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We're coming to you live on Netflix between Game 2 and Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Adam Friedland coming up in a little bit. First time he's ever been on the BS Podcast. I'm excited to talk to him. I have a bunch of random reactions coming off Game 2 heading into the rest of this series. And because I'm an experienced professional who's had a podcast for over 20 years, I feel like I can do this on the fly. I wrote down a bunch of stuff. First of all, um, most incredible Knicks playoff win, Game 2, since LJ's 4-point play. Um, Brunson goes 7 for 25 for 20 points and they still win. They don't get a single call for 90 minutes other than a challenge that they challenged and won the challenge to get the OG3. They still win. They blow a 14-point lead in the last 6 minutes of Game 2. They still win. They have Towns absolutely destroying Wemby in the first half of the game to the point that at halftime Shaq and Kenny had to do like a long mea culpa. I was right there with them. You know, to cement his sudden arrival as one of the 12 most important guys in the league.
We will talk about that a little bit later. Yeah, Bridges leaving his own body and officially making everybody who's ever criticized what they gave up in that Nets trade, myself included, in the last year, just 'cause they gave up all the assets they would've needed to get Giannis. But who needs Giannis now? You're 2 wins away from the title. So you had this incredible Bridges game and then you had Wemby closing with a really horrific 3-point airball that got lost in what happened next. A horrible 2-for-1 fallaway 22-footer. The Spurs did 2 things in the last 40 seconds of this game that I hate. One is we gotta get a 2-for-1 and you end up getting a terrible shot. I'd rather just get one awesome shot. And then the foul to give, I just have always hated. And they did the foul to give, which of course when Wemby fouls Brunson with 10 seconds left, you have no foul to give and suddenly he's shooting free throws. You have an all-time iconic, people screaming out loud as it's happening, bad turnover with Wemby, which we'll get to in a second. You've already heard people talk about it for 2 days.
I have some additional thoughts. And then you have a wide open 18-foot miss from a 22-year-old guy that was actually a really good shot. The question is whether that's the right play in the right moment for somebody like that who's been kind of skidding backwards in the last 2 minutes of the game. But the Castle play, throwing the ball off his back, I think was the closest we've seen in the NBA to the Chris Webber timeout play in college against North Carolina for a bunch of reasons. One, the coach is standing next to Wemby and he's doing this. He's telling him to go, to push it, 'cause he doesn't want to call a timeout to set up a play. I don't know why he was so excited to have his 7'7" center dribbling the ball up with 10 seconds left in a must-win game. I probably would've rethought that. There's a great angle of Wemby from the other side, and he's got both of his point guards to his right. Doesn't even look at him, looks forward. Castle— I'm torn on this because I think Castle thinks Wemby's going to take the ball down, which he's done in the past, so he's starting to put his head down and run.
But I also feel like if you're a real point guard, you want the ball, you're going to come to the ball, you're ready for the ball, and Castle's You know, he's a guard, he's not a real point guard. If that's Fox or Harper, they're turning around, they're trying to get the ball from Wemby because they want the car keys in that moment. And it was just an absolute clusterfuck. And I kind of couldn't believe it as it was happening. It was, I think, one of the all-timers for an, oh no. And everybody had that reaction. There were great reactions that people captured all over the place. When I think about, you throw that play in and then how the game ended and just blowing an incredible comeback, the most damaging, non-clinching, non-injury finals of the last 50 years. So we're removing all the Game 7s, we're removing stuff like Halliburton last year against OKC, 'cause that's probably number one, like losing your best guy in a Game 7. I went to the J.R. Smith game in 2018, which was another, oh no. Where they get the rebound and just, okay, and you couldn't even believe it as it was happening.
The Ray Allen shot, Game 6, 2013 against Miami. Obviously I was at that game too. The crazy Celtics Game 4 comeback in 2008. The totality of coming back from 24 and then feeling like they completely broke the Lakers at the end. Wade Salvatore, Game 5. Miami-Dallas 2006. Now we've blended Game 3 and Game 5 together in our heads and just thought Miami got all the calls for both of those games. And they did get a lot of calls in Game 3. Game 3 was a much better game and also had, I think Dirk missed a big free throw at one point, but the Heat climbed back. A lot of people were involved. It was just more of a traditional awesome comeback. Game 5. Was, was pretty awful in the moment and culminated in Miami winning and Cuban doing the thing where he, he just stared at David Stern from the court. He was so angry. I wrote a very upset column about after that game. That was pretty egregious. And you just felt like, you felt like Dallas was done after that game. The Nick Anderson game, which a lot of people brought up in 1995, is another one.
The 4 missed free throws. I, I see the comparisons with the '95 Magic and this Spurs team, what happened, but you can't really compare those two games for this reason. The Magic had the game, it was over, and he missed four straight free throws, and three and four were like you're watching somebody's career flash before their eyes. And when he missed it, then it goes into OT, I think, and then they, they end up losing.. But that was much more of a, we had it. Oh my God, I can't believe we blew this game. Whereas the Spurs game, they clawed back, they almost won. They had to make a couple, you know, play stops. It was a back and forth game. And even though it was devastating, it, trust me, it was not like the Nick Anderson game. Isaiah's sprained ankle in 1988 where the Pistons are up 3-2, they're better than the Lakers that year. Isaiah gets hurt, still has a 25 in the third quarter, and then They end up, uh, blowing it late. Magic Jr. skyhook. I was at this game, 1987, Game 4. Celtics are up 6 with 2 minutes left, and it just becomes an operatic collapse culminating in the Jr.
skyhook. And then Bird missing, which we captured in the Celtic City documentary, Bird missing the 3-pointer to win it by about 1/100th of an inch. That was the most devastated I've been after a game. And then Henderson's steal in Game 2 of the 1984 Finals. The Lakers are gonna finish off the Celtics and probably sweep or win in 5. And then, um, Worthy throws it to Henderson, goes into overtime. So that, from the last 50 years, those are the worst ones. And I really do think that Game 2 with the Spurs is on that list because having your best guy and the guy who's supposed to be the next guy, like LeBron in 2007 was 22 and he made the Finals. They just got their ass kicked. Nobody remembers a single thing about that Finals. There wasn't anything you could really hang on LeBron and be like, oh, that play. Wemby is just about the best player ever to have like a really dopey play like that happen to him. And we'll see how he responds over the next couple, couple games. But that was about as bad as it gets for a great player.
Um, and I think if I'm doing blame pie, Castle 20% for just turning around and running forward. I, I'm just trying to get the ball from my center. Uh, Mitch Johnson at least 50% for not calling a timeout. And then Wemby, who I just think brain farted and kind of panicked when he should have been like, where, where's Harper and where's Fox? Those are the two guys I need to get the ball to. Um, So I'd put him at like 30 to 35%. That's probably too much blame. That might have been 105% of a blame pie. Whatever. Here's another thing that, that came out of this game that I was stunned by even that night as I was thinking about it. The Spurs have 5 of the worst playoff losses, and I think their 5 is worse than anyone else's 5. They lost the Ray Allen shot game, which is the worst loss. Anyone's had in the history of the NBA Finals. The Derek Fisher 0.4 shot in 2004 where the Spurs were just better than the Lakers that year. And that, that's still a pretty stupid series. And Fisher just getting a jump shot off in 4/10 of a second.
I don't even know if that's legal by the rules we have now. But that was devastating, especially 'cause Timmy had made a big shot right before that to, give them the lead. That's two. Manu fouling Dirk, up 3 in the last like 20 seconds, Game 7, 2006. And we love Manu and Manu's a great player and it was just, he was trying to challenge the play. I actually don't think he did the wrong thing, but he fouls Dirk. Dirk gets the 3-point play, goes into overtime, Dallas wins. The Wemby-Castle pass has to be up there. And then that famous Rod Strickland 1990 play. I was in college for that one, although I think I was probably out of classes by that point. But that was an all-timer. Throws it over his head backwards and ends up, Portland ends up, not only did he turn the ball over by throwing it over his head with like 30 seconds to nobody, Portland gets a fast break, which he then hard fouls the guy on the fast break., and I think it ends up being 2 free throws and the ball. So those 5, plus you gotta go with, uh, game— they— the Spurs in 1979 blew a 3-1 lead to the Bullets, and in Game 7, Bobby Dandridge kills them with 10 seconds left.
Now that wasn't like a screw-up, but it was a really horrible, like, collapse. We thought George Gervin was gonna be in the Finals, and then, uh, Dandridge matches him. I think Gervin had 42, Dandridge had like 35, 37. And he made the big shot with 10 seconds left. I think I, I put some thought into this. That's the worst 5 losses. If you're gonna top 5 worst losses by franchise, nobody can touch that. Ray Allen, Fisher, Manu Fowley-Dirk, the Wimby Castle pass, and Rod Strickland. I needed either 1 or 2 words to explain each of those moments, and you knew what I was talking about. So that part's nuts. Another one, a Knicks Finals sweep, which I think was 16-1 on FanDuel before the Finals, I think would be one of the two craziest outcomes in the history of the Finals. If you're just talking— I'm not talking about upsets, craziest team that won, I'm just talking about outcome. A Knicks sweep, the only thing you can compare to that is '95 The, the Rockets sweeping Orlando, which I can't remember. I bet on Houston in that. It's one of my favorite bets I ever made, betting on Houston that series.
They did not have the sweep, I don't think. But, but that Pistons in 5 over the Lakers in 2004, I think if you thought the Pistons were gonna win that one, you wouldn't have thought it was gonna be that decisive. And then I think the '91 Bulls beating the Lakers in 5 would be another one because that was a classic.
It was a little like this series actually.
Is the young team ready? The old team with know-how veterans, who do you have? I picked the Lakers that series. I bet on the Lakers that series. And the Bulls won in 5. But I would think this is one of the 2 most shocking outcomes along with the Houston-Orlando sweep. The other thing is if they win the title, I think this becomes our premier NBA example of experience over youth because it used to be the '95 Rockets over over the, uh, over the Magic, I think it would now flip to this. 'Cause that '95 Magic team did have that Brian Shaw, that Horace Grant. It wasn't like this. It was this completely young team. I think the Spurs feel younger to me than that team. Uh, a writer named Noops Christensen, oh, oh, a mailbag writer said, I had a thought about Nick Spurs. I present the YMCA test. Imagine if it were the championship game for the best league at your local YMCA. Team A has 5 very talented players, ages 21, 22, 24, 25, and 28. They're playing Team B, which might be slightly less talented, but still talented, and their players are 28, 29, 29, 31, and 30.
Are you taking the more talented but younger Team A or the veteran Team B? The YMCA test. I kind of like this. There's been some other YMCA battles. Like, I, I think the, a really good one was the 2011 Thunder against the 2011 Mavericks. Was one of my favorite ones for these. But then you'll have the next year where the 2012 Thunder, we thought that was another YMCA test series and they beat the Spurs. So it doesn't always work, but I did enjoy this. All right, so what do, what do the Spurs have to do to flip a series down 2 games? So you can either be down 2-0 or 3-1 in a series. I went back and I looked at all the times we've been in this situation in the Finals. And what you learn is you need some sort of dramatic karma-changing, momentum-changing something, and it, you don't know what it is. It could be as simple as the president decided to go to Game 3. I'm sorry, too soon. Um, 2021 Suns, they won, I'm sorry, they, they, uh, won the first 2 at home and then blew the series to the Bucks, right?
Well, what happened in that series? Post-COVID, a little weird. That was the, that was, we're sitting in the stands with some people were in masks, other people, it was just a weird vibe for that whole thing. But Game 5 had one of the craziest sequences. That game's in Phoenix. The series is tied at 2 after Milwaukee won their 2 at home. And then you have that one where Jrue Holiday comes flying in. Steals the ball from Booker. They get the fast break the other way and the awesome, crazy, all-time athletic alley-oop to Giannis. And it was one of those sequences. You're like, holy shit, Milwaukee's gonna win the Finals now. So that's one. 2000, but 2016 Cavs was a bigger one. That was the Draymond suspension after Game 4. And I've talked about this before, but the Cavs lose Game 4 at home to Golden State. It's one of the best games of the 2010s. The Warriors are better than them. They finish them. And then at the end of the game, LeBron goads Draymond into the, uh, technical, and that flips that one. 2006 Heat. You have that Game 3 comeback I mentioned earlier where they're down 13 with 6 minutes left.
The Heat scored 22 points in the last 6 minutes, and they get Dirk to miss the 1-of-2 free throws that, uh, in the last 10 seconds that gets them to win it. That flips a little. They win Game 4, and then Game 5 is the Bennett-Salvatore game. And then the '90s— the 1977 Blazers is the other one. They're down 2-0 to Philly, and at the end of that game, there's a huge fight with Darrell Dawkins and Maurice Lucas. And Dawkins is so mad after the game that he, like, destroys the locker room. He feels like the Sixers didn't help him, and it kind of fucked the team up. So I would say that counts for some sort of momentum shift. There's one time out of all those, so I have the 2021 Bucks, '16 Cavs, '06 Heat, '77 Blazers, which is your best hope for the Spurs because almost 50 years later, they're very similar to that '77 Blazers team. Young core, Wemby is Bill Walton, fall down 0-2 in the Finals. Everybody thinks the series is over. The '93 Suns. Go down 0-2 to the Chicago Bulls. They have a crazy Game 3 that's like one of the lost great NBA games.
Triple overtime, triple overtime, Game 3, and the Suns win. They beat Michael Jordan in Chicago, right? Feels like they flipped the momentum back. What happens? The Bulls have Michael Jordan and he scores 55 in Game 4. And basically just says, no way, you're not coming back. So that's the one time when the momentum shift happened and then the, the team that was up 2-0 that I could think of staved it off. So how do you flip a series down 2 games? You need something crazy to happen in Game 3. I don't think it can just be a win. I think it, it has to be either the Knicks collapse, the vibes are weird, Wemby puts up a 50-30, something, something crazy has to happen Monday night for this series to flip. It can't just be, oh, the Spurs played better and they won. It's gotta be like a tangible flip because no team has ever lost the first two at home and then won the series. So you would need something really dramatic. The good news for them is they do have a really great player, even if he hasn't 100% played like it in the finals so far.
Which brings me to Wemby. So this is something I remember talking about 2 years ago with Anthony Edwards after Game 3 of the Dallas series, which was really bad for both him and Towns. And on the Sunday Night Pod was talking about how there are levels of this with the playoffs and you don't know it until you're in it. And it's just really hard for guys 20, 21, 22, 23, as everything gets harder, as you're seeing the same same team, you know, maybe 7 times in 2 weeks. There's, there's levels to it. There's ways you get pushed mentally and physically that you've just never dealt with before. And sometimes you can see young players, no matter how great they are, you could feel it start to break their brain. And it happened a little with Edwards. He did rally back in that Dallas series and his last 2 games were pretty good. LeBron and, and the 2007 Finals, he was 22, he shot 36%, had almost 6 turnovers a game. Tatum at age 23 in the '22 Finals against Golden State's a good example. He just really unraveled and it was fatigue and how the Warriors were defending him.
He shot 37%, but you could feel it in the last few games. You just could feel him losing, losing control of all the stuff that he was so good at. Shaq in the '95 Finals, just getting killed by Hakeem. KD is a good one. He's age 22 in that Dallas series I mentioned. Both him and Westbrook just felt really young in that series. KD only shot 42% in that series, but Dirk really took it to him. An underrated one was Derrick Rose in the 2011 Miami series when it was like, is it too early for Derrick Rose? Like that Miami team was pretty limited. They, I mean, they basically had the three guys and Haslam. Rochat, 35%. Just, just couldn't put it together in that series. The, the one example of somebody pretty young that I thought acquitted themselves well and actually, um, I didn't, didn't feel at all like they were young was Luka in that Golden State series in 2022. He's pretty good in that series. You go back and you look at the stats, he was not the reason they lost and his stats In general, Luka has never really been spooked by the Finals.
The Celtics probably did the best job against him in '24, but, or not by a playoff series, not the Finals. But Luka's the only example. The point is, when you're a young player and you're great, there's still levels to this and it's still like solving the video game. And I think you could really feel that with Wemby. Wemby was so bad in the first half. Towns just took it to him and, and He did respond in the second half. So if I'm, if I'm the Spurs, you know, I'm gonna get to that one second. Dan Klimko, a listener, wrote in, where does this Wemby Game 2 collapse rank for you on the tragic Johnson, C-Webb timeout, Freddie Brown's pass to James Worthy in '82, Bird steals the ball from Isaiah, et cetera, scale? We don't know yet because we don't know how the Finals is gonna turn out. If this is a sweep, I do think that play gets mentioned big picture. I do think Wemby-Castle, I just think you'll know instantly what it was. It will take you right to that moment and it'll just be one of the weirder brainfire plays that we've ever had.
There was a really good slow-mo from behind the hoop where Castle's turning as Wemby's throwing it. When you slow it down, you're like, why is he throwing it? Castle's already turned.. But in real time, he's dribbling, there's 10 seconds, there's a bunch of stuff going in his head and he's like, I should give that to Castle. And he's throwing it to him, but Castle's already turned around. It's just the kind of play that would never happen if he was 27, 28, 29. He's been in the league for a few years. He would've looked for his point guards. This goes back to the whole youth versus experience thing. This was why we were wondering whether they were the 90 Bulls or the 91 Bulls all season. This is my hesitation with them for a long time, and that I finally bought in on them the last couple rounds of you just can't quantify it until you're there. And that play to me is the perfect example of you just don't know until you're in a moment like that, when you're on a stage like that with that many people watching, when you've had a crappy first half, when you're trying to climb back, when you're tired, when you feel like you have to do everything and you just kind of panic.
Magic Johnson's one of the 7 best players of all time. You go back to the '84 Finals, he's terrible. Like, his worst play in that whole Finals was the end of Game 2. He dribbles out the clock versus giving the ball to Kareem. They didn't even get a shot off on the last play of regulation. He just, like, brain farted. And this is kind of stuff that happened. All right, so if you're the Spurs, what's your roadmap for coming back? I think you have to look at it this way. You didn't get your ass kicked. You're used to the speed of the Finals now. Like, you understand what it takes. You, you really found something in the last 6 minutes of Game 2. You've had big leads in both games. You double-digit leads, I think, in both games. You led Game 1 with 2 minutes left. You came back from 14. You led Game 2 with 57 seconds left. So this wasn't like, like, I was there for Spurs-Heat in 2014 'cause I was on the ESPN show. And I felt like that series was over after game 3. Like, it was like, the Spurs are just better.
Like, this is a wrap. This is— Miami's not coming back from this. So you feel— one of the things you look at when you're looking at a matchup deciding whether a series is over yet is, is the team just laying it on the other team, right? Are there 20-point leads? Is it— what are the— this has been a pretty even back and forth series. The Spurs lost 2 50-50 games, right? Pretty small sample size. So you would talk yourself into that. You would talk yourself into— you completely threw away Game 2. It was one of the more ridiculous losses in recent Finals history. Your Brunson defense has worked. He's 19 for 56. He's taken 56 shots for 51 points. So now you could say all the stuff you're doing to stop Brunson has now led to people like Bridges getting hot. Towns has, has been borderline dominant. But still, that's— if you had said after 2 games, 56 for 51, I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm feeling pretty good about maybe a little less Castle going forward. I love Castle. He's probably one of my 10 favorite players in the league. The fear with him was always that there was this little bit of a Westbrook side with him, this irrational confidence side that no matter what the moment was, he He has so much confidence in himself, he's gonna kind of meander in situations you shouldn't be in.
And you could really feel that in game 2. I just think Harper has been their second best guy and is the guy I probably trust the most other than Wemby. And it's weird 'cause Castle's a great player, but I think they need his defense and his intangible stuff way more than the ball handling. Like, I wonder what will, you figure they're gonna make some adjustments. Would they put him on Towns in Game 3 a little bit? What are they gonna do to try to disrupt Towns? Castle has been the guy disrupting Brunson, but do they try to flip it around and move him around and just try to unleash him as, as this like intangibles force versus somebody that's, you know, seems like he has the ball a little bit more than he should and Harper doesn't have the ball enough. So when I think of the moves, Less Castle usage, lower Castle usage rate would be my first one. I would use Carter Bryan as the backup center against Towns. I like Cornette, but we've just seen too much of the playoffs. Cornette comes in and you immediately feel like the Spurs are gonna go on a 2-10, the opposite of a run.
I would use Bryan against Towns. I love Bryan. I actually don't think they're using him enough in this series. I know he's 19. I know he's a baby. And I mean a baby, like literally he's like a, a young, a young, young NBA player is 2 years away from being able to legally drink. I think they need his physicality because if you're talking about the one thing this Spurs team has been missing all season, it's been that prototypical physical 4 that you could put next to Wemby that could guard like the Towns, Julius Randle, those type of guys. It's really Carter Bryant. And if I were them, I would lean on him more and I would lean less on Cornette. And then the biggest thing is Harper has to be on the floor even more and they have to use Harper at crunch time. I think he only played 4 minutes in fourth quarter game 1. Game 2, played more. He ended up 32 minutes, but he's the least afraid guy they have on this team. I don't know why, but he just is. The guy is like born for this. It— I, I really am careful to bring this up, and I, I think I've even said this before, but the 2000 Kobe Game 4 Indiana, which was like really the beginning of the legend of Kobe, um, Shaq fouled out.
And I'm— I was living in Boston back then, and like so many people my age and younger, like, really, really thought Kobe had a chance to be the next Jordan close. And when Shaq fouled out, I think everybody had the same thought, like, huh, what do we have here with Kobe? Let's— it's time. Let's see it. And I think the thing everybody thought in the moment was, this guy, whatever happens, this guy's not going to be scared. Harper is not scared. He's the opposite of scared. I actually feel like he's the most aggro, ready for this, on— of anyone on their team. It doesn't make sense. He's 20 years old. We've talked about on pods in the past about young point guards. This doesn't make sense. It just doesn't. But it's the reality of the situation. This guy is not scared. He needs to play more and he probably needs to have the ball. Like you think about some of the terrible shots they had in the last 3 minutes of the game, which are always like these fallaway 22-footers, these contested threes, like these shots in traffic. I like all the, all the decisions and situations Harper is in with the ball.
I just feel the best about it. I don't understand why they don't run pick and roll with him and Wemby. I just, I just would have the ball in his hands way more than, than they do. And maybe that will be the flip. Couple other things for them. You already know you can win on the road in the hairiest situations possible. They won a Game 1 and a Game 7 in OKC. I know this Knicks game's gonna be a madhouse tomorrow and Game 4, and it's, the crowd's gonna be incredible and I honestly can't wait. OKC's crowd is really loud. It's not really going to be a louder crowd than OKC. Like, if OKC— if you could criticize their crowd or anything, it's like a constant loud noise that you're, you're kind of head— your head hurts after 2 hours of it. But it's not going to be louder than that crowd, and they went in there and they won. So, um, I don't think they're going to be scared unless this Game 2 loss was just the most damaging thing ever. Trump's going to screw up the Game 3. And I don't mean it from being there.
I'm not talking about politics. It's gonna take 2 hours to get in there. The game will probably start 15 minutes later than it should, which means like it, these games are already starting around like 8:40, 8:41 East Coast time. The game will probably start closer to 9. And if you remember, like in the '22 Finals, they were starting the, the East Coast game super late. And I, I went to Game 3 and I went to Game 6. I didn't go to Game 4. Um, I thought it, I thought it affected the crowd. The game would start at like 9:15, the crowd's out, they've had dinner, they've had drinks, like they've kind of peaked around that 7:30 to 10 range. And by the time you get into the second half, it's late. It's like past 11 o'clock. You feel like you've had all this energy and, um, it's, it's a weird dynamic. I, I just think I think this is, if I'm the Spurs, this is the kind of, kind of crowd slash time situation you're gonna want where it's just gonna feel disjointed and you want disjointed when you're on the road. And then the last thing is Wemby.
Wemby's a great player. Wemby in the second half of Game 2 at 22 points. I thought he was all over the place defensively covering the rim. He's taking some shit because when he's 25 feet out from the basket, guys have gone by him. Guess what? He's a center. Name me anyone over 7 feet that that wouldn't happen to. I, I just think like if you're criticizing Wemby's defense in this, you're nuts. But he hasn't been the best player in the series and I'm not even sure he's been the second best player in the series. So what is, is he gonna dig deep? Is this gonna be like that Game 2? Is the before and after of, oh, that hardened him, that taught him how to win. Or is he just gonna go sideways like Shaq did in '95? We will see. If you're the Knicks, you got no calls in Game 2, you still won on the road. You got no calls. And I actually, I didn't do a FanDuel pick for Game 2. I did bet on the Spurs moneyline with an adjusted over because I thought the officiating was going to be what it was in that game.
And it was what it was. We all saw it. They even rescinded the Mitchell Robinson technical after the fact, which was an idiotic, ridiculous technical at the time. The Towns game, the 3rd and 4th fouls on Towns were atrocious. So you still win that game and you could argue if, if the officiating was a little more balanced, maybe you win that game by 10. If you're the Knicks, you have to assume Brunson's shots are gonna start falling, that he's, he's just, even down the stretch, they missed some wide open 3s. Brunson missed some shots he just normally makes.
So.
You have to assume he'll be better. You have to assume the crowd's gonna be incredible, and that's almost definitely to your benefit. We'll see, we'll see what the, how disjointed it is. And you're gonna be ready for more Harper in this game. You know, that's like the, the one thing the Spurs can do is unleash Harper a little more. So you gotta be ready and gotta plan for that. Okay, last thing, Karl-Anthony Towns. Been thinking about this a lot because I don't really remember anything totally like this happening before in an NBA playoffs where somebody that was a really good, pretty flawed star who I think made the last 3 worst contracts draft that I did with Howson Wise. But we all thought he was good. Anytime we did a Ringer 100, he was always in the top 30 or 35. He's made 2 second team All-NBAs, Or one second team All-NBA and two thirds. He's averaged 23 and 11 for his career for the regular season. 52, 40, and 84 shooting percentages. If you just look at the guys in the history of the league who've played at least 700 games and averaged 22 and 11, right?
Not crazy. 22 and 11, 700 plus games. Yokich, Wilt, Elgin, Barkley, Kareem, Bob Pettit, and Karl-Anthony Towns. So this is somebody that the stats always favored, um, somebody that I think after his career we probably, like, in the basketball reference looking back era, the stats would have been more favorable to him. And yet with somebody none of us trusted, and that's just the way it is, um, but When you think about the, the Knicks make this trade 2 years ago and they're, they basically, they don't have a center 'cause they lose Hardenstein. Hardenstein getting poison-pilled basically by Oklahoma City and the Knicks losing Hardenstein leads to the Towns trade. They're heading toward this season and they decide we have no chance unless we have some sort of center. Towns' contract is scary. We can give up Randle and DiVincenzo and get him. And they basically just bet on the pedigree. They bet on a guy that Wes and Leon had known since he was 15 years old when they were— when West was trying to recruit him at Kentucky. They'd known him forever, right? They're betting on the pedigree. Now, sometimes this doesn't work. Didn't work with Darko, remember?
I think Orlando traded for Darko. Didn't work. Thibet— did Thibet ever have pedigree? He was taken second. Michael Beasley's a good one. Michael Beasley, always one of the best 2 or 3 high school players in his class all the way up. Put up, I think, 25 and 10 in college. Was a little out there to say the least personality-wise, but there was pedigree there and a bunch of teams took chances on him. Never happened. And then Ben Simmons was a good one. Oh, he's fine. It just, the Philly thing didn't work out. You just gotta change the scenery. Well, that didn't work. DeAndre Ayton, sort of Portland and the Lakers. So just doesn't always work. And there's a million more examples than that, but there's, This is something GMs think about. If somebody was a top 5 pick, a top 3 pick, the first pick in the draft, maybe they were in the wrong situation. Maybe you could flip them in another situation. It works way better in baseball. It's worked in football sometimes, um, where especially with quarterbacks where you, they flip teams and things can change. In basketball, Wiggins was a great example of this in Golden State.
Wiggins, we'd all kind of given up on as a meaningful player and he had a bad contract. Goes to Golden State. He's their second best guy on the 2022 Finals team. Aaron Gordon's sort of like this. He was the fifth pick in the draft. We all loved Aaron Gordon, but just never, never really had it in Orlando, right? Goes to Denver, becomes this crucial guy on their '23 team. Rashid was a good one. Rashid had been in some big moments and had had probably more success than Towns. Um, but was too much of a hothead, set the technicals record. And by the time he lands in Detroit, the question was— wasn't for me because I like to trade, but, um, said, too risky. Do you want to be in business with Rasheed Wallace? Well, they end up beating the Lakers that year. Chauncey Billups is a great one for this. Chauncey Billups. I was in Boston going to all those games because my dad never wanted to go Patino's first year. We traded him after 50 games in a Kenny Anderson trade. And I remember kind of liking the trade when it happened. I didn't know what Chauncey was.
I couldn't tell if he was a point guard or a shooting guard or what he was. And he could go to the basket. He was a really good athlete. But I learned a valuable lesson from that, which is don't give up on young guards and especially young point guards because he bounced around. He went to Toronto, he went to Denver, went to Minnesota, and then finally ends up in Detroit. Detroit bets on the pedigree, and guess what? He becomes, you know, one of the better playoff players we had in the 2000s. Robert Parrish is a good one for this. He was, I think, the 6th pick in the draft. Golden State kind of cooled off on him, and when Red Auerbach wanted McHale, ends up trading back from 1 to 3 and getting Robert Parrish. So tho— those are probably Wiggins, Gordon, Rashid, Billups, Parrish are 5 really good examples of this, a bet on the pedigree. And it makes you wonder when you're watching what's happened with Towns, 2 lessons. One, do you look at a couple guys we have in the league now a little more closely? Like, I don't think Evan Mobley counts for this because Evan Mobley's already good.
I think he's been on at least one All-NBA team. Cleveland made the Eastern Conference Finals. Like, he's a max guy. And I don't, I wouldn't put him in the Towns camp. Jabari Smith, Scoot Henderson, not nearly— neither of them have had much success as Towns has had over the course of his career. Zion, higher peak than Towns, but no playoff footprint at all, and not as durable as Towns. Ja Morant. There's off the field, off the court stuff with John that I think, I don't think Towns had red flags like that. So maybe it's Zion as somebody, because the thinking is when somebody hits their mid-late 20s, do they mature? Do they round into something different than what we know now? Right? So the case for Zion would be, well, what if he just became more mature and got in awesome shape? And went to the right team and could be unleashed as this different kind of force. That's one lesson is, is think about the pedigree. Are there other guys like this? The other one would be don't overreact to a bad series. So in '24 against Dallas, Towns was awful, like really awful.
And when Towns was bad, he's bad. Like Towns, people, a lot of people in my life, some people that have had pods for The Ringer or have left The Ringer, were just completely out on Towns. Towns in that series was 20 and 8, but he shot 38%, 24% from 3. Dallas was fucking with him in all these different ways, and it just felt like the dumb foul stuff was never gonna end. And I remember after, after 3-0, I went and I actually found this text. I text, uh, Minnesota's down 3-0 to Dallas in '24, and I started texting House at halftime of game 3. That Towns was gonna be on the Wizards next year. And, and House was really mad. He's like, stop it. That's not funny. It was like a lot of epithets from House. That's how bad it got for Towns. So when they traded for him, huge contract, and we were just coming off the worst series of his career. Well, what happens? This playoffs, he's unleashed. And I don't really fully have an explanation for it. Because I can't think of another example like this of somebody that I had already decided on as a player who then dug deep and completely surprised me in a completely different way.
I got an email from Mike from Toronto. After Game 2, Charles Barkley said he was criticized in Minnesota, criticized in New York. KAT is the Finals MVP. I actually think he might be the fi— now there's 2 more games, but I think he would be the leader for me. Barkley said it was the best two games I've seen a big man play. That feels a little strong. Is this the greatest change of opinion about a player we have seen? It's a really good question because I think all of us had decided on Towns, and what we had decided is good stats, seems like a really nice guy, but is pretty flawed and is gonna have dumb fouls and do dumb things at the worst possible times. And that's just who he is as a player, right? I decided that. So I was thinking about an actual change of opinion. There's got to be 3, 3 qualities here. Has to be somebody we were really down on. Has to be somebody who is good enough to at least make an All-NBA team or be in the mix in a conference finals or even a finals. It has to be somebody that either won a title or kind of came close.
So that rules out Vince Carter, 'cause Vince Carter to me was the most disappointing player of the 2000s just for what the potential was. But you know, the, the peak of his career was probably the losing the Seven to Philly in round 2. It wasn't ever like he got close. Chris Webber's a really good one. I thought Chris Webber was gonna be the best forward of the 1990s. And the timeout I think changed him in a bunch of different ways. And I, I don't even think that's an opinion. I, I think that kind of sapped him of something. And you know, the Golden State thing got weird. He went to Washington and just was really disappointing, right? And gets traded to Sacramento for an older Mitch Richmond. And at that point it felt like a good flyer. Sure. Chris Webber, maybe. And then he turned into one of the best 5 guys in the league there. But they never even made the finals. And then the, the one that's probably the closest to this is Dirk post-2007. After they lose '06 finals and then they lose to Golden State in the '07 playoffs. And eventually that leads to him doing the Australian trip.
But I had just given up on Dirk being the best guy on a championship team. I didn't think it was possible. And then in 2011, he had one of the great resurgences/rejuvenations in the history of the league and blows through everybody. I think he beats the Lakers, he beats OKC, maybe Memphis or San Antonio, and then Miami in the finals. But just, it was a murderer's row and he just went through it and demolished everybody. So Dirk is still the number one thing for this, but in Dirk's case, he had won an MVP. He had made the finals. He was one of the best players of the 2000s. Towns was never as good as Dirk. The Dirk thing, uh, the Towns thing, Towns becoming this cerebral, awesome, never has not made dumb plays at all in the entire playoffs. Like, it's like, it's almost like, like you, if, if you changed your meds for a little kid or something, like you had a, like a hyperactive little kid. And the little kid went on meds and just became a different kid. You'd be like, hey, what's different about that kid? Towns, it's like he's having like a— somebody changed his med series, even though I don't— probably isn't on meds.
But, um, it's been so dramatic, I almost can't believe what I'm watching. That first half he played in Game 2 was one of the best halves I've seen. Best both-end halves I've seen a center play. And I think the guys at halftime were totally red. I think Wemby was shook by it. He's like, I thought I was gonna have a huge advantage of this guy. I went into this series thinking Towns was gonna be the number one reason that they, that they were gonna be in trouble for this series. And it's been the opposite. So watching this Towns resurgence has been fantastic. A couple more emails and then we're gonna get to Adam Friedland. Max V says, living in Matt, and I could say this is the most excited I've seen this city about a possible championship. People are going fucking nuts. The odds are obviously against it. But knock on wood, if the Knicks blow this series, not putting that out there, but he's, he wrote this as an email. The Knicks blow this series. Would this be the biggest gut punch loss of the 21st century? All right. I thought about this. Um, the formula would be how long was the drought?
How gigantic is your fan base? And how egregious was the collapse? So the '86 Red Sox. Is a great example of this. The Red Sox hadn't won in 66 years.
Is that what it was?
68 years. 68 years. I can still do math. Red Sox hadn't lost in 68 years. 13 strikes to win the World Series and lost. Um, and that was the biggest gut punch, I think, of the 21st century for a sports team and a fan base. Um, years to recover. I think it was actually genuinely damaging for a whole generation of younger fans, including myself. The '94 Rangers are a good example of almost having this happen, but they didn't. 'Cause you forget, they're up 3-1 in the finals against Vancouver. They come home for Game 5. It's, it's almost like this Knicks series right now. Prices are through the roof. Everyone wants to be in the building for when they win. They blow Game 5 at home. They lose Game 6 in Vancouver, and now there's 2 days off before Game 7. And I, I knew some Rangers fans and still do. That was an all-time people freaking the fuck out, uh, 48-hour span. Um, and then they end up eking out Game 7 and winning it. So it was all fine. But, um, I would say if the Knicks blow this at this point, I don't know if it'd have a parallel this century.
Because it's unlike the Falcons Patriots where it's 28-3, you blow a game in an hour and a half. This would be, you would have to blow this over a week and a half. And, uh, it would be an all-time historic collapse because nobody's ever won the first two on the road and then lost the finals. So, um, James from Brooklyn wants to know if Towns wins the title, would Minnesota fans be more bitter about trading away KAT or Garnett? And then he says, how long until Ant leaves for a title somewhere else? That was, that was me and James. I'd be more bitter about the KAT trade. Garnett wanted to leave the team. The team should have traded him even 2 years before they did, and he had no chance to win a title there, and you had to trade him and you had to rebuild. That was the right move. The KAT thing really did seem more financial than anything, and they had had success with him already. They had just made the conference finals with him. I mentioned that was a tough series. For him and for the team. But that to me was a financial trade.
It was a chance to reset a year from now with new ownership and try to get Randle on a lower deal and just not have to pay in the 50s for KAT and Anthony Edwards at the same time. And I, I don't think a lot of teams would've made that trade. I think teams would've probably tried to suck it up with Towns for another year. It was a financial trade, but it was also a trade that happened because he sucked in the Dallas series. So I would be a little more bitter about that one. Ricky wants to know, with the way KAT is showing how the best antidote to Wemby is someone who could stretch him out to the 3-point line and leverage their strength to get to the basket on offense, can I introduce you to Joel Hans Embiid? Hans Embiid? Joel Hans Embiid? He's a longtime Sixers fan, by the way, this guy. He said in their matchups this far, Embiid is averaging a meager 38 and 11. He needs multiple, if not all, athletic, high-level, long-wing defenders. A few West teams have just that and more to trade for Embiid. Is a savvy team in the West looking at what KAT's doing and thinking this might be a decent idea?
I laughed at this when I read this, and then I put some thought into it, and I was actually wondering if, if this might make sense for somebody. The problem is you go look at Embiid's contract and it's a catastrophe, but, um, Maybe a year from now. It's a possibility. Scotty in Phoenix wants to know, so everyone knows the Knicks haven't lost since April 23rd. Two days later, they start the win streak. It was also the same day poor Dante DiVincenzo tore his Achilles. Was that like a sacrifice to end the 53-year drought? Poor Dante. Um, I do think they should have him at one of these games. It's, he got the rawest deal out of everybody, right? He's like, I thought we were all doing this Philadelphia thing. What happened? It is weird that he got hurt the same day of this. And then, Kevin in Portland wants to know, if the Knicks want to guarantee their first championship in 53 years, Dolan needs to invite Oakley back for Game 3 at MSG. Can you imagine how the crowd would react seeing him there? San Antonio wouldn't stand a chance. This would be a great, great, great This would be like a pro wrestling moment.
Um, they hug at midcourt or they bring out Oakley, um, almost like a wrestling entrance where like they play, I guess Oakley doesn't have music, but, uh, this would be a pretty good idea. I think if the crowd had their choice between Oakley and Trump, they'd probably pick Oakley. Um, all right. That's enough foreplay. We're going to bring in Adam Friedland and things are about to get wacky. That's next. All right, so we banked this part of the podcast early afternoon, and this is take 2. This is the first time I think this has happened since, uh, COVID when we were having these audio issues. Uh, we did a whole, we did like 100 minutes this morning and I, I could have gone my entire life, Bill. It disappeared. It's ironic, Adam Friedland, because this was your first appearance on the pod. You were excited about it and somehow you brought like a black cloud with you. And it vaporized the technology.
Why are you blaming me?
I'm blaming you.
That was— Belle, the producer here, said that was the greatest podcast. Literally, she said the best podcast.
We're going to run it back. We're just doing it. We're doing it a second time.
I was so sad. I texted the boys when I realized afterwards that this is what I've been preparing for my entire life. I didn't even know. We're just talking about ball with—
listen, honestly, here's the thing. Now that— now it's gone to history. The only, like, 7 people know the magic of that first time we did it, and now we're just going to redo it. It will be better, will be worse. The only ones that are going to know are us.
It'll be most certainly worse. But like, on a sincere note, I grew up— my podfather ran out on our family. Oh. As a kid. And I felt like for 90 minutes I had found a, a real podfather. I won't tell him. I won't say his name. He's become— but his pod— his show— his podcast is called The Joe Rogan Experience. But I don't want to But he left us and he said it was my fault. And I was growing up— my biological podfather, of course. But— and I was like, you know, he's not the step-podfather. He's the podfather who stepped up.
Yeah.
Bill Simmons. No, but I realized it was like, yeah, I was just— I was telling you at the beginning of the last one, but it's just so— it's so sick. You get to just do this for your job.
Yeah. So the first time we did this, which we're just going to do again, you were interrogating me on what my life's like. We'll get to that in a second.
Well, I opened with a comment about how beautiful your eyes were. Oh, I bet you remember that.
Yeah, that got us off to a strange start. They're stunning. Um, listen, important business first. The Adam Friedland Show is joining Spotify in July. You're relaunching your third season with us. So you're technically on the Ringer team, but more importantly, next month on The Adam Friedland Show, you're doing a special soccer podcast, a miniseries called The Beautiful Pod.
Okay, we are off to a disaster start. I screwed this up on Wednesday. Uh, we are starting—
you said this month? Well, this month. Yeah, June. I meant this month, uh, on Wednesday.
Yeah. Yes. Uh, at the Adam Friedland Show, uh, we'll be, uh, we're going into pre-production on season 3 when we return. We are now part of the Ringer something or other. Yeah.
Are you—
do you get classier ads? They do classy ads, right?
I think it's a win for everybody.
I've been selling boner pills for 10 years.
Yeah. No more. I've been selling some disgusting offshore gambling scams and yeah, your boner pill days are over.
I had the, I had the mayor, uh, Mom Donny on the show and we had a, we had a, uh, erectile dysfunction ad like in the, like booked. So I was like, we gotta just, we gotta lead off with the, with a, do you have trouble getting an erection? Yes. But. I'm, yeah, we're doing, uh, uh, we're gonna part, what's it, Ringer, uh, Spotify partner. The Adam Friedland Show is now a Spotify partner. But beyond that, I am now, uh, we're doing the World Cup coverage for the Ringer. I couldn't be more excited.
And, uh, and we loaned you CR, Chris Ryan.
Yes, you did. Well, I mean, it was like with soccer, they loan the players, right?
They can do that for like a year. I just loaned my striker. I'm a second division team. I loaned my striker. I got relegated. We didn't get relegated, but we're loaning CR to you anyway.
Well, you loan like a, like a young guy that you want to get minutes to like a crappier team. Or you like—
thing is, CR has the most minutes at the Ringer. I think he's on 17 podcasts, but you're loading out an agent.
Yeah, yeah. You're like, we can't find space on the roster for, for this guy.
This is like Messi. This is like Messi going to Miami.
Yeah, this is where he's going for to, uh, end his career, on the, the beautiful pod. A Taft's original miniseries. Yeah. So I know, I genuinely, I'm so excited to talk just about sports instead of whatever the hell I do regularly. Actually, I really enjoy doing the Adam Friedland Show. It's like pretty cool, but it'll be a nice change of pace. But like, now that I've like yesterday, I was like writing jokes for it all day and it's just, I'm like, this is just what I should just be doing. This is what I wish I would do for the rest of my life.
Yeah. Come to the dark side. Just waste your life talking about sports and getting paid for it. It's nice. Great. Yeah, it's really nice.
You probably don't even know what a tariff is. You probably—
your life is amazing. Yeah, I don't know.
See, your life is incredible.
Do we have a president or a prime minister here? I don't even know.
I, I, I, I regret to inform you that things are terrible right now.
Well, we have that— one of the things I want to talk to you about was you're in New York City, uh, you live in Brooklyn, but New York with the Knicks, um, it's— there's been a unifying thing happening in the city that all my friends are saying they've never experienced anything like this ever.
Yeah. Well, first off, New York's been— it's been difficult here with the Mamdani Institute of Sharia Law. And then the Knicks have given us— I'm sorry. See, the first joke was funnier. What did I say? Oh, yeah. This is an anti-Semitic—
you're like, how is New York?
No, no, this is the anti-Semitism. I'm now remembering all the jokes, and you can't tell them a second time. I said that Bill was like, how is it in New York? And I was like, well, the anti-Semitism is rampant. And I know, but honestly, what's happening right now is like special. I've never lived in a, But I've been here since 2014 and I was in DC before that, but I've never lived in a city that's just like going so hard for their, for their boys right now.
Blue and orange everywhere. Watch parties, people wearing homemade jerseys. Wesley Morris was talking about it. He's, he was delighted by this. He felt like, 'cause I remember in Boston in 2004 during the ALCS and then the, and then the World Series. Yeah. It felt like the entire city. Just mobilized into this giant Red Sox machine, and you could see it. It was like everywhere you went, you saw hats, jerseys, and it feels like New York's like that right now.
Yeah, people are like out on the street. That's, that's the cool part about it. Like, people are like just running outside. You have like outside your window, you hear people screaming and stuff. Fire— people are lighting fireworks right now. It's like pretty cool.
Yeah, hopefully benevolently.
What do you mean? I mean, I think fireworks are a good thing.
Yeah, they're mostly banana.
Oh yeah. People are doing crimes after every Knicks game. Yeah. Crime is through the roof. No. No. Yeah. You're seeing fireworks. It's really just genuinely— I've— it's really special.
I mean, it's—
New York should have a better basketball team. You know, they should be like a dynastic, like, you know, it's New York, right? And it's— I guess there was those Larry Johnson years in the '90s, but like, it's It's like kind of wrong.
You call them the Larry Johnson years?
The Patrick Ewing years? No, I was saying the Greg Anthony years in the '90s.
Yeah.
Yeah. The Anthony Mason years in the '90s.
The John Starks years.
Right. I remember as a kid, it was just, I remember the fights. I remember the Heat, uh, Heat-Knicks fights and those were, that was really cool. But, uh, yeah, beyond that, I, you know, what was it? '78 was the last year.
No, that, I mean, they had good stretches. '32. They, yeah, '73 was the last title.
'73. Yeah.
Good stretches in the '80s. Like I think the Bernard King stretch before he got hurt was great. Yeah. Couple, couple really good bumps in the '90s. Like when they battled MJ the first time, the physical Knicks teams in the '90s. And then it just, the, ever since I got to ESPN, they kind of died.
Yeah.
When I, when I got there in 2001, it was like they were relevant one playoff series.
In those last years.
That was it.
Yeah.
No, that was in 2013.
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I guess that's even later. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I, they, yeah. I'm like, it's like going to the Garden is special, right? Like it's, it is like a cathedral of the game, right?
I would even admit that as a Celtics fan. I would.
It feels special, right? I mean, you're not necessarily rivals even with the, it's your rivals with us. L.A. L.A. Why do you live there? I'm not going to move to Boston. But beyond that, outside of that, outside of that, it's like the stadium where the, the star on the other team— fair question. What, you like, you have disgust for all the people going?
Well, when I grew up, I hated the Lakers, and it— the moment I moved here, I was like, this is weird.
It's nice, but, but it's nice.
Yeah, it's really nice. The weather is pretty great. Yeah, yeah, nice.
Anyway, but, uh, yeah, it's the, it's the stadium where the star on the other team like has his 50-piece, right?— it's like the stadium where Kobe, like, has his, like, you know, like, like, uh, just takes bows, you know. Like, it's like a place that brings out the best in the other teams. But it's cool, even if they're out of playoff contention, it's the end of the year, and someone does the half-court shot at halftime, like, everyone's— and he misses it— everyone's like, go fuck yes! Out! Like, it's, it's got an energy about it. And, like, the stadium is still sold out, and it's, uh, but it's, like, spilled outside the streets. It was really incredible to see. Yeah. But I was there.
It's been a long time coming too. It got to the point where you started to wonder, is this ever gonna happen again for this team? Between the mismanagement. Yeah. The bad luck, some of the dumb contracts.
Yeah.
And it really was like, it took COVID to really shake the, shake the Knicks out of it.
Wasn't it?
It was post-COVID. All of a sudden things got better.
But there is something about like, yeah, KAT, I mean, I've just never seen him at this level. I went to the first round against the Hawks and I didn't see it. Yeah, I genuinely didn't see it. And, uh, there was something like that was missing there. And I was like, what's the philosophy of this team? And then something clicked. I mean, when's the last time they lost? A month ago?
More than that. Yeah, it was April 23rd.
Yeah. And it's been like remarkable. Like they've had these like, like this, as we were saying in our, the best podcast of all time, we're really, are we hitting it? Can I ask you a question?
No, I don't ask. I think we're very close.
Every woman I've ever had sex with. How was that for you, Bill?
I had a great time.
I'm having a great time. Uh, no, but, uh, yeah, there is— there's something that clicked. And like, you know, like, uh, like, it's just— yeah, uh, I don't understand. Like, Cat, I've never seen him at this level before. The stuff with the mom is like— made me cry. It's like I lost my mother. Uh, there's just something special. And, uh, you were saying the last show, but like, as they seeing them collectively defend and deal with Wemby. Yeah. And like, and then seeing the level of the basketball just in, in these finals, it's like, I just keep saying, this is such good basketball. And it's like, it's been such a fun series. And then the guy that's about the Darth Vader that's in, in waiting about to take over the entire, like, league for— he'll probably play 30 years. We'll probably be still waiting for him to get hurt.
Right.
We're like, oh yeah, at that size. He's 52. He's 52 and he's unbelievable. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it's just, it's really cool.
It never happened to Kareem, so that would be the role model for Wemby.
And he, he wasn't bulky too, right?
No, he stayed— Kareem stayed skinnier. He did yoga and, and karate and all this stuff to kind of stay limber.
And, and we never really got a karate guy. Yeah, yeah, they're both karate guys.
Well, it's, it's funny, the, um, I wrote an intellectual I had a bunch of people in my life, 'cause I picked the Spurs to win the series, and I had a bunch of people in my life who were like, this is crazy, you didn't pick the Knicks. Like, you wrote this whole basketball book and the premise was the secret of basketball and how it's not about basketball and it's unselfishness and teamwork and put fighting off the disease of more and putting your, yeah, putting the team ahead of the person. And, and I, I had multiple friends say this to me like, How do you not see that this is what's happening with the Knicks? And I was just, I was in that mode of Knicks. Well, it was the Knicks and I was also in that mode of, well, it was Cleveland. Yeah. It was Philly with like breaking down Embiid. It was Atlanta with 3 players. Like I just think San Antonio is a horrible matchup for you. And as it turned out, the Knicks are probably a horrible matchup for San Antonio as well.
Yeah. I mean, I guess Mitch has dealt with Wemby kind of maybe Maybe the best.
Is that fair to say? And Towns is really taking it to him.
Yeah. So I think, and also they're still just terrible when he is not playing. Like it's, it's, it's remarkable what he's done at 22. And like, yeah, we were talking before about like, it's not a real sweep, right? Like it feels series over, but like it does also feel like anything could happen in this series.
Well, we, right. Game 3's gonna be weird because Trump's going, it's gonna take 2.5 hours to get in there. Right. Yeah. And, and the game will probably be delayed. The game's already starting like 8:40, so it'll probably start closer to 9. And I always found like this happened in, in '22 with the Celtics when they, for some reason the games were starting at like 9:10 PM Eastern time.
Right.
And it, it definitely, the crowd got a little weird as it got later and later and just didn't have the same energy as it did in the beginning. So I'm gonna be interested to see, does the crowd peak too early? Is the Trump thing like this crazy wild card that is the game like disjointed? Is the crowd disjointed? Or is it gonna be like the romantic version of it is this is you, this is the end of the Shawshank Redemption for the Knicks fans. This is two games of bliss. The crowd's incredible. The Spurs are scarred from what happened in game two and it's just a sweep. And I, I honestly don't know. I don't even know how to pick it.
It's still, it's, it's like you still, you just have seen this franchise like fuck up so many times. It's like, I'm an Arsenal fan. We, it'd been 22 years and we'd like been in first place and then finished second for 3 straight years.
Yeah.
And this season, this season was terrifying every match because of the prospect of finishing second a fourth year, a fourth time after we were up 9 points on the table. Like, We almost fucked it for a fourth time. I don't know how we would've been able to, to manage it. And like, I also, like, none of us believe that it could ever happen too. Like, I'm sure like a lot of Knicks fans are too. Yeah. I mean, well, that, whatever.
There was this moment I talked about in the first segment of the pod, the Rangers in '94 when they hadn't won in 54 years and they took a 3-1 lead heading into Game 5 and Game 5 was in New York. Yeah. And everybody's like, oh my God, I gotta be there when they win the Cup. And then they lost. And then they lost Game 6 and people were just, I, it was the, every Knick fan or every New York fan I knew is the, it was the most horrifying like 4 days. But then they ended up winning Game 7.
I felt like I had a nightmare scheduled. I'm like, yeah, it's tomorrow at 3. I'm gonna watch a nightmare.
Yeah.
I'm just like so scared about it. It's like, and it's, I have to watch. Yeah. Question for you, like, look, bloody soccer was like, How that must have been. Oh, for— yeah, it must have been the most incredible thing that you've ever seen in sports. Yeah.
That's right. The beating, the 4 days in a row against the Yankees is my highlight as a sports fan.
Yeah. That series was unreal. Yeah. But like, but it meant more, right? 'Cause it, 'cause of the curse, right?
Oh yeah. This is, this is the, it's the losing virginity as a sports fan of, it's the only way you can do it when you've had a drought for this long. And then all these great things happen, and it's never going to be as good as the first time.
It's just not. Like, how do you, like— but, like, as a Pats fan, like, how did you, like, keep getting boners? Like, you know, like, what I'm saying? It has to, like, not—
I took those ED drugs you did.
You took that promo code.
If you add a promo code Tom Brady, add them.
420. No, but I'm saying, like, does it feel— it diminishes in, in its, like, uh, excitement? Or you— or Boston guys just like If we don't win, it's just a—
no, the past thing was great because we went from— we were basically like if the Jets had won the Super Bowl, right? We were like, right, black sheep.
He was like a child. He was a backup.
Yeah. And it was so improbable. It was right after 9/11. So there's a patriotic thing. So I think people are rooting with us.
But by the time it was right after 9/11, the Patriots—
well, it was, you know, that beautiful day. U2 at the Super Bowl halftime show.
It was like, but you bought—
you bought American Super Bowl.
You, it was because of your name, the Patriots.
They did it for 9/11. Yeah, yeah, it was part of it. Remember the U2 halftime show? Where the streets have no name with all the 9/11 names is emotional.
I remember the Janet Jackson halftime show.
Well, that's when it probably turned. Then the third one, everyone got tired of us. We became Duke. And then Spygate happened and we were villains.
The best was Prince in the rain in Miami. Do you remember that? Doing Purple Rain.
Anyway, but you were saying, but like, it, the Pats, America turned on us, which actually was great because then we, all we had was each other. The other Pats fans was galvanizing. Then we had, then we were like rejuvenated.
It's what we were talking about with Kobe. It's like you, you're heaped with praise and then yeah, that's the arc, right? Brady was like this, uh, backup, right? It was like a romantic thing. And then like, uh, eventually we're like, fuck those guys. They win all the time.
Well, there's different kinds of titles you win where like that one, nobody ever they were 2-touchdown underdogs in the Super Bowl, and I think they were like 13-point underdogs in the AFC title game. The Knicks one's a little different 'cause it came late, but it's not— people, once we got to the finals, I think the Spurs were favored, but I knew a lot of people that thought the Knicks were gonna win. And I think it's not like shocking that they're winning, you know?
I think I had no idea how to call it. I just didn't know.
'Cause you don't know. 'Cause you got the best guy on one team's 22.
Yeah, he's 22, but he's that. He's in—
I don't know, maybe not. He threw the game-deciding pass off his teammate's back, so—
well, he's 22.
He's 22, and his teammate is 21.
They're incredible when he's playing, and they stink when he's, when he's not. I mean, they stunk last year. How many wins did they have last year?
Who did? The Spurs? Well, maybe didn't play half the year.
I know. Yeah, they— the turnaround is like, uh, is it the The biggest turnaround ever.
It's one of them. The set, the first Bird-Celtic year, they gained like 31 wins, I think, from the year before. This has to be the record.
Oh, really?
It is. I asked you, um, because you live in Brooklyn. We got to stop saying that we talked about this the last time because nobody heard the other time. I know, but it breaks my heart. I know, it's fine.
It's because you already heard it.
Are you—
you have to fake laugh?
No, I haven't fake laughed once. I know, I'm just kidding. You live in—
play off the—
you live in Brooklyn, you live near Barclays, and I was asking you Yeah. With what you've seen from the Knicks and how this city rallied around the Knicks, if you're the Nets, like what's—
Prudential Center, Newark, we're going home. Yeah.
What's the Wednesday meeting like where Joe Tsai's like, hey man, we have to figure out, like the Liberty are more popular than us in Barclays. The Knicks have 99.9% of the NBA fans. What's, what's our plan? We can't keep this going.
I mean, he had to have known already, right?
No, this, this is worse than he ever could have imagined.
I think the atmosphere at any home game is, and they play like, they play every game as like kind of a road game for the, for those, for the players on the Nets. It's tough. I feel bad for them.
Yeah.
The one, the last year, and it's a, I still think about Kyrie and Durant being on the same team and how cool that was. And we never got to, it was a toe, right? Yeah. And then it was over. And, uh, that was the, that I was at the, uh, the game one, the blowout against Giannis. And that was like, uh, there was something like happening and it was exciting, but it just, since then it's kind of, the toe is kind of the end, right?
There's no question. It's the before and after.
The potential of those two guys being on the same team though, at that stage in, in both their careers, it was like, it's such a what if for me still.
Well, it wasn't just that they were on the same team. They, the Knicks also wanted the two guys and they chose Brooklyn over the Knicks, which had happened repeatedly. Like Durant didn't want to go there to the Knicks in '16. LeBron turned them down famously in 2010. Like they weren't even a choice for people.
And I, I think that's— they made some Prados video for him, right? You saw that, right? Oh yeah. Yeah.
But that, I think what's changed regardless of whether they win the title or not, and they're big favorites now, but they're now a destination again, I think for players, which was just not the case for 20 years.
It's, it's crazy. I, I almost forgot that they chose the Nets over the Knicks. That's how toxic that brand was. Yeah, that's insane. It feels like, how is that possible even? You're right. Like, uh, but yeah, it was a better situation over there. And like, uh, yeah, it's such a what if, because Kyrie just does the impossible and makes it look easy for him. And then, uh, everything that Durant does looks easy, but it's really hard to do what he's doing. Like, they're like the opposites. Like, Durant is just making everything look effortless. Kyrie's making everything look so insanely hard and he's somehow doing it. And it's like the combination of those two, like, like offensive, like savants, like on the same team. It's just, it really bums me out. I was like, I wish we got to see more of it.
But, uh, and Harden got hurt the one time he actually cared about that team. Your favorite player ever is Kobe.
Yeah. So what? Oh yeah.
You said it was a question. No, there's no, nobody missed it. This is the first time they're ever hearing it.
Full-throated apology for his mistreatment of Mr. Kobe. No, no, not true.
I just read I was late to the party of appreciating how good he was.
I know you were. You were. But something about you is like, I've always been like, how dare he say that about Kobe? But then I'd be like, if I was Bill, I would be rocking with my boys in the same way. Yeah. There was always like this. Do you, do you think you were like the first to disclose your allegiances in media? Sorry, I asked you a question back. Sorry, I did the thing where I interview you back. Well, I would, it was kind of a new thing.
Definitely was a new thing. 'Cause when I, when I came up, when I was writing for ESPN, And I was writing from like the sports fan per, uh, perspective. It was basically just newspaper columnists and that's it. Everybody was supposed to be very down the middle and you weren't supposed to have favorite teams. And I always felt like the, the people that I enjoyed reading, I always felt like were fans of the sport or the team. And like I talked about this William Goldman book that I loved called Wait Till Next Year, where he wrote from the perspective of the New York fan. I was like, that's That's kind of how I want to write my column now. It's also pretty common.
It's also bullshit. Like, you would have to be like right down the middle. Like, you could— if you love your team and you love your guys, like, you should rather just be honest with it. And so people can see where you're coming from, right?
I think it's different if you're, if you're like Brian Winhorst and you're in locker rooms and you're talking about it in a different way. I think it'd be tougher to be like, I'm also a Giant-Cavs fan.
That's like, but he loved, he loved LeBron, right?
I don't know if he loved him, but he covered him forever.
I asked Nick, I asked Nick Wright, I said, uh, when they had that, the, the Wimby-LeBron thing, I was like, did you say to yourself, uh, and then there was one?
What'd he say?
He laughed.
He laughed. That was it?
He said, Windy's a great guy. It was diplomatic. Yeah.
Um, but, uh, yeah, but it's definitely different now. I think it's, and it's basically because there's way more media, there's way more opinions, there's all kinds of ways to get, um, to become noticed and build like at least a small level of fans. So there's, there's no one method now. In the 2000s, there really was only one method.
You did. I think it's kind of a trailblazer kind of thing. Not to, I'm not, I listen and you were very, I have no respect for you. You were very unfair to Kobe. No, no, but I mean, I think you kind of changed things. Like, I don't know. We didn't know where Walter Cronkite's, like, allegiance is. I mean, not saying that you're doing more of like a— you were just a writer about sports from the perspective of a fan, I guess, right?
Yeah.
Like, I was reading the book. I remember the article in 2002. I read it like when I was in high school, the 9/11 one.
Oh, yeah.
I was like, yeah. I was like, this is— this is— do you think— do you remember back to that? I'm asking you questions now. This is bullshit. I don't want to do that. But Yeah. Do you remember, like, did that feel like a seminal kind of like moment for you? Or was it just another day?
I remember not being happy with what I wrote, but feeling like I had to write something. But the bigger thing is, I remember—
It's beautiful.
I remember wondering, like, if I was still going to have a job. Like, I didn't— 9/11 was, was so horrible and, and so impactful to everybody, even people, you know, that had— didn't know one person that died there, but it felt like just everything was going to be different from that point on. I had never experienced that before. So I was like, well, nobody's going to want to read about sports and, you know, fucking bad takes on movies. And then I remember at some point, um, everybody just started to be like, all right, I gotta do my job again. And I remember within like a week, I went to go see Hardball with Keanu Reeves with my buddy Jacko.
The best.
And we, and I wrote a column about it and I was just like, this is my job. Like, I'm gonna tell you, you have the coolest job. Like, this is like, maybe people will read this and they'll take their mind off shit for 10 minutes. But I think that was, that's the only time in my life I ever remember America like that, where, um, where everybody was kind of like, what do we do? Like, are we all going to work tomorrow? And then you kind of figure it out.
You just got me really afraid because I've had to, you know, I'm recording the World Trade Center right now. I was scared enough as it is the first time.
It's—
that would be a fool me, shame on me situation.
It's weird to go there and not think about it. Like, yeah, because the Spotify offices are there. That's where you are now.
And you go and when you read the word on the text, this is where I have to go.
I'm like, yeah. And this was 25 years ago.
So long.
So you grew up in, you grew up in California.
I grew up in Vegas. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
But I'm an LA sports fan.
Yeah. But you weren't in, you, you hadn't, you didn't get to New York until the mid-2010s. So you, you weren't there for 9/11.
Yeah. Right. I wasn't there, but I remember in high school, I was a freshman and I was like a, I was like a know-it-all asshole. And I was like, uh, actually it's probably the Al Qaeda network of terror because they, uh, recently did an attack on the USS Cole. Someone was like, shut up. I was like, sorry. I was like, I was looking back on it. Like everyone likes politics now. And it was, it used to be like something that if you liked it, you were a loser. And I think it kind of should go back to that. Right. I think too many people are obsessed with politics now. I got made fun of for it and as well I should have. Right. And, uh, uh, but it's, it's weird to see that nowadays. But, uh, yeah, no, I've, I've. Wasn't here for that. But, uh, yeah, I was born in LA. I'm an LA sports fan because my dad immigrated, uh, in '81 to LA, and he got into American sports, uh, to have something to like share with his kids. My dad was at the Gibson game, uh, wow, in '88. How amazing is that?
I was a baby.
Yeah, more amazing that he stayed because you go to Dodger games and people get the F out of there, but before the 9th inning, like, you're making a choice. It's like, if you stay, it's an extra 2 hours.
It's the World Series. I mean, yeah, it's true.
No, you'd be surprised because I went to the 18-inning game in October and I was surprised how many people left.
My friend was there. Yeah. And he said that it was weird. He said the ball wasn't carrying because there was like a high pressure system or something. It was like an insane vibe there. It must have been agony to be sitting there for hours and hours.
I loved it. No, I really had a good— we had great seats, but I really had a good time.
They were serving beer?
Oh yeah, they stopped serving everything.
You just, if I had another beer, I'd be fine. I'd be like, can you guys open it back up? We're gonna be here another, yeah, 9 innings of, of extra innings.
What you said was the key thing because I forget somebody had, would just clearly seem like it was gonna be a homer and the thing just died and we were like, are we ever leaving?
There were so many warning track shots. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I was a big Dodger fan, uh, initially, but then yeah, I guess my team's now Lakers and Arsenal. And I, I, I watch like soccer a lot now, which is the, I was, as I was saying in the last podcast, the, the worst kind of American you could be. It, it's like, uh, something that's, uh, I, I shouldn't, it, it does feel lame. Um, I, to be an American soccer fan.
I just think it's because America, because we haven't really had a truly great player because the team in the World Cup thing, the whole World Cup, our chances feel like We're in a worse spot than we were 15 years ago, even though everyone I know who likes soccer insists that we have the most talent we've ever had. It's just that everybody has more talent. I don't know what's true.
They have no swag. Yeah. They have no swag.
There's not one.
They have no swag.
They don't have that one dude that like a 9-year-old kid would be like, I wanna wear that guy's jersey. Maybe it'll happen in the World Cup though.
The center back, Tim Ream, I saw on my Instagram algorithm, he was like doing advocacy for He said, when I was a kid, I wet my bed. And he's like, 1 in 5 kids wet the bed. I'm like, not before the cup, not before the World Cup. Don't do bedwetting advocacy. It's like, come on, do a cigarette commercial. I don't even know if they make those anymore. Do beer. Who would make us look cool?
Who would be— if he was in our country, who would be the coolest? Like, who would be the guy that actually owns Soccer for America?
What, out of any player?
Yeah. If that person, they just happen to be American. No, Messi's too old now. It'd have to be somebody younger.
Someone younger, someone cool. I don't know. I mean, it has to be Messi's, uh, you, you, you register that it's the best. It's the best we've ever seen, ever.
I'm aware. I was there for the—
he's like twice as good as Ronaldo and he still might cook this time around. It's, it's weird.
How old is he now? Is he 40 yet? Uh, I think late, late 30s, somewhere in there.
Yeah, he's kind of hurt. He doesn't have to, uh, go back on defense. He gets to just walk around and then, uh, there's this— so there's this thing that happens inside of him and then, uh, it'll be like 12 seconds of chaos and then, uh, it'll be in the back of the net. He's, you know, he's like a bizarre guy. He— I, I think he didn't speak until he was like 11. There's something like he was given by God for this one purpose. And, and, uh, uh, but no, I mean, who would be cool to be American? I don't, I don't know. Uh, I don't know. It would be cool if American athletes were— played soccer. Like, I, I've speculated on that. It's like speculating what would— if LeBron played tight end or something. Like, or like, uh, I don't know, thinking about like our best athletes. Like, if Kyrie played soccer I mean, I would imagine he'd be like one of the best.
Kyrie's a great one. I always thought Iverson was my favorite one for this game. 'Cause even there's high school football footage of Iverson where it's like, he's incredible. And it's just like any sport that he played, he just would've been incredible.
It's my favorite YouTube, just watching Iverson. What do you think? Do you think he would've been like top 5 football player of all time? Was he like Deion? What did, what do you think he would've projected as?
I think he would've been like, I think he would've been like, almost like what we want Travis Hunter to be, except he just would've been at a whole other level athletically. Travis Hunter's an awesome athlete. Like he just would've been like a running back receiver type of person, I think.
Well, he was like a, an option quarterback as well, right? But I guess everyone's a quarterback in high school. Like a quarterback.
Yeah.
You could tell his, his throwing motion was a little, but he had a, he had a big arm though.
He did. But it wasn't like the mechanics were off. But then when he took off, he would just run through people. It was like when the gym teacher gets to play with the 5th grade class and he's just dusting everyone. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, it's, it's, I, I watch that video all the time. I also watch a, there's a video I really like of Derrick Rose doing, uh, Chicago footwork when he was in like the dance battle against someone in high school. And he's an unbelievable, yeah. If a guy like Derrick Rose played, played soccer, I mean, it'd be, yeah.
Conversely, Randy Moss playing basketball was great. Like there's some guys who are just like the greatest athletes who've ever produced.
My chocolate. Yeah, they were on— it's the same team with White Chocolate, right? Yeah, unreal. Yeah, there was that, that, uh, that commercial. Do you remember the Nike commercial? Oh yeah, just a good old boy, right? Yeah, I love that shit.
I think Kyrie would have been interesting because I, you know, he's basically ambidextrous, right? He does everything, so he would have been able to kick perfectly with both feet. His footwork and everything would have been great.
I don't know, like, it's his center of gravity too. Like, yeah, he gets in these weird angles though.
Like, who's the best 6'3 soccer player?
So many, Bill. So many. All right, there's so many. Yeah, I mean, like Zlatan is doing— Zlatan's 6'5", I think, right? Yeah. I mean, there's— what's cool is that you could be 5'5", 5'6", and be in the best in the world.
Well, that's why I said I have someone's 5'10".
You could be 6'4" and be the best in the world. Like, uh, uh, yeah, they've had guys that are, uh, like close to 7-footers. And I mean, uh, Peter Crouch was amazing. Uh, and he was technically gifted too. He wasn't just doing headers. He, like, he could use his feet.
But, uh, you know who would be amazing? Who? Uh, as like a sweeper slash a 6? Um, Castle.
Oh my God.
Like, that's like, he's an absolute maniac. Super physical. Like, 10 out of 10 athlete. And relentless. And if you just put him at the 6, he would've been out of control.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Thinking of like a, like a, like a, I guess a free safety or a, or a, like a, a linebacker playing like in the back line. Like think of guys like that. I mean, I don't know.
Yeah.
It's, it's actually, we, that's the disappointment is that it's just, I guess, I guess we haven't been able to sell it yet. You were saying in 2002 we thought that it was like a moment where we could sell it. But, um, we definitely—
I thought it was coming because it started in '94. That was like the first real moment we're like, oh, maybe. And then, um, yeah, the '02 World Cup, that was when my first year at ESPN, like writing columns, and it felt like people cared. And, um, 2014 was another one when it felt like—
that was the year we lost to Portugal, right?
Yeah.
I like the Landon Donovan, uh, oh yeah, 2010. There's a spirit about them.
And it felt— and there was a moment when Jose felt like he was gonna be the next guy, and it felt like we actually had older guys and younger guys and guys on the way up. And then All of a sudden we were not qualifying for the World Cup and wondering what happened.
A good subplot in the World Cup this year is the Canadian coach, Berhalter, was our coach.
I remember.
He is just talking shit. He said that it's, what it is, is the Athletic Association. He said the US soccer has an issue. It's structural, he said. And, but he's also just running his damn mouth. Which is a kind of a cool subplot because we were co-hosts in this, uh, World Cup. But, uh, yeah, I just don't— I don't know, maybe I'm completely wrong. There are people that disagree with me, but I, I'd see— I'd see them underachieving. There's always a bump by being a host nation though, but, uh, it's like— it's weird. It's like, uh, are you seeing where they're doing their, uh, where they're doing the like training camps, like base camps?
Where?
Oh my, it's amazing. They have a— well, they have like Bosnia-Herzegovina is in Salt Lake City. They have Ivory Coast in Philly, which is sick. Just imagine that is sick. Yeah. Qatar, Santa Barbara. I'm pretty sure they got the nice— they bought the nicest place, obviously. There's so many. I have a list, Bob. There's one that was just killing me. Well, now it's bad podcasting, but I got to find it.
But yeah, this is— I thought you were a better podcaster than this.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, dude. I didn't have this prepared. Can I ask you a question about the Canada co-host thing?
Yeah. Is this like in college, you're having a party at the main house and you're having it with somebody else, but it's kind of their house is over there and more people are in the big house? Or are they an actual co-host? Are they an actual co-host or are they kind of glomming onto us?
Uh, which Canada? Yeah. Um, I think that they have hate in their gut and I think that Mexico is a, is a, is a mess right now. Mexico. I think I see them completely. I, Honestly, one of my spicys is that as Mexico crashes out of the group stage because their fan base is toxic, right? They don't have any players that like have any pedigree and play, play in Europe. They, they act like they're Real Madrid and they have, they've never won shit. They lose to America now. They should be ashamed of themselves. And Canada has this like resentment that comes from their coach.
Yeah.
We have like this pressure of like, it's kind of America's World Cup still, right? What is it in Vancouver and Toronto? It's like two places, right? Like, it doesn't feel— I think we're the main show here. Yeah. And I think it's the most—
Don't forget Canada. It's our show.
Yeah, it is kind of our— but there's— I feel really bad, but it's going to be worth it. No, we're going to have one that is just so— wait, there's one that is so funny. They have—
so you liked—
right. Portugal is in Palm Beach, which is like Cristiano is definitely going to go Mar-a-Lago. For sure. Argentina, this is real. Argentina's in Kansas City, right? In the summer. So apologies to Nick Wright. That sounds like shit. And they like, they're literally, there was a tornado warning first day they were there. They like, Messi's just like standing silently and still in the middle of a tornado. They're like, it takes also, there's another aspect that like in Europe, the stadiums are closer to the metropolitan areas. So like you have the fans like kind of marching towards the stadium, kind of like how MSG is like, it's in the middle of the city. And yeah, like going like 3 hours to fucking MetLife. Like, it's just like you don't have that same atmosphere like around the stadium and stuff. And it's also— I'm like a little bit worried. I'm not going to— whatever. You know, they banned water bottles. That's the other funny thing. Can I just ban water bottles?
Can I say something?
Yeah. What is this? Off the record?
Don't ever apologize to Nick Wright. Not on this podcast.
All right, whatever.
Screw that guy.
Just sucking up to fucking LeBron. Um, no, no, I'm just kidding.
Uh, no, we like Nick Wright.
We like Nick Wright.
They banned water bottles?
Yeah. FIFA's not letting them bring in water bottles, so they have to buy water. It's like, the ticket prices are really expensive. I mean, what's going to happen is this. We're gonna say, and I'm doing a podcast about it, we're gonna say like, oh guys, like, it's, it's too many teams as well. That's the other issue. They like expanded the field. There's no groups of death where like a big team doesn't qualify because they want the big teams in the, in the group stages.
I hate that.
I love the groups of death. I love seeing like Germany crash out in like of the groups. It's like, it's really, and it makes it exciting from the beginning. Yeah. And, but something is going to happen and we, that the world is going to explode. It's like, there's a high probability we're gonna see Messi and Ronaldo in a knockout. Right. And I don't know if I can handle it. Like it's, it's really just like he has to lose. Ronaldo has to lose. I can't see— he's going to be so self-satisfied and smug about it, but he, he has a better team. Also, there's just like, yeah, I was telling you before, the element of Iran being here in the middle of a war and them potentially if they get second place in the US getting second place in the groups, they play in Dallas. Is it on the Fourth of July or is it not?
I thought it was. It was in the vicinity of it. Yeah. They would play America. And by the way, America getting second place is conceivable. Like, that's— they're probably even favored.
Turkey are flop artists also. I'm not as afraid of Turkey, uh, as, as people are giving them credit for. People, like, are always like, oh, Turkey has something, and they always— them and Belgium, they're just like chronic underachievers. And Egypt during Mousa has been the same way.
Uh, like, they're all in the cup, and like, I think they all kind of Are you, are you going to try to go to a game or you don't care if you go?
I'm going to Norway-Senegal. Okay. I'm only going if it's free, Bill.
I'm not going if you're invited.
I'm only going. I mean, what is it? It's $100,000 for what?
It's less than the Game 4 Knicks tickets. Well, that's the Game 4. If the Knicks win Game 3, Game 4 Knicks ticket will become the hardest sports ticket of all time because unlike football or baseball, it's It's 20,000 seats total.
Yeah, it is really— we were saying before, but it is crazy. I'm going to stop saying that. It is crazy to conceive of where Trump is going to be sitting. Like, if he's courtside and we're just watching it the whole time, it's going to be distracting for a viewer. He's just sitting there. I imagine he's going to be in a box of some sort.
Oh, see, I completely disagree. I think he's going to absolutely be courtside.
I think, imagine like his Secret Service guy standing in front of Timothée Chalamet.
It's gonna be like when Floyd Mayweather goes— when he— Floyd Mayweather sat courtside, they would have his security guards would be behind him. Yeah. And so I guess that would happen.
Timo can't watch the game, his girlfriend.
Well, the funny— the thing I was thinking, if he's courtside, you know, the way Trump sits, because he doesn't cross his legs and he sits with his legs out with his— with his doing the with the diamond. In the diamond.
Yes.
Yeah. But on courtside, the seats are like this, and it's not— you can't spread your legs out at all like that.
It's like the subway.
Whoever's on either side of him is going to be miserable the entire game because Trump's going to take up 3 seats.
Kendall Jenner is going to be like smushed.
That's the other thing. There's, you know, courtside, you're walking by people, there's handshakes. There's going to be people who aren't going to want the handshake.
It's going to be bizarre.
Yeah. And everybody filming it. So if you do the handshake, it's on film.
You know, I just said we— I just don't— the thing that's nice about sports is we don't have to deal with politics. It's like, it's like a crazy time right now. It's like, there was like a Jewish— there's like this player that could— we don't— named Max Dauman for Arsenal.
Yeah.
And I was like, I was like, I was like, I told my friend, I was like, just look up if he's Jewish. It would be huge. He's up next, right? I was like, can you imagine? Like, if we get one, because for us it's just insane if we get one. Right? And, uh, and then I like realized, I was like, I don't want him to be. I'd rather him not, because it's like, yeah, he's gonna have— they're gonna ask him about the war in the Middle East and stuff, and he's gonna just— don't act like— don't— like, it's too much pressure. Like, just don't be— be like an evangelical or something. Like, be like— what, like Sunni Islam? Just please don't be.
I always talk to my friend Chang about this because he loves when there's any sort of Asian. Mina Kimes is big on this too, but we were texting this weekend about Dylan Harper, Filipino mom. I know. Yeah. So this is like— and I feel like they haven't gotten, gotten excited enough about this.
And Clarkson too. Yeah, they got two in the Finals.
But Harper might be— I mean, he's one of the best young guards that's coming to the league in 30 years.
I think we forget it. We're missing how good he is because it's just the Wemby. There was that game in the last Every series of theirs has been must-see TV. The Spurs.
I love watching them. I said in the segment before you came on, I think this part of the key to the series with the Spurs is realizing that Harper is their second best guy. They just have to accept it. He's 20, he comes off the bench like you just throw it out the window.
It's, it's, I, I think Kobe was 2000.
You just gotta like accept it.
This is your guy. Do it. Yeah. I think you should sweep. Shipswiper. That's what I would do.
Get away. Well, that, I mean, they gotta figure out how to win this series. They can't think about it next year yet, but ultimately I would definitely get Foxes in there.
The team is really bad when he's not playing, right? They, when they add a couple of pieces, it's terrifying.
Yeah.
They're, yeah. In fact, the Knicks have to win because it's, because it's not fair.
But, well, that's the thing. If the Knicks lose game 3. Then that will open up. There's only 48 hours for Game 4, and that will open up the hole. They have to do this now. This is the best chance they're ever going to have. OKC's going to have everyone back. San Antonio will be a year older. Indiana's getting their guys back. Boston's getting theirs. Guys, like, this is your window right now, New York.
And it's also just the ghosts of the past, the ghosts of the Garden. I mean, it's scary. It's very scary. If they lose Game 3, it will, it will be terrifying again. Because they were so 50-50 both of those games. Yeah.
Right.
Oh yeah. Like they could have lost either of them.
Yeah.
And it's like usually you win away, it's, it's, it's game over. Like in the series you have to, they're not going to win 4 or 5. But like, I'm like, I don't know. Well, it could, it feels like this series anything could happen. And it's like every game is just so, it's like just actually the best basketball I've watched in so long. And it's like, yeah, there's like, there's, we were saying before, but there's, ah, There's so much Tibbs in the team, right? There's so much like a hard-nosed, like, you know, they just get to like play less minutes now. They don't have to play like in March. They don't have to play 48 minutes or whatever, you know.
One of my weird sports theories is that the more baggage you have, the more likely it is that stuff will happen along the ride to the end of your exorcism journey. Like for the Patriots when we beat the Rams, we had this game-winning, um, game-winning defensive touchdown that got called back because of a penalty. But as guys run down the sidelines, it's like there's 10 minutes like, oh my God, we just won the Super Bowl! And then it got called back and all these skeletons popped up. Um, and then the Rams scored. And yeah, and it's like, oh, why did I let my guard down? I should have known. And I think for the Knicks, you gotta, you gotta quick taste of it when Brunson, when they fell into his knee in game one, it was like, oh my God, why didn't I, why didn't I have my guard up? And it's just, there's no, there's no easy path to getting rid of all the skeletons. You have to have a couple of those as it goes because you think it's going to happen again and you know how bad it is.
Yeah. Like with Arsenal, the saying is, it's the hope that kills you. Right? Because any, every single year I think something good might happen.. Yeah. And then it doesn't. And it's kind of a reminder you're going to die one day. Right. Like, if you're like a fan of a team that wins every year, you are like, you're like, I'm going to live forever. I'm going to cheat on my taxes. I'm going to cheat on my wife. I'm going to like, yeah, I'm just— your life is a cocaine just fever dream. And you're so happy and you don't think about death ever.
Yeah.
But if you're a team of like a team or a fan of a team like that, you're like, you're just expecting everything to fall apart. All over again. And you're like, I haven't talked to my family in months. And was it worth it? Like, like, I've just been sitting in this living room and I've— yeah. And my wife's like, did your team lose? And you're like, what, what does that mean? Did my team lose? Like, yeah. And then you get mad and you yell. You go for a walk. You go for a stress walk alone.
Yeah, I used to do that a lot when I was younger. A lot of dog walks after tough losses. I went for a walk in the neighborhood.
I went for a walk after the, the Tuck game. I went for a walk. I'm a Raider fan, but like, uh, I think actually I stopped liking football kind of, uh, after that. I was like, fuck football. I was like, this sucks. Like, Charles Woodson was my favorite player. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you.
So D, if you had to guess, with Game 3, do you think it's gonna be— it's an all-time memorable game, or like, would you go Memorable game, disappointing game, or just fucking weird all night from start to finish? Because that's where I would be at. I think the vibe is going to be super weird the whole game.
The vibe is off. I think it's the Trump of it all. And Big Z's there, but Mom Donny's there too.
Big Z. Are you the only one that calls him Big Z? Is that his nickname?
Is it Druunas Algauskas? No, no, mom, it's just like, yeah, Trump. If Trump is courtside and he's making out with Kendall Jenner and Timothy's crying, what are we going to do? Are we going to be watching that game? Can you imagine? He's like, I played Bob Dylan.
The truth is, you didn't even pay for this ticket, babe.
I mean, neither did I, but they're giving it to me because of me, because I go to the Oscars now and you're making out with the president. How dare you?
No, I mean, it's, uh, It'll be weird, but I think, uh, the truth is he shouldn't go because it's just like, it's too much of a distraction and too much of a hassle for a game that's already complicated enough. Like in the league, obviously if the president wants to go to the game, you should go. But like no normal president would go to this game. They would go to a game in February against like the Raptors. They're not going to go to like Game 3 of the Finals, uproot the entire 4-hour infrastructure before the game.
And it's just, Well, you go to a game where they're gonna go nuts if you walk. You go to MMA, right? You don't like—
yeah, but he might think that's gonna happen.
People don't think he's doing a good job. He got booed when he went to his polling station in 2016. Yeah. And he like changed his residency to— but he misses New York, I think. Uh, actually I've heard that. Yeah.
This is like his way to get back in.
He's trying to start dating us again. Yeah. Hey guys, how's it been? I've been in college.
It's like when JLo and Affleck got back together.
I'm living my best life in Palm Beach, just so you know. I don't know if you saw the pictures.
Wait, but we have to do something quickly on your podcast. Yeah, sure. So you were on, uh, CUM-TOWN on ABC, one of my favorite sitcoms. Oh no, it wasn't a sitcom. It was a podcast.
It was called Home Improvement. Yeah.
Uh, your, your initial podcast was CUM-TOWN and you guys never realized ever that you'd actually make money from it. And then all of a sudden you were making money from it. And turned it into an actual, you know, a way to—
Yeah, everything that's happened in my life has been an accident.
Well, you thought the podcast was going to promote, like, your comedy on the weekends, and all of a sudden people liked it.
We didn't know. Yeah, we didn't know that you could make money from podcasting. And then so that we kind of like, uh, I think, uh, yeah, we didn't know how it was growing. People, they used to ask us for like interviews and stuff, and Nick had like a no media policy.
Smart.
And I didn't, and it's just like, uh, at a certain point then you're like, I had worked 2 hours a week and I became the laziest man in the world. And so, like, welcome. Yeah. Then I was just like, but it sucked. But I mean, you're watching sports for work.
Yeah, it's great. I'm so jealous of you now. That's you. That's going to be you during the World Cup hosting a beautiful pod.
She's not going to respect it. I'm telling you, she's still— she's not going to respect that. I'm a sports pundit now. No, no, no, no. In reality, yeah, this new show started and it was a joke. And it's really credit to my old co-host Nick. 'Cause, uh, our Stavros, who's, uh, our friend who, he, uh, was exhausted and he left Cumtown. And I was like, but we should keep doing it, Nick. We have a brand, you know, we should keep going. And he was like, no, you gotta look good.
There's more cum in Cumtown. We gotta keep going.
I'm gonna turn you into a public intellectual. So into like in the vein of Dick Cavett. But like we very publicly pronounced, I think it was a joke. I mean, it's like I was the least, uh, beloved member of the three by far, but probably least talented by far too. And not probably, definitely. I mean, they're like geniuses, the two of them. And then I guess I decided to try for the first time. I never had— I think I was 35. It's really scary too, you know that? It's scary because if you try as hard as you can and then it sucks and you feel bad, that's why it's sport. Like, Wembley was like like this, 'cause he tried as hard as he could. Right. And yeah, it sucks. Like if it doesn't go well, that was Shaq in the 2000 season.
He is like, I'm really gonna go for this and try to win the MVP in the finals. But it's scary. Yeah. 'Cause if it doesn't happen, now what?
And you feel, you feel terrible.
Yeah.
Right. And it's like, yeah. And so then I just somehow it fell in, we didn't know how, how to make a television show. We publicly pronounced to the world we're making a TV show, and then we were like, so we should get some cameras maybe. Then we got an office in like some building, and then we built out a set. It was like all happening in real time, and then eventually it's become a real thing.
And well, one of the best things is you have a crazy guest list. I would say eclectic is the right word for it, but you'll basically— you'll interview anybody. You don't care.
I had Sarah Jessica Parker, and then I had one of the Nelk Boys in the next episode. Yeah, it's, uh, I kind of like that, is having an unpredictable kind of, uh, like rollout of guests. Yeah, it kind of makes it fun and feel, feel fresh. But, uh, yeah, that's one of the things that I enjoy the most about it. But I don't know, I, I really like doing them because it's— you, you were telling me you used to do, uh, interviews, but it's cool. I do a lot of research. I do like 2, 2 weeks of research. Yeah, for each guest. And I have researchers that we hire, like, that are some of the journalists and like, you know, people that we bring in. And like do research packets for me. But like, it's— what's really cool is like trying to account for what someone is like that you've never met. And then like building together the evidence that you find on like the, you know, that, that's been like prepared for you. It's like being an FBI profiler. Yeah. Because you wanna, you wanna disarm a guest, right? You want them to be comfortable so they'll open up more.
So you have to like kind of try to plan for like whatever tripwires there are so you can like continue to like, uh, to like keep them comfortable enough. I think the way I do it kind of maybe a little bit is just to present to them that I'm so unserious. They really don't— like, it's— they don't have to worry. Like, I'm a pretty dumb guy.
And like, you know, they let their guard down.
I used to be on a show called Cumtown. There's a time I pooped my pants during an episode and literally I was laughed at by the thousands of people. And I went home and I was like, I just feel like I did— it was like in front of the whole school. And I'm like, yeah. And they might— I might have kids. They're going to hear about that. They're going to respect me as a father. And she's like, I think you're getting a little carried away, Adam. I was like, dude, why would you even know? And how happy it made them that I pooped my pants. The joy that they got. No. And now I'm talking to, like, Gavin Newsom, and it's really shame on them. I'm not fully aware of why this is happening, but I'm not asking any questions. I guess the show's good. But like, it is really, I don't know, like, uh, it's insane how fast this has been. It's been a year since I relaunched the show and made it weekly.
Yeah.
And, uh, it's grown like so rapidly. And, uh, now I get to talk to my hero. I had Bill Simmons posters in my wall.
Oh, I thought you meant Gavin Newsom.
I had Sports Guy articles. Ah. And, and pinup girls. I had your articles and next to pinup girls and me and the rest of the GIs, we used to whistle at your articles. No.
Uh, well, you had all these. Yeah, I noticed something was happening because you started to do really smart press. People write these features about you and they were like, is he the millennium Jon Stewart? That stuff like that. I was like, this is great. He's, he's figured it out.
All my friends made fun of me for that because the, are you the millennial Jon? And the pictures that they use every time. I'm just like, every single— they use one of me like this, and I'm like, every comedian is going to make— I like went to this building for the photo shoot, and they had me go on the floor with a microphone like this. And I was like, I stopped them. I was like, can we not do this one? And they made it the main picture. Like, every comedian group chat was like, fuck this guy. I was like, but then I guess that's every comedian group chat anyway. Yeah, of course.
You expect it's just resentment and barbs. Yeah.
I don't— the— yeah, I guess I like the other couple ones. I didn't know they were writing. I think they were like reviews, but it's just, uh, you know what it is? I think it's really sad. I think they— it's sad they don't have anything better than this.
Well, there was a whole theory post the election about, well, where is the Rogan manuscript? Where's the other version of this? And I don't know, I never understood it.
A guy that wants to be the president is talking to me. Yeah, to me. Talking about sports is— I'm, I'm like excited because we're gonna go, um, like, uh, I get to take a break from the show and I'm just banking episodes and I'm going on pre-production. Uh, yeah, yeah, yesterday I tweeted at Hunter Biden. Apparently he's, he likes, he's coming on the show. And so I'm like banking episodes and building out a rollout for season 3. Wow. And then in the meantime, I get to do this sports thing. And, uh, I get to watch like, you know, uh, like Ivory Coast versus, uh, you know, Australia and tell my girlfriend that it's important. This is business. And she's like, my parents are here right now.
And you think France, France and Spain are the two favorites? I think that. And you like Brazil at +850 on FanDuel as a dark horse?
There's, I do. There's so many arguments for and against everyone. That's what's kind of fun. Brazil has like the magic of Don Carlo.
Yeah.
The magic of like the guy that's just, he just eats food. I, it just tells them just to have fun out there. And somehow is just like, has this energy, like this vibe about him that's just like, creates this, uh, just, yeah, like I was, Pep Guardiola, um, like used to just be in a lair next to a candelabra the night before the Champions League final, just with like, just constructing the most psycho like tactics and like, this is, this, he'll never see this coming. And then just lose to, to Don Carlo the next day. It's just that it was a perfect, like, uh, just a destruction of, like, uh, someone that's overly thinking everything and someone that's just like, just have fun. You guys are so good at sports. Can you imagine when you were little if that you knew you were gonna do this? That's awesome. You know, he's probably saying stuff like that. And, uh, but like, you know, Portugal has the best mid— the Portuguese midfield is disgusting. It's a joke. I mean, they have, uh, Neves They have Bruno and they have Vitinha. It's like there's like so many— the Dutch backline is the best, but there are issues, there are holes you could convince yourself of.
I think conventional wisdom is like France or Spain do it.
Does America get out of their bracket?
The bracket? I don't know if they get out of the bracket.
The group.
I think they win the group, crash out first knockout. That's my prediction. It just feels like that to me. I think that there's something, there's something just like, there's no energy there. And America, the country isn't just going nutso for them right now.
What under-25 player do you think Tommy Alter is going to say, hey, I'm going to dinner tonight with so-and-so, it's between games, do you want to join us? Which one is he going to glom onto? Yeah. Out of any country.
I don't know. Oh, at the World Cup? Yeah. He knows soccer players too.
Well, I, I just feel like he's gonna add it to his arsenal.
Yeah.
He is gonna go to like a hookah bar with like, hey, Jamal Mbappé, Mbappé's in town. We're gonna go to the Bowery tonight if you want to meet us.
9:30. Yeah. Who would I want to, well, who would I want to chill with, with Tommy Alter? I mean, Saka is my favorite player. Yeah. Bukayo Saka. He's, he's like the guy. He's the guy at 17 who pulled Arsenal out of like just the worst period in our history and, uh, had been there since he was like 8 years old. And, uh, yeah, it's just like, uh, there's something, there's something special about that. He's also another guy who, he had a rough season, but I'm gonna say he's at a world-class talent level in sports, but he's uniquely, um, decent as a human being. Like, there is an aspect of like you have to shed your like, uh, humanity kind of sometimes. Like, there's a— like, Jordan and Kobe kind of had to build themselves into psychos to, like, achieve what they achieved, right? Yeah. And that we— there's an understanding where, like, yeah, if you're gonna be like, I want to take the last shot at the buzzer and miss, you have to be crazy. You have to be like, it has to be me, right? You have to, like, kind of, uh, build yourself into a sociopath.
And, uh, that's what he's trying to do.
He— Webby has it. We love it.
He took the last shot of game 2. Like, I don't feel like Shaq would've done that in the second year of his career.
What we've seen, what, what even is that? Yeah. I don't know. Like, he's Durant and he's, I don't, what even is he? But, but yeah. Could you think of anyone in sports who's like, just like one of the best players in the world and is just a good guy? I can't think of it actually. I think of like, you have to kind of build yourself into a monster to be, I, you like, does that make any sense to you or no?
I can't think of a comp— I think you have to be, I think there has to be a little bit of a zero-sum game mentality to really dominate a sport. Yeah.
How could you like get ready in the locker room before a game and just be like a lovely person?
Right.
It doesn't make sense. Yeah. You have to kind of be like, I wanna, I wanna kill today. And I, I'd be it. And I wanna humiliate other people.
Well, look at Brady now. Brady post-NFL and people are like, wow, he's kind of weird. It's like, yeah, cuz you gotta be kind of weird to be the best best quarterback of all time.
I, I, we had no idea.
Oh, you didn't know?
I had no idea that he was weird while he was playing.
Yeah, we, we started near the end.
He's so offended. It's so real to you. It's so funny.
Ah, he's a family member. He brought us 6 Super Bowls.
Did he kiss you on the lips?
No, he's just— who did he kiss on the lips?
The son.
Son. Yeah.
And so did Belichick, the daughter. There's kind of a nice thing about kissing on the lips. On the—
do you want to leave on that note? No. Um, no, we, we have to wrap up though.
Uh, I know.
Okay.
I've just been thinking about this last podcast the whole time.
No, come on.
We're fine.
Sad. No, we, we hit a lot of the same stuff.
It would have changed—
you know what to do though? Why don't you do this? You told a great story about Kobe and Michael Jackson in the last podcast. We can end on that story because it was a really good anecdote. I had never heard it.
Yeah. Did you look it up afterwards? Did I misstate any facts?
I didn't look it up.
Just look it up on your computer. I'm not looking up.
No, we got to go. Tell the story. We were talking about Kobe and—
no, no, seriously.
Well, we were talking about Kobe and about how it took them a while to round into Kobe and all of the twists and turns. And then you told the story I'd never heard.
We were talking about— yeah, there was something about him just having his whole thing about mentorship, right? And then, yeah, but after bald head Kobe rookie year slam dunk champion, Uh, apparently he decided he wanted to have a man's body, but he needed a man's body, not he wanted. But he was a child. I mean, he looked little, like, uh, LeBron in his rookie year looked like that was a grown-ass man. But, uh, yeah, apparently he was like at Gold's Gym, he's like lifting weights, and, uh, he got a call. He was like, Kobe, it's Michael. And he was like, no, it's not. He hung up. And he's like, yeah, Kobe, I swear to God, it's Michael. Like, don't hang up, please, please, please. And so he's He's like, you want to come out to Neverland? Like, I want to meet you and say what up. Uh, talk. It would be great to meet you. So he went out there and he gave him this book called— this is— it's like a child's book, Jonathan Livingston Siegel. And, uh, he said, this is your— I, I've watched you and you're like me, and people are gonna heap you with praise and give you everything you want, and then they're gonna take it away.
And you just have to remember that one moment when they take it away that you can't stop. Like you can't stop, uh, like, uh, just like what's driving you. And it's kind of like, that is kind of a good assessment of Kobe's career and a good understanding of it.
'Cause, but he does this 4 years before the trial, right? So it was like 1999 range. So it was about 2, like apparently, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So apparently they were like in touch well before that. Yeah. And then, or, but prior to, but since that, and then afterwards, uh, I think when they both had legal trouble, the Eagle Colorado thing and Michael's second trial, they stopped talking. But, um, yeah, he was like, uh, just, just, you can't forget. Like, you have to just— you, you have to just push yourself as hard as you possibly can and, uh, and do not let them, uh, like, take that away. And it's like, it's kind of— for me personally, like, I was so sad because it— how old was he when he had 3? He was like 24.
I think probably, yeah. Yes.
Which is so many chips at such a young age. And then we were like asking ourselves like, what could happen now? Like he, he could just win a zillion, right?
Yeah. But you know, and being back there, like being an adult during that, it was always Shaq and Kobe together. How many were they gonna win together? Can they win 8? And they were always a team. And then the catch would be, can these guys stay together? And then that eventually became the issue.
So my dad, who got really into American sports and Los Angeles sports after the Pistons series, he stood up with about 2 minutes to go in the 4th and he stood up and he shouted. He was like, we never go on family walks. We were like, what? And he is like, everyone get your shoes on. And he was walking like 5 feet in front of us, just pissed. Like, uh, this is Joe Rogan? My dad. Oh, Max, my real dad. Uh, yeah, my father Joe Rogan. No, yeah, I didn't say his name. I just said that he was a host of a show called The Joe Rogan Experience. Um, no, but it was so— I, I have this memory of like me, me and my mom and my sister. We were like, he was like 10 feet in front of us and we were trying to walk fast. He was walking as fast as he could. It was, he was just so mad. The Ben Wallace Pistons. Yeah, that was a, that was an awful, being a Laker fan, it felt terrible.
I mean, that was not even a serious, more stunning result than the series we're having now because I kind of, even though the Spurs were favored, a lot of people, but a lot of people are picking the Knicks.
Their center was 6'7".
Yeah.
Like how big was Ben Wallace?
Well, he was like 6'9", but he was 6'3". Yeah.
Okay. And he was bodying Shaq. The, the, it was like, yeah, what was that team? It was Billups, Tayshaun. It was like, we never saw that coming. And, uh, yeah, whatever. But, uh, yeah, yeah, then ever since then, and then tell me how my ass taste. And Shaq, Shaq is kind of gifted a, a fourth ring. D-Wade goes on like a historic tear. Uh, yeah, everyone's laughing at Kobe now. Shut up.
Shaq was pretty important on that team.
He was pretty important.
Got to defend Shaq.
He rides D-Wade's coattails to the, to the, to a fourth. And no, um, no, but it, uh, did you ever say that? My favorite player. And I was like, but he's a— also, I think he was blamed for the breakup of that team unfairly. And I think the, the— it was really the busses that, uh, that wanted to break the team up. And I, I think that in retrospect, like, you don't think so?
There's been a lot of books written about this. Kobe wanted his own Kobe was ready for his own team, and I think he was incredibly frustrated by Smush Parker.
Get Smush Parker on the phone.
No, but I think he was— I think him and Shaq were not meant to be. They were not meant to be a long-term marriage.
And I don't think—
I mean, all the stuff that happened off the court didn't help either.
But, you know, I'm gonna say that Kobe— was it Kobe's fault? No, but in reality, I think that it's just like, you see it, it's just like LeBron after the decision. The guy who's beloved, just everyone's like, haha. Like, we love seeing, we love seeing people destroyed somehow in society and then building them back up. Yeah. No, in America we do. In the UK they don't. It's weird. When I watch like British sports, they, they don't have a concept of, uh, comebacks. It's insane. But like when Tiger won, I cried.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Like, 'cause I was like, I never thought I'd see him again. And I was like, uh, he was, when I was a kid, he was like in Sports Illustrated for kids. And he was like, he was also a kid like me, and he was winning by like 20 strokes and making Phil Mickelson want to kill himself every Sunday. Dude, just eat shit every Sunday.
This is how I felt when I saw The Town. I was like, Affleck's fucking back. We are out of the woods. My guy is back. Let's go for a ride. You reminded me that you did this whole bit about Tibbs and Steve Kerr, and you wanted to redo it. So Let's pretend you're ad-libbing this from scratch. I asked you, we could start. If you were Tibbs's best friend watching the Knicks 2 games away from the finals, what would you say to Tibbs?
I would say, first of all, it's great to be best friends with you. You're an incredible guy. You shout a lot. And also, like, what's going on with your throat? Like, you're always hoarse. Should I make a little tea with honey? I have echinacea. Are you sick? Do you think it was necessary to play everyone 47 minutes in November?
Why didn't you just sham it? No, but you're trying to lift them up though, because the Knicks are 2 games away from the Finals.
Your DNA runs through these boys. I mean, that is a fair point, to be honest. Like, he built— like, how hard-nosed they are. And especially, like, seeing them collectively deal with Wemby. There is something about like, uh, they're like, uh, yeah, he's made them tough. Like all they even— I know Cat's been— had a new coach for a year, but like it's a, it's a Cat that we haven't seen yet, right? Yes. And it's like, but I, it, but I do, I feel bad. I do for like Mark. I felt really bad. Mark Jackson, but he was doing the ABC broadcast the year after he retired, or retired, he was, uh, asked to leave. Because it was just like, how must he have felt like watching that? It must have been like watching your wife having sex with a man who has the biggest penis in the world, and not only orgasm after orgasm, just sitting there saying, hand down, man, that was good, tipo, pero, just like he's whispering in her ear. And you have to not only— no, wait, not only do you have to watch your wife having sex with her, the best, the guy that's giving her the sex of her life, You have to give a play-by-play on ESPN and ABC for the next 5 years.
You have to do— but yeah, and now he's, now he's, uh, it's reverse cowgirl.
That was—
and that's a great reverse cowgirl, whatever he does. And that's hand— that's good D but better O. Yeah, hand down. Yeah, I mean, I think I, I would hope that Van Gundy was just nice to him and said like, listen, listen, they Come on, man. You're a good guy.
You're a good guy. She wouldn't have known that she was gonna love it with like this until she went through the marriage with you.
She had no way of knowing it. I just did. I didn't even know a woman could have this.
This would have happened with you. Yeah, this would have happened with you if you just hung around.
You were great. I mean, it's, you know, are you sure for a job you want to be doing the play-by-play? Mike Breen is saying bang over and over again excitedly. Every time your wife comes, curry bang, bang.
All right, we're wrapping up. Adam Friedland Show coming back in July and the Beautiful Pod starting in June on Wednesday. Chris Ryan, many others.
Maybe I'll have a hat. Signing ceremony.
Signing ceremony. Great to see you. All right. Thanks, Adam Friedland. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to State Farm for sponsoring today's show. Thanks to Adam Friedland. Don't forget, he is, uh, coming aboard. Go check out his podcast if you haven't listened to it. It's great, really fun interviews of the whole variety of eclectic people. Uh, he's really good at what he does. Excited to have him with the World Cup. Excited to lend him CR for a few weeks. You know, we don't always do that. A lot of people want to borrow CR. Um, thanks to Gao and Eduardo and everybody from my side as well. Um, here's the plan. Monday night Game 3, it's gonna end, and then Rob Mahoney and I are gonna be live on Netflix breaking down what is sure to be a memorable game in some respect. I don't know what's gonna happen. I'm prepared for anything. Uh, new rewatchables is coming Monday as well. We did Single White Female. We're in the middle of From Hell Month. Also, we put up a mailbag on Thursday if you missed that one. Uh, just about an hour, but, uh, banged through some really fun questions for that.
I will see you in 32 hours, 36 hours, something like that. Uh, enjoy Game 3. Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.
Join The Ringer’s Bill Simmons LIVE on Netflix to give his thoughts on Game 2 of the NBA Finals and to discuss what the Spurs will need to do being down 0-2 in the series (1:15). Then, Adam Friedland joins the pod to talk Knicks, the World Cup, and much, much more (50:27).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Adam Friedland
Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers
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