The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Aliens, one of the most requested movies of the last couple years. We have Talladega Nights coming next Monday. That's gonna be the Ringer Fantasy Football guys taking over the pod on that. Bunch of football stuff next week. Sunday, me and Sal are gonna do Guest Alliance Week 1, and we're gonna do all of our NFL futures. I'm gonna have a podcast on Tuesday, going Wednesday night after the Patriots game, and then Thursday night after Rams and 49ers in Australia. So Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, we'll all be live on Netflix. So stay tuned for that. I'm in Boston, Massachusetts, where I went to Fenway Park yesterday with my dad and my son and my daughter's boyfriend, who, uh, has had an interesting week. We, we got to see the Mariners lost, but we had a great time and it was great to be at Fenway, one of my favorite places on the earth. Not really enjoying the allergies these days. Went to, went to my daughter's game on Tuesday. They won their first game of the season.
She scored a goal. So that, that was fun. It's been an interesting week, up and down week in a lot of different ways. But that's the thing, when you've been in the limelight for a while, shit happens anyway. Barkley's coming up in a little bit. That's right. Charles Barkley, every September right before football season comes on the pod. We had him, we had him randomly booked. And yet, uh, in the last 48 hours, all hell broke loose with the Clippers. Last 24 hours, last 36 hours, whatever it was. So we got to hear him talk about the Clippers. I am going to talk at the top of the podcast, all my thoughts on the Clippers. It's gonna be right after the break, right after Pearl Jam, and then me talking about the Clippers. And then after that, Charles Barkley. That's next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to fanduel.com/bs to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club.
21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right, I'm recording the top part of the podcast here early Thursday afternoon. I went to the Red Sox yesterday. My phone started blowing up, and it was because the verdict finally came in on the Clippers from the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, and the Clippers were in trouble. This was the biggest punishment ever handed out in the National Basketball Association. You know all of it at this point. 5 first-round picks. Ballmer's out for a year. Lawrence Frank, 6 months. $30 million fine for Ballmer. Can't go to his own arena. The arena that he just spent 5 years slaving over trying to figure out how to make the best basketball arena possible. Can't go to the games next year. This was a phenomenal level of incompetence from Ballmer and the Clippers. When you think back to 2019, where LeBron had shown up in LA the year before. The Clippers were so desperate to be relevant again in year 5 of Ballmer that they literally whored themselves out in every way they could.
Not only did they do everything it took to get Kawhi, they trade SJ and all those picks for Paul George because that's the only way you can get them together. Instead of just playing poker with Kawhi, which I, I, I still don't know where else he would've gone. Regardless, they get fleeced in the Paul George trade. Which was defensible when it happened, but 6 years later looks like one of the worst trades in the history of the league. They got fleeced by somebody named Uncle Dennis, who is no longer allowed near any kind of league business for the next 5 years. They got screwed over by Kawhi Leonard, I think. You know, you think about like, who didn't get punished in this? How about Kawhi? He only had to pay a $700,000 fine. He got to go back to Toronto, the team he should have ended up with anyway. Didn't really lose any money, didn't get suspended for 20 games without pay. And, you know, why'd they do this? Because obviously the players union, and maybe even Kawhi too, it's like, hey, if you're easy on Kawhi, we won't challenge this. And as soon as the players union can't challenge it, the Clippers have no recourse because they had agreed to abide by whatever the NBA found in the investigation.
So if the players union's not suing and nobody's suing, this is kind of what they're stuck with. They have screwed up almost a decade and a half of their franchise dating back to the summer of 2018. Like, they're not gonna have their pick in 2032. That would be 13 years after the Kawhi signing. They could basically throw a bar mitzvah in 2032 for how fucking stupid they are. They've turned themselves into the Southern California Brooklyn Nets. They, I think, will have less fans over the next couple years than they've ever had at any point in the history of the franchise, including in the '80s and '90s when the owner was actively trying not to spend any money. And somehow they are the single most depressing situation in the NBA yet again. If you think about the mid-2000s Timberwolves after the Joe Smith verdict and the damage that that did to Kevin Garnett's prime. Kevin Garnett is one of the 25 best players ever and makes the 2004 Conference Finals despite the fact that they lost Joe Smith and were starting to lose all their first-round picks. Within, in '05, '06, '07, never makes the playoffs, right?
You have one of the best players in the league. You can't even make the playoffs in a 16-team playoff. And they ended up having to trade him to Boston where he finally wins the title. This demolished them. And what happens, and this is what's gonna happen in the Clippers, when you don't have picks, you can't get somebody like Jokic or Giannis to show up in 2027 or 2028. No free agent wants to go there 'cause you don't have a future. you have to start taking these huge risks. You take risks on people like Mark Blount. That's what Minnesota did. Or Ricky Davis, or, you know, you're, you're taking these big expensive contracts that people are actually trying to dump, but the player is good and you're hoping maybe it'll work out with the player. And by the way, if your front office isn't that good, like look at Minnesota, they wasted the whole mid-2000s. Garnett trade was defensible 'cause they got Al Jefferson and some picks back. But then in 2009, you know, they passed Curry, they passed on Curry twice. So that demolished, I would say, a decade and a half for the Timberwolves based on all the picks they lost, having to trade Garnett, and then incompetence.
Could that be what happens to the Clippers if Wagner, the first round pick the Clippers got in the Zubac trade, if he becomes a bust? They took him 5th. I'm just saying, I hope he doesn't. I hope he turns out great. If he becomes a bust, this is the single most depressing NBA situation since the early '80s Cavaliers when owner Ted Stepien traded away so many first-round picks they had to create the Stepien Rule to, to basically prevent anyone from being as stupid as this Cleveland Cavs owner was. This would be the most depressing situation since then. All right, so the Clippers are still professing like their, their, their innocence, but You know, if you do the sniff test here, and this is something that Pablo Torre did so well as he was doing all the podcasts about it, where he was, he had real evidence, but was also like, hey, does this pass the sniff test to you guys?
Basically.
Well, you look at the sniff test now from, from what we look at that report, we know that multiple NBA teams already said in the late 2010s that Uncle Dennis was making crazy demands. Like, that's documented. They, like, asking for hockey pieces of hockey teams and crazy shit. So we already knew that was happening in the summer of 2019. From the report, these are just things that were in the report post-signing. They said Uncle Dennis consistently pushed the Clippers for $10 million a year in extra Kawhi endorsements. And if you read between the lines of 47 different things that you can just add together, it's clear they were like, yeah, all right, you do this and we'll try to figure out how to get you to $10 million a year somehow. Um, 4 companies that he had endorsements with. This is from the report. Each company had never before signed an endorsement agreement of remotely the same financial magnitude and hasn't since. That's notable. Also from the report, each agreement imposed minimal performance obligations on Mr. Leonard relative to the amount he was paid. I talked about this a few weeks ago. It never added up why he was getting endorsement money not to endorse anything.
Well, the report spells it out. Go read it. 36 pages. Also from the report, no agreement was publicly announced. So you're paying out money for all this dude to endorse your product, but we don't know he's endorsing it and he's not doing any work for it. Sniff test. Um, there were also emails from the Aspiration higher-ups. The Clippers are promising to increase the amount they pay us per quarter in line with what we pay this guy, is a direct quote from one of the emails. Another responded, thanks for verifying. We should be fine if it's cash flow neutral. So this is basically, this is spelling out Quipper's giving Aspiration money and it's coming back to them and it's just kind of going back and forth because they're trying to figure out how to get Kawhi stuff. And then also in the report, Quipper's chief commercial officer, Scott Sonnenberg, talking about the, uh, the Forum deal that they had. I never wanted this Forum deal. Always knew it was super shady. I cannot begin to tell you all the red flags with these deals, just doing what I'm told. So that's documented. Not great. There's, there's some what-if stuff.
I got some good questions about this over the last 24 hours, including, you know, the Clippers, the 5 first-round picks are gone. Should that have just been the prize for the in-season tournament? They're not going to do that. But the first round now, 29 teams, so everybody has a better chance of They move up in the draft. So it has all these ramifications. So every, everyone else in the league has to be delighted that the Clippers got their legs cut out, and it also makes the draft a little easier for them. The most interesting email I got was from Tim from Philly who asked, let's say the Clippers won in 2021, and then it turned out all this stuff had happened after the fact. What if they had won a title? What if they won the title in '23? Would Adam have had to revoke it college sports style? One of the weird things about this was a lot of the Kawhi stuff was really centered around the extension, like the 2022-23 range. One of the years where he was hurt. I didn't understand that part at all. And it almost makes it seem like it was some IU stuff there.
There's a million things I don't get about this. The biggest one being, why are you doing all this for Kawhi Leonard? I get it. He won the 2018 title, and you could argue he was the best player in the, in the world at the time. And he gave you credibility to battle LeBron and all this stuff. But you're dealing with somebody named Uncle Dennis, and you, you're in this world. You could say, you could talk about, oh, every NBA team does this. This is a whole other level of what every other NBA team would do. Like, even if they had gotten him— An endorsement to do like an El Segundo sub shop, and he held the sub up like that famous Scottie Pippen sandwich ad where he's holding the one with the giant footlong sandwich with the 2 girls between him. That's one of the funniest ads of all time. Even if he had done that and they overpaid him for that, at least he was getting paid for work. I just can't believe that these people who also built like an awesome building, who seem really competent in everything they do, Were this bad when you read this 36-page report.
But then you think, what more could we have expected from the most incompetent sports franchise of all time? I wrote a piece, The Curse of the Clippers, in 2009 after Blake Griffin got drafted, where I spelled out all this stuff. I, I'm just gonna rip through the highlights, not even from that piece, but everything after. This is a team that traded for a young Moses Malone in 1976 and then flipped them 6 days later. for 2 first-round picks. They traded their MVP, 2-time MVP Bob McAdoo for John Geno and cash. They traded 2 starters and an unprotected first for Bill Walton, who had broken feet and ended up having 35 surgeries. Players they stupidly gave away or lost since the NBA merger in 1976. Mentioned Moses and McAdoo, Adrian Dantley, Terry Cummings, Tom Chambers, Danny Manning, Lamar Odom, Andre Miller, and Elton Brand. That's just in the 33-year span from '76 to 2009. They traded future firsts for World B. Free and Joe Bryant, and those firsts became Charles Barkley and the number 1 pick in the 1986 draft, Brad Daugherty. They took Danny Ferry one spot ahead of Glen Rice, even though Danny Ferry was like, I'm not reporting to the Clippers, and ended up not reporting and playing in Italy.
They had traded him to the Clippers. They passed on KG and Kobe in consecutive drafts in spots where they easily could have taken them. A lot of people passing them, but it's notable. They drafted Michael Ola Kandi first in a draft with Pierce, Vincent Dirk. They drafted or traded the following stars, traded for the following stars who either blew out their knee or their Achilles: Tiny Archibald, Norm Nixon, Marcus Johnson, Danny Marining, Derek Smith, Ron Harper, and Loy Vaught. They drafted 18 forwards in the top 9 over a 33-year span. They drafted Blake Griffin in 2009. Super exciting. Immediately gets hurt, misses his rookie season. They traded Baron Davis in 2010 to get off his contract. The 2010-11 season, the pick they trade to get rid of the contract ends up being the number 1 pick in the draft, Kyrie Irving. 2014, their best chance ever to make the finals. They get completely submarined by the Donald Sterling scandal. which was the craziest owner scandal in the history of the league, submarines them during a playoffs where it seemed like they might have the best chance to win of anyone in the playoffs. So that happened.
They do the Kawhi trade, which ends up with them giving away SGA and Jalen Williams and basically building the OKC dynasty. Then the, the Kawhi piece of it where he just keeps getting hurt, that basically blows up the first half of their, of their decade where they never know if they could rely on him. COVID 2020. It's forgotten that as we're heading into COVID, 3 teams have a chance to win the title. Milwaukee and the 2 LA basketball teams. We go into the bubble. What was the team that completely fell apart in the bubble more than, like, famously more than anybody? The team that just kind of wanted to get outta there and didn't care if they won a playoff round or not. The Clippers. And then 2021, right when that season's wide open, ends up being Phoenix and Milwaukee. What happens? Kawhi gets hurt in round 2. They end up not making the finals. That's the only time they ever made a conference finals. They do not have a retired number, at least that I know of. The best Clipper is probably Chris Paul, the best Clipper ever, who they just completely torpedoed their relationship last year.
The second best Clipper they've ever had is Blake Griffin, who they signed to a big contract and then traded to Detroit and cut his legs out. And the 3rd best Clipper is probably Kawhi Leonard, who just caused them a bar mitzvah worth of damage over, over the 2020s and early 2000s, uh, 2030s. So they have no picks in '29, '30, '31, '32, and '33. And I don't know how you fix it. So the big question for me, um, was this the right punishment? And this is— I'm not saying they shouldn't have been punished. I'm saying, was this the punishment that they deserved? Because I think you could make a case. Maybe you give Ballmer the choice. Maybe it's either you sell the team or here's the punishment. And if you don't sell the team, your fans are going to know that you chose to keep the team. And screw them over basically for half a decade. So you pick, you tell us, because either you sell in the next 6, 9 months, or here's the punishment. Because the part that gets lost in this is you have all these Clipper fans. There's not a lot of them, but they're, they're, they're there.
They're, they're around Southern California, and there's people that bought season tickets, including myself. I bought, uh, I have season tickets with my friend Mike Tolan. When they built this new building, They went around and they went to a lot of— they basically asked if you want to sign a contract, if you go, if you buy in for 5 years, you know, you get 20% off, you get this, you get that. So we're in year 3 of a 5-year contract for Clipper tickets, and we signed up with a team that just cheated and got, and got docked according to the NBA. Do they care about the fans at all?
No.
Like, would they offer any Clipper fan, like, hey, this was really bad, we get it. If you want to opt out of your tickets, if you want to, if you bought tickets for a game this year and you want to, you want us to return the money, if you bought half of a season ticket, whatever, um, we're offering you a refund right now. What happens if there's a class action fund? Like what, like if, if Clipper season ticket people got together and were like, we're actually going to sue the Clippers because we don't want to pay for tickets this year after everything that happened, what would happen? This has never been tested in the history of, of the NBA. And the bigger thing to me, and this is what I don't like about the punishment, I get why they had to do it that way. And you have to have, basically, this is the third rail and people know what it is now. The people that get punished are the fans. Steve Ballmer's worth $15 billion, right? Oh no, I have to pay a $30 million fine. Like he probably burped that out. Oh, I can't go to Clipper games for a year.
Well, who watch 'em on TV?
Yeah.
Jillian Jacobs and Lawrence Frank, like they're suspended. He gave Lawrence Frank a huge extension right before all this stuff happened. The fans are stuck with the team. And this is what happened with Minnesota in the mid-2000s. This is what led— when I was at ESPN, I wrote a magazine column about how I wanted to be the new GM of the Timberwolves because they'd hit rock bottom and maybe they needed hope and some outside thinking. How do you fix this from a Clipper standpoint with the fans? Like, not only did— was this Kawhi thing a nightmare from start to finish, they never won anything with him, right? And then on top of it, they had to trade for James Harden to try to make Kawhi happier, and then they gave up more picks. This 2028 pick they have, it's probably going to the Celtics unprotected. It's like a Celtics-Sixers, they get the best of the pick of, uh, whatever the pick played out. So even before they lose '29, '30, '31, '32, '33, That pick's going to Boston in '28. So as a Celtic fan, I, I'll be rooting against the Clippers the next couple years.
But how do you reconcile all this with the fans? How do you get them to come back? What do you do? How do you think outside the box to make them feel good about being a Clipper fan again? Especially tying in the last 50 years of this franchise and the fact that from the moment they moved to Southern California or started thinking about it, it's like somebody tossed a black cat on this team. And it's never gonna change. And if the outcome had been sell the Intuit Dome to the Lakers, move this team to Seattle, I just don't think there's a lot of tears shed. I really don't. And I, and I think what Ballmer did with this team, where he was basically following the worst owner in the history of the league, history of the league, and one of the worst owners in the history of sports, and somehow came up with, with an even worse outcome than, anything from a basketball standpoint that happened with Sterling. So this is a disaster. I really think that there should be, um, some outs for the fans, um, because I think this is just bullshit. You root for a team, you pick a team, you're stuck with them.
You're not allowed to divorce your team. Um, somehow we're allowed to divorce real people but not, not our teams. And if you pick the Clippers, you're just taking it in the chin. For your entire life. So how is that worth it? At some point you gotta come up with another choice for an NBA team. And, and honestly, I think it's right now for a lot of people. So yeah, I never thought the Clippers would find a new rock bottom, but I think they have. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna go to Charles Barkley and Charles's audio and video was cutting out a little bit. So there's some video spots that we had to run a picture. When his videos stop, but it's that you're gonna enjoy it. He's great and he's coming up next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. And guess what? FanDuel is now everywhere. I'm not kidding. It's everywhere. California, Texas, Georgia, Florida. You can finally get in on the action at home, the game, whatever the group is watching. It's all up to you. FanDuel makes sports more exciting because every fan can now celebrate your team winning Or when the group chat calls, the comeback.
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Wow. And you end up with that. You could have been a Clipper. I mean, you probably wouldn't even be talking to me right now. You might be living in like a one-bedroom apartment in Alabama somewhere.
Hey, you listen, the luck of the draw. You know, listen, it was really interesting. Like, remember when that thing came out like 2 weeks ago and the clip was like, well, we found no wrongdoing, blah, blah, blah. Then like a day later, NBA said, no, that's, that's their investigation. We got a different one.
Yeah.
So, so I said, somebody asked me what I thought. I says, well, the NBA is trying to figure out what to do. The Clippers are not very good at cheating. They got busted and they're trying to figure out a way to save the integrity of the people of the NBA. The Clippers are not very good at cheating. I mean, this was one of them.
Yeah.
Shout out to Pop Ray for uncovering, like, wow, no brain, like really easy cheating to find. So listen, I think they did the best they could under the circumstances, and the Clippers got what they deserved. But this was probably let Kawhi come to Canada, and that's the best case scenario.
Yeah. When Kawhi, when that trade got greenlit for him to go to Toronto, that made me suspicious because Toronto was probably the team in 2019 that had the most agenda against the Clippers for how it played out?
Yeah. You know, listen, number one, Kawhi should've never left Toronto in the beginning. He owned an entire country. He had a great general manager in Masai Ujiri. I mean, it was, it, that was one of the great runs. That was one of the great runs in NBA history by one guy who took an entire organization to the top. And he should have never left Toronto in the first place. But this is just a stain on the NBA, plain and simple. This looks bad. There's no way to— there's nothing you can really say. The Clippers got busted for cheating, and they didn't— I guess they got busted twice for cheating because I guess Kawhi was getting paid by 2 different companies.
So 4. Wait, and sponsors I'd never heard of. They're people that didn't normally have sponsorship agreements with anybody. And that's when, once you get to 4, pretty tough to cover up this stuff.
Yeah. Like even if you did a commercial, you could at least cover it up a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah. Like you get paid for not doing anything. That's really bad cheating. They could at least put them in some kind of a fake commercial. Or something like that to try to cover their ass, which honestly, if we're going to be honest, that's what they probably should have did. They have to know, especially when I saw when people started getting arrested, everybody's going to flip to get less jail time. So that's when the aspiration thing went down. My man got jail time. You have to know that's when the cookie started crumbling. So if they were going to cheat like they did, All they really had to do, Bill, honestly, just do a fake commercial. Even that. Yeah. They should have did something like that so they would've been able to cover their ass.
Yeah. And that was the, in the, in the, in the report that came out where the, it really seemed like they took umbrage at a couple of things the Clippers did, including like, you have this endorsement deal with a team that's never, with a company that's never done endorsements. And then there's no commercials or any sort of thing for the endorsement, and they have no other arrangements like this with any other athletes or celebrities. So what do you want us to do at this point?
Yeah, they put Adam in a very bad situation. They put— and I got a lot of love. They put him in a bad situation and they got hammered, rightfully so, plain and simple.
Chuck, would you take money from a company that wanted you as an endorsement, but you didn't have to actually endorse anything, and nobody ever knew you were even involved with the company? I feel like you would do this.
Bill, let me tell you something. There is never free money. Don't forget, there's never free money. Like, some of these stories you've been hearing through our lifetime, when something crooked happens, If you do something criminally for money, it always comes out in the long run.
Right.
And I always say, one of my favorite things is, jail is full of people who didn't commit crimes. You're like, no, no. But to answer your question, obviously anybody would be tempted to take a lot of money, but there's always consequences when you do something illegal. There's always consequences, plain and simple.
Did you feel like this stuff was happening when you played, or is this a relatively recent thing?
Oh, it happened when I played. The Rockets needed me to take a pay cut to sign Scottie Pippen. And I said, you know what? If y'all can get Scottie Pippen, I'll take a pay cut.
Right.
So they said, we'll make it up to you next year. I'm like, oh, all right, fine. And it wasn't a lot of money. I think the most money I ever made, I'm not saying it like stupidly, most money I made was like $5 million, which is a lot of money.
Yeah.
I know that, you know, the internet fool's gonna go crazy. That's a lot of money. So I took a pay cut so we could sign Scottie Pippen. And then they said, we're gonna make it up to me the next year. And I was on the end. I had nothing left in the tank, but I had one more year left on my contract. So I show up for training camp and sign my contract and they're like, Well, we decided you wasn't worth a shit, so we're not gonna give you that money back. We're just gonna give you your original money back.
Oh no.
And I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're like, well, you can go somewhere else. And at that stage, I couldn't get more than that money with them. I'm like, you know what, y'all pissing me off. But I had to take that money. Um, but you remember, you go back, remember when Joe Smith got busted, but the Timberwolves, but teams have always did under-the-table deals where they're like, hey, yeah, you take a pay cut here, we'll hook it up to you. I think they're actually, I think the NBA's investigating a couple of those right now. If my memory serves me correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Gary Trent's one is weird. Yeah.
But people been like doing this a long time.
So, you know, for the Clipper fans out there, where you have your team just get destroyed by first the Kawhi trade and then you lose a half a decade of first-round picks, including you had a couple picks in 2029, now you have one. And it—
The good point about it, they're used to losing, so it won't be a, it won't be a shock to the system.
That's true. Yeah, they have 50, 50 years of experience with feeling bad. But when this happened with Joe Smith, who you just mentioned, and Timberwolves, I thought it had a profound impact on Kevin Grant— Kevin Garnett's career. Just Minnesota basketball in general. It took them— I would, I mean, then they were hiring the wrong people too. This is the team that famously took 2 point guards that weren't Steph Curry in the 2009 draft. Like they made a bunch of mistakes. But ultimately I look back at that and I remember writing about it at the time, like, holy shit, this Joe Smith thing, it might be ruining Kevin Garnett's prime. And they got to the conference finals once in '04 and that was really it. He was in the lottery for 3 straight years after that. That's crazy.
Yeah.
And I wonder with the Clippers, is that gonna happen?
Well, the Clippers are not gonna be relevant for the next 5 years anyway.
Yeah.
Listen, if you're in the Western Conference, you better get, you can get frequent flyer mileage to Oklahoma City and to San Antonio. And if you bought, if you bought 10 tickets to San Antonio and 10 tickets to Oklahoma City for the next 5 years, You gonna have— you gonna get to use them. Everything in the West is going through OKC and San Antonio the next 5 years. Those— so they're 2 great organizations. They got great players. They're well coached. Like the NBA championship going through San Antonio and OKC the next 5 years, not just the West. But yeah, so listen, that, that's the only saving grace for the Clippers. They, they're not gonna be irrelevant for the next 5 years, but most teams in the West are not gonna be relevant for the next 5 years.
I talked about this at the top of the podcast, but do you feel like there should be protections for fans with this stuff? Like, do you think the season ticket holders of the Clippers should be like, this whole thing happened, I didn't sign up for this, I'd like to be let outta my season tickets? Like, should fans have better protection?
100%. And be one, one, and one thing I've always said, I think there should be a rule that you cannot raise your ticket prices if you're below .500. I've always said that. I don't think, like, some of these teams, they raise their ticket prices every year no matter what.
I've all—
I've steadfastly said this, there should be a rule in pro sports that you cannot raise ticket prices if your team below .500. And, and I don't even think that's that much of a, like, an issue. Like, if your team is below .500, you should not be able to raise your ticket prices, plain and simple.
Yeah. I wonder, like, even in the second half of a season when a team's clearly trying not to win, if the, if those tickets should be discounted. We don't think about this stuff at all with the paying customers for whatever reason.
That's a little bit different because if you ask a fan, are they trying to get to that damn lottery? That's a different animal.
But now nobody at the lottery is in the same anymore though. Like, if you're in the bottom 3 now, you have less ping pong balls.
Yeah, but I think the NBA screwed that up. What they have— and I've said from the beginning, every team in the lottery get one ping pong ball. That's it.
Hmm.
The notion where we reward you with ping pong balls for losing is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, okay, you gonna get one ping pong ball that will force you to try to win down the stretch. It's like, well, we're gonna be in the lottery. We're not gonna get more balls. I've always thought the NBA screwed this thing up from the beginning. Every team in the lottery get one ping pong ball. I mean, I think you can count on one hand the amount of times the team with the worst record actually got the number one draft pick. I mean, yeah, they never get it. So why are you rewarding them to tank games the last 30 games of the season? No, you know, you're going to be in the lottery, you're going to get one ping pong ball and that's it. That'll be an easy, simple way to fix the lottery.
Can you explain to the people listening who are, are a little bit younger, who don't remember the '80s and '90s, how incompetent the Clippers were when you were an NBA player? What it was like to play against them? What, just what it was like to have them in the league during that stretch?
They're kind of like a lot of baseball teams now. The Clippers always had good players, but they wouldn't pay them. I tell people this all the time. The notion that every team is trying to win in sports is not true. It's not true. Some of these guys are just great businessmen. They're making money because they're splitting revenue. Their team is getting evaluated at $200 or $300 million more every year. So they're running a business. But Donald Sterling was a great businessman. He was an awful person, but he was a great businessman. The Clippers go back. Bill, I've said this for years. It's impossible to be bad at sports. It's impossible. Think about this. If you're gonna get a lottery pick every year, your team should get better automatically. I, I, I, when I'm talking to my friends, I said, these teams, some of these teams are not trying to win. Because think about this, if you're a great lawyer, you're gonna go to the best law firm.
Yeah.
If you're a great doctor, you're gonna go to the best hospital. Sports, We are the only job in the world. Think about this. We're the only job in the world where we tell you, you suck. But you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna let you pick a new crop of people coming out, the best of the best. And you said it earlier about Minnesota. They picked 2 point guards in back-to-back years that weren't named Steph Curry. They just don't know what they're doing.
Yeah.
I tell people all the time, it's impossible to— it's impossible to be bad at sports if you just— if you got— unless you got bad people don't know what they're doing. Go back and look at every draft. Think about this. The San Antonio Spurs, they moved up to get Kawhi. They drafted Tony Parker, Ginobili, Hall of Famers. in the second round or late first round. That's— they know what they're doing.
Yeah.
You know, people didn't pick Jalen Brunson, they picked him late. Like, people just don't know what they're doing. Like, and, and, you know, now, now they're using analytics, but the best way to evaluate basketball players is to get people who would know exactly what they're looking for. But I do, like, if you're not good at your job, Yeah, but a lot of these guys, general managers, they keep their job to like 3 head coaches. They, they, they, and if they, if they get lucky every now and then, they keep their job. But man, it's impossible to be bad at sports if you know what you're doing.
Yeah. To that point, like think about Oklahoma City, right? In the late 2010s where Durant leaves, they have Westbrook, they make a big play for Paul George. They're kind of, they have a low ceiling. They're not gonna make the finals. They know it. And then Presti, within a year, completely rebuilds the team, makes the Paul George trade, nails a couple picks, and they go from like, we suck to now we are a title contender in 2 years because they played the system correctly. But a lot of teams don't.
Number one, nobody thought Shai was gonna be this great, but right, he picked Jalen Williams, he picked Cheick Hongram. And what the thing Sam does better than anybody in the league, He got guys on the bench that are incredible.
Right.
Like Isaiah Joe. I know they just traded him. They got the Jalen Williams kid. Like he getting, 'cause you, when you're drafting as low as they are, you have to know what you're doing. It's actually, he's from the San, uh, San Antonio model. And he, you see, he's doing like the same stuff with, with Ginobili and Parker. The guy, yeah, that he's getting late first round, second round are really, really good players. That goes back to what we're talking about. If you know what you're doing, 'cause there's guys who pick guys in the lottery who can't play dead, you know? But if you know what you're doing, you gotta have a great scouting staff. You gotta have a great system in place.
So you look at like some of the other teams and what they did this year. Right? Philadelphia, sometimes, sometimes you get lucky, right? Philadelphia, Maxey fell to 21. They end up, they getting him. That's a good, they great pick. They, they tank for one year. They get VJ Edgecomb, great pick.
Yeah.
Jaylen Brown, the Celtics wanna move off him. They're in the right place, right time with that. They get him and then all of a sudden LeBron's like, hey, that's looking pretty good over there. I'll jump in too. And now all of a sudden they have the number 2 odds in the East.
Yeah. You know what's interesting about that, Bill? I've been asked, you know, I live in Philadelphia during the summer 'cause they got the best golf courses in the world. So I play golf every day. So I've been in Philly for the last 2 months. I have been asked 9,755 times why the Celtics traded Jaylen Brown to Philly. And 9,752 times I said, I have zero idea why. And that was to me one of the craziest trades I've seen in, in my 40 years in the NBA. I can't explain it. It doesn't make— like, okay, the Celtics don't want Jaylen Brown. I understand it. Clearly they did not want Jaylen Brown. Jaylen Brown. There is no way in the hell you trade him that close to, number one, a team you gotta play 5 times in the regular season. and probably gonna have to beat— get through in the playoffs because the Sixers were dead. The Sixers were dead. They were irrelevant. They had a— they had an aging Paul George and an aging Joel Embiid for the next 2 years with Paul, 3 or 4 years with Embiid. They were dead in the water, irrelevant.
And now all of a sudden they get Jalen, they are back in contention. And then you throw the cherry on top with LeBron. But there's nothing anybody can say to me that I can go on TV or on your podcast or anywhere in the world and say that trade made sense for the Celtics. That's just crazy.
Yeah, I've obviously been sitting with it all summer and I think about 2 weeks ago talked myself into at least maybe why it could work. But fundamentally, I just thought Jalen was so good last year, and I get that they didn't wanna pay 2 guys that amount of money. Like, both of them had top 10 contracts in the league for value. And to me, like, the more I stare—
Paul George makes similar money to Jalen for the next 2 years. They didn't have, they don't have, they didn't have to pay Jalen right now.
I think what they were thinking was, Paul George and Jalen, they're making around the same money this year. Next year, Paul George is an expiring, would allow them to circle back. But that it was interesting, some of the rhetoric they had about like Stevens, who, you know, is always very careful what he says. And he just seemed to think like the team ran its course with those 2 guys and that it wasn't sustainable anymore to contend. And that a year from now, they're gonna be in the same decision they were in this year. And they had to make a move. They had to change the team. They had to, move Jalen out, use all these people in his spot. And that was either gonna be them going sideways or maybe even going up. I just, I watched the whole season last year and I thought Jalen was, was incredible, you know? And that's the part I, I can't wrap my head around, trading a guy off an awesome season. I just haven't seen that before. Yeah.
Jalen was great last year. And let's be honest, once Jason gets a chance to have an entire offseason summer, He's gonna come back being an MVP caliber player. They would've been the favorites in my opinion in the East. I think that Knicks thing was like one of the greatest runs, but I, I think they're gonna regress a little bit.
Yeah.
But they, in, in my opinion, if Jalen had stayed with the Celtics, they would've been the favorite in the East going forward next year. And if even if you wanted to get the Knicks their respect, they would've been the second team in the East, right? So listen, I've tried to wrap my head around it, to be honest with you, Bill. Well, like I say, I'm not even opposed to them trading Jalen, but you don't trade him to Philadelphia. You don't trade him. You don't say— even the owner of the Sixers told me, he says, you're a great player. I gotta trade you. I'm not trading you anywhere in the Eastern Conference.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you trade him out west, but to trade him to Philly, to a division rival, that was just crazy. Now, like I say, you, 'cause LeBron, there's no chance LeBron comes to Philly. There's zero chance LeBron comes to Philly if Jalen's not there.
Here's the, here's the thing with that. It didn't seem like there was a market for Jalen, which is even more surprising, but goes back to what we talked about in the beginning about a lot of these teams are just stupid. Like they, they, if Jaylen's, if they're basically like, hey, we're shopping Jaylen Brown.
Yeah.
We've seen all the teams in the NBA. I find it hard to believe there wasn't a team or two that would've been like, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll make a run on him. We'll go for him. But you were in this situation when I, when I think about like chemistry and stuff, which was obviously a reason they wanted to split up Tatum and Brown, even though they got along, they, there was like no bad blood or anything. But I think that there was a little bit of a whose team is this thing that they just wanted to get ahead of and they didn't think it was solvable, especially how good Jalen was last year as the guy. You went through this in Houston when you guys got Pippen. Now you guys were older.
Yeah.
But you had Pippen and Hakeem and you, and you guys were all, you're all 3 of the top 35 players of all time and it didn't work. So why didn't it work? Was it beyond you being old? Why didn't it work?
Just 'cause we were old. We made it to the conference finals, like I think my first year in Houston, but—
Yeah, but not with Pippen.
Yeah, but that's the only good year that we had. We were broken down and Scott didn't want to be there. He took, he took the money, but he didn't want to be there. Remember, he bolted to Portland right away after that. But we were just old has-beens, to be honest with you, Bill. We had one good year. I mean, we, Remember Stockton hit the shot?
Matt Maloney that year.
Yeah. My first year in Houston, we had a good year and, and, and, and, and I was cooked. I had a good second year, but after that I was cooked. But it was, and Hakeem was cooked and Clyde was cooked. And that's why Clyde, and that's why honestly why Scottie wanted outta there. Remember we, yeah, remember we traded Hakeem the next year. Yeah. But we were just all cooked, to be honest with you. People don't even get it. Hakeem finished in Toronto. People forget that. But, but we were all cooked, to be honest with you.
Yeah. There's some tough jerseys from the '90s 'cause we have Ewing was in Seattle and Orlando. Yeah. Keenan was in Toronto.
Yeah. Some stuff.
Tony Parker ended up playing for Charlotte in the 2010s.
You know, it, it always, it, it, it always ends badly. It always ends badly. You, you know, Father Time is always going to win. I think it's a league easier. It's a lot easier today. Let me get that out the way. 'Cause there's no physicality. So you can play another couple years, but like, 'cause all the physicality is gone out the game. But for most great players, it always ends badly. I mean, you could say Michael for the Wizards ended badly. If you wanna be honest, it did.
He wasn't Michael Jordan playing for the Wizards, but didn't make the playoffs either year.
Yeah. Yeah. But it, it's always gonna end badly if you keep screwing around with Father Time. All right.
So we kept, we've been saying this about LeBron for the last couple years and, you know, I, I just, does he defy it? 'Cause Brady defied it. Brady played to his 45. He won a Super Bowl, he was an MVP, and this was in his like early 40s and it kept going and going. Can LeBron be the only guy who defies that?
If we have to be honest about LeBron, if he gets swept in the playoffs the last couple years, So just 'cause you're putting up good numbers don't mean you're being effective. And I don't— and I'm not taking a shot at LeBron, it's just fact. You know, people say he's defying the odds. I'm like, well, if my memory serves me correctly, he's gotten swept in the playoffs the last couple years. I thought they got—
Yeah.
So I says, is he putting up good numbers? Yes, he's putting up good numbers. That does not mean you're defying— 'cause it's, to me, it's a lot easier to get numbers now. Uh, it's a lot easier to get numbers, but I'm saying, right? And LeBron's playing well, don't get me wrong. But to say he beating Father Time, like they got swept a lot. If we gonna be honest, you know, we got a lot of, uh, Stepford Wives out there when it comes to LeBron. And you either agree with LeBron or you just hating on LeBron. Uh, I, I, I love the way Jalen Rose was getting some heat. He said the media's turned into LeBron fanboys. And I, I, I said, no, they're Stepford Wives. They just go along with whatever they say. I said, LeBron's playing pretty good. I'll agree with that. But they've gotten swept the last 2 years in the playoffs. So don't tell me how great he's playing, 'cause if you getting swept, you're not playing that good.
Yeah, I guess great. He's playing great for a guy in his 40s.
That's—
but the issue is, and I think this has been the issue for them the last couple years, and they clearly knew it because they didn't really want him to come back. You have, you basically have 2 spots.
Would you say that again?
They didn't want him to come back. I've been saying that all summer.
Listen, Bill, and I'm so glad you said that because I'm dealing with these fools in the media. Like, LeBron left the Lakers. I said Lakers didn't want LeBron. They were like, it's time for us to move on. Like, I love the way he released that statement saying, I've decided to move on. Like, Dude, the Lakers, they handled this. They're like, nah, it's time for you to move on. 'Cause that's— and you, if you, and you, I'm glad you said it like that because I tell people, you think if the Lakers really wanted LeBron, he would've left there? Come on, man, stop it. These, these media guys are so like, LeBron made the decision to leave the Lakers. Like, no, the Lakers made the decision for LeBron.
And they made the decision in January or February and then Luka got hurt.
Yes.
LeBron had that resurgence, but The issue with LeBron—
They needed to do it. It was time for him. And I was disappointed he went to Philly. I'll be honest with you. I wanted him— I thought it would've been a great ending for him to go back to Cleveland. Like, he has no affiliation with the 76ers. I, yeah, I thought it would've been a perfect ending. And let's be honest with you, I think honestly, if LeBron went to the Cavaliers, they, they would've been my preseason pick. 'Cause they got a really, really good team. They just need some leadership. If LeBron had went to the Cleveland Cavaliers, they would've been my pick. And that, and, and lemme tell you something, if he would've been able to go out winning a championship in Cleveland, it, it, I can say I'm always gonna think Michael's greatest player, but LeBron's career would've been the greatest career if he had went back to Cleveland. 'Cause if he wins the championship in Philly, that'd be cool. 'Cause Philly hadn't won in a long time. But if he had went back to Cleveland at 42 years old, or 43 if he gonna play 2 years, and walked out winning a championship, it would've been the greatest career.
Like, it'd have been Brady-esque, 'cause Brady is at the top of the food chain on careers.
Yeah.
But if LeBron at his age would've been back to hometown and win, it would've been the greatest career in sports history.
Yeah, it's, I don't think he felt like he could win with that team in the same way is, is my interpretation. 'Cause it seemed like at the beginning of free agency he was headed to Cleveland. I would've bet anything on it. And he was, he was the only team he was actually meeting with in person in real ways. But something scared him off on the Cleveland thing and maybe he thought they could get rid of James Harden.
I don't know. Well, listen, you know what I, this is what I think. I don't have no proof. I'm just scared outta my ass. I think once he found out they had probably did an under-the-table deal with James for 3 more years.
Yeah.
I think that's probably what scared him away. Because I, I do believe if he went back to Cleveland, if he went back to Cleveland, they would've been the favorite. No question. I mean, they, 'cause they got to the conference finals last year and you had LeBron with his leadership to go with those guys, they would've been a favorite. But there's no doubt in my mind 'Cause, you know, first of all, I was surprised they gave James 3 years, but it makes sense. Like, like, okay, they had promised him that deal.
One thing about LeBron, just from the last couple years, I think what's changed, even though you, you, the numbers were relatively the same, right? I think the issue is you basically have 2 spots for expensive guys on an NBA team, right? The way the salary cap is now, the, the second apron. So if you're gonna really pay 2 guys, you better make sure you can win a few playoff rounds in a row with them. And LeBron at his age, clearly, I, you know, I don't think he could be one of the 2 guys anymore because of the grind of the season, how you have to play on both ends. And if they wanted to pay Reaves, that you can't pay Luka, Reaves, and LeBron and expect to win more than one playoff round. So I think they were out in February on it.
Oh, I agree with that. But I still think if he had went to Cleveland with them twin tower and Donovan Mitchell, and LeBron's gonna have the ball more than James Harden if he don't win there. I thought that would've been the favorites in the East in my opinion. 'Cause they're, they were, I mean, like I say, with the team they had, they got to the conference finals and—
Right.
They're, and, uh, and one of the worst coach, one of the worst coaching jobs and one of the worst NBA games I've seen. The team blow a 20-point lead like that. Like, yeah, they were close. So, so if LeBron had went there, in my opinion, they would've went, they would've been the favorites in the East.
Here's the thing, if you're paying LeBron $4 million a year, that's a great deal. I don't care. I don't care what team he's on. Like, that's amazing value for somebody like I— why do you think San Antonio didn't want him? Because they ended up going Tobias Harris instead and doing some other things. But San Antonio was so close. I felt like he would've had a huge impact for them.
That team, first of all, those 2 guards, I don't wanna see them for the next 10 years if I'm a guard in the NBA.
Yeah.
Harper and, and, and Castle. I do not want, if I'm a guard in the NBA, I do not wanna see them boys the next 10 years. They're gonna be the best. They're gonna be the new Steph and Klay. I, I really, think they're like, no, you know what, let's just do it organically. We got Wemby, we gotta, we gotta. So yeah. And I think, 'cause they won't probably— Wemby to grow into the leadership role on his own because they, like I say, they're gonna be the team to beat with OKC for the next 10 years in the NBA. Yeah. I mean, you're gonna go through OKC and San Antonio the next 10 years. I'll take a bet right now. If you say, but gimme OKC and the Spurs, they're gonna win 5 championships in the next 10 years. I'll like, I'll take that bet.
5 in the next 10.
Yeah, I'll take that bet. Yes.
Here's the thing. Like normally I would say you're right, Chuck. I think that's the right instinct. We've had 8 champions in 8 years and we've had a bunch of teams already that people are like, oh, what, like Denver after 2023? Watch out for these guys. It's gonna be the next dynasty Celtics in 2024. Uh-oh, here we go.
Hey, let me tell you something. If, if you go back and look at those teams, if the Nuggets hadn't traded everybody, they probably would've repeated, right? Let's be honest, the Spurs won 7 games without OKC having their second best player, OKC probably would've won that series if they had had Jalen. They probably would've beat the Knicks. But so, and listen, I, I'll go back to this. If the Celtics have never, you know what the Celtics' superpower was? Porzingis.
Yeah.
If, if they could've Tatum healthy and Brown and kept Porzingis healthy, Celtics would've won another champions. There's always been something flaky that happened, or we would've had some teams that would've repeated. Because when the Celtics had Porzingis, I'm like, nobody can beat that team right there. Porzingis, it gave them a superpower to— 'cause you had Tatum around and Porzingis. I'm like, nobody can beat that team. I said that like in January, and I didn't know Jaylen Williams gonna get hurt. I said, okay, she gonna win the championship. And he got hurt, never got healthy whatsoever. Listen, okay, saying the Spurs gonna be battling the West, but I'll take 5 outta 10. I'll take that bet if they put it out there somewhere.
Yeah, but you just made the case why that's not gonna happen. There's so many dumb things that can happen with these teams. You can have injuries.
Yeah.
You can make one dumb trade. You can't pay everyone at the same time. And we've, I just feel like we've seen like the Warriors who they won 4, 15. Yeah, 4, but 3 in 5 years basically. Right. when Durant came, but, but they won one before Durant, then they won 2 after and they lost in '19. And we would've said when he showed up there, oh my God, they're gonna win 8 of the next 10. And they won 2 more and then they won the extra one in '22.
But, but they probably would've won another one if, if LeBron, they, they got, remember they got the, the package from the NBA when they suspended Draymond. They probably would've won another one.
Remember?
Yeah. Oh, I remember. To be honest, I think, yeah, I think this OKC team is bigger and deeper, and I think this Spurs team is bigger and deeper. So they gonna have some— listen, this Wemby kid, he's got a chance. He can do things that most people can't do.
Yeah.
And OKC is the deepest team in the— they're the deepest team in the league. They, they, I mean, they almost made it to the finals without their second best player being out. I think he only played in probably 30 games all year.
All right, so if I'm the rest of the league and I agree that on paper 5 of the next 10 could go through San Antonio, Casey, I'm thinking, well, who knows with injuries and money, especially Wemby, 7'6. We're always scared of him and his health, all this stuff. What happens with Chet Holmgren the next couple years? Was that an aberration in the playoffs last year, or maybe he's not as good as we thought he did? Like there I'm talking myself into certain realities 'cause the, honestly, the Knicks thing, the Knicks and the run they had and the fact that they basically just came together for 9 weeks and won a title, it makes me wonder, is that, do we have so much talent in the league now? Could that keep happening?
The Knicks, probably the greatest run in NBA history for, for a good solid team. I don't think they're a great team, but It had one of the— Bronson's turned into one of the great all-time performers, which is interesting because I don't think even when the Knicks signed him, they thought he was gonna be this great.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think— and I, and I saw, I remember there, there was a bunch of clips and he kept receipts where he showed where people bashed him when he went to the Knicks. I mean, this is not a needle mover, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I love when he played that video. But man, it's been one of the great surprises. He is turning one of the great players in our league. But they went on one of the great runs, one of the great runs in NBA history. But like I say, I, I'll take my chance with OKC and the Spurs. If, when they do that, the futures, I'm gonna bet on OKC.
Yeah.
I'm gonna put some money on OKC and the Spurs for the next 5 years for sure.
Okay. So you're over-under next 5 years, 3.5 titles for OKC and the Spurs, sounds like.
Oh yeah, for sure. Okay.
How much fun are you gonna make fun of the Lakers this year? The snowtime Lakers, all the white guys, just the weird team they built in general. This feels like it's gonna be comedic fodder for you on the show.
No, I really wanna see the Lakers do well. I, first of all, I'm a big fan, a big Austin Reaves fan. I think they're gonna be better than people realize. Really? Yeah, dude. Luka, Luka and Kyrie took the Lakers, took the Mavs to the finals. Come on, man. This team is probably better. This probably team is just as good as that team. Uh, uh, they gonna be fine, I think. Uh, are they gonna win a championship? I don't think they gonna win the championship, but the league is better when the Celtics, the Knicks, and the Lakers are good teams.
Yeah.
See, Listen, with all the crap that was going on in the NBA with this load management bullshit, the Kawhi thing and all the stuff going on, I think the NBA got the luckiest league in sports history with the Knicks winning the championship. I thought it— I've been in the NBA for 40 years. This was the best feel-good story. that I've, I'm trying to think when we've had a champion that was such a feel-good story.
Dallas. That the only one is Dallas and Dirk, but that was really one player versus a whole city and all the history.
Yeah. It's like an all-time great getting that monkey off his back. He can't win a championship. I agree with you. Dirk is the only other in the conversation where it was something that everybody felt good about basketball.
Well, I remember with Dirk the first time, I think one of the first times we ever did a podcast when I was at ESPN, you called it the shit list. When a guy, yeah, when he, no matter how great he is, if he doesn't have the title, you're just on the shit list. And like Dirk pulled himself off the shit list, right?
Yeah, he did. Dirk pulled himself off the Karl Malone, John Stockton, Charles Barkley, Pat Ewing shit list. Elgin Baylor, one of the all-time greats.
Elgin Baylor.
Yeah. I was happy for Dirk cuz there's nothing, You know, you don't go crazy over it, but when you hear guys talking about it, these are all the time great players who have won the championship. It comes up all the time. So it drives you crazy. Like all of a sudden we're like golf and tennis were individual sport instead of a team sport. I'm not sure how that actually happened, but it happened. So, but other than— 100% agree with you. Other than Dirk winning the championship, The Knicks winning the championship was probably the second best feel-good story we've had in a long time.
Do you think it was repeatable or are they a one and done?
I think they're one and done. I think that was just a perfect storm, to be honest with you. I do. I just think it was a perfect storm because, you know, one thing is quiet and kept. The Eastern Conference has become better than the Western Conference.
Yeah.
I mean, you take away the Brooklyn, you take away the Brooklyn Nets, there's not a bad team in the Eastern Conference. That's one of the things that concerns me about Philadelphia. You know, Joel Embiid has never played a full season. LeBron hasn't played a full season in probably 6 years. How are they gonna be able to hold up? Because like I say, other than Brooklyn, every team in the Eastern, even though Washington Wizards gonna have a good team, I mean, come on, man. When's the last time we've been able to say that?
10 years.
So every time the Sixers play the Celtics, it's gonna be a dogfight. And so if they don't have those guys and they're the number 8 seed and they have to win 3 series on the road, that's hard to do.
Well, you also have the miles from the previous years, right? They made the conference finals 2 years ago. They went all the way last year. We saw that with the Warriors where they had that 5-year run. But by the time they got into year 5, they're running on fumes. Durant gets hurt, Klay Thompson gets hurt. You know, the 100 playoff games, 95 playoff games a year kind of adds up. Giannis and Bam on Miami.
Yeah, they gonna have a good team. But do I think they gonna win a championship? No. But they, 'cause they got a lot of spots to fill, but they gonna be a good team. You gimme Bam and Giannis, that, that goes back to my original point. You're not— see, that's why Embiid and LeBron both gotta stay healthy because every game, like I say, the only team, and I, and I shouldn't say it 'cause I'm going by last year. The only team I see that stinks in the East— Eastern Conference is Brooklyn Nets. Atlanta's got a team now. Orlando's gonna have a good team.
Charlotte.
Charlotte's got a good team. The—
Indiana's back.
Indiana, Indiana's gonna be a really One, Indiana's gonna be one of my sleepers, but also out west.
Me too.
Let me tell you something. You know a team that's gonna surprise people this year? The Utah Jazz.
Yep.
Danny is quietly building a really, really good team. They're gonna surprise people. People say, who's your sleeper this year? I said, man, Indiana's gonna be really good. I said, 'cause the Zubac trade, they, they got kind of got screwed in the lottery 'cause they could have got another good player. But having Zubac back, Zubac is a hell of a player and Halliburton. But I said, man, watch out for the Utah Jazz. They, they probably get— now they got to figure out what to do. Are they, are they gonna keep, what's the, Markkanen? Because they could jumpstart their future quickly with him. They could be a playoff team with him, but if they traded him, they could get a king's ransom 'cause he's a hell of a player.
Yeah. I'm with you on Utah because the X factor for them is if Peterson is good right away, they're gonna be really dangerous. 'Cause that's like exactly what they needed, like a guard who could create offense at the end of games along with the other guard they already had. Yes. But yeah, I'm watching them too. It's time for a special part of today's episode brought to you by my buddy NFL Sunday Ticket. We've all been there. You're watching one game, you're constantly refreshing your phone to see how your fantasy matchup is doing. We just did our fantasy draft here at The Ringer, so I get it. Luckily, with NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get every game every Sunday all in one place. So for instance, Trevor Lawrence is my quarterback on the Jaguars. I have 4 TVs going, probably gonna put him on to see how he does. Colston Loveland on the Bears, I thought he was the best tight end value. I think he's a top 2 or 3 tight end. Very happy to take him, get to watch him on the Bears. David Montgomery on the Texans. I get to watch him and their defense.
I think he's going to score a lot of touchdowns. Sam LaPorta, who I took as my flex, even though he was also a tight end. My theory was I want 2 of the best 5 tight ends. He could be my flex. Maybe I can trade him down the road to somebody who's a little desperate. And then last but not least, Ashton Ginty, who was just a value pick because he's a little hurt. But I got his backup, Mike Washington. So I do a little handcuff action. Now in the late games, I have something at stake with the Raiders. This is where multi-view comes in. Instead of flipping channels, use the multi-view builder, pick the exact NFL games you want, and it's a total game changer for your fantasy team, for whatever you're, whatever you're getting outta that football Sunday. New users can get NFL Sunday Ticket for 8 payments for just $30 a month. Get every game every Sunday, all in one place. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, new users pay $240 or 8 non-cancelable payments of $30 a month, first charge at purchase. Availability varies. Win NFL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games and YouTube TV for local and national games.
That exists too. YouTube TV required. Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. Commercial use excluded. No refunds. Wir unterbrechen mit einem kurzen Plot Twist für dein Glas. Erdbeere kann mehr als Dessert. Jetzt neu. Granini Selection Erdbeere, fruchtig pur, als Strawberry Matcha Latte oder im Spritz. Und noch mehr Fruchtgeschmack? Entdecke die ganze Granini Vielfalt. Mixini, Happini, Donzini, Friendini, Granini. Tell me how your ESPN experience was, because it seemed rocky during the regular season. Then the playoffs, you seemed like you guys again.
Yeah, it was great. The only thing I didn't like, we didn't, we never worked. I thought it was disrespectful to the fans because—
Yeah.
Listen, man, we were very seldom on. It's crazy how they were great, to be honest with you. They didn't do anything. When you're in a relationship, you want it to work for both people. And I called Tim all the time and I said, yo, man, if we doing something you don't like, tell us. He said, dude, We love what y'all doing. And I said, the only thing that I had a problem with, and people complain, I said, dude, the fans don't know when we're on. We only work— we, we open the season, Bill, in October. We work one day in November and we work Christmas Day.
Right.
I said, we work 3 times, 3 months. I says, the fans can't find the games as it is because we're on 3 different networks. They don't know what night, different things are on. And I thought that was disrespectful to the fans. I know these TV networks, I know they pay a lot of money, but we should do everything we can to make, to make the games accessible to the fans. And I didn't think we did that last year, showing us once a month to start the season. I, I didn't like that at all. 'Cause the fans like, well, damn, when are they gonna be on again? We're like, we're on once a month. The, the rest of the time they were on NBC and Amazon. Like, no, let's help the fans find the games. That's what we should do.
So I feel like there's some endarounds, like they could put you on ESPN+ or ESPN2 and just try to keep you in the habit of being on once a week. Seemed to be the easy fix.
First of all, that shit's not gonna happen. Okay? That's not gonna happen. So stop it.
You just told me you wanted to work more.
Yeah, but no, I'm not gonna do the, do that every show shit. That was the one thing I laid down. Like, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a good team player. Yeah. But I'm not going on every show. Number one, I think it's really important for me to limit the amount of times I'm on television. Like, when I'm on, I wanna be on.
No, no, you misunderstood me. I'm saying, I'm saying do more Inside the NBA. No, I'm not. Not other shows.
I'm not on TV at all right now.
Yeah.
I don't wanna be. I don't, I don't do shows right now. I, 'cause when the season start, I wanna do our show. I'll do a couple ESPN things, but the last thing you wanna be is on every show. I don't want people to get sick of seeing my face. I'm very strategic. I, I've done the same thing. Like I have a, I'm doing your podcast. I haven't been on TV since the season ended. I went on TV one day when LeBron announced this thing. They had me all over damn creation. I cursed LeBron's ass out because I was on my way to the golf course and they called me to turn around. I was on my way to the golf course. They called me and said LeBron's gonna make a decision. What made it even funny and weird, Bill, I was on my way to the golf course in Philly because I live in Philly during the summer. And I went back and they didn't know where he was going.
Yeah.
So I had to go on the show and talk about it. Then he announced it was on Philly, and I spent the next 5 hours on TV in Philly talking about LeBron coming to Philly. I was so damn pissed. I told LeBron when I see him, I'm gonna kick him in his ass 'cause he ruined my company. But I really do a conscious effort. I told ESPN, I'll do Greeny every now and then 'cause I got much respect for Greeny. I'll do Stephen A every now and then. But the one thing I'm very conscious of, I don't want to be on TV all the time because I don't want people— because, like, and listen, and I don't want to call out guys, you know, guys who love seeing themselves on television. I don't want to call anybody out.
Yeah, I have an idea who you're talking about.
Yo, man, I'm sick of you on TV. You don't have to go on every show. You don't have to have an opinion on everything. So to get back to your original point, I'll do Greenie every now and then because I like him. I'll do Stephen A every now and then. But no, I'm not going on every show. That's just not going to happen. I can promise you that.
Well, at least you're not doing the thing this year where you're claiming you're going to retire. You retired more than Muhammad Ali. I think Muhammad Ali had 7 retirements and you had 9.
Bill, let me— I'm going to say this for the last time. I need you to listen to me like my girl Judah said. Judah said, I need you to hear me. You're not listening to me. I need you to hear me. You're listening, but you're not hearing me. So I told TNT I was going to retire at 60, and they're like, oh, he's full of shit. He's not going to retire. So we come up, I'm sitting, I said, hey guys, this my last year. They're like, what do you mean? I said, I told y'all 6 years ago I was going to retire at 60. They're like, you were serious? I said, yeah, I was serious. Then they said to me, do us a favor, stay 2 more years till we get the new deal. I talked it over with my friend. They're like— I said, okay, I'll tell you what, I'll stay to '62, which was last year.
Yeah.
And they said— they said— I said, I'll stay the next year. Little did I know these fucking idiots was gonna lose to NBA. And I say like, so I had made up my mind I was gonna retire after last year. So I said, okay, I'm good. Like I say, I'm gonna pass it to Jamal Crawford or Jalen Rose. I'm good.
Yeah.
So they're like, okay. So then they're like, well, we need you to sign. I said, I told y'all I was retiring next year. They said, we can't let people think you're retiring. 'Cause we're negotiating a new TV deal. I said, that has nothing to do with me. I'm retired. They're like, can we tell people you're gonna stay? I says—
Yeah.
Okay, tell people I'm gonna stay, but I'm not staying. But I didn't know they were gonna lose the deal. So I'm retired. This is a true story. I meet with NBC, I meet with Amazon, NBC offers me a deal. I'm like, I appreciate it, but no thank you. Amazon never offered me a deal, but I said— I met with them. I said, no thank you. So I think I'm retired. I get a call from Ernie, who's the person I trust and respect the most. He says, Chuck, they got this deal on the table. Well, ESPN's gonna take our show. Would you consider keep working? I said, well, Ernie, not really. He said, but everybody can keep their job. Not me and Shaq, everybody behind the scenes. And you know, Bill, I really love the people. I've been with 'em for 26, 27 years. I was like, Ernie, How long do you want to stay? He says, let's keep their job for 2 more years. And so I said, Ernie, I'll stay for 2 more years. But he says, Chuck, I'm planning on retiring in 2 years because me and Ernie are a package deal. So to answer your question, Ernie said to me, Chuck, would you please stay for 2 more years?
I said, you know what, Ernie? I love you, man. You're the best. I said, I'll stay for 2 more years. So right now, unless Ernie changes his mind, next year is my last year for 100%, Bill. But I always have to explain to people these retirement conversations 'cause they're like— I'll explain why I was gonna retire. But so right now, Ernie told me this year and next year was his last 2 years. But the only reason I stayed is so everybody could keep their jobs behind the scenes. We're talking 200 people. But I'm hoping the show keeps going on ESPN. But if Ernie retires after next year, I'm done. Because we are a package deal. I got so much love and respect for that guy. If he says he's done, I'm gone. Because let's be realistic, I could have went to NBC and made more money if I was concerned about money.
Right.
NBC offered me more money than I was making at Turner, but I was like, it ain't about the money. I say I'm done. But man, I really wanted to keep these people because I've been, like I said, I've been with these people either 26 or 27 years. I get to know them and all their families. And, but like I said, I can't just keep working forever. Dude, I'll be 63 freaking years old. I'm not— I, I listen, I wanna die on the golf course, Bill. I don't wanna die on TNT, on ESPN.
Definitely not.
Yeah, no, I don't. Hey, hey, I don't wanna hear dun dun dun and just drop dead on the— I wanna drop dead on the 13th. Yeah, I wanna drop dead on the 13th hole.
I— it's funny, when I, I went to see you for the, the first time we met was 2002, I think. I went to Do a piece about Inside the NBA when I was writing for ESPN.com. And one of my takeaways was like, oh, this is why the show works. These guys love each other. And it's so funny, like, you, you still have that same relationship with Ernie 25 years later, basically, where now you feel like it's you and him to the end.
Yeah, because number one, remember I told you, you kind of remember, I said, man, I'm a big fan of yours. I read your stuff, blah, blah, blah. You're like, what? I said, I'm a big fan of yours.
I remember. Are you kidding?
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you know, Ernie, man, he is the glue that holds all this stuff together.
Yeah.
He works his behind, and he's been through so much stuff in his life. You know, his son died a couple years ago. That was traumatic for us. You know, he battled cancer. You know, when you work with somebody, I mean, I can't even believe— you know what's really funny? Ernest gives me shit all the time. 'Cause when I took the job, he says, he pulled me aside, he says, be honest with me, how long are you gonna be here? I said, Ernie, I'm gonna be here for 5 years and I'm probably gonna take an MBA job. And like once a month he says, hey, how's that year 5 thing working out for you? Because I'm not gonna lie, I originally thought, I said, I'm gonna do TV for 3 or 4 or 5 years max, and then I'm gonna take an MBA job. And now 26, 27 years later, and it's amazing.
I would've loved to have had you as a GM in the mid-2000s when I was writing my column. When, when we had, that was like the atrocious GM apex. All the, all those teams, the Knicks and the Timberwolves. And they, I, you, I don't know if you would've fleeced them or you would've gotten infected by them, but something interesting would happen.
I've had 3 chances to be a GM, but they wouldn't gimme total control. I said, yeah, no, I'm not leaving my job to take a job and I'm gonna get fired. I says, right. I saw this happen with Michael Jordan with the Wizards. Like, they blamed him for everything, but he hoped for— I said, I said, I have no problem with y'all blaming me for anything, but I'm gonna have complete authority on all the draft picks and trades. They're like, well, you have no I said, yeah, who you think I'm gonna hire, my brother? I'm— I, I says, I, you— I can always tell who's gonna be a good NBA coach or a coach in general, Bill, by the assistants they hire. Because a lot of these coaches— one thing I admire about Nick Saban, he hired every ex-head coach because he knew they were gonna be a good assistant and they were gonna do things the right way. They wanted to be a head coach again. A lot of these coaches hired their friends and their buddies, and they like somebody who they ain't worried about taking their job.
Right.
I said, I don't want somebody who wanna be an assistant their whole life. I'm gonna surround myself with successful people. Like Nick said, when you go back, every coach he hired, Kirby, Lane Kiffin, Sarkisian, the coach at Maryland, like he hired guys who had got fired. Butch Jones, Because number one, they know how to run. If you're a head coach, 'cause it's a total— 'cause being an assistant coach is like night and day from being a head coach.
Right.
But he hired guys who had ran things, who knew how to organize things. But what he's like, I want strong assistants around me. But a lot of these coaches going back to the era you're talking about, they hired their buddies who didn't know what they were doing, who were like, They were worried about somebody taking their job. I want somebody around me who's ambitious, who wants something other than an assistant. You gotta, you gotta, to be successful, you gotta surround yourself with successful people.
Right. I agree with you. I've tried to do it. You always come on every early September before the NFL season. I think this is the 4th or 5th straight time. You have opinions, you have picks. 2 years ago, we looked this up, 2 years ago you picked the Eagles to win the Super Bowl and they actually did. So I think you're 1 and 4 lifetime with us. So obviously everyone's on pins and needles to see if you can increase the percentages. What do you have for the season?
Lemme tell you something, man. I was so excited when last Saturday happened. It was like Christmas. They call it Week 0. I finally got to go into a sportsbook and bet on football. I was— because this, like, because now it's like Christmas for me every Saturday and Sunday for the next 6, 7 months. You know, football's my favorite sport. I don't normally leave my house on Saturday and Sunday because I bet on football every weekend. I just freaking love it. I do. I love it. And so last week I went in the casino for the first time and the guy looks at me like it's like Christmas. for you. And it, it is like Christmas in the middle of the damn summer. And I'm good to go. I'm good to go for the— I am. I, I, I love going into casino every Saturday and Sunday betting on football, Bill. I do. But this gonna be, this gonna be a great year. You know, obviously everybody's on the Rams bandwagon, man. I'm— it's great to see Aaron Donald back. I got so much love and respect for that guy. But In the, in the AFC, man, I want this team to win the Super Bowl so damn bad.
Bill, I wanna see the Buffalo Bills. Josh Allen to me is the best player in football. I saw Herm Edwards say that the other day on ESPN. He says, this guy's the best player in football. And they went out and got him a weapon, DJ Moore. I hope it's enough. I hope they improve their defense. I would love to see— they got a new head coach, obviously, but I want to see the Buffalo Bills because, you know, you talk about the shit list earlier. I think one of the greatest accomplishments in sports history, they're never going to get recognition or the love it deserves, is the Buffalo Bills going to 4 straight Super Bowls. That's never happened before, but they're never going to get the respect they deserve because they never won one. It's one of the great, because, you know, you talked about earlier all the wear and tear you put on your body when you play all those extra games, all those year after year after year.
Yeah.
But the Buffalo Bills had to, they, they had, you know, and it's, it sucks. They've never gotten the credit and respect that they deserve for that accomplishment. But I'm a, I'm all in on Buffalo. I would love to see them win the AFC and get to the Super Bowl. In the NFC, man, the Seattle Seahawks have to be the most disrespected champion in the history of football. I got a chance to meet their coach, Coach McDonald, uh, uh, in Lake Tahoe. And man, the job he did, man, they— that defense was incredible. Sam Darnold, he didn't see ghosts anymore. He just saw the Vince Lombardi. But that defense was incredible. They don't even get mentioned anymore. It's all about the Rams. Like I said, I know they got Miles and, and, and I'm glad to see Aaron Donald back. But man, Seattle has to be the most disrespected team, Super Bowl champion in a long time. Can your Patriots be good again since they got my man AJ? You know, that's gonna be interesting. You know, how are my Eagles gonna do now? That, that, that's the big question in Philly. It's gonna be a lot of pressure on Jalen to, to, to play at a high level.
Yes.
So if you look at it, listen, I think the sleeper team, and it's not, you know why I know they're the sleeper team? The quietest mouse in the room has been Jerry Jones. This is the, this is the first time that I can ever remember they've went the entire preseason without Jerry being on television. every single day, that tells me he thinks the Cowboys got a legit chance. And they—
I agree, super quiet for 2 months.
And listen, you think about for the last, for the last few years, it's been Micah's contract, uh, Dak's contract for the last 3 or 4 years, CeeDee Lamb's contract the year before. I haven't heard Jerry all preseason, which tells me he think they got a good team.
Yeah, I agree.
So, yeah, so they're gonna be really good, man. But that's what, you know, there's always— can Kyler Murray—
Come on.
Listen, Tim McConnell is a genius on offense. Can Kyler resurrect his career, man? Oh, here's another wild one. It's now or never for Lamar in Baltimore.
Right.
Now, I never— that's what makes— I tell people, when you play sports, when you got a good team, the beginning of the season, there's nothing like it, Bill. Like, guys know when their team sucks.
Yeah.
But when you have those— 'cause I tell people, very few years when you play basketball or football, you're like, we got a chance of winning the championship or winning the Super Bowl. Like, I played for 16 years, probably 5 years I'm like, we got a chance of winning championship. And probably football is harder, but you know, you— but there's probably, there's probably 10 teams that's got a legit chance to win the Super Bowl. The other 20, they're like, we trying to get better. If we make the playoffs, we gonna have a good year. But when you like the Patriots, they, they gotta get to the Super Bowl to feel like they had another good year. Buffalo, Baltimore.
2 thoughts on what you said, 'cause I said this last week about the Seahawks. I'm so glad you said that about them being disrespected. I was making the case last week they might be the first NFL Super Bowl champ who is a nobody believes in us team. Everybody's moved on. They have basically 95% of their team is back from last year when they dominated everybody. And I don't know, everybody's just blowing the Rams, blowing the Rams, blowing the Rams. But if, if I'm— you mentioned McDonald, how good of a coach he is. You know, he's going to use it as motivation the whole year. Everybody's already handing the Super Bowl to the Rams. It's like, we didn't even win. You know how this goes. This happens in football all the time.
Yeah, I, I heard some idiots on TV talking about, can the Rams go undefeated? I'm like, undefeated? Like, damn, they ain't never made— they ain't even made the playoffs yet. So, but you know, that's what makes fodder. But like, you know who, you know who I got a man crush on? Dan Campbell.
Yeah.
I wanna see Dan Campbell. I, I would love to see Detroit get back to the playoffs and do some damage. I mean, it's so, so, but that's, that's what makes sports crazy, Bill. That's what, because last year nobody expected your Patriots to get to the Super Bowl.
No, no, I thought they would be good. I didn't see it.
How about Sean Payton in Denver? Denver might be the favorite in the AFC. They might have got to the Super Bowl last year if my boy Bo Nix of Auburn didn't get hurt.
I mean, there was 2 teams The, the Denver absolutely could have beaten the Patriots and probably would've if Nix didn't get hurt. And then Houston would've beaten the Patriots if Stroud didn't completely fall apart in that game. 'Cause Houston had the best defense, at least in the AFC, maybe in the whole league.
And also, can he rebound? He, he probably, he probably got more pressure on him than any player in the NFL. When you got a defense that good, And you were the re— the single-handed reason they lost. And like, he's probably, in my opinion, he's probably got more pressure on him than any player in the NFL. I truly believe that.
Well, and that's the difference between basketball and football, 'cause in basketball you're all basically one unit and you have starters and the bench. Yeah. In football you have the offense and the defense. And if you have an awesome defense and your QB is just letting you down over and over again, it's, it's almost like Like when Matt Maloney couldn't hit a 3-point shot in the playoffs for you guys. And it's like, that's one guy, but this is like an entire unit that's just submarining you.
And you just, you know, the thing is you just don't have to turn the ball over. You don't have to play great.
Right. Drive the car.
Yeah. You, yeah. Just keep us, keep us on the highway. And so, and that's, and that's the thing. It's hard to play sports under pressure. Is he gonna just let it fly or be tentative? That's the hardest thing about sports that people don't realize. It's hard to play sports under pressure. Like if once he throws his first interception, how's he gonna react?
Right.
So that's what, but that's what makes sports intriguing. That's why we watch.
Well, and then the quarterbacks just in general this year, we have Lamar's at a really interesting point in his career. You have Nix, who I think has a team that at least is like a top 6 team potentially if he's good enough. You have Jalen Hurts, who you haven't even mentioned yet, with a huge spotlight on him now with another offensive coordinator, no AJ Brown, making a lot of money outta Eagles fans. Where, where are the, where are the Eagles fans staying with Jalen Hurts these days?
This is gonna be a big year for him. This is gonna be a big year. This is going to be a big year because they took the noise out the room and like, okay, because they choked, it's the other guy. So we got rid of the other guy. Now, okay, it's on you. And listen, that's the way this thing works. They picked a guy, they said, okay, this relationship is not salvageable. And they're like, we're going to take you.
Right.
That's just the way this bounces. It's all on Jalen now.
Yeah, the Rams thing is interesting because comparing it to basketball, when you have heavy favorites in basketball like San Antonio and Oklahoma City, you can't even bet on them to make the playoffs. They've made the odds so high, it's like literally impossible to bet on it because, you know, like whatever happens, they're gonna have the infrastructure to be good. And in football, yes, you know, the Rams, as good as they're like top 7 or 8 are and as great as their coaches, it's still football. And you lose 2 of those guys and you have a top-heavy team and all of a sudden that can tilt away. So anytime I ever see somebody that's a prohibitive favorite, I just don't, I'm not buying it. I don't think anybody should be a prohibitive favorite.
Well, you know, listen, you got guys on television and radio have to pick somebody and they gonna pick the prettiest girl, the prettiest girl. You know, can Matt, can Matt Stafford stay healthy? You know, he, you know, he stayed healthy and won MVP. But, you know, he's up there in age, so it's, you know, they might— they took the kid Simpson from Alabama. He might have to go out there and play as a rookie.
Right.
So, but that's what, man, that's what makes sports amazing. Like sports, like in real time, like you get to be high, low, mad, sad, excited. We do all this stuff in real time. That's, that's why when the season first starts, Bill, it is such, it's such a ray of joy over cities, over people. Like, right, it's beautiful to watch.
All right, so it sounds like, so I have Houston and Seattle in the Super Bowl and I have Seattle winning back to back. Your Super Bowl pick is what?
Them 2 defenses that you picked, the final score gonna be 17-14. That's how it feels. As my man said, that's gonna be a slobberknocker. I'm, hey, I'm rooting for Josh Allen. I'm gonna go Buffalo Bills against Seattle and the Buffalo Bills are gonna win the Super Bowl over Seattle. Wow. 21-17.
Wow. Buff. So you're saying they finally get off the hump. Josh Allen gets off the shit list.
Yes.
Buffalo as a city gets off the shit list, just like a shit list Cleansing.
And it's gonna be one of the great days in sports history. My man Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, Darryl Talley, Cornelius Bennett. Yeah. See, I forget what Steve's name, the point returner, the great kick returner.
Oh, Steve Lasker.
I forget his name. Who is it? Steve Tasker. Steve Tasker.
Steve Tasker. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I love those guys. I became a Bills fan because of Cornage Bennett and Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas and those guys and Bruce Smith. So I want them to get off the list 'cause just same way I saw, did you see the excitement on those Knicks players? Patrick, Larry Johnson, John Starks and all those guys.
It was great.
I would have to, yeah. So I would love to see those guys be on the parade with the Buffalo Bills. Got a new stadium and everything.
Yeah. The really, now that the Knicks have won the title, I would say, is it the Suns? that would be the most euphoric fan base if they won the title. And they haven't, they haven't since 1970. They've had a team and they have great fans.
We're not gonna win a championship. That ship has sailed, brother. Stop that, Bill.
I'm saying down the road, not this year.
Well, how about my Sixers? That'd be great too.
Eh, you won in '83.
Bill, that was a long—
I guess that was a long time ago.
Past millennium.
Suns never won.
I, I, I know. Thanks for reminding me.
Well, it's true.
Yeah. But no, man, it was great for New York. I told you it was exciting. But man, that's the beauty of sports though, man. You start from, you start from the bottom every year and whatever happens, it plays out in real time. Real time.
So would you, would you expand if you were the NBA or would you just move Brooklyn and the Clippers to 2 different cities and Stay at 30?
Well, we need a team in Seattle for sure.
Yeah, no kidding.
Seattle was— Seattle has the best fan base in pro sports, probably. That was one of the worst decisions they made, moving that team outta Seattle. I always, I always feel bad about screwing a fan base, moving a team, but the number one priority, we need a team in Seattle, period. And I know they want to do Vegas, Yeah. But the number one priority should be Seattle. They have the best fan base in sports.
We agree. Charles Barkley, a pleasure as always. We'll see who's right. We both have Seattle in the Super Bowl. You have Buffalo, I have Houston. I have Seattle winning, you have Buffalo winning.
Hey man.
And we'll see who wins.
Thanks for having me, man. You're a good man. Continued success. Thanks for having me.
You too. Always great to see you, Charles. Thanks. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Charles Barkley. Thanks to Eduardo Gahal as well from The Ringer. And I'm gonna be back on Sunday. We're gonna be live. Live on Netflix, I think at 7 o'clock ET, me and Sal doing Guess the Lions Week 1, plus, uh, our NFL Futures draft that we always love to do. Enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday. I don't have feelings with you. 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 877-8-HOPE-NY, or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons starts the pod by giving his thoughts on the NBA punishing the Clippers. Then, Charles Barkley joins to discuss the Clippers news, Jaylen in Philly, LeBron leaving the Lakers, and much more!
(0:00) Intro
(2:50) The Clippers get punished
(22:57) Charles Barkley on the Clippers, ESPN, and more!
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Charles Barkley
Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo
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