Transcript of Boston Gets Clocked, Round 1 Predictions, and a Mega-Mailbag With Chris Ryan and Joe House New

The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by FanDuel. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up new rewatchables. On Monday we did Ghostbusters. First time ever we did that one. It was me and Chris Ryan and Van Lathan. That one you can watch on Netflix. All the movies that we're doing for basically the next 10 weeks are all gonna be available on Netflix, including in May, a bunch of comedies. And we actually got them to license some. And I'm not sure which ones we're doing out of these, but I know what we're doing next Monday because it's going to be There's Something About Mary. So that's available on Netflix in May. Uh, they're gonna have Animal House, Borat, 48 Hours, Tropic Thunder, Splash, Tootsie, um, just a slew of them. So when May hits, go check it out. And we are going to do them all through May, and then June moves into From Hell Month, which is the month I am the most excited about in Rewatchables history. I'll explain more when we get to June. But, uh, There's Something About Mary, Monday. Yeah. Um, La Gata, which is our narrative series that we're doing, episode 5 dropped today.

It is, I think, a 7-episode series, but please catch up on that if you haven't been listening to that. Don't forget about Todd McShay, did a bunch of great NFL Draft stuff. He has his Too Early Mock Draft newsletter that went out, I think, today. And then Sean Fantasy, who was on this podcast on Thursday, he's doing his Projections newsletter as we try to ease into newsletters a little bit more. I like newsletters. I wish my fingers still worked. I would have a newsletter. Coming up on this podcast, me and Joe House and Chris Ryan, we recorded right after the 3 Tuesday night playoff games. Um, and then we go in a time machine. House and I did a mailbag. I had so many mailbag questions, I had to rip through them. So House and I did that actually before the Tuesday game. So it's gonna be me, CR House, basically live right after the games, and then we go backwards in time a few hours and we're doing a mailbag with Joe House. So that's the podcast. We're into break and then Pro Jam. 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 a 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+ D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right, a little past 9:15 Pacific time. We're presented by New Era for this first segment. CR is here, Chris Ryan, fresh off a dramatic Sixers win. Joe House also here, fresh off a non-dramatic Spurs-Blazers game. The Spurs wrapped it up. We made the fatal mistake of waiting for the entire game to end before we started this segment. I'm sorry, guys. You just never know with, with Denny and the Frisky Blazers what they were capable of. Let's talk Sixers-Celtics first. Sierra, do you expect a win tonight? What were you expecting?

No, I expected this to be my customary cuck position where, you know, Boston defeats Philadelphia in something and I have to come on and listen to you talk about Jordan Walsh. But you got a big heart. Don't let anybody ever tell you otherwise, Bill. Here we are going back to Philly for Game 6. And what a Joel Embiid night. That was really great. That actually was like a really great sports moment for me.

What was the story for you, House, as a non-biased, uh, non-Sixers and non-Celtics fan?

Another guaranteed loser on an All-Chalk Parlay. Sit down. Oh, let's sit down and look at these favorites. Okay, Boston closeout, Spurs closeout, Knicks-Atlanta, I'm not sure. Let's see, uh, let's just go ahead and parlay all the favorites and give some money away to the sportsbook.

I mean, honestly, throwing the Celtics as a big favorite at home, I was texting you guys on the gambling thread. Just a mistake. The Celtics in the last 5 playoffs, including the '22 when they made the Finals, 25-11 on the road and 24-17 at home. Just over and over again. I don't know how many times they've lost as big favorites, but it's already happened twice this series. This went beyond a, like, regardless of if they finished Philly off. Or if they just have an unbelievable dramatic 1982 reverse, uh, I guess it would be 1981 reverse of going up 3-1 and then blowing the last 3 games, which Chris's Sixers did in 1981 against the Celtics.

This is ridiculous.

If we flip that and you guys come back. No, big picture. I have some, I'm developing some real concerns with the Celtics team.

Okay.

And I think you saw some of them tonight. Like this Derek White thing is, is a real problem. He's averaging 8.2 points a game in the playoffs. He's shooting 29.8% and he's made 5 of 21 threes. And it felt like, CR, the Sixers were just leaving him open tonight.

Yeah, I mean, I think that this was a little bit more about what the Sixers did right than what the Celtics did wrong. But Derrick White has definitely not blown my mind in this series. He's obviously like accrued enough credit in the NBA that, that like it doesn't really matter if he has like an off series or something like that. But it wasn't even like I was, when I was watching, I wasn't like, well, it's not like he's VJ Island or something like that. Like I couldn't really figure out if he was being shut down with, by somebody in particular. He just seems like he's just, he's just missing something from his game right now. And, and the Sixers, like, you know, the Sixers hit their threes tonight. That was the, the big story aside from Embiid. Yeah.

This confidence swoon happened for White in 2022, House, in the fi— in the, basically the whole playoffs.

You remember that, Joe?

Of course, 2022, I was there.

Well, this is a weird one because it, it was on the fringe of happening the whole year. It was probably the reason he didn't make the All-Star team cuz his shooting stuff wasn't good enough and it felt like it was getting worse. And now, now it's a problem. I mean, my dad was at the game and he was saying that the fans were really mad they didn't bring Pritchard in sooner. They brought him in 4 minutes left, really after the game had ended. The Celtics missed 12 shots in a row down the stretch in the fourth quarter. And they put big minutes on Brown and Tatum, which I thought was also weird. 40, 40-plus minutes for each. And I guess the part I don't understand watching this, and we can talk about the Sixers in a second, they had this whole bench mob thing and all these different lineups they could do, and they were going small and big and all these different looks. And, and it just feels like they're going chalk against the Sixers in a way that I don't understand. Whereas Nurse, I feel like, has changed stuff as the series went along, and now he's like, And Bede's back, we're playing 6 guys tonight.

Yeah.

Drummond played 7 minutes, Barlow played 5. They really went 6. They went big minutes for everybody and they felt like they had real advantages, right? Yeah.

And this was one of those games where I, I think that if you're a Sixers fan, if you watch them, you can see sometimes when Embiid comes back into the mix, he seems to discombobulate the guards a little bit. Like they're not playing at the pace that they want to play at.

That happens in games for sure.

But yeah, so, but seeing him out there tonight, he was the best player on the floor. The whole night. And when he went out with the, the knee scare, that was, I was like, oh, that's the end of the series. That if this is it for him, and that's really tough, but like pretty, pretty amazing him coming back in now. Like he's got, uh, Keita and, and Garza and, you know, he's not like exactly facing Olajuwon, but like he's doing a really nice job against those guys. And I thought defensively he was awesome tonight. The kind of turning point was that, that layup he swallowed on Tatum where he just kind of like, yeah, changed his mind mid midair, Maxie stole it, PG gets it on the wing and pops it out to Edgecomb for a 3. And that kind of like, every time the Celtics threatened to leave the Earth's atmosphere, the Sixers pulled 'em back in.

Yeah.

And it was mostly 'cause of Embiid.

Yeah. My dad was saying he thought they were gonna go up 15, 16, 17 in the first half. Never got there. Sixers hung around. Embiid stopped chucking threes, House. That was the other thing.

That, that was the only thing.

Once he started playing around the basket, the whole offense changed. It felt like. Yeah.

The only way for the Celtics to stop Embiid was, uh, to encourage him to shoot more threes. And at halftime, he went in having missed 6 of them and said, you know what, maybe I should step inside the 3-point line, distribute some. The Sixers shot 7 of 12 from the 3-point line in the third quarter, and Embiid made 7 of his first 9 shots in, in the third quarter. And that swung the entire game. They were down 13 in the third quarter, the Sixers were, and the Celtics were mainly scoring inside in the first half, all of their points. This was— this is a reminder of who this Celtics team is. It is a team very much in transition. This wasn't— this wasn't a team built for a championship run, a deep run. It is by happenstance, good fortune, good planning that this team was as competitive as they were this season. Tatum's return is— is really a goddamn miracle. But this is not a, a team, a Celtics team built for a championship run. They're gonna live and die on 3-point variance, and tonight they died. They had 3 guys on the entire roster with double-digit shot attempts, and they had 3 guys who scored in, in double digits.

That's not a recipe for success. And they don't have anybody to guard Embiid, um, or, or to really take advantage of his immobility. Except for the 3-point shot. And if it doesn't fall, they're vulnerable.

But that, but that was weird about it. First of all, I'm fine with Embiid getting 2s. When you start doubling him and giving up 3s, that's when I think stuff can multiply and Sixers guys can get hot. So I, I just like, let Embiid score. If he is gonna have 40, he is gonna have 40, but don't let the other guys get going. And then on offense, I just like, just go at either go at him, attack him, or go smaller and pull him out, make him have to guard somebody. And they didn't really do either. He was kind of just floating around in the middle. It seemed like they were really afraid to challenge him. And then a couple times when they did, it was like those half-ass challenges that he swallowed up. Hey, listen, there's a weird Jaylen Brown thing happening in this series too that the stats don't totally back up. I'm just going eye test from what I watched during the season. I thought the Sixers have done this whole series that they made it really hard for him to go by people.

It's also been a bit of a, a vintage Paul George defense performance.

He's been really good. He was really good again today. He played 43 minutes. This guy, we thought this guy, House and I talk about him later in the mailbag. We thought this was a guy on his way outta the league, and I think he's been a real asset in this series. But Jalen's had, Jalen was, he, I think he made the most 2-point baskets of anyone in the league this season. Was really good in the getting to the paint and getting these good shots and was doing it all year against Lou Dort, all these A-list defenders. And Philly has really, I think, throttled him a little bit. Even when he's scoring, they're really tough shots. You know, Tatum's been up and down, which you can expect, but I, I think he's probably been the most consistent player. And then the fact that they're getting no offense from White, if they get a game like Pritchard today where it's 12 points, all right, well now where am I getting the rest of my offense? Well, it's not coming from the bench with the defense going nuts back and forth. So he, I feel differently about this series than Hawks-Knicks where it's just like there's just been a complete reverse in like the talent kind of showed up.

Yeah. Where I think the Knicks figured out the series and it's 3-2, but the Hawks won 2 one-point games. I don't necessarily think the Celtics are gonna lose the series and they're -2,200 to win it. But I also think Philly has a lot of confidence against them. And I thought, I thought after Game 3 they had a lot of confidence.

The only thing that makes me think it's not going 7 is just that Philly tightens up playing in Philly. Like, I don't know what the record is in the playoffs over the years, like you just said, but like they feel like they play a little more free on the road. And this was like a very—

Celtics certainly do.

Yeah. And this was just a great anti-Cancún game. Like these were a bunch of guys who were just like, we don't want our series, our season to end tonight. I think you could see also for as much backroom stuff as Sixers fans engage with of like, oh, should we, you know, is this, is this it for Embiid? Should we trade him? Should he ask out? Whatever. Like that team was really playing for him as much as with him. And I think that, I think that was like a really nice meaningful capstone on what it's been like a very troubled season for him.

Yeah, I think that's fair. He, he looked really good today. The Celtics have some moves. I think a little more—

like, yeah, yeah.

I think, I think they really have to figure out the bench. Like, Sharman once again didn't play a lot, and, and I, I think he's important, but it just feels like they need more energy and some more fight. The problem tonight, the Sixers had the two best guys in the game. So when I think like you're up 3-2 in a series, but you just played a Game 5 that you didn't just lose, but the, there were two guys in the game who stood out and you had neither of them. That's a problem. And then the 3-point variance with the Sixers, you know, if they're missing threes, it's gonna come down to whether, you know, Embiid just can put the whole team on his back, which I'm dubious of, 'cause I thought he looked exhausted.

Oh yeah.

I mean, that's the, it's been a little bit of the thing with Nurse is that he ground Maxie down a lot during the season. Nurse plays his guys a lot. He played him a lot in Toronto, and then tonight I just felt like The team was gassed. I mean, we were— I luckily Boston didn't have that much in the tank either, but turning around and playing on Thursday does not inspire me with like much Cinderella confidence. You know, like I, I'm not excited about seeing Joel on, on what, 48 hours rest, right?

After big minutes. How's— I thought the move tonight, I thought for sure Mazzulla was gonna do this, was go back to kind of the regular season kind of lineup rotation that the Celtics had, go big on the bench. Try to get some confidence for Shireman, for Walsh, maybe even Hugo, a little Garza, and try to do— this was a team that in Game 82, they benched everybody and beat Orlando with their G League team because they had these guys that actually played really well together. I thought they would do that. Instead, they put big minutes on Brown and Tatum. And I almost wonder if, if Mazzulla's like, we're gonna close 'em out, we'll get rest, we'll put big minutes. And now they're playing 48 minutes later, and Tatum's played big minutes in this series. So yeah, I think this series has already been like, turned out not awesome for the Celtics. Like, this should be over already and it's not.

I agree, um, with all of that, except the thing is, you know, again, that, that's who the Celtics team is. Like, tonight should have been the night that they did the kind of hockey lineup, um, kind of rotation, right? All those guys play good at home. They all feed off of that home crowd, that, that, that bench mob. And that might have changed the energy, but Missoula's playing, you know, kind of a long hand here, right? The long hand is to get— well, but you want Tatum and Brown on the same page if you're going to make a deep—

oh, so you feel like he's like almost— he's almost like pressure testing the partnership in a game where he's like, I bet we're going to win this series if we just win one more out of the next three.

Yes, that is exactly what I think. That's the strategic call that I think he made. Instead of doing the thing that would have changed the energy, um, in the first half, which was going in that bench mob direction that's been successful for the Celtics all season long. I think they, they need, um, JT and JB to play together. I mean, uh, JB was— shot 39% from the field today and, and could not—

it felt worse—

anything in terms of that, that penetration. It's the point that, that Bill made where he was getting those twos all season long. It's playoff time. And the one thing the Sixers have is good perimeter defense if Paul George is healthy.

Yeah.

And he is. And so there you go.

Hits his threes then, like, I mean, Zach, I don't, whatever the reverse of Zach Lowe's stat from the other night where it was like VJ Edgecombe is 0 for 16 in Sixers playoff losses this year.

So yeah, right.

It's like if he's hitting 3 out of 6, like we're looking pretty good. I know, I gotta say, I mean, for as much as Bill, like, I, you know, admire what the Celtics have accomplished without Tatum and then bringing him back into the fold. Like if you have Embiid, Maxey, Paul George playing well and Edgecomb rising and Grimes having a hot night, I'll put them up against the Celtics.

You feel like you can hang with them?

4 or 5?

Sure.

Yeah, we can hang, you know?

Yeah. Grimes was really good today. I, I really liked, I thought he should have been playing more in this series. He played 24 minutes tonight.

He was plus 18.

He's addicted to Kelly Oubre.

I know. Just, he has 2 4-point plays.

Grimes is one of those, when he's open, I feel like it's going in. It's like, fuck, this is happening. So yeah, they had, they have some momentum. You, we haven't, have we had like an incredible Maxey game yet?

I guess game 2, sort of. I think his finger hurts. I think he's, he still has like a kind of busted hand and I think he's tired, but I think there was more zip in his game tonight and I felt like the, even if it wasn't exactly like Denver level, it was the Dribble handoff stuff that him and Embiid were doing at the top of the key and whipping the ball around. Like, it just felt like they were like, we're in, we're not going home tonight. Like, this is not the end of the season. And, and if they can bring that Thursday, you never know. My dad was, I'm excited. This, this has rekindled my excitement.

You know, my dad was pretty disgusted afterwards. Although the Bruins, I don't know if you surpassed that big overtime goal. So that kind of lifted his spirits.

That was on my smaller TV. Yeah.

Beast.

But he, uh, he was pretty, he was just like, you could feel it that the game never had the right flow even when we had the lead and it just, something felt off about it. House, I'm gonna go glass half full on it though. I do think this Celtics team, I'm, I'm okay with them having some adversity and seeing if they can ride through it or not with, with the Tatum just being thrown back into this like this. Tatum and Brown together, them trying to like, let's see it now. Let's go to Philly for a game 6. Philly's got confidence and Bede is probably the best center they're gonna play in a playoff round until the, unless they can somehow get to the finals and play whoever comes out of the West. And, and let's like, they found out tonight Vucevic against some of these big scoring centers, he's just not, it's not happening. He's not stopping anybody and he's a real liability. So what does that mean? Are they gonna go smaller, et cetera, et cetera? Who knows? Hawks-Knicks. So I gotta say, like, who would you— let's say the Celtics get through the Sixers series and the Knicks finish off Atlanta.

Who do you think would win a Knicks-Celtics series? Because I almost, even though Game 7's in Boston, I almost feel like the Knicks would have to be a slight favorite in that series. How would you have the odds?

They won't be favored because the Celtics have home court advantage.

Well, home court advantage, that has not mattered to them as much as it should have for 5 years. Like, I don't know.

What's the first reason why you say that, Bill?

The Knicks were built to beat the Celtics. I think they have a lot of confidence playing the Celtics, and I think they have a little more cohesion. Like you saw tonight, when they can turn on their defense and Brunson You know, can have a game like he had tonight. They're really good. Like they have, the Celtics are a little live by the 3, died by the 3, or some of their bench stuff. The Knicks feel like a little more consistent to me for a series, but the Celtics, I think I really want to see them battle through the adversity here. What do you think, Avs?

I have the Knicks in the finals. So yeah, I mean, you know, my prediction for this NBA Finals was the Knicks and the Nuggets. Good luck. That's not happening. Well, but the, um, the Knicks part of it, you know, this, this, this little odyssey, this mini experiment with Atlanta— when we were sitting back looking at the playoff matchups, um, before the, the games got started, we, we kind of circled this Knicks-Hawks as like, hmm, if you're looking for one where it might be surprisingly competitive, yeah, um, that this might fit the bill because this, this Atlanta team is like kind of multifaceted. They can definitely defend. Um, the one thing they can't defend is Karl-Anthony Towns. And Karl-Anthony Towns, the most important thing the Knicks did was make sure that he got touches in the first quarter. Yeah, I mean, he ended up, uh, with— he didn't score 20 points, but he was a very, very important part of the offense in the, in the first quarter.

He got off.

Yeah, yep. And, and that really set them up. They, they basically got out to the lead that they never really relinquished, um, over the balance of the game from the first quarter on.

Even bringing in Alvarado for these little cameos, it feels like it supercharges them, which is what I was saying about the Celts before. Like, the Celts used to get that from the bench, even like the little Alvarado run. Uh, Brunson was masterful tonight. The CJ piece was really interesting, CR.

Yeah, so I was mostly watching Sixers-Celtics, and by the time I flipped over, this was pretty much over. So He only had 6 points. What happened here?

Yeah, he just was a non-factor. I think what happened is he's 34 years old and old guys in the playoffs just, you know, they're gonna have nights where they just don't have it. Like you saw Drew Holliday tonight in the San Antonio game was another one. It can look great in a Game 2, all of a sudden in Game 5, it's a 2 for 15. But they, I guess the benefit, House, was that with CJ, now they're not gonna have to pay him $35 million a year in the free, free agency if they lose in 6. And he kind of peters out near the end. Maybe they get him on a better deal.

Atlanta, they should.

Atlanta made some interesting additions. They put Daniels on Cat, they put Okongwu on OG, and they put Alexander Walker on Brunson. And watching in the beginning, I was like, oh, I like this. I like Daniels on Towns. This is good. And then the Knicks figured it out in about 10 minutes, and that was that. But I think, CR, I think we can retire the CJ McCollum on the Reggie Miller villain MSG storyline.

To be fair to him, I think he was like, let's just settle down, Juice. Like, I'm 34. I do wonder whether or not the front row of Stiller, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, and Chalamet was—

don't forget Jenner.

And Jenner. And whether that was kind of like a hat tip to Adam Silver, like, we can't lose in front of these guys kind of situation.

First, great to see Chalamet back out there. Yeah. Having fun again. It feels like the Oscars were a million years ago.

When was he not having fun?

I'm glad he's living his life. I'm glad that, I'm glad he's not wearing his Knicks concerns on his face. But I, I, this playoffs really feels like the Knicks fans have passed the Laker fans from a star power standpoint. This, that was a pretty impressive fivesome that they had trotted out. I was like, wow. This is, this is good. I don't know what the Lakers equivalent— that the Lakers are really struggling as Jack is getting older. I think they really struggle.

Who's the mayor of the Lakers right now?

It's really tough. Like, you, you hope Denzel, but Denzel is like also a Knicks fan. He's like a sports bigamist.

Does Flea still make it on the screen?

Yeah, you have Flea, you have Dyan Cannon. Like, they can't— oh gosh, they're in a knife fight with like a little butter knife. Yeah, they really need to double down on, uh on their fan base. Yeah, so I guess going forward with the Knicks, the only thing is Bridges just seems like he's a Section 8 at this point offensively, and that's just how it's gonna go. But they, what the Knicks had in Game 4 with the being down 2-1, this is a real, people staring at each other, the fans freaking out. All right, what do we got in us? Are we gonna come together? And they did. It's not far away from where the Celtics are these next couple days now. Where they really looked, they legitimately lost tonight. That was not a, oh, we didn't hit our threes, that's why we didn't win. It was like they got their butts beat tonight in the second half. So what is that gonna mean and what adjustments are they? Spurs-Blazers. Thanks anyway, Portland. Thanks for all your efforts and your concerns.

Thanks, Denny.

Thanks, Denny. You tried, you got mad at people a couple times, you lost half of a tooth. Yeah. Thanks, Jrue Holiday, enjoyed your performance. Thanks Scoot Henderson for that quick little cameo that boosted my stock before Dylan Harper took it to him.

Donovan Clingan, can he make a 3-point shot or have I just not seen it?

He'll take 'em.

Yeah, he'll make, he'll make you think about him.

Yeah, yeah, he'll shoot it. Yeah, yeah, he'll take it. He's no Drummond. Drummond's just automatic from the corner now. I mean, Jesus.

Yeah.

So House, is this a sweep without the Wemby concussion?

Yes, yes it is. But you know, I, I'm, I want to give some flowers to this Portland team. They were in it, like, you know, they fought. That was, uh, they showed the, the value of, you know, pushing all the way to, to the end because there was kind of an inflection point moment for their season where they could have found themselves in the lottery again without too much effort. Um, but I, I mean, I love this revelation of Denny and I'm interested in their offseason. They have cap space.

They kind of need a point guard because I don't know if Scoot's going to be the point guard.

Well, isn't Damian Lillard supposed to be the point guard?

Well, then what's he gonna do, right? Um, he will be something to them. He will be a very important, meaningful piece to them. But they have some money.

Do they?

They have some interesting pieces. They have $15 million. You have to ask— maybe Tom Dundon thinks he gets to keep that.

I was gonna say, you're like, I'm gonna give them their flowers. I think Dundon might be like, I'm not paying for Flowers? These guys don't need flowers, they're basketball players.

I got this email from, uh, a guy named Parker who had more ideas for Tom Dundon to save money. And one of them, he had stuff like on the bench only have seats for the coaches, for like the two best coaches, and everybody else give to paying customers because you could make more courtside stuff. Uh, use unpaid people to clean up the court. Halftime shows, just don't have a halftime show at all.

Honestly, there's a couple of these things that I'd be pretty into.

Yeah, I'm like, he can really zag the other way.

I just think that like, like, Dundon is obviously gonna drive— like, if, if this keeps going, like, it'll be an embarrassment for the league. But like, if he was like, you know what, you guys, we don't, we don't need somebody unicycling around during halftime. Like, just go, go to the bathroom, get a beer, come back.

We're just gonna play some music. He could have the scorer's table, could just have 2 people on it, try to sneak some courtsides in there.

What else could he I mean, the halftime is easy. That's kids playing basketball.

Yeah.

And you know, you can, depending on how cynical you want to be about it, you can set odds. Like, you know, you can, you can bet on kids. Oh my God, that's a thing.

Same game parlay within the game.

Yes, that's right.

He thinks, he thinks he can say, Parker thinks he could save money on the exercise warm-up bike and maybe just use real bikes because they're cheaper. So the guys would have to actually pedal around.

Well, you could do that. You could just basically say to a guy, you'd be like, you're either in the game or you're out. Riding The bike is not gonna change it.

We've gotten rid of the bikes. We saved $590. So yeah, this will be some Blazers summer. They're gonna be cheaping out on a coach. They do have some cat, some maneuverability with some trade stuff. They didn't have Shaedon Sharpe really for this series 'cause he had a stress fracture thing and he barely played. He wasn't the same. And I do wonder like with his scoring, could they have made this a 6-game series?

But we'll— I'm excited. I do hope he doesn't destroy this. Like I'm excited.

Interesting team. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. We are right in the middle of the NBA playoffs. I'm making picks left and right. Did, did an unexpected one on Monday night cuz I really liked the slate. So we did OKC moneyline, SGA 25+ points, K 25+ points, Tobias Harris 15+, and it hit, it was 2-to-1. Gonna try to, every time I like any sort of parlay or any situation, probably just gonna tweet it out. And if there's additional FanDuel value, like there is Tonight, where all customers get a profit boost. Oh yeah, you love those profit boosts. Um, and if you can match that with the parlay or the bet that you like, your win hits bigger. FanDuel giving you better payouts on same-game parlays on NBA playoffs all playoffs long. Lock in your bets, boost your odds, make the playoffs pay off with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Head to fanduel.com/BS to get started. FanDuel. Play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra.

You know what my favorite thing about the playoffs is? I like during, and it's usually maybe a game 4. Might even be a Game 5. Game 7, everyone's nervous. There's a different level of energy. But Game 4, Game 5, for one of the two teams, there's this realization with like 5 minutes left in the fourth quarter where it's like, uh-oh, our fate is suddenly in real flux right now. Who's stepping up? What are we going to do? Let's calm down. Can we rise to the moment or are we going to shrink from it? And you can kind of see it. With different teams. It's definitely like, for instance, gonna happen in this Denver-Minnesota series. There's gonna be a moment in one of the later games when all of a sudden either Minnesota's taking it from Denver and at some point somebody in Denver's gonna have to hit a shot and you're gonna look around and go, who's gonna do it? Or in Minnesota's case, maybe Denver is punching them back and now Edwards has to step up or DiFroncenzo, and you just never know. And you never know how somebody's gonna respond to pressure, but that's why we love the playoffs every spring.

It's as great as opening up a Michelob Ultra, a nice cold one, crisp, refreshing, the ultimate prize. Plus, as the official beer partner of the NBA, they're giving fans a chance to win courtside tickets, custom merch, and more. You could be at one of those games when the pressure rises. Michelob Ultra. Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at mclubeultra.com/courtside. Mclube Ultra Courtside 25-26. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2025. Ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at mclubeultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, and prizes and details. We're gonna play a game of which underdog would you rather be? Lakers, Rockets. The Rockets are +750 for the series. Celtics, Sixers. Sixers are +1,100 for the series, which seems way too high. And then, uh, Knicks, Hawks, +560 for the Hawks.

How's this Rockets idea? Is, is Durant— there's no Durant, right?

I don't know. Is there Durant?

Well, even if there isn't, is it better without him, right? In some crazy way.

Better without him. Like, do you want him on the bench or he was just laughing it up with Reed Sheppard and Jabari last night.

So I mean, it seemed like, or the other night, so it seemed like everything was cool. Joe, you go first.

So are you reading the prices as they exist right now in the FanDuel Sportsbook, Bill Simmons?

They are where I saw them a half an hour ago. Maybe they changed a little bit.

And what is the Rockets' price?

The Rockets' price, I'm gonna give it to you right now. The Rockets' price is +730.

Okay. So that's because no team in the history of the NBA has come back from a 3-0 deficit.

Philly is still 11-1. And Atlanta is +570. And weirdly, I probably feel the worst about Atlanta. I feel like they had their— They're like the Turk in The Godfather. I missed my chance. I am mounted one now. They had the Knicks. It's like, salazzo. Yeah, I missed my chance. Who would you have, House? I think probably the Sixers, just because there's a world where Maxi has one awesome game and Embiid has another awesome game, and then all of a sudden the Celtics are going home and it's like, what just happened?

We got Edgecomb. I mean, at the price, that's right. Uh, we got one great Edgecomb game. He's capable of two. So if Edgecomb and Maxey together go off— and they did do this a couple times in the season— I mean, we even have— we—

there's—

there still could be like a vintage Paul George game in there. I guess that's the one.

What does a vintage Paul George game look like?

Honestly though, he's right.

It's like saying like a vintage Dell Carter performance.

It's scoring in the high 20s, early 30s, and locking down one of Boston's wings.

That's it.

I'm gonna regret saying this. I agree. It's, it's the Sixers. It is. It is like, let's win game 6 and then game 7s are weird.

Great theory about how the Rockets, I mean the, the Lakers didn't want to win game 4 because they wanted to extend the series so that the next series would start later to buy Luka more time. I don't believe this. I just say caught Conspiracy Bill's attention that the Lakers would lose Game 4 and Game 5 to push the next series to like Tuesday.

Oh, they would lose both.

Yeah, they, they, they'd basically throw multiple games. I don't believe this, but Conspiracy Bill, it did come across his desk. I did hold it up to the light.

Didn't pass the, uh, do you think every time, uh, Luka watches Lou Dort trip a guy, he's like, ah, you know what, this is getting a little tight now.

One more second here. It's going to be fun watching SGA against I don't even know who and the Lakers if that ends up being the series. Who's— yeah, that, that's not going to last too long. Okay, next question. Which team would you rather be? Denver -142 or Minnesota +120 right now heading into Game 6? If your life depended on it, which team would you rather be? Which team would you rather back?

So I missed it. What's the state of Nasrid?

He came back in the game. I think he's okay.

Okay. Um, man, that's really rolling downhill against Minnesota. Uh, would I rather be Denver or would I rather be who?

Minnesota. Denver's -138, Minnesota's +138.

Oh, I thought it was a different series. Yeah, I, I would rather be Denver.

Pass.

Why is that a question? I don't understand.

It's a question. I mean, which team?

Minnesota just has to win one game.

Yeah, but they don't have Anthony Edwards. They don't have their best player. They're not going to be—

I mean, well, can I give you that?

What you're doing is you're, you're saying that the version of the Joker that we've seen thus far, even with, you know, an empty calorie triple-double to stave off elimination.

That was not an empty calorie triple-double. Why do you say that? He was great in that game.

He was fine.

Here's my fear. The Game 5 Spencer Jones, Cam Johnson were really good at home in a Game 5. What is that going to look like in a Game 6 in Minnesota when you're on the road and, and, uh, your team actually needs you. I just think it's easier for guys like that to play at home. That's one of the things that frustrated me with the Celtics tonight. Like, home games are the time to bring out your bench guys and hope you strike oil with one of them. I don't really trust that many of these Denver guys if Gordon's not going to play, you know, and that—

well, that—

and I don't think Minnesota needed that game. I, I just think that's the way the league works. It's like, we're up 3-1. It would be nice if we could steal this.

They don't have Anthony Edwards.

They need every game.

There are no giveaway games for them.

I'm not saying it was a giveaway game. I just think there's a level of desperation that one team has versus the other. You could feel it a little in Philly-Boston, but especially in Denver-Minnesota where Minnesota's like, all right, we don't really need this game. Like Game 6 is the one they need.

But they, that's, wouldn't you call that a must-win basically though? That Game 6 for them?

I mean, I wouldn't, because I don't— I don't— I think it's conceivable to go in somebody's building and win Game 7s. We just see it over and over again now. Like, how's that? It's not like what we grew up in the '80s, where it was like Game 7 at home, you won. And if you could win a Game 7 in somebody's building, it was like a fucking miracle. I feel like anybody can win anywhere now.

If Anthony Edwards was playing for Minnesota, they'd win this series. This is a Minnesota team that went to the goddamn Western Conference Finals 2 consecutive years. They have no problem beating Denver. And they, they demonstrated, you know, the, the idea for this series was that this is a new Denver. Denver reeled off 13 straight wins coming into the playoffs. I don't know the last time they lost 3 consecutive games. They just lost 3 consecutive games to this Minnesota team. Yeah. Um, because this Minnesota team has— they, they know how to beat Denver. They are built to beat Denver. They know how to beat Denver. They have no issue beating Denver. But they don't have Anthony Edwards. So I think that Denver's going to win 3 straight games and they're going to beat Minnesota in the series.

Well, it sounds like you should bet the Denver money line for this series then. Done. I'll tell you this, say less. I think the line for game 5 is outta whack. Tampa, uh, Minnesota's +5.5 at home in game 6. I think it's a 50-50 game and I don't really trust Denver without Gordon, with him either playing hurt or not playing at all. They don't have 5 guys that I trust in a game like this, and I think that's what worries me with them. So if you have with Minnesota, even if it's just Io, McDaniels, Reid, Randle, and Gobert, and you get lucky with one of the bench guys, I think you could beat Denver in a game like that. So I'm leaning Minnesota. I mean, I would take the points, but I also— something's a little off with Denver. I don't like it. I think Gordon's too important to them. So you would really have to see Joker just go bonkers.

Yeah, but don't you think he has that game in him? Like, don't you? I mean, unless he's got some secret injury or a horse he loves dies, like he's got that game.

At him, of course. I don't know, he's— the fact that he's just not hitting threes anymore worries me. That the, the NBA did the little bit of the playbook in Game 4. McDaniels had 2 fouls in the first 3 minutes of the game, which was just a classic. And I don't— you're not getting that in this game. And I bet McDaniels is all over the place. All right, so we disagree on that one. This one's probably a little easier. Which team would you rather be, Cleveland or Toronto? Cleveland's -460. Toronto's +380. I would be very worried if I was Cleveland though, because I think Toronto's found something with the muck it up small ball thing, and Cleveland has James Harden. Those would be my two concerns.

Zach Lowe called this one correctly. This is going to go 7, and the home team is going to win this series, and it's kind of unnecessary that it's going to go 7.

Yeah, it really does die out to go 7.

It doesn't need to go 7. Cleveland has advantages in a lot of different ways, except is Evan Mobley a bitch?

I mean, I think it's time to go ahead and put it, put it on the table. I would use that word.

Okay, what word would you like to use? Because maybe it's step up time. It's step the fuck up time. This team was built to be a 55-win team this series, this, this season coming in. They were supposed to be comparable to the team from, from, from last year.

Yeah.

They hit the reset button and brought in some really important valuable assets at the trade deadline because it wasn't working. The formula didn't work. And I just would like to see the guys that we're adorning with the— that they're here. The leap is coming. Here it comes. This is what this team's supposed to be on paper. And I'm still waiting. We're playing playoff basketball games now. That's where their advantage is supposed to reside, is that dude with his inside-outside, you know, uh, capacity. I don't know, I'll, I'll just sit tight and wait for it to happen, I guess.

I said this to Zach on Sunday. He doesn't seem to have these games where it's like, wow, Evan Mobley is running amok, he's just destroying Toronto tonight. Like, he's kind of there. He does some nice things, but I don't know if there's that last level for him. This might just be who he is. CR.

Yeah. Uh, I, I, I've not spent a ton of time with this series. This is always the one that seems to be on. You're not locked into Raptors-Cavs on Tubi at like 1:30 PM, you know, like I'm never sure. Uh, the Mobley thing though is strange because you would hope that something like the Harden trade is the exact thing that would be like, look, like, I mean, Harden was very, very, very good for Embiid. Like, I mean, it's just like playing with a big man and being able to like facilitate that kind of stuff. And it just doesn't seem to have made an appreciable difference. I do kind of feel like Cleveland's playing with their food a little bit here and will win the series. But it is, it's an unnecessary amount of labor for these guys.

I think I picked Cleveland in 6. The 2 series ones I liked were Cleveland in 6 and the Knicks in 6. Cleveland in 6 is now -105, so it's even. Cleveland in 7 is +170. And if you wanted to get nuts and think Toronto upsets Cleveland in Game 7 and we have another James Harden moment, that is 7 to 1. I do think they found something with Maury Boyles though on going smaller. Like they've, you know, they, they basically have turned it into an athletic rock fight and they've made it really difficult for the Cavs. And I, I'll be interested to see what the, what the adjustments are. I'd probably lean Cleveland in 6 still. but if it goes to a 7, I would just be really nervous. The history of, of Cleveland sports, the history of James Harden, the Donovan Mitchell. Eh, okay. And then Orlando, Detroit. Orlando is -240 and Detroit is +198. But we did find out that Franz is yet the latest one. Oh, now it's -290, -250 Orlando, +205 Detroit. We did find out. Even though Orlando's up 3-1, that Franz has a calf thing and is gonna miss Game 5.

Bad calf thing.

Like, it's like probably for the rest of the series.

It's a calf thing where you're missing a game, which tells me that's at least a week and it's not 100%. And the way that I thought that team really found something with the 5 starters and Kane and a little Black, but really like 6 and a half guys. So this, this changes that a little bit. I, I don't know, House. Where do you stand in this series, House?

Um, it's the most impossible one to figure because of the schizophrenic magic. They were schizophrenic coming down the stretch. They lost 7 straight games, then they, they finished the season on a 7-3 over their last—

they lost to our G League team.

They, they, they, they needed a win.

They played all their starters, G League team, and then they lost to Philadelphia.

Right in the play-in and really didn't even show up.

Yeah, they did not want to be in the playoffs against us.

Yeah, that was a 1, 2, 3 Cancún vibe they were giving off for sure, Paulo. But Franz reminded us when, like, he was really important to them. He really can score. Yeah, he really can create. But he's Franz questionable Wagner. Tell me, take the Q out of, out of the, the, you know, next to his name. And go play. Just play. He can't play. He can't be on the floor.

Chris, it's hard to imagine because Detroit's so new to this and this is all happening so soon for them and playing as a 1 seed that I don't think they have like the institutional knowledge necessarily to claw themselves out of this. So even without Wagner, it doesn't feel like this is Detroit ripping off 3 in a row and it, and, and they don't, there's no guy on that team where I'm like, well, he's going to put it together. Kade's been playing like he's had a lot of turnovers, but has been playing fine. It just like, it's exactly what you've been talking about where it's just like they, they stood pat at the trade deadline. Maybe in 3 years they'll be able to be like, see, that's why we did that. But this year they're going to regret it. And it's going to be a little bit of like a bruise going into next season where you're like your number 1 seed. You were the number 1 seed almost like wire to wire. I think they were pretty high up there at least for most of the season. And to get beat by the 8th seed of a bunch of guys who most people were like, Jamal Mosley's gonna get fired in between play-in games.

Still might get fired. He might win this series and still get fired.

And that's, that's crazy. So I mean, I think that that's pretty unnerving for Detroit.

Well, you get the stink on you because you have this great regular season, then you flame out in round 1, and then you go to the next season and no matter what the result is for the first 3 months, people are like, well, you, this was what happened last year. Like we've seen this happen with the Cavs. We saw it happen with the Phoenix Suns. There's these teams that can have these great regular seasons and it just evaporates overnight when you, when you have like a flameout.

Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm willing to be a tiny bit more generous with Detroit. They did like, Jaden Ivey might have played an important role in this series. It's, it's possible. You can't dismiss it out of hand.

You mean, for TMZ headlines?

Well, for— no, for— I mean, you know, he could have been a viable starter. And it's the case that, like, you know, we complained that they didn't do more at the trade deadline, but they thought they were going to have Malik Beasley last summer. They thought Malik Beasley was going to play basketball for them, the best— one of the best 3-point shooters in the league last year.

Yeah, but they've known for a long time.

No, I know, I know.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to sign Caris LeVert. When there are other free agents. I mean, they, they— I don't think they covered themselves in glory. I think Orlando—

they won 60 games.

No, but I'm saying I think that's pretty good moves. Yes, you can feel it now. Um, right. I really like the Orlando -240, and I just think they will win one of the next 3 games because I don't— I— their defense, the rock fight nature of this, um, I just don't see Detroit winning 3.

Yeah, and Durant seems like he's on another planet.

So yeah, like they, they fit.

They saw if he was like, if he was balling and like, it was just like they just are losing close games or something, but he seems, I mean, he just got injured.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

We cover that later. Uh, last thing, the lottery proposal. Shams wrote this 3-2-1 lottery proposal that they leaked out. Lottery is now 16 teams. This would be the idea. Um, teams 4 through 10 in the lottery order get 3 lottery balls, but if you fall into the bottom 3, you only get 2. And then everybody else, 9 and 10, uh, playing seeds in each conference also get 2. And the losers of these 7A playing games get 1. And then they had some other stuff about no team would be able to win the top pick in consecutive years, which I like. No team would be able to win 3 consecutive top 5 picks. I like that as well. And then you would not be able to protect picks in the 12 to 15 slots going forward.

Oh, interesting.

So I thought this was too confusing. I— the only ones I really liked out of this were the, uh, the ban on winning top pick and the ban on winning 3 consecutive top 5 picks. This other stuff, like, I still feel like there's gonna just be different ways to tank. Like, would Golden State have rather been a play-in team or would rather be in the 4th through 10th spot with more lottery balls than anybody else, than the other 6 teams? I, I would rather throw away the play-in game at that point, which to me sounds like even more severe.

So going into the playoffs, I was chatting a little bit with Zach about whether or not like the, the teams in this, in this play-in tournament, or if that's what you want to call it, were like a validation of the concept of the play-in or a repudiation of it. And like, would you rather be be in the, the AJ Peterson, you know, A-cup sweepstakes, or would you rather, you know, go get your teeth kicked in by Oklahoma City or, or I thought Detroit. Um, and now it's like, you know, not only has Orlando now made this a series with Detroit, and that's super fun, like, you know, it'll probably be a little bit hard in the second round, but like, I, I don't know, man. Like, I kind of think that improving the enticing teams that are like mediocre or low mediocre to duck the playoffs or be worse than they actually are because they might get into the lottery. I even, even if it's weighted that way, I still don't love it. And again, I know this is kind of a superficial critique, but if you can't explain it to me in an elevator ride, it seems like it's not going to really be popular.

And that's also one of the problems with this is it's like the, it's not like the NFL draft where everybody is like, I can find somebody at 30 that could help my team go to the playoffs. Like, you kind of tune out after the first 4 picks. What about you, House?

Yeah, I mean, this is the inherent challenge that's super unique to the NBA. And as long as the incentive structure rewards teams that fare worse over the course of the season with a higher draft pick, then you are stone cold fucked. You have created an incentive structure for teams to go try and get that because the impact is outsized. The impact of getting a player that can change your franchise, uh, you know, in, in a, in a split second. I mean, you know, Wemby isn't a good example because he's a once in a whatever kind of a, uh, player.

And Detroit had the highest number that year and didn't get him.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, and Washington has been up there in the mix for a handful of years, but you know, Cooper Flagg to Dallas completely resuscitated, like, saved the franchise, a dead situation. It's a miracle that they got that lottery. Really, it's an American— over— I'll never get over their good luck. It's a miracle.

It's like gonna be a miracle when Golden State wins this year, when Golden State gets the top 4 pair. It could be miraculous.

It's gonna be a miracle.

I don't know why we can't just have the top 10 worst teams each get 8% and anybody in from the 1 to 10, 8%, and then we split the other 20% with how many teams you want to go and then put in those other things about the top 5 pick consecutive years and all that stuff. I'm fine with that. The, the thing I really don't like about this bottom 3 record being penalized thing, what happens if you just have the year from hell and a bunch of guys get injured? Injured. Like, Indiana. Yeah, Indiana. I actually watched those games and felt like they were trying to win most of the time. For the most part, they weren't doing a lot of that chicanery of other— they just had a lot of injuries part of the season.

The second part of the season, I mean, let's, let's be—

but there were teams earlier in the season and earlier, they just didn't have a choice with what was happening. Yeah, but then there were teams like, with no disrespect, Utah, who Well, I felt like we're—

Utah definitely could have been better than— yeah, why were they—

no disrespect.

Yeah, because they get very touchy about that.

I know, but here's—

but Utah should have done that.

Like, if the system is gonna tell you to do this, because you have to have Markkanen and JJJ and be awesome next year, you know, like, they could be really exciting.

I still wonder if there's some way to, um, to split, like, split the seasons in half. For the lottery balls. And if like in that second part of the season, like Argentinian soccer. Well, if your record is just way out of whack with what it was in the first half of the season, then maybe that, maybe that should be. But, but this gets into your elevator thing, CR. I do think you were going to have to be able to explain this in a sentence. It's like anything else. It's like good TV shows. You should be able to explain in a sentence. A movie pitch should be a sentence. A pitch I have for a company, it should be a sentence. And the latter, it should be one sentence. And it's like, hey, top 10, the worst 10 teams, 8% chance each. You can't win the top pick 2 years in a row, and you can't get a top 5 pick 3 years in a row. And those are our new rules, and that's what we're doing. I think people would accept that more than what we have now. This 3-2-1 thing is like—

Yeah, the only danger is just like you, the, the teams that are 13th, 14th worst, try to, try to dip in.

Like, look at this. This is a proposal. This is a fucking 400 words. I mean, that can't be your proposal. So hopefully this will not be what they end up doing. Um, House just wants to win one more lottery before they pack it in.

This is the one.

What are your big ones?

John, there's a, there's a big culture change happening in Washington.

I was reading culture change.

Yeah. They're doing one-on-ones with like the whole staff of the players. Like I was reading about it. It was kind of cool. I was like, Ted.

Well, how's that? We have a great, great, uh, Washington Wizard question in the mailbag that we're about to do. CR, what's life been like after CR month? Just, just searching for answers after that?

We're looking for meaning. Yeah. Um, no, it's been pretty good.

What are you talking about? Yeah, no, Ghostbusters, baby.

Yeah, Ghostbusters was great. Um, Bill, did you see the PSG-Bayern Munich game today at all?

I did not.

The Champions League game.

Sadly, I was doing work.

I highly recommend you check it out.

What was the final score of it?

5-4 PSG. It's one of the best soccer football matches I've ever seen.

Oh, really?

And this guy Michael Olisée, who plays for Bayern Munich, played out of his mind today. I was hoping he would go to Liverpool next season.

You know what I did see was the second division Spanish goalkeeper clocked that other guy and jumped by 20 guys. I watched that. I watched a bunch of angles of that one. Can that happen more? Because the goalie just had like the pads too. Send me that one.

I want to see that one.

Oh, it was great.

He cold cocked the guy.

Yeah, it was good stuff.

Yeah. We're getting ready to roll pep over here. Is that what's going on? Yeah.

I mean, like, it's, I, I think it's, it's heating up obviously, but no, the PSG Bayern game was like the, like revived my, my soul. It was amazing.

Do you have a Champions League pick for for House and I.

I just, I think PSG is gonna win.

You think they're gonna win the whole thing? You got House's attention. Okay, he just—

what are the odds?

Uh, I don't know, but I think the tough thing for Arsenal is if they beat Atlético, the Spanish team, they're +185.

House, okay, good, I'm in. Done.

They're running— Arsenal's run-in is tight because they're, they're going nose to nose with Man City for the, for the title. So got it's a little harder for them than it would be for PSG.

CR's just, as soon as the Sixers get eliminated, whatever round, he moves right into World Cup mode in England. Just thinking about everything, where we're gonna go.

Is that, is that the, well, who's your, your World Cup pick?

I, uh, my World Cup pick, he hasn't done all the, all the research. It really depends because a bunch of guys have gotten hurt recently, so I have to kind of rethink it. A couple of French guys got hurt.

Um, he's doing, he's preparing for Sean's doing a movie draft of the best Philip Baker Hall movies. And so they're running out of movie draft ideas, so they're doing that. Uh, he's hoping to get Happiness with the second round pick.

Hey, I don't want to keep House up very late, but I have to ask him one question.

Groggy House loves this. What are you talking about?

Yeah, I'm good. I'm up. For the last like 10, 12 days, maybe a little bit longer, he's been kind of trolling me about how unquestionable it is that REM is better than The Replacements. And oh my God, uh, I didn't know where you stood on this, but I know you must think it's a closer fight than Bill Simpson.

No, that, that wasn't what I said.

Uh-huh.

As usual, classic CR, you twisted my words around. I said at the time, CR, that REM was a much bigger band than The Replacements and it wasn't arguable and we didn't put them next to each other.

That is true.

And now as the years have passed, bigger is different. People are like, no, actually The Replacements were better. And that's been a thing that is now—

those are two different arguments. And you following me down the hallway and being like, the bums lost, is not convincing me. Because you said they're bigger. I said, I know they're bigger. And you were like, and they were better. And I— it's like, I just don't agree.

They had a more successful career.

Okay, again, two different— like, you know who had a more— NSYNC had a more successful career than Minor Threat. Okay, uh, now we're talking. NSYNC had, you know, made more money, was more well-known, you know, more critical, not more critical acclaim, but, uh, when we were in college, R.E.M.

was the crown prince of alternative college radio. They were the band.

I was a DJ.

Yeah, I know.

At WCHC, the College of the Holy Cross, the hip stuff, 99.1 FM. From the day I arrived, you know, the first time they let me on in that radio station. Within the first couple weeks of school, they gave me, uh, me and, and Jeff Macer, uh, the 10 AM— 10 PM to 1 AM Friday night slot. Hey freshman, go suck a fat one. Here's your radio slot Friday nights at Holy Cross.

It's like Marlboro Lights and Mountain Dew with Joe House.

And I'm here to tell you, I didn't play REM in 4 years from 19, the fall of 1987 to the, to the spring of 1991. I didn't play a single REM song, not once in my entire college career.

'Cause they were too mainstream and you were Andy Zagreb at that place.

Say it again, CR.

How much Tim did you, did you, do you bang?

How much? Amazing.

Of course.

Of course.

Goes without saying.

There you go. That's the only metric that counts, Phil.

Mission of Burma, you know, Replacements, Lemonheads back in the day. Like, also all amazing stuff we could do. Volcano Suns, bang it, baby.

So what's your answer, Haus?

But what? Who do you prefer? R.E.M. has more— has established a lengthier career, but the Replacements are irrefutably incredibly impactful for the moment that they arrived and what they did.

I never argued that.

Okay, I agree. On the same page. We're all on the same page.

So is Fugazi.

Fugazi surpasses The Replacements to be respect—

I mean, respectfully, you know, it's got a much longer conversation. Early 2000s music is fucking back. Ben Simmons went to Coachella. Number one reason was because The Strokes were playing. He was more excited about them than anything else. All that music is back from the Yayayas, the Strokes, all that stuff is back.

LCD, I saw a bunch back in the day. They were a little wet farty for me. Like, I saw them with Guided by Voices. That's the problem, CR.

And Guided by Voices kicked their ass, right?

It wasn't even close. Yeah, so that's the problem. First time I saw the Strokes were they played with Guided by Voices.

All right, can we, can we schedule like a late '80s, early '90s alternative rock Is this the first time Minor Threat's ever been mentioned on your podcast? That was pretty impressive. Definitely. There's a 100% chance. All right, House is going to stay because we're doing a mailbag. CR is going to go and celebrate with a couple of Vijay Hedgecomb brews, some Vijay Hedgecomb lights.

That sounds delicious.

Yeah, some Vijay lights. All right, guys, thanks so much.

All right, we are in full swing for the NBA playoffs. Great teams, great players, great action every single night. The stakes are the absolute highest. And when I watch, I love to bet on FanDuel, especially when I'm on the East Coast back for Celtic games that I could just jump right in. FanDuel, a brand I trust, easy to build my bet. I know I will get my winnings instantly. So Wednesday night, couple really fun ones because we have, we have Orlando, Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, and Houston. Lakers. And honestly, I don't think you can go wrong with the underdog moneylines in any of those. I'm gonna send out an official pick if I really love one of the matchups or a parlay situation. But, um, I think all of those series are 50-50 series, especially like Orlando might just be better than Detroit. Toronto has really figured out a small ball lineup to bug Cleveland. And Houston-Lakers, who knows that? I mean, that series should be 2-2. It's 3-1. Anyway, I'll figure it out. Check out my picks in the FanDuel Sportsbook app and on my social feed. Don't forget to boost your potential winnings before you place it.

FanDuel, play your game. All right, you just saw House with CR. Now we've gone in a time machine backwards about, uh, 10 hours, House. Um, and we're gonna do some mailbag questions. I had so many good mailbag questions, people sending them into BSPodcast33@gmail.com. You came on and did the mailbag with me, I think last month. And you said after, I just had a great time. It's a true story.

I, I love the mailbag. It's one of, I mean, I'm not as sure that I'm allowed to talk about your re-apex, but the re-introduction of the mailbag into your steady stream of content is, is, is welcome and America loves it.

Yeah. When I started my column on this Boston Sports Guide in '97, I think the mailbag was like the third one I ever did that was encouraging people to send emails. I'm glad they're still happening. I have a bunch of good ones for us. First one is from Chad H, who made a request. Oh, would prefer if you could answer this one with house for obvious reasons.

Uh-oh.

Yeah. Where do you think this is going?

There are 2 or 3 possibilities, none of which are good.

He said, I was so excited for Arby's steak nuggets when they came out last year, and then it seemed like they dropped off the face of the earth. It was over before it started. I think this should be an NBA award. Who is this year's Arby's Steak Nuggets NBA Player of the Year, named for the player that showed such early promise and then for one reason or another completely fell off the map? Wow.

Tremendous question.

Really good. I have a good answer for this that I can go first unless you want to jump in.

I need you to go first, but I will say in Arby's defense, part of the allure of the Nuggets was their scarcity. It was a limited time run, a limited edition. Now, I'm not suggesting that whatever player you have in mind, and one that I'll think of in the next 35 seconds, also should, should be scarce or should be a limited run. Um, but there's nothing keeping Arby's from bringing back the Steak Nuggets in the same way, right? This player that we're going to talk about could ascend yet.

So the scarcity, I think what we're landing on here is it had to be somebody we felt like was going to be in our life more consistently, and then it was abruptly over. Okay. But we know next season the player's going to come back, much like the Arby's steak nuggets. So the candidates to me are basically anyone on Charlotte. We could go with, uh, we could go with Concanipple that we thought we were going to get a great playoff run from him. All of a sudden it was over. He didn't win Rookie of the Year. And we're— it's just abrupt. But I think the answer is Jalen Duren, who I voted for second. I voted for him second team All-NBA. I really—

you're getting daily content out of this now. Well, he hurt your feelings. You're, you're really in your feelings about this.

I really believed he— I had him second team All-NBA. I wanna, I wanna write into the NBA and see if I can change my vote, even though I already sent it in. He's been so bad in these playoffs for him. For somebody that I thought was just impactful and consistent night after night, and now just seems like he's a mess, that I wonder if it's— but he's still playing, so I don't know if that qualifies.

So I was trying to think of, um, teams that came out hot and then fell off at the beginning of the season. We thought, oh, look at this team, and then they fell off. But I can't really come up with anybody that fits that very well.

Is—

does Giannis qualify? Like, the version of the Bucks that we all lost money on because we thought that the Bucks were going to be really something this, this season. Uh, and we got tiny tastes of him and like, oh, uh, Hollins, look at what— look at this, you know, what, what he's done in terms of the— like, they've got the role players, it looks like this Bucks team could be something. It was very fleeting, it tasted good for a minute, and now it's gone.

Yeah, that's pretty good. I think that's probably the answer. There was like this when Giannis came back and the Bucks had hung around and it, but the thing is like the Arby's steak nuggets came outta nowhere. Giannis we'd had for years and years. So I do feel like it has to be like a fast riser guy.

Oh, a player.

Yeah.

That we, yeah. That we didn't anticipate.

Well, you know, it could be Lamelo too. Like we didn't realize this Lamelo thing.

Oh, that's pretty good.

Yeah, I think it's Lamelo. That's pretty good.

That's the answer.

I like that one.

Yeah. It abruptly ended and then we were mad at him and he just did a bunch of dumb things and we don't know where he went. Um, all right, we'll go with LaMelo. Uh, Alex from Virginia said, I know you and Zach are old white guys. Good start. And maybe you need Van Lathan to inform you of important information that the beautiful Angel Reese used to date Jalen Duren. Now she is the proud girl of Wendell Carter and has taunted Duren on Instagram during the series. Um, so Carter may have taken Angel Reese, outplayed Duren in a series, and potentially even sent him home as a 1-8 underdog. Wendell needs respect. So I didn't know about this till yesterday. So maybe that is because I'm an old white guy, uh, because she did an Instagram of, of Kane on the Magic, who— Raising Kane came out of nowhere and dunked right on Durant's head. And she did an Instagram post about it and has been, uh, I guess, as I, I'm not, I'm not really on social like that, so I, I, I sometimes I miss stuff. And I definitely missed this storyline. I wish we could have incorporated into our I feel like we might have even taken Orlando moneyline if we had known this was a factor.

Um, but anyway, well, did you know about this as another old white guy?

Game by game, I'm familiar with the, the, um, who she's dating now. I'm familiar with this current relationship. I didn't—

I don't—

I didn't know, uh, the entirety of the history. Um, I will say since game 2, um, with Orlando I've thought this Orlando's been super live and I'm sure we were covering it. Yeah. In the, in the portion with CR. So I won't elaborate right now. Okay.

Zach wants to know, for all the times you mentioned people saying Denver beat no one on the way to their championship in '23. I mentioned I didn't say I felt this way, but this is a thing that people are saying now that Denver's only won one title. They didn't beat anyone that year. Zach wants us to remember that all the experts Nuggets picked both the Lakers and the Suns to win the West that year, and the Suns team was allegedly stacked. And the whole reason I started listening to your podcast in the first place is you were the only voice outside Denver that genuinely believed the Nuggets could win. I just feel like I need to defend our only championship as we potentially fall apart this year. Hey, it is one of those stupid narratives because Denver was not on the radar like that, and people did think it was going to be Lakers. I don't remember what the Suns-Nuggets line was that series, but I think people felt like that was gonna be even. Right?

I loathe this. I loathe it. That is to say, the storyline about a team with an undeserved NBA championship outcome. The only one within modern era that you could possibly take issue with, poke holes in, is the bubble. The summer camp. The summer camp championship that the Lakers won. That's exactly right.

I mean, did you see everything else?

Come on.

Did you see what Davis said about that? He felt like they didn't even really totally win, and it was so weird there. And well, that's just completely different.

That sounds like every other Davis. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. Um, shocker.

No, I thought, I thought Denver, you know, when they played Miami, Miami was like a giant killer at that point. They'd taken out a lot of good teams, and you could make the case that the only thing you could really ding Denver on, it's not their fault, was Dragic got hurt. And Dragic wasn't the same in the Finals. And I think that would've been a really live Finals for Miami if Dragic is healthy. I don't know if they would've won.

We have examples of teams that suffer an injury in that way, you know, either as the Finals get started during the course of the Finals that the NBA history is replete with those examples. Denver earned that title. It was legit. They— that's how I feel. You can pave it however, you know, say, oh, the path because they encountered this and that, like every Every champion of the last 50 years has those kinds of—

and by the way, if we're going to do that with teams and pick the '24 Celtics or another team, we're like, whoa, who'd they play? If we're going to do that with half the titles, then we should swing the other way and we should talk about the 2011 Mavericks title reverentially, where they went through every good team in the West. I think they were underdogs. They, they beat Portland in a series they were down on. They swept the Lakers, they beat OKC, and then when OKC was really scary, and then, right, upset this Miami team that everybody thought, everybody thought was gonna win 8 straight titles, then we should talk about Dirk reverentially. We should talk about the 2011 Mavs all the time. You can't have it both ways.

That's fine.

All roads aren't equal.

We, we, but they're all hard. I mean, I'm not, why, why were you trying to win 16 playoff games? Yeah, it's hard to win 16 playoff games.

We're on the same page with that.

I don't wanna get into the business of of, of, uh, yeah, we're on the same side. Yeah.

Because if you look at OKC this year, they get Phoenix in round 1, they're gonna get Lakers, Rockets, you know, that winner in round 2, and then, um, you know, potentially San Antonio, uh, Denver, Nuggets, whatever happens, right? And yeah, maybe who knows if one of those teams is even going to be fully healthy in that series. So I don't know, you could do this all the time. This one I did not know about, and I checked today and it was not a big deal. It was, it was brought to my attention by Dave Workman, who said, did you hear Jay Moore's latest pod with Vlad Divac? Now there is a really funny part of this where Vlad explains why they took Marvin Bagley over Luka, because they already had this leader in De'Aaron Fox who was happy to be in a small market, and he thought Luka was a big market guy. It might not be a fit. It's— it was like insane. It was like he had 6 years to workshop it. Anyway, Dave says, obviously he's married to Jeannie Buss. When they were talking about Luka, he said, quote, I knew about the Luka trade for like 6 weeks because of Jeannie.

Had to keep my mouth shut. And I was like, don't trade AD, that's crazy. And then he asked thoughts. Okay, so this goes back to a great Conspiracy Bill thing. That I've even tried to badger, uh, Rich Paul, who does a podcast for The Ringer, about— I feel like way more people than everyone claims knew about this Luka trade. I'm just always going to believe—

you've been saying it from the very beginning.

I'm always going to say it. I'm always going to— Cuban pretends he didn't know, uh, the Dumonts pretended they didn't know until the last minute. Jason Kidd, who I wouldn't say has like an awesome truth history. Um, he claimed he didn't know. JJ Redick said he knew at the last second.

Um, it was basically every single person so far. I believe JJ the most.

And I think Genie even said, yeah, we didn't know until the last second. Well, now your boyfriend just went on a— or now your husband went on a podcast and said he knew for 6 weeks.

So I mean, the proof was in the pudding. You spelled it out immediately. AD waved the trade kicker. And that's it. That's all you need to know.

And he waived the trade kicker almost overnight for reasons that remain unclear because he was fine with the trade because he wasn't 100% happy in LA. And I just, I, I, what would you say over-under people that know? I'm going, if I give you over-under 9.5, would you go over or under?

I thought you were going to set it at 15.5 because think about everybody in that on the two ownership groups, right? Those ownership groups are, uh, you know, have minority owners, whatever.

Yeah.

Uh, 9.5 is an over for me.

Okay. This is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. A fantastic email from Fergus Collins.

All right, Fergus.

I'm from Ireland. I mostly follow Irish sports, but I'm also a Celtics fan. Hmm. Why does following Rory McIlroy and following the Celtics feel like the exact same emotional rollercoaster? They both give me the most hope for success to a fan while also giving me the greatest chance of a dramatic collapse. The Celtics lost two 20-point leads against the Knicks last year. McIlroy ties the round with Scottie in the 18th Ryder Cup. The Heat upset the Celtics in the playoffs. Rory throws a 4-shot final round lead in the Masters in 2011, going up 6 on Saturday in Augusta. Countless articles about how no golfer has ever surrendered a major. Then he's talking about the Celtics favored to win the East, scrappy team but always blows lead. He goes on and on and he said, uh, How did I end up with both of these people in my life? Basically, it's great analogy. 'Cause Rory is the most talented. I mean, other than Scotty, he's the most talented golfer.

Yeah. And it's always like, I feel for the last 20 years, he's, he's really, you know, he's been in that upper, upper, upper echelon.

And he, the greatest enemy to Rory is himself. And in a lot of ways I felt the same way about the Celtics the last few years. Even the other night in Portland, in, uh, in Philly when they're up up in Game 4 by 25, and I'm like, I'm fucking— I'm— I still have my seatbelt on. I'm fully prepared for them to just take 10 terrible threes in a row, and all of a sudden we're up 7. There's something about their style of play, I just never feel safe, which I think is exactly the same feeling as Rory. So I actually think everybody's really good.

It's great. No, never feel safe with Rory, any lead whatsoever. I mean, going to bed, uh, Friday night with that 6-stroke lead, you know, the conversations in my threads were like, you know, how, how is this gonna get tightened up? We, we all know that, that it's, you know, that the 6 strokes are gonna evaporate by hook or by crook. The only thing I wonder about, and it is a tremendous job by Fergus, Rory has an element of unmet potential because there was a 10-year gap between the majors that he won. Was there a point since, you know, the Celtics won in '24, so they finally got the Jays the championship, but it felt like that was on time. It didn't feel like the Jays should have won a championship earlier than that to me.

No, they should have won in '22. They just weren't ready to win it.

Yeah, I agree.

They were better. They had a better Curry. Just that was Curry and the Warriors infrastructure and the Celtics not being ready yet. But I think if you wa— go back and watch those games, it's like, oh my God, how did they not pull this off? It was just Curry was the know-how. You couldn't compete with it.

That's right. I agree.

20 in the bubble is interesting because I don't think they were really ready that year and they had the Kemba Walker piece of it, but they really went toe to toe with all those teams that year. And that was easily one that could have made the finals. And then '18, that game 7 against Cleveland. Where, you know, one of LeBron's greatest games ever, he plays all 48 minutes and it's basically just LeBron against the Celtics. What did they miss? 100 threes. So they would've made the finals. So, okay. If you say this whole run from when they got Al Horford all the way to now, and it's basically they've only made the finals twice, I would say that's a slight underachievement for the potential.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because I mean, you would point to, for Rory, the US Open that he coughed up against Bryson when Bryson snatched it, you know, on, on the 18th hole with Rory missing a short putt. Or Rory lost the Open Championship. Cam Smith a couple years ago shot a super low score and Rory couldn't get any birdies to roll in. So was right there on a Sunday on the back nine of those championships and couldn't get it, get it across the line. Okay.

And last year too, like they blow two 20-point leads to the Knicks and then Tatum gets hurt and they, you know, squander that series. Indiana ends up making it and taking OKC to 7 and OKC's young and not totally ready yet. And who knows what the Celtics would've been, but I, I think that's a, I think that's a good analogy. I think we're gonna look back at how they had Tatum and Brown basically coming in at the same time a year apart, which is impossible now in this day and age to keep two guys like that who are that expensive together. But they also had cap space and a great GM and like, man, they only made two finals. That's why I think there's some pressure on them this year.

That's a great point.

You know what I mean?

It's like, wow, why didn't they make more finals than that?

We had these two guys the whole time. It's important. Speaking of Tatum, Xavier in New York says, Dante DiVincenzo, they said he already went full Tatum surgery. Are we at the point where that should just be what it's called? Like how Tommy John became TJ, tear it, fix it immediately, no debate. Tatum bounced back. Have we now created the JT surgery? Because so much of it depends on how fast players get it after they tear their Achilles. You have to repair it immediately. You have a better chance to come back. Will this be called the Tatum surgery?

I can't stand for it. And it's not because I have any particular feelings for the player that I think it's appropriately assigned to. But we lived through it with Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers was threatening coming back and playing football games, you know, the season right after.

But he got a different— Aaron Rodgers got the different surgery though. He got the quickie surgery. Tatum got the one where he did it immediately. Yeah, but he got the one that allowed him to come back faster. Tatum got the one where they did the full heel, but they did it within 10 hours of the injury, and they feel like that allowed it to come back 100%. I do feel like he might have— the doctor who did it might have created some new version of this. All right. I don't know. I'm willing. I don't like having Tatum's name involved with the surgery is my least favorite part of this.

How long did it take Kobe? I feel like Kobe was his, his comeback.

Then he got hurt again.

Okay.

Yeah. He came back, but then hurt something else. I threw this at Zach. I wanted to get your take from Rob from Pensacola. Could you consider renaming the Ewing Theory after Trae Young? Got a few of these about the Hawks without Trae Young are eligible. And my, my take was pretty steadfast. Like he wasn't good enough to be eligible for the Ewing Theory. And I don't feel like anybody thought the Hawks were screwed when they traded him. You, you're, you're down with that, right? No.

And also I feel like an element of the Ewing Theory includes a kind of immediacy. Like the player is supposed to be part of your plan and the player is lost and you're not—

like Edwards getting hurt right now. Minnesota makes the Finals without Edwards. That's the Ewing theory.

That would be the Ewing theory. Exactly. Trae Young had already been marginalized. Like the direction of the team with the trades that they made, the acquisitions, the offseason acquisitions, the direction of the team. They were looking to— I feel like they knew what they had with Trae. It would— they, you know the answer to this because they didn't extend him. Like, if they— he was the most important player to them, then they would have extended him. So I, I don't ever criticize anyone for trying, you know, let's, let's be creative here, everybody's innovating with, with the theory. But I feel like we have to visit first.

Yeah, don't forget what the bones of it are, which was a superstar that the media felt, um, was the single biggest reason the team would win the title. Gets hurt, everybody writes off, gets hurt or traded or whatever. Everybody writes off the team and then they do better without him. Yes. That is fundamentally what the Ewing theory is. Edwards would be an example. Another one would be like if Jalen Brunson sprained an ankle or something and all of a sudden the Knicks started running stuff through towns and were much better with, without Brunson basically. And we were like, whoa, it's a different Knicks team, but are they better? And that would be an example of the Ewing theory. Like, oh my God, we're so screwed. We don't have Brunson and then he's better.

And it would be the Knicks. I mean, that would be pretty interesting.

Or if the Celtics last year, if Tatum had got hurt and they came back from 3-1 and made the Finals and then—

Sure.

Yeah, sure. That's, that, it has to be that level of player. Will Hanselman from Chicago writes, I didn't know this. He said a lot of people talk about Ripken's consecutive games played, a streak that you love dearly, or Wilt's 100. I will always think the most unbelievable sports stat is LeBron averaging 27, 7, and 7 over 1,600+ games. But never playing a single game that had the stat line 27-7-7. I feel like it's more likely his points record gets broken than whatever the hell that record is. It's the perfect metaphor for a guy whose historical consistency never stops changing and evolving. I had no way to look this up because I'm not smart enough, but if this is true, if he never actually had a 27-7-7 while averaging 27-7-7 every year, That's fucking crazy. That's the single— that's crazier than Bam's 83-point game. So please, can somebody tell us once and for all if that is true?

Get somebody to look that up.

How is that possible?

27-7-7 for all the games that he played? When you think about it, he made 8 straight finals. So you're not just talking about regular season games, you're talking about playoff series after playoff series after— and they weren't like, you know, 4-0s or 4-1s. Like, that's a lot of games to not get a 27-7-7.

It can't be true. John Palmer asks, you'll love this one, will pulling a Paul George become a thing? Every aging star dealing with injuries should be taking tons of alleged HGH and other alleged banned substance to get stronger and recover faster. The penalty if caught is a 20+ game mid-season vacation, which you probably would've missed anyway via load management, leaving you more time to recover and train. They come back healthier and better just in time to spin up for the playoffs. They're giving up money, of course, but what were the other negative consequences for Paul George? Again, this is from John Palmer. So here's the thing, Paul George has looked really good in this Sixers-Celtics series. Like, he— I talked to this with Zach on Sunday Night. It's like, I feel like he's resuscitated his trade value. So he cost himself, what, $10 million with the suspension, but he's resuscitated himself as an asset. Whereas in March with Big Waz, he was the second pick in our worst contracts draft, I don't think he would be the second pick anymore. So I, I, I love the concept of pulling a Paul George in general and trying to guess who would do this next year.

It's like, oh, Zach Levine, he's pulling a Paul George.

No, it's gotta be somebody good who needs the rest. Somebody like Draymond, like someone.

Yeah.

Yeah. Somebody who needs it in their 30s. We're in that stretch right before the playoffs. That would be to me, if you're looking for an opportunity for there to be genuine salary cap circumvention, uh, that would be one where the team and the player and its representatives are all like, you know, if you felt like— you felt like just taking a look— because like, in terms of, of NBA, um, public consumership, I feel like it's, it's— I— you don't get as mad at the player for, oh, he got popped for, for a piss test as opposed to he's sitting out deliberately because he's resting up for the playoffs. I feel like it gives you a pass a little bit to fail the piss test.

Plus, he brilliantly played the mental health card immediately, right? When he came back, people were like, "Okay, didn't realize." And that was it. Like, Barry Bonds was like, "Fuck! Why didn't I know that in 2004?" If only.

If only he knew. Yeah.

I was thinking of some of the best pulling a blanks ever, and I think my favorite one is Vince Vaughn in Swingers. Saying, I want to grab two cocktail waitresses to pull me a Fredo, or whatever he said. Like, the pulling a Fredo was my favorite pull in a— but pulling a Paul George, pretty good. And now it's time for a new segment called Era Comp. It is brought to you by New Era, the official cap of the NBA. Today's players, I know they're incredible. It's also important to recognize the legends who shaped the game we're watching today. As you know, I love to do this on my podcast constantly, bring up the past, bring up the history, everything. The New Era NBA Hardwood Classics collection celebrates a lot of those iconic moments and players who made, um, that era unforgettable. So let's put the era side by side, the '80s and now. Um, they wanted me to pick a top player now and compare him to a player in the '80s. And this is a little unconventional, but I think there's a lot of Jokic and late '80s Magic Johnson who— Magic Johnson was allegedly a point guard.

He really wasn't. He couldn't guard the other point guard on the other team. He controlled the game. He could post up. He did a lot of stuff with his back to the basket. He controlled the pace of the game. Unbelievable passer. He could score 37 points in a game. He could score 20. He could have 20 assists in a game. He could have 8. He could rebound. He could get triple doubles and was just all over every single game offensively. And I think Joker, even though he is a center, when I watch them, they really remind me of each other.

I—

Joker is like the the kind of spawn of Bird and Magic, but really closer to the late '80s Magic side, I think, is the comp. And when I watch Joker, it's hard not to think of late '80s Magic, as Kareem is bald and old, and everything had to run through Magic. Anyway, you can relive vintage logos and timeless icons with the New Era NBA Hardwood Classics collection. Headwear available in a wide range of fitted and adjustable styles. I'm personally an adjustable guy because I have a giant head. As well as Hardwood Classics Apparel. Here's what you have to do. You have to visit neweracap.com/ringer. That is neweracap.com/ringer. And you could shop now and you can use one-time code RINGER for 20% off your first order. Go do it. D Bob in New York, he says, I think the streaming resolution— I'm sorry, the streaming revolution of the last 7 years Was secretly pushed by big advertisement. Before streaming, I never watched a commercial in my life. When the game went to break, I flipped channels. If I was watching on DVR, I fast forwarded. Now I'm taking every second of commercials in because it takes too long to get out of the Amazon or Peacock app.

Thoughts?

It is true. D Bob is, is on the money here. I don't, I can't touch it.

We're on Peacock. First of all, if you leave Peacock, you can't get back for another 7 minutes. It's, it's like It's, it's, it auto locks you out.

I had no, I thought it was me. I thought that, you know, uh, I, I'm a pretty caveman TV person. Yeah. So I thought it was because I'm using the internet to pull up my streaming, my streamers are all—

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. I'm doing it. And I thought, oh, I must be the only moron who can't switch from there to, you know, what ESPN to see what's going on in the, in the hockey game because it will take me, you know, another 4 and a half minutes just to get over to ESPN.

So good.

This makes me feel better.

These sports on streamers, I think there's been some real ramifications that we weren't really fully able to assess until these playoffs started. Because, like, when Netflix had the Christmas games, it's like, cool, I'll just pop over and check out the Christmas game, or I'll watch the Christmas game. But now, in late April, when there's hockey and basketball and baseball on, you really want the ability to maneuver around. And unless, like, thank God for me, I have multiple TVs and I can keep stuff on.

But if you— thank God for you.

But if you're a college kid, you have one TV, or if you're at a bar, like, if you're— like, somebody was telling me in New York—

you're at a bar, you can go from that portion of where that TV over to this portion where the other TV is.

Somebody was telling me at a bar in New York they could only have the Amazon on one, one of like the 8 TVs because they lock you out after, after it's 3 devices. So the other 7 TVs were like tied to ESPN and baseball, and, and there was like the one Amazon TV. And I was like, that makes sense. Makes sense. Like, I can't even watch Amazon with my dad and my daughter hopping on my Amazon at the same time. We really— this is— we need a sports bar, SportsR to really figure all of this out because I just feel like Amazon should relax the device thing for the playoffs. And Peacock, same thing, where it should just be like, during the playoffs, 25 people can use my Peacock or my Amazon. And, and then bar, or maybe bars get a special exemption. I don't know. There's got to be a better way to do this.

There's got to be a better way to do this. I just want the back function. How do I get the back function restored? I can't have two TVs every game though. Yes.

Today, that— or Tuesday— Monday's game, the first one ended on Peacock and I wanted to go backwards out of it.

Yeah.

And it— I just went into an abyss on the TV. I was like, all of a sudden I was on like Pluto. I was like, what happened?

Yeah.

I just skidded sideways. Um, this email is no longer timely, but I really liked it and I feel like we gotta figure out how to use it anyway. I am a proud female listener and I have been riding hard for the pod for decades. Now to business. The playoffs start on April 17th and I need to know which matchups are you fully locked in for and which ones are you not, absolutely not drinking any fucking Merlot on? Do all 8 matchups have some Pinot in them, or do any qualify as a Merlot matchup? Maybe you can spend quality time with your family and miss one. And this is written by Nicole, quotes BJ Diamond, in Larchmont, New York. I'm just reading the email. Tremendous. What was our— I like the idea of the Merlot matchup though. I think it was OKC Phoenix was our Merlot matchup. Definitely.

I, I, I'm only interested in that to, to get a gage on whether I'm gonna live bet the, the spread, the second half spread or the fourth quarter. Is, is OKC gonna cover? How am I gonna live bet this? That's it. I would check in, do I wanna live bet it?

Eh. I did a FanDuel thing yesterday that actually hit where I had K 25+, Tobias 15+, OKC to win. Oh, that's fun. And Shai 25+. So I was rooting for Shai to score. And Shea had 5 points at the end of the first quarter. And it was really fun because it was like, all right, I'm probably safe here. It's, it's SGA. And then Shea just ripped off like 14 points in like 3 minutes. And it was like, this is great. I'm having so much fun. It is over. Yes.

Phoenix was very, very, very, uh, plucky. They were, they were in that.

But it was, it was a really fun way to watch the Merlot matchup between OKC and Phoenix. So next year I'm just gonna bet the over on Shea points, but I like the Berlo matchup cuz we don't have NBA TV anymore. So we needed somebody to replace NBA TV.

And it really only applies to round 1, right? Cuz we're not gonna have every matchup in round 2 is gonna be a delight, an absolute full, full-on banger. Big, big reds. We're going to big red land, aren't we?

Yeah. Well, Lakers, OKC, if Luka's not back will be interesting to watch, but I—

isn't Reeves likely to be back.

I understand they're not beating— okay, no, they would need injuries on the OKC side. Um, Braden from New Brunswick, Canada checked the average Roger Goodell hug time for the first rounds of 2026 and 2015 and said, uh, my instinct, which I said on Thursday that I thought the hugs were getting longer, is correct in '26. The average hugs were 4 seconds and 10 years older, there were 2 seconds. And he wonders if this doubles each decade going forward in 2036, 8-second hugs. Now he sent this before, um, the guy who stayed in the green room the whole time, didn't get picked, the nose tackle, and then got picked and came out at a 19-second hug with Goodell. So that might've even bumped the hug number.

But you know, that was emotional.

The move is somebody should come out and instead of going for the hug, just a firm handshake.

A firm handshake.

Like almost refuse the hug. I just would like to give you a business-like handshake. What, how would Goodell react? Would he pull the guy in Trump style and like just maul him? What would he do?

Yeah, it feels like, I mean, because Goodell isn't tiny. He's not, you know, he doesn't, he's not dwarfed by these guys. I feel like, yeah, he wouldn't, he wouldn't tolerate it. As soon as he gets your hand, yeah, he's pulling you in.

He's Trump hugging you. Yeah.

Why do we, why, why, why are the hugs longer though? What's the explanation for that?

I don't know.

Oh, I thought that's where we were headed on this whole topic.

Well, you know, the hugs are twice as long as they were 10 10 years ago. So why?

Because Roger's more comfortable. He's like, I own all this shit. I, I, I am the man in charge. Let me ask you, you want to hug me?

Who have you hugged for more than 2 seconds in the last 10 years that was a friend of yours?

I'm not at liberty to discuss this. I mean, wait a minute, a friend of mine?

Yeah, a friend, a male friend.

Uh, like, I've had some very—

when you saw the Holy Cross guys, like Joey on Happy—

let me think about it.

When you saw Finney and the Holy us guys, did you have a 4-second hug with anyone?

You go like this hug and then you go to the arm around each other. Yeah, those lasted.

But you didn't go 4-second full body hug with anyone, right?

No, no, no, no, no, not, not, not, not, you know, not junk to junk.

I think the guys, it's like, it's like the quick, quick hug and then the backhand shake.

You're tight. And then, and then I like the arms around the shoulders.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you got some stuff to chop it up on.

The arms around the shoulder like extends the hug, but it's not like a full— nobody goes genital to genital. Which, that was what, that was my favorite.

He didn't do that.

Goodell didn't do that for 4 seconds with anybody.

Full straight on, like hugs. This is what, remember, this is my favorite NBA draft moment ever. Darius Miles and David Stern went full waist to waist, genitals to genitals hug for some reason. I need, it's one of the funniest photos of all time.

Let's get the clip. Let's run the clip.

Listener Bill Doll. Bill said, I am a Wizards season ticket holder.

I'm sorry, Bill.

My hot take is that LeBron is coming to DC this summer.

And no, he's not.

Here's the evidence. He was incredibly complimentary of the Wizards young core on Steve Nash's podcast. I like that he called it Steve Nash's podcast. It's LeBron and Steve Nash podcast. Um, number 2, he was seen hanging out with Jaden Daniels post-Lakers game. Number 3, He's a good fit with Trey and Anthony Davis, his old buddy.

Okay.

It's LeBron's team. Nobody's else. Number 4, shifting the Michael-LeBron narrative by actually winning in DC somewhere Michael couldn't even make the playoffs in.

Ah, that's good.

Could not play in the GOAT combo. Great job. Now that this is spoken to the ethos, it won't happen, but maybe those of us up in the 400s will actually get some decent basketball. here in the nation's capital. A guy can dream. I like the MJ angle. MJ finished here. I did too. And I made the conference finals with Anthony Davis and Trae Young. It is kind of fun. It would—

I mean, that team with him on it, they would be better than any team that MJ played with during MJ's era.

Here, can we talk it out for a second? So you'd have Trae Young, Anthony Davis, LeBron James, Alex Sar. And who's your shooting guard? Who the shooting— it can't be Koulibaly, right? He can't.

Keyshawn George. Keyshawn George.

Yeah, we like him. Yeah.

Yeah. He's, he's good. We do with, we like him with good reason.

And a little Trey off the bench.

Yep.

I don't know. That could be, I could talk myself into 45 wins.

It's a, it's a low 40s. Yeah. To 45. It's, it's a, it could win a, they could win a round in the playoffs.

His goal could be like, look, this, this LeBron versus MJ thing I brought to the table. I've played way longer. I threw an alley-oop to my son in a playoff game, and now I've won a round 1 series in Washington. I've done 3 things Michael Jordan couldn't do. Also, I was never maybe secretly suspended by David Stern because of gambling. So there's 4.

Great, great point.

Speaking of conspiracies, this is from Peter L. Assume the conspiracy theory that the NBA draft lottery is rigged is real, and you've just been appointed league commissioner with these powers. How are you arranging the first 4 picks in the upcoming draft lottery? Wow. It's a great, great question.

We had this conversation, what was it, a month ago? Yeah. Who did we say was going to be the funniest to win?

Well, Golden State.

Oh, Golden State.

Yeah. Um, I'm gonna—

well, that's not the funniest. That, that's an actual genuine, like, that's a conspiracy because that's what he's saying.

So, all right, so I get the commissioner job. I'd obviously immediately hire you as my Mark Tatum. I'd let you announce all the second round picks. And now to announce the second round, Joe House. Um, so the lottery teams we have I'll just give you the top 12. Well, I'll give you all of them. Wash— this is in order of 1 to 14 for odds.

Yeah.

So Washington, Indiana, and Brooklyn all have 14%. Utah, Sacramento, 11.5%. Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago, Milwaukee, Golden State, OKC— they're out, not fixing anything for them. They're too good already. They don't need the help. Miami and Charlotte. So if we're rigging this, Golden State has to be in the top 4 because it's our last chance to save Steph. So it's more a question of who is the best guy for him to play with, and I actually think it's Caleb Wilson.

Wow. Okay.

So I'm happy just putting them at 4 so they end up with Caleb Wilson, even though I'm becoming increasingly concerned he could go— not for him, but for, for the Boozer family. I think he's gonna leapfrog Boozer. I his tape is too crazy. Like, I really think you'd have to— if we were in the room, I feel like we would spend enough time scouting these tapes and at some point look at each other and be like, we gotta take Wilson. Like, this guy is a fucking freak, man.

I watched so much Boozer and he was so tough. I thought he was NBA ready every time I watched him play. I understand the limitations. I think there's a ceiling, right?

He would— he is not the guy I would have for Golden That's totally fair.

That makes tons of sense.

All right, so we'll put Golden State 4 and we'll give them Wilson. So now we have 3 teams before. Can we— Charlotte has 2.4% odds, but can we have them jump to 3 and take Boozer?

Oh, oh wow. Wow.

Right?

That's pretty good.

LaMelo, Khan, Bridges, Boozer, and And who am I leaving out?

That's pretty good.

Who am I leaving out? Oh, and Brandon Miller. And then Diabate, that's a fun team.

Diabate, that's who I was thinking of.

Atlanta at 2, I was thinking because of Peterson. Adding Peterson to what they have now as like the CJ McCollum understudy, eventually moving in. It's not gonna matter if he doesn't have personality because that team has a lot of personalities already.

The New Orleans pick, that'd be the New Orleans pick.

Atlanta moves up, so I'm thinking them at 2. And then number 1, like, why not, why not Joe House? Why not Washington? Why can't you have the Bansa? Why not?

I would definitely fix it for me, that goes without saying.

But I think the Bansa, that's— it's the most fun teams for him would be Washington or Utah for him to go in right away. And then in this scenario, the Clippers get the 5th pick, and that would be really fun too. And Indiana Indiana would not get any of the top 4 picks, right?

Because 5 to 9, the Clippers keep it. Is that what it is?

Basically 5 or 6, they keep it. It can't go lower than 6. Now I do feel— I do love Indiana and I'd feel bad if they didn't get the pick, but I don't know.

Did they put the protection on it then? They shouldn't have put that protection.

Yeah. Also, why did you give up all of that for Zubats? It was a lot.

I think it's going to be awesome on that.

I know, but that's a top 4 pick in this draft. Yeah, I, I don't know. Now that we're here and that they could actually lose the pick, this draft is fucking incredible.

It's gonna be really good.

Um, the other one I was thinking, Clippers getting Aikoff or something. Well, the other thing you could do, you put Indiana in that Darren Peterson spot at 2, and then you put Atlanta 5th, and Atlanta gets our guy Aikoff at 5.

Mm-hmm.

Who I think the combination of Akuffe and Atlanta, his name ends with first letter is an A. There's like some A, AA stuff.

Okay.

His game in Atlanta.

Yeah. Yeah.

It could be really special.

Yeah. Like I feel like he'd be a hero in Atlanta pretty quickly and they can run. I mean, they can definitely run.

So is that our answer for the fixing?

Do it again. I, I, I'm, I think I agree.

Dubançon.

I know I agree with Washington.

Dubançon 1 to Washington. Peterson to Indiana 2. Boozer to Charlotte, 3. Um, and then Golden State gets, gets Wilson at 4.

Atlanta at 5.

Atlanta at 5 takes Acuff. And then there's one more team I wanted to take care of.

Oh, we better go bet this.

No, number 6, Dallas has to get top 6 because they need to get either Acuff or, uh, or Wagler from Illinois.

I want, I want Dallas to fuck off. I'd like to invite the Dallas Mavericks organization.

Oh, their fans are like so traumatized. Come on.

I understand. This isn't, they, they, they already, all right.

So that'll be our top 5.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Good question. Glad we talked that one out. Corey writes in, I'm 25 years old from the Bay Area and a lifelong Warriors fan trying to come to grips with the fact that Steph Curry will be retiring sooner than later. My basketball life will be changed forever unless the Expendables happens. I imagine this is similar to how you felt when Larry Bird was nearing the end of his career. What advice do you have for coping with the loss of one of the greats? House was in my place a couple times in the mid-'90s when I would break out old Bird Celtics tapes because the Celtics were so depressing. It was all I had to go back and watch old playoff games. And honestly, Corey, welcome to your future. If it gets super depressing with the Warriors, all you have are the old tape. And reliving Curry games. And I had a 2.5-foot bong at the time. That was really helpful. Um, to get super baked and watch old Celtic games and pretend they're happening live. I've talked about that, but that would be my advice. That's, that's what the post-career— because you're never— it's just never going to happen again.

This is once in a generation you get somebody like that. You're never—

and, and, you know, you, you look at it so fondly. You say, I can't believe I was so lucky to, to enjoy that. And you, in the same way that that Corey's being prepared. I mean, Steph is missing big chunks of, of regular seasons now. Yeah. Um, and, and, you know, Bird was, was so broken at the end.

Right. We knew. Yeah, we knew. We knew. Um, Paul and I got a few people who mentioned, and this has been on the internet too, Tatum, Halliburton, Lillard, and DiVincenzo all had the number zero and all tore their Achilles.

Okay. Do you have to be zero?

From—

did not.

Do you have to be crazy at this point to have number 0? Is this like a jinx number? Would you change your number if you were a 0 at this point?

I, you know, I, I was making the joke about Gilbert Arenas as Agent Zero, but he did have a debilitating leg injury.

Yeah. What's up with 0?

And the Wizards did give him a giant extension anyway.

Are there any more zeros right now?

I mean, the answer's definitely yes.

Oh no. Tyrese Maxey's a zero.

Oh, okay. The offseason number change. We need it.

He needs to give birth. Christian Brown, um, Koulibaly on your team. I, I'm just out on zero. Don't get rid of the zero. We've seen too much damage at this point. Um, Kelly from Iowa, I know you'd like this one. Kelly from Iowa wants to know, can we please have Babydoll get Waymo to sponsor Tiger Woods? Come on, baby, who loses here? I love the idea of Babydoll taking on Tiger Woods as a client. And trying to keep it low and, and making, but just calling different people in his life and making it seem like you were the only person he's told. And meanwhile, he would tell 150 people in 5 hours.

Everybody would know. And there'd be pictures of Tiger in a Waymo.

I do like, why couldn't Waymo offer Tiger like $50 million to be the first Waymo sponsor? It's actually a great idea.

That, that is, is kind of brilliant. I mean, you know, We have to get to the point where we can have a little bit of a chuckle, maybe. I mean, it's tough to have a sense.

We obviously just reached it right now. Like, let's—

I don't know, let's—

a little Waymo sponsor for him. Um, Chase from Canton, Ohio— I didn't know about this— said the Cavs had a social media playoff theme in 2026 that they called Be the Fucking Difference for their fans.

Oh, okay.

But they blotted out all the letters in fucking. And just kept the C. So the t-shirts read, be the C diff. And then apparently C diff is the shorthand for Clostridioides difficile, which is a bacterial infection, severe watery diarrhea and abdominal pain. One of the most known treatments is mixing your poop with the poop of someone you share bacteria with. Oh no. Uh, is into a dried up poop pellet they put in your stomach. I'm not even joking. Wants to know, where does this stand in your pyramid of poop jokes? How could the Cavs win the title with the postseason theme of Be the C-Diff? And would anything funny have ever happened? You know what would actually be funnier is if they got bounced in round 1 after Be the C-Diff became a thing. Yeah, this is apparently— this is a thing that happened.

This is, is amazing. Poor Cleveland deserves— the fans deserve better. Now they did have LeBron for all the time that they had.

They did win the LeBron.

But you know, yeah.

So if you, if you Google this, the C diff, I can't believe they did that. How did they not Google that? Mitch from Carlsbad wants to know, you and Zach touched upon Kevin Durant's complicated legacy a bit on Sunday. Too often his Olympic performances aren't discussed and they should be. He was often the best player on the floor. He can be dinged for a lot of things, including leadership skills, lack of the same team jumping. But I do think his Olympic performances should be mentioned. You agree?

Me too, totally agree with this. And, and the same goes for, for Melo. Like, part of what, uh, you know, when those guys play with their peers and their peers find them and their peers, you know, revere the, the performance at that level, uh, and let them, you know, sort of take over the way that they have, that, that to me just says so much about, um, you know, who that player is in their era. Yeah. And so KD's ability to do it across— what is it, 5 golds? Is that what he ended up with? That, that, that is something that needs to be mentioned. It's a top line on the resume for me. One of the top 4 lines on the resume.

Maybe his legacy is he couldn't play in the bachelor party, and he might have been a wild card at the bachelor party, but there's a bunch of different scenarios where he would have been really fun at the bachelor party.

The MVP of the bachelor party.

He might have been the MVP of the bachelor party. Didn't plan it, didn't pick the location. You had to kind of fight for him to get there, but then he was tremendous for 2 straight days.

Yeah. Elevated everybody. Elevated the whole thing.

But if you put him in charge, it might not have gone great.

Sure.

That's fair.

We've all got friends like that.

We'll never go to a bachelor party again. We, we don't know.

Says who says who? I don't—

we'd have to have somebody our age divorced.

Second marriage. Yeah.

Well, is this second marriage? Do second marriage people have a bachelor party?

I sure hope so. I haven't been invited to one, but I would go.

Chris wants to know, is Ime Udoka getting himself fired the most underrated key to Boston's continued success? I can only imagine how quickly he would've mentally broken and buried Cato, Walsh, and Shireman, and how the Celtics offense would look with Chris Boucher and Xavier Tillman standing around while Tatum and Brown played iso ball. The Rockets are a bad sequel to the '22 Celtics in the Finals. Now, I don't think that's totally fair 'cause they did make the Finals. They did have some good wins. The offense was really rough and we blamed Tatum and Brown a lot. And now we're watching the Rockets basically do the exact same thing. Game 4, Zach and I talked about on Sunday, was the first time they actually were like, hey, we should maybe attack Luke Kinnard and spread out. And, and it, it was pretty bad. What was your email take?

Well, I honestly, though, the longer this has gone on, I'm subscribing to the theory that there is, there is some dysfunction in the, in the decision-making. Guys are not all on the same page inside the building at Houston because the Reed Sheppard bit is, is inexplicable. Our guy Raheem Palmer has been loudly all season long saying you got to get Sheppard his minutes. It doesn't matter. Whether, you know, how you feel about his, his contribution. He needs to be ready for right now because Houston, for whatever reason, thought they could, they could play this season without a point guard. I do want to go back, by the way, you guys, you and Zach on Sunday's show, in, in entirely appropriately giving CJ McCollum his flowers. You, me, and Zach sat in your studio and I said, hey, Houston, go get CJ mother effing McCollum. These are going to be available for the season October October of 2025, and look at this guy in the playoffs. But be that as it may, Ime, to me, like, we— even as early as November, you're watching end-of-game sequences and it didn't make sense who was getting the ball.

It didn't make sense the way the rotations were playing. I feel like there's something going on inside that building where personnel, uh, and, and Ime are not on the same page.

Yeah, I would look at it when you're talking about point guards that you know you're gonna need in the playoffs. It's almost like scuba diving where you need to get you X amount of hours to become an official scuba diver that can go 100 feet under the sea or whatever it is.

Yeah.

I don't scuba dive as you can tell, but whatever it is, it's like you can't do this until you've had this number of hours of instruction and now you're finally allowed to go below this level.

Your body's gotta acclimate to the pressure.

All of it.

Yeah.

To me it's like, I know it's probably gonna be frustrating, not that fun to play this guy at 25 to 30 minutes a game, but you're going to have to do it because in April this is gonna be your one chance to do anything 'cause Fred VanVleet's not coming back.

Yeah.

The crazier thing though is that they didn't trade for Dusunmu or Kobe White. I just don't understand the thinking behind that.

Nothing at the trade deadline.

I mean, the Pistons too. We said this at the time when the Pistons were like, Kevin Huerter, we're good. It's like, you're not necessarily good.

Doesn't feel like enough. Yeah.

Last question. This is from Chris Krause, who for some reason was thinking of car-centric movies that I could parody with Kahn Canipple. Feel free to add your own, he said, but here are the ones he came up with. Driving Miss Daisy. Instead of solving racism, Bill teaches Kahn the value of 1980s pop culture and why being on his phone less and allowing himself to be bored is good. Speed. Instead of having to keep the car at a set mile an hour, Bill and Kahn have to keep podcasting. What will run out first, their gas or list of topics? And then his last one, Collateral. Bill already has the silver-haired look, so he's obviously the Tom Cruise assassin. But in this scenario, it's Khan realizing Bill is driving to the houses of his least favorite internet trolls. Close shot of Khan looking terrified as Bill beats a keyboard warrior to death with a copy of The Book of Basketball. If any of these are made, I only request producer credit. House? Yep. These are my listeners. This guy wants me to remake Collateral with Con Knieppel where I beat people to death with a book of basketball that trolled me on the internet.

Pretty phenomenal. I don't know where these questions come from, but I love all of them.

Great job, Krauss.

How did, how, uh, before we go, how do you feel about Sonny Stiles? You happy?

Oh, I'm over the moon. I just couldn't believe that he fell to 7 for this one. I mean, this is why I'm out here repping. On the squad. I think what Washington did on defense, and Stiles is a perfect fit for our new defensive coordinator, the guy from Minnesota. He's so versatile, he's so fast, he's so athletic. It's going to be a great fit. He's already, you know, the team has already embraced him. Amazing job.

Two things dear to your heart, where he was the only one that noticed the $100 at the end of the playbook allegedly and mailed it back.

Great story.

Whether it's true or not, great story. And then unbelievable high school basketball mixtape.

Oh, outrageous.

You love nothing more than that. The football player high school mixtape on repeat.

I, I made my—

Drake May had one, you went nuts, and you didn't even pick Drake May.

But that, I mean, you know, that, that, that gives your, your, your brain like, oh, he could do all of these things. Look at this. It's great.

I really, if I was in the war room, I would really factor that in. In the high school basketball mixtape. Like, look how generous he is with the ball and his teammates. Like, this— maybe he'll be this way as a teammate.

It counts. It counts. I mean, Hoops IQ is not a small thing.

All right, House, thanks for doing the mailbag with me. I appreciate it.

Always a pleasure. Thank you for inviting.

See you on Fairway Rollin' and on the Ring of Gambling Show as well if you want to check out more House. Happy playoffs. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to House and CR. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahau. As well. Don't forget Ghostbusters. That is the new rewatchables and it's up and you can listen to it and you have 6 days to watch There's Something About Mary because that's going to be the next one. Um, I will see you on this feed on Thursday night. God only knows what's going to happen with the basketball these next couple nights, but we will have a big action-packed podcast on Thursday, probably taping at least the first part of it right after the game. So I will see See you on Thursday.

Go Suckers!

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