whole thing was rough. It was just tough.
You're talking about the Shams piece or—
No, no, the Shams piece. I literally, I just try to ignore it because it's, it's the point that I was making. Like, yeah, we had a tough meeting after a game that we blew. Like, again, if you go into any locker room, why is that news? Yeah. But it's more like the whole Giannis, did he play, not play? It was tough. And I saw it like, as a coach, I could literally see it from both sides of it, and I really could. And when I talked to Giannis and we talked a lot, I told him that, and it's just where the human side of me, Bill, is the Bucks front office has done an amazing job overall to win a title and to get there. They're good people. And then you have Giannis, who I'm telling you is a good person. Yeah. And they're both, you know, over all this stuff. And I don't think Giannis knows if he wants to stay or not. And I don't know if the organization knows one way or not either. And it just, it's too bad because I just hope that part is figured out. When you win a title with someone, there's like a blood transfusion and that transfusion shouldn't be broken.
And that part is the one that I want them to figure out. So it's tough.
Yeah. 'Cause you had that in Boston when the KG Pierce era was coming to an end and you were coming to an end there too. Yeah. Yeah. But you had the umbilical cord of that title and it's tough to just be like, all right, we ran our course here. 'Cause I told you this last summer, I thought they should have traded Giannis last summer and I, I didn't, I didn't like the Dame stretch bringing Myles in. I understand why you did it because you were trying basically to create a situation where Giannis retired with the Bucks, right? Yeah. You didn't want to just throw away a year when you didn't have your pick, but it was, it was almost an impossible situation.
It still didn't give us a second like star to go to. Right. You know, in retrospect when you think about it. But you know, Bill, I don't know about the whole trade thing. This is where I struggle. I'm being honest with you. Like, yeah, what if, what if a guy wants to stay where he's at? He's won a title and he wants to play his whole career there. Like, what's wrong with that? You know?
Well, especially when he won the title so he doesn't have to go chase one.
Like, I look at like, yo, Joker, Joker never wins again. Should he leave? Should he stay?
How about Curry? Curry doesn't want to go. Curry could go to Charlotte tomorrow if he wanted.
Curry.
Yeah, he would never do that. He wants to play. And be a Golden State Warrior. And if Giannis did decide that and the front office decided that, okay, there's nothing wrong with that. That's the only thing that bothered me during the season and during the summer about it is like no one, you know, no one has asked Giannis, like, what do you want? And that's where you hear one side wants to leave, one side wants to stay. I don't, I think, I mean, I don't know if he's made up his mind either way yet. Well, that's okay.
The thing that was right, the thing that's been going around since July in the NBA circles, which sometimes can be unreliable, sometimes can be pretty reliable. It was like Giannis wants to leave, but he doesn't want to be the one that asked for a trade. Like that's what we've around the league. That's what's been going on since August.
Exactly. That's what you hear. Right. But that's not exactly what's said every day.
So are you talking to him and being like, yo, Giannis, do you want to get traded or not?
Like, did you ask him? No, never, because it wasn't my place. But we talked about a lot of stuff, and I just think that he's still— I think he has this thing about him that he wants to— he would love to— like, what did he say on the trade deadline day?
You know, I'm a buck or whatever.
Yeah. And something like that. I think he thinks that way. Yeah. And so I think leaving is very difficult for him. So you may be right. Maybe he wants to leave, but doesn't want to say, I don't even know the answer to that. I just know it's not as cut and dry as people try to make it out to be. And it's not as easy of a situation as people think it is.
Yeah. Well, the problem is they traded a lot to get Jrue. Right? Yeah. So you give up, you're giving up future picks, assets, all that stuff. And it works. Yeah. You win the title. Then you go all in again on the Dame trade and you give up more, basically the rest of your assets for the 2020s. That's the problem. Yeah. And, but Dame gets hurt, which is bad luck. Yeah. That was just bad luck.
And, and bad luck happens. Like, oh listen, you don't win unless you're healthy. I would fight today if you told me that KG never got healthy. Never got hurt. We're winning too. Yeah. You know, but that's part of it. And you know, the Dame thing was unfortunate. Like once he went down and got hurt, Giannis gets hurt. You know, the whole thing about Giannis having advanced in the playoffs. Well, Giannis hadn't played in the playoffs, you know? Right. He's been injured until last year and then Dame goes down. So the narrative doesn't fit. What actually happened is what I guess I'm saying. And I'm sitting here today, I can't tell you what's going to happen. I really can't. I'm at a point now where I just hope everybody's happy, whatever happens. And that would make me happy. It really would.
Well, let's have the Doc Rivers exit interview. What could you have done differently? If you could go back and change shit, what would you— did you feel like you did a good job? What were the things?
I think I didn't think I did a great job this year. I really did. Now, obviously with all the injuries, it was hard and it's easier to second guess. I thought one of the things that I've always been known for is holding everybody accountable for everything, being on time. And I thought I was very lax in that this year. And there's, Reasons for that that I can't go into, but it bothered me that I wasn't. Other than that, you know, getting guys to buy into their roles. I've been very good throughout my career. I look at the teams that I've coached, Bill, like when you look at even some of the teams that went deep, when you look at them on paper versus the other team, how did they get to being up in a series, you know? But that's because everybody bought into their roles. I thought I really struggled getting each guy to see who they really are, understand that, and then play that way. Yeah. 'Cause I think that's the key to coaching, really. I think that's when we look at Joe and all the good coaches now in our league, if you can't get each guy to understand who they are and buy into their role for the good of the team, You're not gonna win.
Period.
So is that, that's it for coaching for you, you think? What do you think?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we met about, you know, I wanna say 7 weeks ago and we had a, me and ownership, we had a great meeting and that's why we're all on the same page. And they asked me what I wanted to do. You know, one of the owners says, you know, one plan is, you know, if we do this, "You can hang in there for a year or two." And I literally said, "Oh no, no, no." No, I was a matter of fact. I told my coaches, like, "I'm done." I love coaching, loved it. I had a lot of success at it. I had some way more ups than downs. But at the end of the day, I've given 40 years 47 years or whatever. I don't even know how old I am. Straight, straight, Bill, with no off time. And I just wanted a break. I want to get away. The grandkids and just life in general, man.
Yeah, but the thing is, I don't trust you completely because I remember being at dinner with you and Larry and you were saying how great it was not to Not to be coaching, but not getting the calls at 3 in the morning and how relaxed you were. Then all of a sudden it was like, wait, Doc's going back to coach the Bucks.
What happened? That doesn't mean I don't want to run a team or get in the front office. I've done that. And there's places that would be really fun to do. But right now, you know, I'm just going to try to sit back and if something comes, not coaching, I'm gonna look at it. But right now I, I can tell you, Bill, I think it, it was time. And, and so I, I'd be surprised if I coached another game. I'll put it that way.
All right. You said that last time.
I don't know if I trust you. I don't know if I said that last time. I said possibly. This time I'm saying it, but I'm not gonna be Ali. Like, I'm not gonna keep coming back, you know?
At least I hope not. What's, how's the golf game these days?
Well, I haven't golfed much, so yeah. So you gotta get that back. Yeah. Can I say the golf scene in Milwaukee is amazing except for January and December. It's really difficult to get a good golf game going.
So yeah, February, probably not great either.
Not great either.
All right. Well, you're gonna pop back on every once in a while, right? Yeah. You're gonna be watching basketball. I hope so.
I love basketball. I know people, you know, somebody, I was at dinner last night and I had the, game sitting at the dinner table on my phone. And the waiter walked up to me and he's like, "I don't get it. You just retired. Your team's not in it. You're watching the game like you're prepping." And I said, "I love the game. It's a great game." It's like, I'm really planning on going to a couple arenas and sitting in the crowd. And just watch the game. Not in the front, just sit in the crowd and watch the game. I think that would be— I've never done that. Think about that. I've been in the league for 40 whatever. I've never done that. So if you see me in the crowd just sitting there drinking a beer, I'm there because I'm having a great time and I'm gonna watch the game.
Wow. That, that is— yeah, you went from playing to coaching to announcing to coaching to announcing. Yeah. I guess you never had a, Yeah, I've done it in two games.
Austin's— when Austin came to play the Lakers and I was coaching the Clippers, I sat in like the fourth row. Yeah. And I had a ball. And then we were on the road once when I was with Philly and Austin was with Minnesota and Minnesota was in early in New Orleans. And I called New Orleans and said, I wanna see like in the seventh row. I do not, 'cause they always wanna put you on the floor somewhere. Said, I don't wanna sit on the floor. And then they were like, well, we're worried about security. I said, I'm good. And me and Sam Cassell sat in like the 6th or 7th row. We played New Orleans the next night and it was a ball. The fans were talking crap. We were, we, uh, I remember at the very end I turned around and say, hey, see you tomorrow. We're gonna get your ass. Guys were laughing like we had a ball. It was, it was so fun. So it was cool.
All right. Well, it's good to have you back. Congrats on the Hall of Fame, by the way. Oh, thank you. That was pretty cool.
That was cool. That was awesome. The call's awesome. I think I know who I'm going to ask. I can't tell you yet. You can figure out one.
Yeah, I probably have a guess.
Yeah, but it's going to be a really cool thing. And when you make it as a coach, you make it because all the people who work with you and play for you, you know, you really do. Like, so it was more of a thankful thing for me.
Awesome. Well, it was great to see you. I'll see you in the West Coast, Los Angeles. Very soon. Great to have you back. Missed having you on. Good to see you. Thank you. Good seeing you. And now it's time for a new segment, Embracing the Era. It is brought to you by New Era, the official cap of the NBA, and they make awesome caps. You should check them out. Take a trip back through time with some of the most iconic court-defining moments with the New Era NBA Hardwood Classics collection. Let's be honest, a little hard to top the legendary '80s logo. Some people are partial to the '90s when we started to get a little wacky, but the '80s, oh yeah. And speaking of the '80s, um, that was the era that made me an NBA fan. I was an NBA fan in the '70s. I was going to the games, you know, with my dad, 1974. But the '80s, when the league became the NBA, Magic and Bird started riding to glory. Michael Jordan showed up. We had a Celtics-Lakers rivalry. We had those NBA Entertainment ads that you can go find on YouTube.
The NBA is fantastic. Slam dunk contests, 3-point contests, all that stuff started. And now you can go back in time with the New Era NBA Hardwood Classics collection available in a wide range of silhouettes, including the iconic fitted 5950. Or adjustables like the 940 A-frame and 970, and some great hardwood classics apparel as well, including this awesome green Celtics sweatshirt that they sent me that my daughter stole from me within a week, and now I have to get it back when she's done with college this year. Visit neweracap.com to shop now. Use one-time code RINGER for 20% off your first order. Check it out. All right, my friend Nick Khan is here. Mid-level boxing promoter, uh, also works for WWE. When do you become an upper-class, uh, boxing promoter?
Middle of boxing executive. Dana White is the promoter, as you know.
So mid-level boxing executive.
Boxing executive who also has bull riding reporting into me. Bull riding.
So don't think about the bull riding now that you're a big deal.
Don't think, you know, mid-level wrestling. Oh, he's just mid-level boxing also. Fat.
We haven't had you in the studio yet. You do one interview a year, although you did two this year before WrestleMania, because you also were in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Yes, sir. My father. Press your father. My parents still lived in Las Vegas. My mother passed in 2019. All is good. So he still lives there, still subscribes to the hard copy of the Review-Journal. And he was the one person when the article came out who said, hey, there's a big article. Yeah. It's like, wow, on you in the Review Journal today. Yeah. Couldn't believe it.
My dad does the same with the Globe. Hey, you were in the media notes in the Globe today. Do you want me to save it?
Like, no, I'm good. Yeah, save and put in that plastic sheet. Put it in your scrapbook. By the way, just in terms of the studio, last year, your microphone, it was like circumference 42 inches.
We're taking it all seriously. We've had a very good last year. Our stuff looks good. We look like discount TV shows now. It's on Netflix, 4K HD. That's sick. It's all good.
I've watched— the life seems to be pretty good since.
Seems all right. So you're in the bad back club now. So welcome aboard on that.
The old man club, the bad back club. Ridiculous. Yeah. So I'm going to try to sit with my core engaged.
I told you my theory, though. It's 95% stress. There could be, like, a traumatic— like, you get in a car accident or you're on a roller coaster and something— like, some sort of— But for the most part, it's usually sitting habits and stress, which is what I tell everybody.
But here's the only thing, though. So you and I have known each other for almost 20 years now. Yeah. I've never seen you externally stressed. Now, I don't know when kids are in a down family and this, that, but you've never called me with some version of, I'm so stressed. I just think it's part of your life. I think whatever stress—
I think you get used to stress, but you have way more stress now because you're in charge of bull riding and WWE and You're a mid-level boxing executive, so this is the most stress you've had.
Listen, this is, uh, it's an easy life compared to jobs you and I may have had growing up. That's true.
All right. By the way, did I ever tell you my decision?
So I went to public school in Las Vegas. Yeah. Bonanza High School. You're like, I've never heard of that school. It's just a public high school.
It's called Bonanza High School. Yeah.
All the old Vegas high schools were all Western themed. Rancho High School, Chaparral High School, Western High School, Bonanza High School. Okay, so that's just El Dorado High School. So that's what they all were. I was like, should I go to college? Should I not go to college? There was— you remember when you and I were younger, you'd look for a job in the classified ads? Yeah. It said, you know, now hiring. In 1992, I believe the minimum wage was $4.25 in Las Vegas. $15 an hour. Come work at the Marina Hotel while we transform it into the MGM. Ooh, it's no problem. I went down there. It was kind of a construction job. They said, hey, you signed up. Okay. I said, what do I need to do? They're like, you see that huge pile of rocks? I said, yeah. It's like, you and the other guys need to move that pile like a mile away. And I was like, nah, left and enrolled at UNLV. I was like, I was a busboy in high school and all this stuff. That was all fine. But moving the rocks thing, I'm like, this is too much for me.
I have a similar experience. My buddy Jim Grady and I, we went and worked at some tent company the beginning of the summer, one summer, and I was one day and out. I was driving home. I'm like, I am not going back. That's a one and done.
I'm not doing that again. I had a job in high school as a busboy at the old Gold Coast Hotel in Las Vegas, which is an off-strip casino. First day, it's like, at that time when we were younger, the manager's role is kind of assholes. Yeah, right, kid. You're 2 minutes late. It's going to be a big reflection on your future. And I was like, all right, I'll just quit. How's that sound?
How does that sound?
Just quit. You can have someone else bust your table. So you have many stories.
I don't remember if we talked about this on the pod, but I don't even remember how you became an agent. Did you do the mailroom thing, or did you back into it another way? I was a lawyer for 6 or 7 years. That's what it was.
That Freddie Roach, Manny Pacquiao story.
I remember now. I just have the amnesia.
Yeah, because of Freddie and Manny, started going to a lot of the boxing matches, met Jim Lampley, met Max Kellerman. Yeah. Who's in business with you now. Yeah. And started representing those— Joe Tessitore, met those boxing announcers, started representing them as a lawyer, and then went to become an agent in the sports media space.
Those are usually the best agents that didn't start because they wanted to be an agent.
Yeah, I have this thing also. And by the way, it would apply to Ben and to my children, Sonny and Natalie. When I was an agent, if there were young people, assistants who I liked, I'd always say, where are you from? Anyone who answered, I'm from LA, I'd be like, yeah, but where? And it was Reseda, Sherman Oaks, Huntington. It was never Hancock Park, Brentwood. It's just different. Perhaps your son goes to run a hedge fund or run a team or something like that. But most of the agents come from a little more working class. Yeah, it's true.
The good agents, at least. I have a bunch of— normally I don't have the iPad with questions, but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I see you have your Ali sweatshirt.
I wore the Ali sweatshirt for you to get the boxing.
All the good Tasha and boxing books. We'll start with the wrestling.
I want to move into the whole armada that you guys have created with the combat sports, basically, but the wrestling. WrestleMania 42. Yes, sir. Just seeing the 42 makes me feel super old. It's just kind of like, fuck, 42. I remember every aspect of that week leading up to the first one, and now we're at 42. It's kind of jarring. I like it.
I compare it to WrestleMania 1, which I watched from the LA Sports Arena on closed circuit. We were in Los Angeles. That weekend. But I also compare it, like, people talk WrestleMania 18, and I'm like, wait a second, that's now 24 years ago, right? It's those things when you read—
which one was 18? 18 was that Hulk and Hogan, right?
But it's those things you read and, like, now if you look at 2002, that would be like 1985 talking about 1962 or whatever the math was. And that makes me feel like, man, the years are flying by.
The thing I really hate right now, Instagram just knows how to bring my confidence down. They do these things now where they show somebody. I don't know if it's AI or how they do it, but it's like an actress or an actor from the '90s, and it's them now. And then it's like, here's— you might remember me. And then it goes backwards, a montage of when they were young, and then it goes back to them looking like us now. And I always get really depressed.
I just got something on Instagram last night. It was Andrew McCarthy.
And it was like one of those where it went backwards and forwards. Yeah, I don't like those. I don't want those anymore. Correct. All right. Why Vegas for the second year in a row for WrestleMania?
So, number one, we had a great experience last year. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, led by a guy named Steve Hill, who's a terrific executive. I think I first noticed when the Super Bowl was there a couple of years ago. It was probably the most seamless Super Bowl I had seen. Yeah. I think a lot of people were surprised by that. Having lived there for most of my, you know, pre-adult life, uh, it didn't surprise me at all because there's no city that can handle that quantity of people. Yeah. Uh, better than Las Vegas can. So we set up WrestleMania last year. It was quite successful. We decided to go back to back, you know, fingers crossed. Let's see.
It's kind of built for it. It's built for the everyday people. It's built for like what you guys have to deal with flying executives and celebrities in out. It's easy. Million hotels. There's other stuff going. You can turn it into a get in and out same day or turn it into a weekend. Yeah.
And look, even if you look at the media business, the current media business now, yeah. The easy questions to answer. Where's Disney primarily located? Yeah. Where's Netflix primarily located? Where's The Ringer primarily located? LA. You know, I think it was New York and I get for news it's still considered New York. Where's David?
It's tough because of the Giants Stadium piece. It's tough. Yeah, it's hard to get to. It's tough. I think LA works now with SoFi, I think would be okay. I'm trying to think of some other ones.
Yeah, we did SoFi in 2022. It worked out phenomenally well. Yeah. I think there's 3 things the West Coast undisputably destroys the East Coast in. For WrestleMania? No, just in general. Okay. One of them semi-related to WrestleMania. The start time and end time of sporting events. Destroys the East Coast? Mexican food and sushi. Some food, sushi.
Trying to think what else I would throw.
Weather. Weather. The given. Yes. The sun. The sun, 75% of the year.
My daughter FaceTimed me today. She was walking around wearing a t-shirt and shorts in Boston. It was like 70. No, it was 78. It's like, Dad, 78. I'm like, cool. Welcome to the last couple of days of my life here.
How about 78 here?
You put the air conditioning on. Hot. So what are the big challenges now? Like, you have this WrestleMania coming up where you're coming off— 24 was awesome, right? That's like a couple years after COVID. Bring Cody Rhodes in, just like one of those great signature WWE years. And then last year was the senior year, which I thought worked great. Thank you. Now you're in 26. It's really tough in wrestling because everybody either wants to say you're red hot again, or you're not as hot as you were last year. And it's just one of those two extremes. And it feels like the business right now is in the— yeah, it's not like it was last year. And that's kind of what happens. The ratings are a little bit down, the attendance is a little bit down, and then people just latch on to all— so how much of it is real and how much of it are you just not concerned about?
So here's the good thing. A year ago, so right after WrestleMania last year, Triple H, who you know, and I got together and we said, okay, let's take a look at the future. Yeah. Let's look at our top male superstars. Cena was obviously his retirement year. We have, and you tell me if you categorize these as our top men, Roman, in some order, Roman, Roman, definitely Cody, Punk, Seth Brock. So if you look at their ages, it's 4.
I throw McIntyre in there too. Yeah, put Drew in there.
Yeah. And he adds to the narrative. Okay, they're all 40 years or older, right? So we said, all right, we got to make sure we're preparing for the future here. We went down to our performance center to see Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom, who run that on a day-to-day basis and run NXT with us. And we said, okay, let's take a look at the talent here. How come DX, for example, when it was first starting to pop, Triple H, I think, was like 26. Yeah. Why is it taking longer? And Sean said, there's one thing we could really use the company's help on. We need to be able to tour NXT because doing it from the studio every week, you don't get the authentic fan response that young wrestlers need to know if their work is working or not. Yeah.
You know, it's a lot of this different region is going to respond differently.
Correct. It's different. It's sort of like Randy Orton shows up in St. Louis, he's getting all the cheers in the world. He shows up in a different city, he doesn't. You need to know how to react to that. He said, we need to be able to take NXT on the road. Great, no problem. Give us a week. We came back to Sean, let's take it on the road starting in a month or whatever it was. And then you saw the quickest acceleration of Obafemi. Yep. Trick Williams, Javon Evans, soon to be others. Coming up from NXT. And one of the matches I keep hearing people talk about is going to be the opening match Sunday, which is Oba Femi Brock Lesnar. Right? Right. So Oba Femi—
That's main ESPN, right? That's main ESPN.
Yeah. So first night of ESPN— pardon me, first night of WrestleMania, the first hour is on ESPN2 and ESPN Unlimited. Second night, Sunday night, first hour is on ESPN. And ESPN Unlimited. So Sunday night we open with Oba versus Brock. It's a match when Paul and I sat together with a number of other folks, said, this seems to have a bit of a hot hand here. Yeah. Let's start big.
New versus old. A lot of, lot of good stuff.
Lot of good angles. And, you know, I think Brock's work has been phenomenal. Oba's work has been phenomenal. If you caught the go-home show of Raw by any chance, Oba's promo with Paul Heyman was phenomenal. So we, fingers crossed, right? But we think that's all working. So if we're a publicly traded company, part of a publicly traded company, the results are the results, right? Fingers crossed.
But it's interesting what you're hitting, 'cause that's always been, whenever there's been a wrestling renaissance, it's usually coming from a young group of people that maybe you weren't expecting or you didn't think were ready yet. You know, when it happened with Triple H and those guys in '96, '97, it happened 'cause WCW, was building like an all-star team of older guys. And by necessity, WWE had to pass the torch to young people and hope they were ready.
Right. Think about this. You remember when they brought WWE wrestler Sgt. Slaughter back in the late '90s? Yeah. Who was sort of like a GM-type personality. And Triple H was really going from Hunter Hearst Helmsley to Triple H. It was with Shawn, early DX. And they put on the sort of, like, construction masks, if you will, that had the windshield wipers because they would say Sarge would spit in their face when he would talk. And all of a sudden you saw DX pop, and then you saw Stunning Steve Austin come over as the ringmaster. And I remember seeing him and being like, is that Stunning Steve Austin? Now he's the ringmaster. I don't know if this is going to work. And then boom, it— Jake Roberts, King of the Ring.
The Shield, 15 years later, was another one, right? Whatever, the 15, 16 years later.
Think about how quick. Yeah, those guys, they had it, they put in the work.
They had it. You knew it immediately.
Immediately. Immediately. You and I. Well, that's a weird— yeah, we, we talked about it early.
Yeah. But that's one of those things where most of the times you kind of have to have it right away. I think very rarely are there the late bloomer guys. You're like, wow, this guy, this is happening now. Like, L.A. Knight was kind of like that. He was older when it happened for him. But the most part, you kind of know early. It's like basketball.
Yeah. I think even in broadcasting, even when— didn't you do a commercial early on? Was it with Kevin Mayne? Kevin? Kenny Mayne? Poolside? Oh, I did Main Street with Kenny Mayne. But it was like, oh, who is that? Yeah. Like, you were saying things that other people weren't saying. Yeah. And it was like, well, who's that? And then you'd start reading your columns. And for me, it was like, referencing The Karate Kid in a sports column. Like, I haven't seen that before. By the way, Karate Kid, as you know, you're the one who first touted it. It's one of the handful of perfect movies. It doesn't mean I like to think so. Tell me a flaw in that movie.
I think it doesn't get enough credit for being a great '80s movie. Avildsen doesn't get enough— great sports movie and a great '80s movie and really well done.
Avildsen doesn't get enough credit, maybe because Rocky is not perceived the way that it should be perceived.
Oh, no, it's because of Karate Kid 3. I think that's what killed that. That can do it. He should have just taken his name off it and pretended he was like John X.
John Jack Jacobs. Yeah, the guy who did, uh, what was the, uh, Eddie Furlong, um, American History X. Remember he changed the director, changed his name, or took his name off?
Yeah, yeah, because Ed Norton was like in the director's thing.
Avildsen should have done that with, with 3.
You're a big, you're a big Rocky guy. Love What are your 1, 2, 3, 4 rankings?
So second half of 2 is the best Rocky of all time, but the first half of 2 is a little slow. First half, first 3/4. I think on Rewatchables, one of your guys said the moment she says win.
Yeah, that's it.
Until the end.
It's the best 30 minutes probably of all time.
Phenomenal. Every scene, the music, the score in that. We know how great the score is, but somehow it's not remembered the way it should be.
We talked about that on the about people cheering in the theater, which was the only time I've ever really seen that for real. Like, people cheering like it was they were at WrestleMania or something.
How about also, and you have a number of phenomenal books here that then later became movies. How about going to the movies and it was sold out, right? You'd go and you'd be like, okay, we want to go see Rocky II. Sold out. Well, when's the next show? 11:30 PM. Okay, well, what else? What else are you showing here? And you'd go see an alternative movie.
It was tough. That's starting to come back with the IMAX, but you can still see, like, LA is probably an anomaly because they have so many theaters here. But you see the, if the IMAX is sold out, you kind of have to, well, do the laser, I guess. Totally. But it's, so it's a little, but I do feel like the, the movies are a little bit back, not like it was when we were growing up.
But at least you know before you go. When we would go and you'd walk up and it's like, so and so, Rocky 2 sold out. Right.
At least we can buy tickets. Yeah.
At least you can buy, you know, in advance and can buy it.
You just did the Nick Khan thing where you moved away from my original question.
What do you mean? We talked to Oba, Brock. No, but were you—
so the ebb and flow of the business, it's a little bit of a down right now, but it's not too far down, but it's not as high as it was 2 years ago. So you think the key is build around the young guys? Because one of the criticisms is always that you don't do as many house shows now. Guys aren't on the road as much. There's real reasons for that. It's because the way the business used to be, these guys would get run into the ground in 5 years.
Think about every wrestling documentary you've ever seen. Yeah. Usually about wrestlers in the '80s started off with, I was on the road 300 days a year, right? Right. It's no way. And then you saw the results of that. Forget family life, but you saw what people would do to make sure that their bodies could perform at that level. Yeah.
That's like me right now.
What are you doing?
The things I have to do to get doing 4 podcasts a week.
I really have to also listen to people.
Don't see what I'm doing. I understand.
It's very hard. And by the way, because of our age, which we started off with, I'm sure you have a stretch man now. Yeah. Which is always an awkward connection to me, some man stretching my leg.
I don't know. I don't have my own personal man stretcher, but I do find myself doing things I never thought I would have done in the past, like watching TV, but making sure I'm sitting on the floor just stretching out my tendons, just doing this thing.
I talked to a mutual friend of ours, Pete Bavacqua, who's the AD at Notre Dame, and just a random conversation a couple of months ago, he's like, hey, I just worked out. He was on the road. and I'm like, how long did you stretch? And he's like, dude, I was the only guy in the gym. It was all young people. I'm stretching out, this and that. I'm like, they're all looking at me saying, there's the old man.
I haven't talked to him in a while. He was the greatest guy as a high school kid. He was younger than us, but we all loved him. And I totally wasn't surprised that he's super successful now.
Love that guy.
Honest, bro. He had great people skills when he was like 15. Totally.
Yeah. Love that guy. Honest broker and in his dream job, which I always applaud people for. Do you think, by the way, how rich are you now?
We haven't talked yet. I'm not the one that sells stock all the time. I always see that sold more stock. How did we start this?
A mid-level wrestling boxing executive with bull riding reporting into it.
Yeah, I saved the bull riding convo for The end. Listen, I don't know if people are going to say this.
Part of the reason I came here today is to try to take out a personal loan from you. Not that much money for you. $30, $40 million. That's fine. It's no big deal.
I was never asked to invest in the 2K company.
Why don't you just buy some stock?
I actually was asked to invest. I don't know. When did Ari do the whole UFC thing? It was like 2016.
Why didn't you do that? You didn't believe. I didn't.
I actually, I could have, because it was, it was Baby Doll was in there and they asked Jimmy. And so I actually looked at it. I really studied it. And it's hilarious why I didn't invest because I should have. And I really believed in UFC and I thought it was going to keep getting bigger. And the reason I didn't invest was I came to the conclusion it was too dependent on media rights deals. And if they didn't get the media rights deals the way they thought they were gonna get the media rights deals, it wouldn't have been worth anything. So I was like, I'm not doing it. I'm out. How'd that work out? Terribly. It was a complete misread. It was actually like the conclusion I landed on was the exact opposite of what happened. They were completely right. Media right deals were exploding. All of these great things were about to happen. And I was like, I don't know. I don't see it. I don't see the case.
By the way, I passed on investing in Sweetgreen. I'm like, that's never going to work. There's plenty of that on this end. On the UFC side, if you think about it, it's part of the opportunity we see in boxing. Yeah. If let's go back to 1984 for a moment, and you would know it better than I would, but this is off the top of my head. If I said to you, who are the most famous athletes in the country? Okay, so Jordan's still not pro. Bird, Magic, Joe Montana, let's say. And then a bunch of individual sports stars. Yeah. McEnroe, Nicholas, Mary Lou Retton, Carl Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Boom Boom Mancini, Evil Knievel, Chris Everett. Chris Everett. Right. And then you fast forward a mere 10 years to 1994 and the leagues have become the leagues. Yeah. The NBA is going crazy. The NFL's going crazy. The individual sports outside of WWE and subsequently outside of UFC, they all stayed the same. So the question, we know this, that people would always ask is, who's the heavyweight champion of the world? You would know it. I would know it now. And Usyk, most people don't know it.
Who's the fastest man on the planet? The sanctioning bodies are ridiculous. The belts messed it up. I knew Marvin Hagler as the middleweight champion. I didn't know him as the WBC interim middleweight champion in recess. It's nonsense. It's absurd.
Max and I, when Max was here, we were talking about when there was that crazy Super middleweight run when we had all those super middleweights at the same time. And I forget, I think it was maybe Showtime. Yeah. Had them all fighting each other. And that was one of the last times I felt like, oh, there's real structure to this.
The Super Six.
Yeah, it was called in the best, which seems like what everybody's trying to do now with boxing. And I think from a boxing standpoint, I have more choices month to month than I think I've ever had before.
Look, it's Turki Al-Sheikh is certainly trying to do that and has certainly done it and put his money up and made fights that no one was going to make. So if you look at what the promoters were doing on their own, the boxing promoters, it was, well, let's just have our guy fight another one of our guys. And then finally you'd get Errol Spence, who I give all the credit in the world to, didn't have to give Terence Crawford the opportunity. This was pre-Turki. Being involved in boxing, knew that the fans wanted it, gave him the opportunity.
But that's why we don't get that. Correct. 'Cause people point to Errol Spence and like, that's what, that's the worst case scenario. It's you get absolutely obliterated by Bud. I understand. And then you don't have the same drawing power anymore.
It's, it's no different. And this is not directed at, at you, and I know it's a young Patriots team, but the Patriots deserve to be in the Super Bowl. They got beat handily. So what?
I'm, I'm at the point with it now where I wish we had lost in the AFC title game and never made the Super Bowl. You're hurt by the Super Bowl? Well, I just think it's setting off a chain of events. Now my coach is in a scandal. I have that going. Like, I just feel like we're, it's gonna be the year from hell. I'm already resigned to it. Not jinxing anything.
You have the right QB. I have the right QB.
Hopefully he's healthy. Yep. Not jinxing. The boxing thing though. I feel like there's more awareness, but the thing is, I might only feel that way because I have a lot of people in my life who like boxing. So we're like, the Zone had a fight. It had a card in England last week. Last Saturday was early. Tyson Fury. Netflix. Yeah, Netflix. Sorry, Netflix.
Sorry. Whoops. Employer of the Ringer.
I'm going to leave that in. Sorry. Yeah, I'm not going to edit that out. It's more of my old age.
Netflix had it. James Spitzer. Bella.
I don't know if you've heard of these people. The Zone was 2 weeks before. Netflix was last week, and it was starting like 11:00 pt. But it just feels like every week there's something.
Look, think about things that Turkey's getting right and separately Netflix is getting right. One of them is the selection of dates. So it used to be, if you remember, like a Bowe Holyfield, the Fan Man fight. Was in November. Yeah. Remember when the Fan Man came in and they had to put blankets and everything around Bo and Holyfield to stay warm? Outdoor venue, Caesars Palace, Vegas in November, very cold at night for West Coast, certainly very cold. Why are you going so heavy during college football season? It's insane. And by the way, it's not just college football season, and that was November. But if you just look at the fall, okay, what are the 4 most popular sports in the United States if you bifurcate pro and Yeah. College. Okay. NFL, college football, NBA, college hoops, MLB having a bit of a renaissance right now. Two strong World Series. True. So you're going with postseason baseball with a stacked Dodgers team, which, you know, when you get the big teams in it, it tends to matter, as you know.
Yeah. October's a no-fly zone now for this stuff.
Why would you go so— but boxing did it consistently.
You talked about this the last time you were on, and I thought it was really smart. How in TKO, just in general, like UFC, just like, hey, let's rethink how we're approaching the calendar. Why is WrestleMania this weekend? Why can't UFC take advantage of this 2-week window here in August where nothing's happening? Why can't we put a boxing card here? I feel like we're like— it feels like the sports card, my dance card, weekend to weekend is more filled than it used to be. Instead of just the weekends where there's too much stuff and you're like, all right, I guess I'm gonna watch this instead of this.
Totally. So a couple of examples of this. Yeah. When Dana, Ari Shapiro and company made Mayweather McGregor. Yeah. Triple G Canelo had already been announced for middle of September of that year for Mexican Independence Day weekend. Yeah. And I remember speaking to Dana. I was not working with them at the time, speaking to him, and he said, We're going to go the last week of August, pre-Labor Day. And I said, hot in Vegas. He said, yeah. And he said, you know the Vegas routine. Most people are going to come in, they're going to go to the pool, they're going to go to the side or at the pool or in air conditioning. You got it. Yeah. And that fight I think is the highest grossing pay-per-view of all time, or second highest grossing gate pass after Mayweather Pacquiao. And I was like, that's brilliant. When we all started together at WWE, which is now almost 6 years ago, coming out of COVID we looked at our premium live events calendar and we had one. I don't remember the month. You would probably remember the month. This is in 2021. And I asked the founder of the company, I said, why are we going up against Tom Brady's return with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at New England?
And he was like, I don't know. What should we do? I said, let's move to Saturday night. Right. I'd rather go up against Alabama, LSU in its prime than Tom Brady's return to New England with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Great. Do it. It was very easy to sort of make those changes, which we did. So even on WrestleMania, April 18th and 19th, 2 years ago in Philly, it was Final Four weekend. That was the last deal we inherited. Why would you look at the Final Four this year? You had 3, in my opinion, hot teams. Illinois too. So maybe 4 hot teams. But you had Hurley, you had, um, who beat them? Michigan, Arizona, Hurley, and Illinois, right? Why would we want to go up against that?
I've noticed a great weekend that everybody didn't realize was a great weekend when they went to 2 weeks between AFC, NFC title games and the Super Bowl. So much better. There was that weekend between the two that was basically a wide open weekend. You're just going against like basketball now called Royal Rumble weekend.
Exactly. Yes. But Royal Rumble was not always that weekend.
No.
Royal Rumble would go the Sunday of the two conference championships and then we moved it to the Saturday 'cause it's a wide open night. Yeah. And then you quickly realize, well, you can't book an NFL stadium because every NFL team's hopeful that their team is in one of those two games. So I don't know, Pro Bowl at the time was on at like noon Eastern or something. It was daytime event. So 90% of the country's still cold. People are used to watching sports on Sunday. People are used to—
it's like the first dead weekend since late August. Correct. Yeah.
So why not do it then? Which we did, and ratings skyrocketed.
And then summer, some of the opportunities are you got to look and make sure there's not a men's or women's World Cup to make sure there's not an Olympics. And if there is, you got to avoid it. You don't want to go against the Olympics for any reason. So think about this.
First weekend of May always was a big boxing weekend. Oscar De La Hoya would fight on Cinco de Mayo weekend. Right.
That's a Mexican Latino kind of—
it's kind of a made-up beer holiday, if you will. But it's a good time to go to Vegas. Weather's perfect, this and that. It's also Kentucky Derby Saturday. Yeah. So you have men and women sitting around a television, especially with the proliferation of—
you also have basketball and hockey.
Do you also have basketball?
You also have the playoffs, like usually like huge game sixes, game sevens for both sports.
Huge. Kentucky Derby's a 3-minute sporting event, right? So if men and women are together, okay, what do we want to do? We want to watch the NBA game. If our team's not in it, there's a, oh, there's a big fight on TV. Great. Let's order it. But why not do that with the Preakness? Which even if you read, I'm sure you did the news yesterday that, hey, the Preakness may move a week later. So instead of being 2 weeks after the Kentucky Derby, 3 weeks. Yeah. Why would you not have done that years ago? Give the horses more of a chance to recover. That's right. Create more of an opportunity. One horse wins both races, then you have a Triple Crown contender at the Belmont. Like, why would you not have done that? Horse racing, much like boxing, fragmented. This track owner does this, this one doesn't like that. There's no unification to it. So with Zufa Boxing, if we can replicate the version of a league, if you will, yeah, NBA, NHL, NFL, UFC, WWE, where the best fight the best, there's consistency of programming and you know no one's going to duck anyone.
Maybe we have a chance.
You stole Conor, Ben. What do you mean by stole? Well, you grabbed him, brought him to your team. It had to be done.
One-fight deal. I thought he looked good on Saturday night. There were some unintentional questions. Yeah. Progress brought it, but that's part of the thing.
What did he have, like, 4 injuries? Yeah. He basically admitted after, like, yeah, I was really hurt, but I felt like I had to fight anyway.
He didn't have to fight, but yes, he's game. And look, it's part of the Zuffa legislation with the Muhammad Ali Enhancement Act is that insurance for fighters will kick in when training camp starts. Because as it's set up now, fighters only have fight night insurance. So if they get hurt 7 weeks before, a lot of them will just go through camp hurt because they can't necessarily afford to go to the doctor and pay for it and all of that. Let's get training insurance, small things like that. The minimums that someone can make per round to institute those so people aren't fighting for, you know, hey, here's $40. It's kind of like Rocky Balboa, Spider Rico. Yeah. Okay. It's $48. Spanish took some liberties in that fight. Took some liberties. Yeah. And then talk shit to him after. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't say— what did he say, man? Spider Rico.
So you're happy with how the boxing's going?
I'm happy with how we've started it. Give it a couple years. Let's see where we are.
But you guys are feuding with Eddie Hearn already.
We're not feuding with anybody.
You were lobbing some grenades at him. He's lobbing grenades back.
This is great. Listen, I don't know what the guy's talking about.
We've gone from Tony Khan to Eddie Hearn.
I like it. By the way, there's similarities between the two. What are the similarities? They both work for their dads, which, by the way, I'm going to give Ben Simmons some strong advice here. Yeah. Whatever he decides to do with his life, do not try to be a podcaster.
Ben Simmons does not want to work for me. That will not happen. Why? He wants to forge his own way. Of course. Yeah.
That's the way it should be. Yeah. Right. You do everything you can as his father to set him up in the world. By the way, he should use your relationships. He should do whatever he can. It's a bit of a dated reference. Frank Sinatra Jr. should have done anything other than be a crooner.
That was the worst case scenario, correct?
He should have said, hey, Dad, I want to be a music manager. Can you introduce me to people? Sure. I want to book venues. And sure, this and that. Ben Simmons should not be a podcaster, nor will he be.
I just read something. I think it was— I want to say it was Bill Gates, but it was somebody like that. Who had their kids when they turned 21, and, or they were going to, they were in that range. And he, and he met them, they had dinner, and he was like, I'm just here to tell you, you're not gonna inherit any of my money. I'm gonna leave each of you $10 million. I want you to forge your own way, and that's it. You're not getting anything else. I get it.
By, by the way, I read in an—
you don't have to worry about that cuz Sonny's gonna be like president. Listen— Sonny's already like a fricking mafia head. Like, you can see him at these games. He's shaking. People are coming up to him. It's like watching Michael Corleone in Godfather II.
Well, I— listen, I appreciate the Michael reference, especially since we named him Sonny. In II especially. He's definitely not going to come work for me, nor will our daughter Natalie. Yeah. She's— they're going to— and of course, I will try to help them get into good schools.
I could see Sonny running the boxing. Who knows?
If he's passionate about it and he earns his way in. And by the way, there hasn't been a weekend where I've traveled for wrestling or boxing where he has not traveled with me. Yeah. And you remember, you and I were at WrestleMania 2016. How old is he now? 10? He's 10. Yeah. WrestleMania 2016. We were both at AT&T Stadium for WrestleMania 2016, and you sent me a video of— so Ben's 18 now. Yeah.
Ben doing all the moves in the She was 8. It's on my Instagram.
That's like peak slamming pillows, wanting to spear you, I'm sure, this and that. I told you this.
8 to 10 is the peak little boy age. It's amazing. 8, 9, 10, home run.
It's amazing. They're the best. Comes with me on the weekend, can go in any meeting that I'm in. There's one rule. You can't talk because to me, he hasn't earned his right to voice his opinion. So he takes notes for me. That's good.
He listens. He listens.
Absorbs it. Correct. Listen, absorb it. Be in the room that your father has earned his way into, but don't think like you're here because of you. Yeah. And I found in combat sports, when you have kids whose parents are somehow associated with it, in it, I haven't seen it work. It might work one day. I haven't seen it work.
Well, you, I mean, you inherited a company that had Vince with his two kids working, but the daughter Stephanie was really good and wired a lot like Vince. Phenomenal. And then the son really wanted to run the business on his own. And that was a lot of, some of what we did the documentary about, this really interesting dynamic of father-son.
Didn't you go to the same high school as him?
It was, we lived in the same city when I was in high school, but we didn't go to the same high school.
Got it. Got it. But yeah.
Okay. Got it. One boxing piece that developed in 2026 was obviously the big conflict in the Middle East that's still going. And a lot of the money for some of the stuff you guys were doing, other things were doing, was tied up over there. You had plans to go over there. Like, what ha— like, is this just a wait, play it by ear? Like, not a fun topic, but I have to ask. Oh yeah, of course.
And by the way, just so all the listeners and viewers know, your guest house bigger than my real house. That's true. It's true. This room bigger than master bedroom at my house. So I've come stay here for a while. All right.
You're always invited. Thank you.
Yeah, look, it's a tricky situation there. Keep in mind, I'm the child of Iranian immigrants and a little bit different than most Iranians in the United States in that my dad came in 1952 when he was 5. So in essence, I'm a little more second generation than first. So I don't have family that I've ever met who's there, but obviously monitoring the situation on the business side and on simply the political side. Number one, we'd never send our wrestlers, our crew, anybody into an unsafe environment. But hopefully this thing clears up in the not too distant future. And I understand hope is not a strategy, so it's a wait-and-see approach.
And did it affect all the plans you guys had for the next 3 to 5 years? It must have at least a little bit, right?
No, I think Turkey, as you know, had the Tyson Fury co-main event, Conor Benn, Benn with us, fight on Netflix, not a different carrier, this past weekend from London. Yep. So that fight made, or from Tottenham. So that fight made sense at Tottenham Stadium and we'll work around it and work through it, but nothing's been affected thus far.
So you're dealing with all these different places now, right? That for WWE, the boxing, you don't deal with the UFC as much, but, and everyone's settled in their partners, but there's a big courting process sometimes with— Sure. What are people better or worse at this than they were 15, 20 years ago when you had like during like the John Skipper era and now you have like Netflix has Bella and Gabe and all those people and ESPN has Jimmy Pitaro and Burke and Paramount has all their people. And what's different about the whole process than the 2000s? Anything?
Well, I think, look, I happen to be in a bit of a more senior seat than I was early 2000s. So in dealing with Bella, Gabe, Brandon Rieg, who lives down the street from here, by the way, that means it's a very—
thanks for telling everybody—
affluent neighborhood. Very affluent. Great. Brandon Rieg, who, by the way, I've said this many, many times, told me and Stephanie McMahon pre-COVID, I don't know that Netflix ever gets in a live, but if they do, you should line up your international media rights because Netflix is not going to do a deal with WWE that says, hey, great news, we have WWE in 3 countries. So at that time we started putting the process in place where the international rights would all time out with the US rights and boom, the Netflix deal a year and change ago, which has been a game changer for WWE. So they're phenomenal. You got new leadership at Disney with Josh D'Amaro. The time was obviously right for Bob. He chose, in essence, Bob Iger, his timing, and left quickly.
The time was right in 2020.
Listen, it depends on the success. Sometimes it's hard to leave. Look, I'll tell you this. If the coach of your favorite team had decided I'm just going to be a broadcaster and shut it down. And if the person who was the president before the current president had said, I'm just going to be a one-term president, I think they'd both be remembered far differently than they're currently remembered. Yeah. So it's important that you get out of it before it gets out of you. And that's something we'll have to hold each other to in like 20 years. It's tough. I totally see it. It's tough.
Like, even somebody like Lorne Michaels now, he's still producing SNL. He's in his 80s.
It's also like, when you've worked hard like you have, like, what are you gonna do every day?
That's what, uh, I still love what I do, and I still feel like I'm good at it. I don't know, 5 years from now, if, like, I didn't— the question for me is, how would you know if the signs were there that you weren't as good? Who, who would— who in your life would tell you Hey, you're not as good. I don't, I don't think that conversation is ever happening with anybody. But I've noticed, like, I really thought about a lot with Stern. Stern was the first one that I really felt like I had a courtside seat to, no pun intended, of just like really watching how he ran everything and then really feeling like he was starting to lose control of the narrative a little bit the last couple of years he was there and he couldn't see it. But I think it affected his legacy a little bit.
To me, in business, there's pirates and there's armadas. Stern was a pirate. Yeah. Right. Hey, I'm coming to Los Angeles. I'm going to kick Mark and Brian's ass, or whoever it was at the time. I'm going to chew them out. Correct. And then City Lights. Yeah. And then you think about the Stuttering John stuff at that time, way ahead of the game. Yeah. Just crushing everybody and the things they would talk about and the character names, like, way ahead. And then all of a sudden, the pirate became the armada. And to me, when that happens, you usually see a little slippage. The pirates need to stay the pirates.
Wait, you're talking about Howard Stern? Who are you talking about? I was talking about David Stern. Oh, strike that.
I love Howard Stern. He hasn't slipped at all. You tell me, is Howard Stern—
has this— I would say he's another one. Yeah, that's an interesting one.
I mean, that's another good example. And by the way, people, People who defend him may say, well, no, it's a smaller universe now. I don't know.
Seriously, I was talking about David Stern. You were talking about Howard Stern. But the conversation, if you did a transcript, it seemed like we both understood what the other one was saying. Maybe not a good sign for either legacy.
Listen, if there even is a legacy. By the way, Dana White and I, at times I'll say, hey, they're entering championship rounds. He thinks 5th round UFC. Right now, he obviously thinks 12th round boxing as well. But even if you look at the vernacular of boxing and the falloff on it, you still hear it. This is like a heavyweight championship fight. He's taken an 8 count. You can run, but you can't hide. Then you hear the UFC come into the vernacular where everybody uses tap out. Yeah, I'm going to tap out this and that and other sort of lingo introduced by the UFC into the American culture. Became part of the zeitgeist. It's part of the zeitgeist. Boxing, we'll see if we can get it back in. But yeah, we were talking about two different sterns.
Same, maybe same issue. Um, one thing with that, I think the difference in 2026, I really noticed this with Amazon doing the NBA this year. I have no dog in this race. I don't care who wins. I just want to enjoy sports. But I think with Amazon, the most interesting piece to me was that Saturday afternoon game they had. And Sacramento Denver was one a couple weeks ago, but they would have it, it would be like 1:00 PT, right? So 4:00 ET, so late afternoon, but then overseas, primetime basically. It's on like 9:00. So you have this Wimby Joker game and now I'm in all these different countries with it. And if I'm the NBA, I'm like, this is fucking incredible. This is so— whatever this is, is where we need to go if we're going to grow the game. Now the flip side is all the playing— we're taping this on a Tuesday— all the playing games are on Amazon, which is a good thing because I think they do a good job. It's a bad thing because I think there's a lot of people who, A, don't realize they're on Amazon, and B, maybe don't have Amazon and are going to be like, well, wait, what about— I don't want to get Amazon.
So there's a little bit of that, and I want to see how that shakes out over the next couple years.
But by the way, analogous to that, when the NFL started doing the European games. Yeah. I never believed it was solely for the purpose of, oh, we want to develop a European fan base. I thought it was to develop a fourth Sunday window. So if you say on the East Coast, well, you know, 10:00 AM Eastern, that would be really early. You live in LA. I live in LA, 10:00 AM Pacific. You're up watching football. And if you say, well, 7:00 AM Pacific, you know, on the West Coast, that would be far too early. If you look at the ratings and share in Hawaii and Alaska, they watch it just as much as the rest of the country watches it. So I always believed it was to create a fourth window, which it seems like it's heading towards, in addition to establishing international fans, which I think the NFL, first mover in that space, they've done phenomenal work.
That's the only one you really haven't— we could probably talk about pretty freely because you're never going to cross paths with them, right? The NFL, like just how they—
Yeah, we should talk about anything freely.
No, but I think they're fascinating because they're the only entity that sells games, matches, events, whatever, that can basically do whatever they want and people just have to take a big gulp and then put up with it, right? I don't know what they're capable of, but this deal they're about to do with— now that the Paramount merger and all that stuff has allowed them to basically blow up some of their deals, reconsider them. I'm prepared for anything. Like the Friday night rule with the high schools, are they gonna go after that? Are they going to add 18 games with 2 bye weeks and stretch the Super Bowl out and basically go into February? Yeah, probably. Are they gonna have an international game every week? They might. Are they gonna just add 4 more teams out of nowhere? I don't know. Are they going to be on 7 different platforms? Maybe. Like, the WNBA is on 7 broadcast partners. Like, to me, that means the NFL could do it. So could, could it just basically be everybody gets a small piece of this and they're just like, this is the price, man, you're the painter or not, we don't want to hear it.
But it seems like that's where we're headed.
Everything you laid out has or could happen with the NFL. I'd also, if I was college football and you hear the conversations about executive order for NIL and this and that. And yeah, second most popular sport, as we just talked about, in the United States, but makes the fifth most amount of money. Yeah. I'd be looking at that Saturday night and saying, we, we know the NFL jumps on Saturdays as soon as college football regular season winds down, you know, post-season.
Oh, being worried about being exclusive on Saturday night.
They did it with the college football playoff. Yeah. You know, hey, we're gonna go on Saturday, the NFL games. And the playoff, I think, went head to head on the college football playoff.
Once they did that, that opened the door for the NFL to be like, okay, guys, I guess we're battling.
By the way, think about this also. We discussed this internally. That does not mean it was our exclusive idea, just so we're clear. Myself, Shapiro, Dana, Ari, a number of other folks. Black Friday. Amazing day. Black Friday is no different than Thanksgiving Day for a lot of people. Okay, some people go line up at 3:00 AM to go, yeah, this and that. But for the most part, people are sitting around with food and there's nothing to watch. So the NFL puts a Black Friday game on, and now there's rumors that they're going to add a second Black Friday game.
Well, there's a rumor of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving game.
You said we discussed internally also. And again, I'm not suggesting it was our exclusive idea. That night before Thanksgiving, there's a lot of people at home. Maybe that's a good night for boxing. And it's a good night for anything. Anything. Yeah. There's nothing on.
That's like Netflix. I think that was a Stranger Things night for them one of those times, or somebody released a major TV show that night. Christmas Eve.
Yeah. If Christmas Day, if you have 5 NBA games and the NFL said, oh, we're going to go take that also. And put 3 NFL. Why would there not be sports on Christmas Eve? So there's a lot of these nights. I think what happened was the traditional thinkers would say, oh, people are traveling. The reality is, and my phone's off to the side, you have an iPad there. We can watch whatever we want, wherever we want. Yeah.
When you're traveling, you're actually still the audience. Whereas I think in the '80s it was a little different. If I went to Acapulco with my family, 1988. If the hotel didn't have the channel, that was it.
By the way, when Ronda Rousey fought Holly Holm in their rematch, it was December of whatever year that was. Yeah. And I was in Mexico with my family, and I looked up what bar has the UFC, and we went to go watch the fight. Now, that's 7, 8, 9 years ago.
Now you're just on an iPad. Correct. Or you're streaming it to your hotel TV.
So even Fourth of July weekend, different this year. 250th anniversary. Fourth of July is actually a Saturday. Yeah. So there's a lot of free entertainment out there. But that weekend, and in my prior profession, we really pushed ESPN to have a boxing match on that weekend from Australia. That weekend is wide open for viewership. So open that people watch the hot dog eating contest. There's nothing on. So WWE, what does that tell you? It's, again, summertime for us. Wide open.
How about last weekend of June? Because the draft, they even moved it up, I think, even closer to the finals for the NBA. So now it's like that last weekend has zero.
Shockingly, you would say that we have a PLE on June 27th.
There you go. There you go. What are you the most excited about for WrestleMania?
I think Roman Punk is really interesting to me. I think just from a career versus career standpoint.
Yeah.
I think Punk said it again on the go-home show. This is my first one-on-one WrestleMania main event match. You've had Roman several, and obviously Punk left for a while and came back and has done phenomenal work with us. That was a coup for you because I would've voted no on that one. It's interesting though. You've dealt with, quote unquote, talent. You may be, quote unquote, talent. At one point, one of your employers may have said, oh, he's difficult. Like, I never found you difficult. What's difficult?
I had the last laugh on that one. Yeah.
Look at your fucking house, dude. No, but it's just like the difficult thing.
It's like, all right, so only one company thought I was difficult, and yet all these other people have also had the exact same issues with that company. Maybe it's the company. Agreed.
So even on punk, like, okay, when he was in his 20s, he said certain things that he shouldn't have said. What ambitious guy didn't— what ambitious man or woman didn't do that?
But I get where you're going for here. I do think even he would admit, I'm a lot more humbled from some of the stuff that's happened to me. I see things from a different perspective. If I go back, I maybe would have done some stuff differently.
He's been pretty open talking about about that. Sure. And look, maybe that applies to you too. Maybe it applies to me also. Things I did earlier in my career that I say to myself, like, could I have been a better teammate?
Things like that.
It was a little aggressive, or, you know, whatever it was. But I'd always rather have that. Yeah. Like, hey, let's rein it in a little bit, then go be more aggressive, because that never works, right? You can never get anyone to do that.
Punk's at, like, the same stage that Justin Rose was at at the Masters just now. Justin Rose was 45. I picked him to win the Masters, and he almost did. He kind of blew it in the final 9, but he's 45, and in golf years, you're kind of near the end at that point. You can, you know, maybe still make a run in a major until about 50, but for the most part, you're probably still a real threat until 45, 46. Wrestling's a little similar. Like, you can still do what Cena did and be really careful about how you schedule out stuff, but to be a main event show-up-all-the-time performer. I don't know what the expiration date is, but it's probably somewhere around his age now, right? Middle, late 40s.
The good thing with him and with Brock and with Cena last year is they've all been quite responsible in their life. Yeah. So the conversation of, hey, you, Brock, or now Punk, you have to tell us when you start feeling like, I'm not going the way that I used to go. Right. Tell us, and let's figure out something else for you. Again, you have to leave it before it leaves you. So far— now, Punk tore his tricep in his first Royal Rumble back. Yeah. Okay. Came back 9 months later. So far, he's performed at an A-plus level. Fingers crossed.
He's had some bad luck injuries this decade.
Yeah.
Look, Bron Breakker went down, then Seth went down.
Bron Breakker went down. I mean, was it true he was going to be in a major Saturday or Sunday?
Well, listen, it seems like there was a major push behind him that was evident. And we hadn't finalized WrestleMania matches or order of matches at that moment, but you saw Seth come back from the fake injury, which was one of the greatest works of all time, in my opinion. It worked. He even went kayfabe with his young daughter. Yeah, it worked. And then he came back and really got injured. And then Bron got injured. And it's something we're consistently having to deal with, like any other sports franchise. And it can change the whole season. You just saw with the Lakers.
Who's the biggest WWE star in 2033?
I think there's a shot for a couple people. I think, keep in mind, Rhea is in her late 20s.
Rhea Ripley. She's amazing. She's amazing. Yeah. She has a chance.
She has a chance. She's already up there.
She also passes the when you're in the room test. Does this person feel like a major person just walked down the runway into the ring?
No question. She has it. Yeah.
Not a long list for that. So she's in her 20s. Roman always had that. Always. And that was probably why Vince stuck with him, even when the fans kind of tired. Like, you could feel it in the room, like he had something. You knew it.
Listen, there's certain guys who come in the room and everyone comes— certain men and women who come in the room and everyone comes to them. And then there's other people who have to go up to everybody. Yeah. So with Rhea, with Roman, assume everyone— Yeah. When I say the room, I'm talking about an 80,000-seat football stadium.
But you can't really explain it until you see it. Hogan was the number one all time for that.
As soon as he would appear. Actually, Andre probably was.
I think one of those two.
I always feel like Andre was, even though we've seen so many of his matches, he was like right when I was getting into it. Yeah.
But if you're there in 1980 and he's walking into Shea Stadium, it's the most riveting thing you've ever seen.
Were you shocked and/or disappointed or hurt when you then saw videos of Hogan previously slamming Andre at Shea Stadium? Or did you know that?
Yeah, no, we knew about that. Even when we did the documentary, we knew. Because they toured together for like a year in, what was it, '80 or '81 and wrestled in Japan. There's a lot of evidence of that. So we're a couple of years apart.
Yeah, just a couple of years. But when you're 12 and someone's like 16, that's a big difference. So when I was watching, first of all, when Patera and Stud cut Andre's hair, I couldn't sleep. Maybe I was 8 or 7 or 8. That was like shocking. Tough one. And then when Bundy broke Hogan's ribs, I think so Hogan could go to Japan. I remember sleepless, like, oh my God, I can't believe he's—
My first one was Killer Khan breaking Andre's leg, which wild. Andre broke his leg, but then they said Killer Khan did it. They got a whole awesome angle out of it. That was a great one because Andre was laid up. He did break his leg up. You never answered my 2033 question. Rhea. I'm high on Logan Paul.
He's pretty good. He's a good dude. And by the way, he puts in the work. So one thing—
what's in it ultimately, like, for him, that's what he wants to be, is to be in this business? Because it seems like he's trying to do so many different things.
I think it's part of what he wants to be, but on a full-time basis. He's full-time with us now. And yeah, he does the card rip-its and the Pokémon stuff and his podcast with us through Fanatics. He's just turned 30. Okay, that's good. So high on Logan. I'm high on Braun. Yeah, it— we cannot rush it though. Gotta sort of let him develop at his own pace. And he's an excellent athlete who obviously grew up in the wrestling business, but let it develop at its own pace, which we're all on the same page about. I think all three of those— Oba's an obvious one. I'm high on Trick. I like the fact that he's an SEC athlete. I like the fact that he sort of inherently understands media. I like the fact I always look for people whose inner voice matches their outer voice. I look for that in wrestlers. I look for it in political people. Yeah. If your inner voice matches your outer voice, you have a shot. Trick Williams is Trick Williams. So I like that.
How much time do you spend talking to Triple H about this? About Like, kind of, what do you think? A lot. Yeah. I would imagine this is most of the conversation. A lot of that is somewhere from some of the conversations I have in life, trying to figure out different arcs for different people we have or we're interested in.
Right. What's working on your business? Why did that not work?
It's like those two people together, there's something there. It's also similar to our business.
You got to go, your frequency is heavy. Yeah. Like, if you— tough to get an audience this way, but if you said, okay, I only have to do 12 podcasts a year, assuming—
no, you have to be in the mix. Correct.
You got to go every week.
The best ones, though, are when you think it hasn't happened yet, but you're convinced it's going to happen. Because we have, like, not to single a pod out, but we have this college football podcast called Ringer Tailgate that I just— I know it's good. And I know it's going to be a bigger thing. And I feel like this season it could be a bigger thing. And I just like, we just have the right group of people and the right chemistry. And this is like a show that's going to work.
They speak about college football the way that people who are real college football fans speak about college football.
You just want to hang out with these guys as they shoot the shit about this. And it's like, it's going to happen this year. And if it doesn't happen, I'm going to feel like it's my fault.
I sort of look at things the same way. I know Triple H does also. If someone has all the tools in the ring, in ring, and puts in the time and manages their life outside of the ring, if it doesn't happen, it's sort of on us. Right. Right. The creative. And if they fuck it up, it's different. And there's a lot of chances to fuck it up, as you know.
Well, and sometimes, especially in wrestling, if the guys get the smoke blown up their butt early and they're doing pretty well, it can go to their heads.
We've seen that many times, by the way, in all professions. When fame comes early 20s, you see it with athletes all the time. SportsCenter anchors.
It's happening to all kinds of people. You saw it in the media business over and over again.
Did you catch the Lamar Odom documentary on Netflix yet?
I didn't watch it. You knew the whole story. Yeah, I know the story.
By the way, I was at UNLV when he was supposed to come to UNLV. Remember, he signed there for a moment before he went to Rhode Island. Yeah. Okay. He was so good, so young that you almost wish like he wasn't that good. Right. Because the things that you can't teach, he inherently had. But the things that you had to manage, he inherently couldn't manage. And I don't mean to critique his life, but sometimes when you're so young and so good, it can mess you up.
Basketball has a lot of those. A lot. I mean, the mo— one of the most famous ones ever was Marvin Bad News Barnes, who I think would have had probably top 25 forward talent. Like, it was just, but just off the court, complete disaster. And it tends to catch up with you. There's a couple, yeah, there's a couple guys now that I won't mention that we worry about. One thing you guys are doing that I love, that I feel like I'm responsible for this, even though I can't take any credit for it, but I have mentioned it to you every time we talk. I love managers. Just feel like we never had enough managers. I don't know why we got away from that in the '80s. So now you have McAfee as maybe a heel manager. It seems like we're headed that way. Yes. Which is weird because he's also doing a show on ESPN every day where he's not a heel manager, but I fully support it. But just in general. And then Stephen A said this week that— is that true?
Did you talk to him about potentially being a manager? Listen, love Stephen A. And by the way, he's bringing his show First Take to Vegas for WrestleMania. He would be a phenomenal manager, and he wants to be a heel. Most people say they want to be heels.
He really wants to be a heel.
They want to be like the cool heels, like Hall and Nash. They don't want to be the monster. McAfee came in as a monster heel, different than who he actually is on his show. McAfee's an easygoing guy from my point of view. Monster heel. You have always said bring back more managers. It's something again, when Triple H and I went to go see Sean and Matt Bloom a year ago, we said, hey, look, keep in mind also, in addition to the in-ring performers accelerating their path, for ones who may just not have an in-ring or who bodies may break down, if they're good on the mic, send them this way. By the way, managerial ring announcers, there's plenty of work to be done. I don't think there's like a ring announcer school.
Who do we think is the best manager of all time?
I go Heyman and Bobby Heenan. What do you say?
I have— I think Heyman is the best one I've ever seen at actually guiding, kind of owning the room sometimes, like, in a way like that. Some of the best wrestlers ever can really— like, everyone kind of shuts up when he's talking. Heenan was crazy because he could also wrestle. And would get thrown around, get his ass kicked. I would— the Grand Wizard, like that whole era, I still don't really know what his gimmick was, but I was scared of him as a kid. Albano, Lou, Captain Lou Albano was great.
Um, do you know that's Pete Bavaqua's like second cousin?
Oh, not surprised. Yes. Yeah, not surprised.
Like legit, but the cousin or uncle or something like that.
My favorite ones as a, as a teenager who couldn't get a date were Missy Hyatt and Miss Elizabeth. Well, listen, so we haven't really brought the '90s— late '90s kind of brought it back a little. I still feel like there's some meat on that bone too.
You're also talking, you know, mid-'80s, you're 15, 16 years old.
Missy Hyatt, it's an important group though.
Yes, I understand. Missy Hyatt, pretty attractive, by the way. Did you ever catch that she did one Piper's Place type thing for WWE that didn't work out? Of course.
It was called like the Missy. Yeah, something like that. Didn't go well. They had one major thing on it. I had some questions for them.
Why you say, yeah, of course. I didn't know that you knew that.
Well, there was one that was making the rounds. Something happened on one of those. There was a really eventful— I can't remember what it was, but there was some sort of major thing that happened in the storyline. And it was like, oh yeah, I forgot you had that. Didn't work. Couple questions from my buddies Gus and Sal. Yes, sir. If you could change the result of one match since you've taken over, if you could just go back and mulligan a match, what would the match be?
Well, I don't know that we've taken over, but—
Well, you know what I mean? Since you've been involved with the WWE, however many years, is there one mulligan match you're like, ah, fuck, we should have done that instead? It's a good question.
It's a great question. As I think it through, I think Cody not beating Roman at WrestleMania 2023 was the right move at SoFi. Yeah. And making it wait and ripen another year and doing it in Philly was the right move. What about you? What match have you seen? Jog my memory here where you're like, ah, it shouldn't have played out that way.
Mine is more like, I just don't understand what happened to the Royal Rumble. Where it— maybe it was just because where it was located this year, but I used to like when there were like the 5 or 6 completely random, oh my God, I haven't thought about this person for 20 years, or oh my God, that's Kevin Nash, he's here. And I don't know why we went away from that.
So I'll tell you, there's one inherent issue that is solvable but not as easily solvable as it used to be. Now, because as you know, athletes with science and working out and this and that, their careers go much longer than they used to. Yeah. If I said to you, okay, who from the late '90s NWO, who would you like to see come back? There's no one. So Hogan, rest in peace. Yeah.
So you'd almost have to go to late 2000s or early 2010s.
So think about Stone Cold retired when he was 38. We're just talking about punk is 47, retired at 38.
Yeah. See, these are good points, right?
So there aren't Kurt Angle, by the way. I love Kurt. Bad knees, just had double knee surgery. We can't clear him medically. He could come out and do something on the mic and all of that stuff, but there aren't men or women where you're like, this guy's readily available. Remember even Tatanka came back 10, 15 years ago. Assume Tatanka, How old do you think he is now? 65.
Yokozuna still alive? No. Another question. Would you ever consider doing the '80s thing, using WWE to mirror things that are going on in real life, like some of the political stuff? That seems like that ship sailed 20 years ago.
It's too tough with the political environment now, like to have ICE officers arresting Never do any of that stuff.
That would be crazy. Yeah, that would be awful. But could you do, like, I don't know, somebody like a super left liberal wrestler as a heel who's just constantly correcting everybody? Or do like a super MAGA? You just would stay away completely from all that stuff.
We did it for a moment in time in NXT when we were coming out of COVID The guy who's in the Wyatt 6 now, Joe Gacy, was before he would, let's say, body slam you, he would apologize that he had to.
That didn't work.
No, it didn't work. But he was like, I'm very sorry that I have to wrestle you. Very sorry that—
So, like, a politically correct angle, right? Everything. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Something there.
I mean, it is one of the great things about wrestling is it always mirrors whatever time of it was happening in. So if you think, look, go back to the '70s and '80s stuff, you can't get mad at some things that were happening because it was like everybody was cool with it. Really, the only time people weren't cool was the Sergeant Slaughter Hulk Gulf War, like that whole era. That was the one time people were like, yo, what are you guys doing? This is crazy.
Think about it. Like, life is wrestling, wrestling is life. Yeah. Both reflect one another. In my opinion, the Sergeant Slaughter thing when he's like, I'm now an Iraqi sympathizer.
You're going to get killed. What are you doing?
Brings in the Iron Sheik as General Adnan. Brings in— no, brings in Iron Sheik as Colonel Mustafa. Brings in Adnan Al-Qaisi as General Adnan. It's insane. Sheik speaking Farsi, not Arabic.
That's the single craziest thing they ever did. I can't believe nobody stopped it. One other question for those guys. Yes. When do you become a character? Never. Never. That will never happen. Never do it.
Never, ever, ever. I'm a behind-the-scenes guy. By the way, if you remember in my prior profession, I never asked to do podcasts, did podcasts, did interviews. I believed for me as an agent, it was best for my name to appear after pay to the order of only. Now, at a publicly traded company with WrestleMania coming up, it's different. We obviously want to get media coverage, but Triple H, We'll do most of that on our collective behalf in terms of a character who's also a real-life executive. But never, ever, ever will that happen.
What's your biggest fear for the next 18 months?
Listen, I think there's a lot of concerns in the country. I think there's some concerns with the economy. I think the middle class started getting squeezed 10 years ago. So, you know, people with money are fortunate and they have a lot of disposable income. Those things can always affect any business. However, I've noticed coming out of COVID during COVID people— this is not my original thought, so we're clear— people wanted to buy things in COVID. Now people want to have great experiences. And WWE and boxing and UFC, which I have nothing to do with on the business side, they're all great live event experiences. So if you can get it right, rarely do people go home disappointed. Hopefully we get it right more than we get it wrong.
Live events, movies, concerts. Feels like everything. People want to be around people again. I also think a big piece of that is you can just kind of, you can kind of live a month straight and not see other humans if you really wanted to. Or you, you have less connective tissue. People don't go to the office every day. There's a lot of places where it's like 3 days a week or 2 days a week or work remotely. Um, I think it's one of the last places where people don't go to bars in the same way.
No question. By the way, restaurants, look at the restaurants closing in LA. The restaurant thing's bad. There's a number of reasons, but it used to be in LA on a Thursday night, there were 15 restaurants. If we said, let's go somewhere fun for dinner, 15 spots you could go to. Now on a Thursday night, you go and everything's sleepy. It's different.
People are like, they're doing food orders or they're just grocery shopping.
Yeah. I have some theories on that, by the way. What? So food orders, like you said. I also think the proliferation of personal chefs, where it's not just billionaires who have them, so you can have someone come cook for you or cook a bunch of things. Cook a bunch of things. And I think for celebrities with the iPhone, tough to go out in public. What are you going to go? You and I are going to go get drunk and someone's going to catch you on an iPhone acting drunk or even speaking to your wife. I'm sure you've seen what people are like. Maybe not in Los Angeles and other sorts of people recording you, like, oh, there's Bill Simmons. There's Bill Simmons. Why would Leonardo DiCaprio subject himself to that? And then fewer people go because of that.
I think the lack of drinking is a piece of this, too, with the restaurants. Huge. I don't think people drink the same way just at all.
Huge.
And even, like, I was talking to Sheng and I were talking about this recently because he has a bunch of theories on this, but saying, like, when people, whatever, this, the 20-something generation, you go to the bar, you get a drink, you just pay for the drink. And if I bought you a drink, you would immediately Venmo me your side of the drink versus, like, keeping the tab open. Sure. Nobody keeps the tab open. I've noticed that when I keep the tab open at a place, though, bartender always seems really excited. People are keeping the tab open. So some of the habits, I think, are different. But I think the Postmates and the food ordering stuff has really hurt. It's just way easier to stay home and eat.
But think about it. When we were kids, you could really only get two things for delivery, pizza and Chinese food. Yeah. Now you can get everything delivered. So to your point, from a money standpoint, because if you're throwing—
if you're driving to the restaurant, maybe there's parking or valet or whatever. Then there's a service tip. It probably is a cancel out from what you did if you did Uber Eats or whatever anyway. So it's also habits change, but I think live events feel like they're even more— I'm so happy movies came back. Same. Movies are back, like for real. And I think comedies haven't come back, but horror movies have come back, big tentpole stuff, IMAX stuff. And, uh, it feels like that at least is good now.
By the way, we went to see the Ryan Gosling movie Week 3.
Yeah, still packed.
Packed, packed at the IMAX version in the Valley, what used to be the Arclight Sherman Oaks, I think is now AMC. It's great.
So you still feel like from an attendance standpoint, even though you're down a little bit, the live experience still matters and is not something you're worried about?
Listen, we're down like a single-digit percentage. Yeah. So 1 or 2%, whatever it is now, I'm not concerned about that at all. Gets Cena's retirement tour, which we planned for, assumed people were going to— it was real. This is the last time you're going to see him wrestle in this city. We planned for it. Okay. We have a crop of A+ listers who can main event. Okay. They're not in their 20s or 30s anymore. Let's plan for that. It's all about trying to see what's around the corner and getting ready for it. No different than your business. So, right, originally it was you were the hoops guy, right?
Then you branch out.
Correct. Now you're doing movies, right? Right. It's like, okay, well, nobody's doing that. Okay, well, I was kind of the movies guy. I referenced Karate Kid earlier. No one else was doing that. So why don't I talk about the other movies that people want to talk about?
Yeah. So it works. And what's ESPN brought to you? I think it's still weird to see it on SportsCenter. I have no idea if I like it or not.
The coverage is outstanding.
Yeah, no, they're really covering it like a real sport, which obviously I like because I've always liked wrestling, but it's still— I don't know when I'll get used to it, I guess is my point. Why do you hurt me? No, I'm not against it or for it. I'm just like, wow, this is crazy. ESPN used to not acknowledge wrestling, and now they're interviewing so-and-so on the 6:00 PM SportsCenter.
Just strange. Listen, keep in mind, 20-plus years ago, WWE was on UPN. Yeah. And the Nashville Network, which became the National Network, which became TNN, which became Spike, which is now Paramount. Yeah. Now we're on Netflix, USA, ESPN. It's worked out, in my opinion, great for the consumer, great for the company, great for our athletes in terms of their potential to crossover, like Rock and Cena and the Bellas and the Miz.
You always want the good partner that actually is glad to have you and is pushing you.
For sure. And I also think I don't like when deals get inherited. So Bella was the driver of the WWE deal at Netflix. Jimmy Pataro was the driver of the WWE deal at ESPN. That's a good thing. The successor, as you know, rarely just says, I'm just going to do what the predecessor did. So I like that the people sort of in the seats were the big champions and have certainly showed up. And turn out for us.
Bonus question before we go. How's your back? Can you make 2 more minutes?
Yeah, we're good. I have a question for you before we go too.
What was your takeaway on the Netflix, Paramount, Warner Brothers love triangle? Did you think Netflix was going to win?
It certainly appeared that way. But I also thought you have a legitimate billionaire on the other side. Who was willing to subsidize and use their shares. Correct. It's no different if David and Larry Ellison wanted to buy this home when you wanted to buy this home. I would bet on them to get this home.
Thank God they didn't. Thank God. It's a nice studio.
It's a beautiful place. As successful as you are, it's different levels of wealth. You're like super, super rich.
So you felt like as soon as— so Netflix is ahead, seems like they're getting it, and you're like, I'm not counting out the Ellisons yet. If they really want this, they're going to get it.
Tough group to count out. Yeah. And I have no inside info. I've only read what's available publicly, but in my opinion, they were never really out. Even when Warner Bros. Discovery wasn't answering texts and this and that, having gone through, and I get it, it was WWE and UFC merging, which seems to have worked quite well under TKO, having gone through a semi-similar transaction. Yeah. Right. Warner Bros. Discovery does not have a controlling shareholder. So it was going to be up to the shareholders at a certain price, purely up to the shareholders at WWE. It was also purely up to the shareholders so long as Vince McMahon was not treated any differently than any other shareholder, which he was not. So whoever presented the best offer for the shareholders was going to get the company. That's how I saw Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount. And you had one side with unlimited capital.
Yeah. Paramount. What's your question for me before we go?
I mentioned the term perfect movie earlier and said Karate Kid's a perfect movie. Doesn't mean it has to be an all-time great movie.
Perfect for what it wanted to be.
Correct. Tell me off the top of your head, what are other perfect movies?
Perfect for what they wanted to be? Yeah. Social Network.
Perfect movie.
Silence of the Lambs. Silence of the Lambs. Really good. No flaws in it.
I'm not saying it's the Godfather 1 or 2. But when I watch that movie, I'm like, they didn't mess anything up in this thing. That's what I consider. Yeah.
Because even Heat, which is one of my favorite movies of the last 35 years, there's a whole Natalie Portman plot where I'm like, I don't know. Agreed. Can probably bump that one. Social Network, I watch like probably every 18 months, and I'm always like amazed how every single decision is the right decision from start to finish. You know another one? I mentioned this when I did my most rewatchable movies of the 21st century. and the number one pick was Devil Wears Prada. Perfect movie from beginning to end for what it was trying to do. Perfect. I don't know if the sequel's going to be good.
By the way, the trailer for the sequel looks amazing.
Yeah, we'll see. The original trailer. I always get nervous.
Look, the good thing on sequels now, as you know, and you've talked about this on the Rewatchables many times, they don't have to sort of pick up the storyline. No. That we left off with, which is what ruined the Karate Kid franchise as a film. Right. You could have just started a different story.
It got weird with Daniel-san and Miyagi in 3. Well, also, Daniel-san, you're in your 20s now. You don't have any friends? Why are you still hanging out with this guy? Make some friends your age. What are you doing?
Also, in 1, he's fighting for the All-Valley Championship and for respect. Yeah. In 2, he's fighting for his life. I don't know.
2, he's fighting for his life. And then 3, he's fighting in the tournament. He gets an exemption all the way to the finals. I don't know what tournament this is. What are those rules? Just goes right to fighting Mike Barnes. It's one of the worst movies ever made. Quick, last question.
Yeah. What was worse, Karate Kid 3 or the new Karate Kid?
Not Cobra Kai. I didn't see the new Karate Kid.
See, that's how much you look down on it. You wouldn't even watch it.
I have a hard time with the money grab sequels.
It's like Jaws 2, Jaws 3, Jaws.
I still haven't seen John Wick 4. I started it. I think I'm good with John Wick. I love John Wick. I love 1 and 2. 3 is fine.
When did you cut out on Terminator? Poster behind you.
After 2. After 2. Same.
Yeah, 1991, 2 came out, which was great.
Alien, I was good after 2. I'm sure there were other good ones. I'm fine with those. Halloween I stuck with all the way through. That's probably the only one.
Just kept going the whole time. Did you get the opportunity to rewatch these movies with your children for the first time when they were younger? Yeah. And were they as into most of them as you were?
Definitely some of them. I'm sure you're going through it now. Yes. We were always 3, 4 years too early with movies with our kids. We just really pushed the envelope in probably damaging ways in retrospect. Who knows, dude? I just tried to show our children Full Metal Jacket. Oh, God, I wouldn't have done that one.
I'm like, you're going to love this opening scene. And 1 minute in, 2 minutes in, I'm like, okay, we're going to have to wait.
It's a wrap.
It was rough. Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah. For some reason, I thought they would like it.
Now we would push the envelope with the horror movies, but usually no. Oh, here's the scene of Halloween when Bob's going to have sex with PJ Soles. Like, I'm going to fast forward. To a little ahead here. But for the most part, we were like, they're going to find this stuff anyway. We might as well watch it with them and kind of edit it as it goes along.
So my son Sonny, who you mentioned earlier, was begging to watch 8 Mile. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I think we can do it. I think we do it. There's one scene in the factory we'll have to fast forward. Opening scene is Kim Basinger on the couch. Right. And I was like, okay, wait a little bit here. We forget certain scenes. I get you can look it up, but that scene was not at the forefront of my mind.
All right, so big winners of this podcast was, I think Rhea Ripley was a winner. Logan Paul.
You also agree? Logan Paul.
All the people that run all the streaming companies you deal with. Yes. Me, because you complimented the studio.
Dude, you're a true American success story. You are. It's what I say about Dana White also. Each of you went, you were employed by— for our generation, the brag was, I work at ESPN, I work at this agency. It wasn't in 2005, I'm going to go start my own company and sell it for however many kajillions you sold.
Well, you weren't allowed to leave ESPN. It was like, if you left, your career was never going to recover. That was what everybody said. Even though Dan Patrick, by the way, did fine. You did great, by the way.
I saw you when you left ESPN. You were at a Clippers game, like, the Saturday after.
Yeah, I went with my friend Ben, like, a week later.
And I remember seeing you, and it was one of the only times I've seen you where I thought you looked, like, a little— not sad, but you didn't— Usually, if I see you, especially at hoops games, it's like, what's up? And I'll say, hey, give me your analysis of this game, and you'll give it to me. I don't know hoops like you do. And we'll have a conversation. And then I was like, and I started seeing you build. Yeah, right. I'm like, oh, dude, this guy's building an empire over here. And at that time when you were doing Grantland, Jalen Rose and Jacoby and all those guys would refer to you as the podfather. Right. Right. And you saw around the corner where this whole thing was going. So in a way, first mover, who also happen to be great at it. And then, okay, my thing, your thing, it's working. Now I'm going to replicate and try to build an empire. You did it. Dana White did it. Ari Emanuel did it. All credit to people like that. By the way, Marc Shapiro told me when I called him when I took the WWE job, he said, give me a piece of advice.
He said, you're going in as the president of the company. Just keep in mind, founder CEOs different than regular CEOs. You got to give a little more leeway. Because they were the ones that went out and said, fuck this, I'm going to go start something and try to make it.
Now you're going to be fired up to start something else.
Might have to maybe invest in something where you finally do once.
Yeah, see, that's how smart I was. You turned your back on UFC, turned your back on TKO.
So stupid. Can't go to WrestleMania because NBA playoffs.
I don't see how they're going to solve the media rights, the new media rights issue. One of the worst analyzes ever.
Listen, all you need is one. And this was a line I saw on CBS Sunday Morning. It said, if you have two bidders on one property who don't like each other, then you're in business.
I mean, that's Zaslav. All he needed was the Elisons to be like, fuck, we got to get this thing. And that's what he was banking on. Their stock was like $8 at one point, dude.
People laughed at him. He always made good money. Yeah. Okay. You had 600-pound sisters. Yeah. Laughed at him. He went and convinced what was Time Warner, let the minnow swallow the whale. Let me take it over. AT&T took that debt. They said, oh, it's never going to work. Sells the company. Big transaction. Credits him. I have nothing negative to say about that. Pulled it off.
Pulled it off.
You know how hard it is to pull it off? Think about how many people try and how many people fail. He did it. You did it. The others I mentioned did it. It's impressive, by the way. Thanks for ending on a compliment.
Of course. It was great. Good luck this weekend on WrestleMania. I'm not going this weekend. I'm taking the year off. You care about NBA? No, it's because my son went to Coachella for 3 days, and we can't do the 2 straight weekends.
Is this the first Coachella on YouTube, or has it always been on YouTube?
No, I think they did that before. Okay. Yeah.
Because our daughter Natalie is now 14. So this weekend it was a lot of let's watch Coachella on YouTube. Which we watched with her, which I thought was a great platform to have that on the Quasar stage. Never even heard of these terms.
It feels like every year they've upped some sort of visibility with it. Like, it feels slightly more relevant as the decade has gone along post-COVID. And I don't really know why. My son was excited. The band he was most excited about was The Strokes. It's a 25-year-old band. He was like, they were awesome.
By the way, to your point and what we talked about earlier, people love experiences. So whatever Coachella is or was, you see the price of those tickets, you see how people are getting there. It's nuts, right? Now, by the way, I don't understand the whole Burning Man thing for grownups.
I don't understand either. As I said, Coachella combines a lot of things I don't like. Having a pain in the ass travel trip, having to rent a place, a lot of, like, aimless walking. I don't like concerts in general. Yeah, just like not knowing where to be the whole time and just constantly feeling like you're going to make the wrong— it's not for me. How about the— I like just going to WrestleMania and I just— here's my stage.
Now I will sit here. Yeah. And if I want to go get some popcorn, I'll go get it. Maybe someone can get it for me. Way better than where's the stage and where's the restroom?
Do you want to go there? I hate it. I don't get it.
Hate, hate, hate.
All right. That's our old guys on the sofa. Thanks. Good luck with WrestleMania. Thanks, man.
Let me know what you think after. Appreciate it.
All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Doc and Nick. Thanks to Gajao and Eduardo as well. Don't forget to check out La Gata over the weekend. It's awesome. You're going to love it. New narrative podcast from The Ringer. Don't forget to check out on the rewatchables if you miss Basic Instinct. Fine. Kindergarten Cops coming up. And that's on Netflix as well if you want to check that out. This podcast is on Netflix if you didn't know that. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the basketball. Hockey, I think, is starting. Is hockey starting? I'm about to jump on the Bruins bandwagon again and enjoy the baseball and enjoy the sports and try to stay married. I will see you on Sunday night with Zach Lowe, live on Netflix. 21+ in President Select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Opt-in required. Rewards are non-withdrawable. Restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration, leg requirements, and max wager amount. See terms and sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.
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The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Doc Rivers to react to the Warriors taking down the Clippers to keep their playoff hopes alive, Wemby and the Spurs’ improvement this season, and the Bucks' season (5:17). Then, Nick Khan joins to talk about the future of WWE, WrestleMania 42, and much more (01:27:18)!
Host: Bill Simmons
Guests: Doc Rivers and Nick Khan
Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo
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