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The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did Tropic Thunder. We're doing comedies all month on Netflix. You go to Netflix, they have a million comedies. We've done a bunch of them on the Rewatchables already, including Fletch, Along Came Polly, Ghostbusters, 48 Hours. The list goes on and on. And we've also done this month— we did Tropic Thunder, we did Ghostbusters. Well, we did that last month. We did There's Something About Mary. And this Monday we're doing Borat, which is an absolutely hilarious movie. I've watched it once. I have to watch it again before we record the episode. But, uh, just laughing my ass off. This movie, it's 20 years old, it's still really funny, and it's gonna be Monday's Rewatchable. So stay tuned for that. Uh, scheduling stuff. This Sunday— so I'm recording this on Thursday. We don't know what's gonna happen in the Game 6s on Friday. Detroit and Cleveland, and then, uh, San Antonio, Minnesota. Who knows? So on Sunday, we might be doing 2 podcasts with Zach Lowe. We might be doing a part 1, part 2 after each Game 7.
Might just be doing one after the Game 7s, or if there's no Game 7s and just the Game 1, we'll be doing one episode. But we're gonna be live on Netflix and we'll, we'll let you know on social media what the, what the time is if you want to join us. I'm looking forward to that. We have an action-packed podcast on this one coming up after the break. I want to talk about, uh, 5 guys that I'm looking at heading into, um, these Game 6s that we have, a doubleheader on Friday night. Really, really interesting night of basketball. Brian Curtis is going to join us to talk about the NFL schedule release was today, but just in general what the leagues are doing here with all of the games. And, um, is there just too much sports? Are we heading there or is too much sports a good thing? We're going to talk it out. My dad finally decided to come on after boycotting, um, for a week and a half after the Celtics lost, but Boston sports is in shambles. So, um, had him come on and talk about it for 20 minutes. And then last but not least, Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, who's never been on the podcast.
They finally got some luck with the lottery. His story is fascinating, how he ended up owning not just the Utah Jazz, but also the hockey team as well. And he hired the Angels from Boston and just a lot of stuff about what it's like to own an NBA team. So this is a long, fat, content-filled podcast. It's all coming up next. We're gonna take a break, bring in Pearl Jam. And then, uh, I'm gonna talk about the NBA. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. It's been a wild playoff run, not over yet. FanDuel wants to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan. FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, plays during NBA postseason. Build a same-game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout, or try live betting and jump into the action. Right after tip-off, whatever you want. That's the whole point of live betting. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat. Connecticut.
All right, we have a Game 6 doubleheader on Friday night. Really intriguing. Game 6 is always intriguing, but I think these two, for different reasons, Um, can't wait to watch. I've already broke the news to my wife that that's what's gonna be happening for us on a Friday night. Cavs -3.5 at home to finish off Detroit. Minnesota getting 4.5 points trying to stay alive against San Antonio. And look, Minnesota looks like they're in trouble, um, for different reasons than Cleveland looks like they have the upper hand against Detroit. Minnesota just looks like a talent issue, especially with Edwards not 100%. Cleveland-Detroit, this series has become more of a math problem where it just feels like Detroit's max is around 105 points, and if Cleveland could just get over that, they're gonna win. Detroit in the playoffs, 14th in threes, they've only made 10 threes a game. 49% on twos, 13th. They have the 4th highest amount of turnovers, they're almost at 16 a game, and they're just running out of guys that they can put out there in crunch time that they can trust. So I think they're in the most trouble of these 4 teams.
But I have 5 guys I'm watching on Friday night for different reasons, um, in the 2 series. First one is Julius Randle, who was a huge reason I thought that the Timberwolves won Game 1 and then has been a lightning rod ever since. 13 and— 13 for 39 in the 3 losses and, um, has just looked really, really awful at times trying to challenge Wemby, trying to challenge what the Spurs are doing to him. And it's like Randle has these moments where you've like, I thought after game 1, I was like, he's the key to the series. I'm not sure if the Spurs have guys to guard him. And then by the time you finish game 5, you're like, can they play Randle?
What?
I mean, this is a story of his career. He's made multiple All-NBA teams. We're always questioning how good he is. And I guess this is just who he is from a basketball standpoint. He's made, next year he makes $33 million, the year after he makes $36 million. So he's the most obvious trade candidate. And he is a guy that when things start going against him, you can kind of see it. He wears his emotions, he wears the nobody believes in me kind of mask on his face and can get really frustrated. And on top of all of this, Towns has been great in the playoffs for the Knicks. So you have this trade that was, I thought, one of the more fun trades we had this decade. And the Knicks are, are clearly now winning the trade. And Randle, DiVincenzo, sadly, um, is hurt out for the year. But Randle, um, the swing guy from Minnesota, and it might not even matter, he might be awesome in Game 6 and it might not matter with San Antonio. But, um, I'm watching him. If he's bad, I don't see a world where Minnesota can win when Edwards isn't 100%.
On the flip side, I'm gonna lump these two together as my second guy, Facel and Champagny on San Antonio. They made 5 threes a game during the season. And shot 38% combined. And I thought were pretty reliable. I always felt like their threes are going in. In the series, they're 21 for 63, 33% basically. I mentioned this because Wemby and Fox and Harper have been a disaster from 3 in this series. They're all 27% or worse. Wemby, I think, is a better 3-point shooter than that. Harper, when he came in the league, wasn't supposed to be a 3-point shooter. And Fox has kind of bounced around where there's— you watch certain games and you think, Maybe he can make them. Other times you never think they're going in. I mention all this because they lost Game 4. They were 6 for 26 from 3. And if you're looking at like, how does San Antonio blow Game 6 and how does this go back to San Antonio in Game 7? To me, forget the Minnesota piece. Forget how if Edwards is 90% healthy, 95% healthy. Forget how great Wemby is. Forget how awesome Dylan Harper has been as these players went along.
You can beat San Antonio simply if they miss threes. And I don't 100% trust their 3-point shooting. So I'm specifically watching Bissell and Champagny because if they're making threes in the first half and Wemby's doing Wemby stuff and the heartbreak, like San Antonio, that'll be it. It'll probably be like an 18-point win. But if the threes are starting to bounce around and they can't get in a rhythm, that's what I want if I'm a Minnesota fan. So you could say this about almost any NBA team. We'd be like, ah, if the threes don't go in, it's tough to beat them. San Antonio specifically, I don't totally trust their 3-point shooting. And I think this is the Achilles heel of the team the more I watch them. And if it goes south in a Game 6 and you go to a Game 7, and I'm still nervous about your 3-point shooting, and Minnesota comes in as the fuck you alpha dog just trying to bully them and, and, you know, really test them. And all of a sudden each guy's looking a little nervous taking those threes. That's the recipe for San Antonio blowing the series.
I do not think that will happen. I would not bet on it, but it's a team that sometimes they'll be up 14 and all of a sudden they start looking a little creaky 'cause the threes start bouncing around. So we will see. All right. Cleveland, Detroit. I assume San Antonio's gonna beat Minnesota and I would probably not bet on Game 6. I think Detroit's done. I think they, they have slowly broken as this series has gone along. And even, even Game 5, which, you know, by— they play Paul Reed the entire fourth quarter and the entire overtime, I think, because my next guy on my list, Jalen Duren, has gone south to the point that they just decided he couldn't be out there. He was a 2011 guy, had earned the season 65%. He's a 10-8 guy in the playoffs, 50%. There's some stuff teams are doing to him in the playoffs. Like they, like we've talked about, they're just not guarding Thompson anymore. They're preventing Durham from rolling. But his confidence really seems gone around the basket. Like these little flip shots that he used to make. I, again, I'll say for the 19th time, I voted for him second team All-NBA.
And he, I don't know what happened. I have a theory that I'll mention in a second. He also doesn't seem as explosive. There's a chance he might be hiding an injury, even watching the way he's running and stuff. Who knows? But, but compounded with Stewart is just been basically unplayable in this series. Jenkins, 21% from 3. Now he's playing crunch time and, and hasn't been making 3s at all. Holland can't shoot. LeVert is a classic trick-or-treat guy. They can't find 5 guys to close games with. Robinson missed the game 'cause he had back issues. I assume he's gonna play Game 6, so they have to go Kade Thompson, Robinson, Tobias, and Duran, or, or B-ball Paul as, as long as they could possibly go. That Duran lineup is +10 in the playoffs. Every non-Kade lineup's a disaster. And it's like the old Doc Rivers theory of as a playoff series goes along, the number of guys you could trust in this series starts dwindling and you started at 8 and suddenly you're at 7, then you're at 6, and Detroit just might be at 4. The Durant— here's my theory. He's a restricted free agent this summer, and I think especially after the season he had, you assumed he would be getting a max or close to it, like maybe something $40 million a year, maybe something close to that Jaren Jackson contract, but he doesn't have it yet.
And now he's not playing well and teams have schemed him differently and To me, this almost feels like, uh, like he's unraveling a little bit. I'm— this happened for different reasons to Antoine Walker, and the Celtics played the Nets 2 years in a row in '02 and '03, and Kenny Martin, just for whatever reason, had Antoine solved. He just had Antoine— couldn't do anything against him. And I really think it changed Antoine's career. That and his free throw shooting went sideways, but Um, he just was never the same. And with Duran, I would assume that's not gonna happen. He's 22 years old, but I always get really nervous when somebody goes full Section 8 private pile in a playoff series, which is what's happening. Like, him, him not playing in the fourth quarter in OT is just— I, I just couldn't believe it. And the guy that we're watching does not resemble the guy from the regular season. So Is he gonna bounce back in Game 6 in Cleveland? Is this just gonna get worse? I think you have to watch. We'll know in the first like 6, 7 minutes with him. The next guy, Max Strus, who single-handedly swung Game 5, a notorious trick-or-treat guy.
He'll do this twice a series where he'll look awesome. I did like the way he was defending Cade. If he's not the trick-or-treat guy for them, then it has to be Merrill, I think. But I think it needs to be one of those two. They need like that little influx. Schroeder's another one. Schroeder, every year nobody wants Schroeder, and then in a playoff series you completely trust him. At some point we'll figure it out with him. Struce, when he's going, I really like how Cleveland looks. And he fell into play. I've never liked him because he was on Miami and the Celtics would always play him, and he always like felt like he was killing the Celtics, even though you go back and look at the game logs, he would have like 2 good games a series, which is what he does. Um, a reader named Ovi Jacob mentioned that, um, Struce, Struce is slowly morphing into the Macho Man Randy Savage. And ever since I got that email, every time I watch Struce, it feels like he's reinvigorated to me. He really does kind of look like the Macho Man. Uh, I think you should start talking to him and be like, oh yeah.
Um, but when you watch him in Game 6, just think of the Macho Man. It makes the Max Struce experience so much more fun. We'll see if he swings Game 6. Last guy has to be James Harden. Has to be. Looked washed in Game 1 and Game 2. Looked washed for the first, I would say, 43 to 44 minutes of Game 3, to the point that I didn't think he should be playing. And then huge Game 3 ending. He was really good in Game 4, 11 assists, 24 points. And then he was their best guy in Game 5. He, um, him and Mobley— Mobley was really, really good, I thought. I thought Mobley was really good the last 2 games actually. But Harden had 30 and, and you know, it's weird. On the one hand, he has 58 turnovers in the playoffs, 22 in this series. And there's moments when he just looks old and Detroit's made him look old. And Asar Thompson looks like he's athletically at, you know, a different planet than 36-year-old James Harden at this point. By the way, I did not think that was a foul on Asar Thompson. That's a no call.
You can't decide a game on that.
Sorry.
But Harden, he's played 185 playoff games, which has to be— I didn't look this up, but has to be like top 5 or top 6 ever. He hasn't made the conference finals in 8 years. He made it in '11 and '12 with OKC. He made it in '15 with Houston in that crazy series where the Clippers should have beaten them in Game 6, and Harden was on the bench as the Rockets came back. So he like barely gets credit for that one for me. '11 and '12, he was a sixth man in OKC, and 2018 was the one where he carried a team to the conference finals and then ended up losing to Golden State in the famous 3-point rock fight that Houston just couldn't make anything after Chris Paul got hurt and hasn't made it since. So we've been talking about his playoff legacy, or lack thereof. Zach Lowe famously called him Guard Karl Malone, which I don't even know who that was more insulting for, but We've already litigated this. We've already— the jury came out, came back in with a verdict. His 2020s have been kind of secretly terrible and will get lost in the shuffle when we go through his career and, you know, how, how great it was in a lot of ways.
But the playoff stuff was bad. But last year, died against Denver in Game 7, like just really, really, really awful. And you could see it right away. '24, died in the last 2 Dallas games. 23 really died when he was on Philly in the last 2 Boston games. 22 Miami series did not end well for him. 21, the last 2 bro— the Brooklyn series against Milwaukee when he was hurt. Hold that thought. That's probably my favorite James Harden playoff performance until what we've been seeing with Cleveland. But in the 2020s, '22, 6-8 stats are fine, but we were there. We know what happens and You just can't trust him. The irony of this, how amazing would it be if 36-year-old James Harden went on like a heater right now? If it, if it basically starts with the end of Game 3 and it runs through and he's just awesome for the rest of this Detroit series and then goes into a Knicks series and becomes this. By the way, he's been in the Western Conference his entire career except for that brief Brooklyn stint and that brief Philly stint. Somehow never. Avoided, uh, never ended up playing the Knicks.
So at least I don't think he did. I don't remember James Harden playing Knicks. So James Harden in MSG revamping his whole playoff legacy thing, pretty fun. Or it could be pretty painful. I don't know. I, I was thinking about his greatest playoff moments though. You can think of the worst playoff moments. And we could do that for an hour. And I was trying to think, what were the best ones? And honestly, nothing jumped to mind. And it, and my mind drifted to 2021 when he was hurt on that Nets team. And his greatest playoff moment was probably the, with Zach Lowe called the greatest theoretical playoff team ever when him and Kyrie and, and Durant were all healthy. But then I really liked how he played in that Milwaukee series after he was hurt. I thought he was like heroic in Game 7. Um, basically playing on one leg, doing everything he could to just try to set stuff up for them because he kind of had to play. And as crazy as that sounds, I think that was my favorite James Harden moment. All the other ones were kind of negative. Um, he's in a situation right now with Mitchell where he can kind of drift back and forth and be impactful but not impactful.
Um, and do a little seesaw thing with Mitchell, which they figured out for the most part. It's okay. Um, but I like how this is lined up for them because they need Thompson to, to defend Mitchell. They can't play one of their other defensive swings because then they just don't— the Detroit has no scoring at that point. I mean, you could argue maybe they just go all defense and throw away the scoring because they can't shoot anyway. But if Thompson's shadowing Mitchell and he's around them, then you're going to have to let Harden do what he's going to do against pick a swingman on Detroit. So it's set up for him here. And then against the Knicks next round, they might be able to just try to hunt Brunson as much as they possibly can and, and, or, or pull Towns out. Harden will be doing all his flopping stuff. This is kind of set up for James Harden to be like, you thought I was dead? I'm not. You thought, you thought I was guard Karl Malone? Watch this. Do I think this will happen? I don't. I do not, but it's in play.
It's better than he was on the Clippers where he had no chance to do anything. I have Harden career-wise, I have in the mid-40s of my pyramid. I have him actually one spot higher than George Gervin, and I have him two spots behind Sam Jones and Walt Frazier, who were two of the best clutch players in the history of the league, and especially as guards. And So the irony of those two being on a list and then it dropping and then going to Girvin, who, you know, I wrote about this in my book, but had a chance. He was up 3-1. I mean, it's crazy Girvin didn't make the finals, but the bullet series for Girvin was, is kind of his version of a James Harden. Didn't do quite enough when it mattered. And then Harden has a million of those. Who knows? Maybe, maybe it's a better late than ever clutch situation for James Harden. Would I bet on this? I would not. We have no idea what to expect from James Harden. My prediction, I think Cleveland finishes that. I think that I feel the same way that I felt about the Toronto-Atlanta series.
I think Detroit's going one direction and Cleveland has solved them in a lot of different ways. And the only way they don't win, ironically, is if James Harden completely sucks. I think they're gonna finish off Detroit in Game 6. I don't really know what's gonna happen in Spurs-Minnesota. I would almost go with Spurs win by double figures or Minnesota upsets them and wins. Watch the 3-point shooting. These games are gonna be great. And I can't wait to know both, watch about them, watch both of them, and then on Sunday talk to Zach Lowe about what happened and where we're going in round 3. We're gonna take a break. We are going to come back. With my friend Brian Curtis. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel giving you better payouts on same-game parlays all NBA playoffs long. We are almost halfway through the NBA playoffs. We still have more ways to build and more value every time you play. Stack your picks for every game, every minute, every round, whatever you want, from spreads to play, player points to threes and more. Build it all into one same-game parlay and go for bigger payouts.
If you're betting same-game parlays this NBA postseason, bet them on FanDuel. More options, better payouts, all NBA playoffs long. Head to fanduel.com/BS to get started. FanDuel, official partner of the NBA. Play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Holiday Inn by IHG. Gee, if I'm ever traveling for work, which I try not to travel too often, but I do travel for work, and where I stay is super duper important. I like an easy check-in process. I like to be able to hang up all my stuff really quickly. I like a TV with a remote control that can do some stuff. I'm, I'm pretty easy for the most part, but I like to feel like it's just a nice place. Um, if this sounds like you, check out Holiday Inn. Has a whole new energy, especially for business travelers. You'll see it everywhere from refreshed rooms to reimagined social spaces and dining done right with new drinks and dishes. And for business, there are flexible spaces that work for the way you work.
It's a new day. It's a new stay. Book now at holidayinn.com. All right. The ombudsman of my life is here. Brian Curtis, taping this before the NFL schedule release. I'm sorry to pull you away from the anticipation of just Staring in front of your computer, just waiting to see who the Cowboys were playing in Week 10. Um, I never understood this day. I never—
I—
kudos to them for blowing it out. There's stuff I want to talk about that have nothing to do with Schedule Day, but do you get Schedule Day? What is this?
It's terrible. It really is terrible. The one they had this week where we're leaking Week 2 Thursday Night Football.
Yeah. Why?
Not Week 1, not Thanksgiving, not Christmas. Week 2. It's like, am I supposed to just schedule my life right now around Week 2 Thursday night?
Well, you already know who your favorite team is playing road and home before, whatever. So I guess it's just for travel purposes, but, um, leaking out all the international games and what their plan was for Thursday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve, all that stuff kind of defeats the purpose of schedule day. That's not why we're here though. I feel like there's a moment happening right now with professional sports and money and scheduling and trying to figure out how to justify all these giant media deals. And you can feel it happening in real time with college football, with the NBA, and with the NFL specifically. And the NFL now, they're gonna have 9 international games this year. They're pretty transparently discussing how the 18-week schedule is coming. You're seeing the owners just kind of leak that out. The season this year, we're starting week 1. It starts late this year. We're starting September 9th on a Wednesday. First week we go Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Monday. The playoffs don't start until January 16th, and the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day. So they've just declared war on everybody's lives, and we love the NFL and we're addicted to it like it's a drug, and we can't fight back, but Is there a tipping point where there's just gonna be too much?
You know, remember that quote from the executive who said we've reached peak TV 10 years ago?
Right.
And it wasn't just about the quality of TV, it was about how much. This feels like peak sports TV, except I don't know that we're quite there yet. Right. Because as you mentioned, what's still out there? 18th NFL game, expansion maybe in every league. Certainly the NBA, but maybe also hockey, baseball, um, bigger TV deals, more, you know, more sports scheduled on days we never used to have sports. I, I just feel like there's more out there somehow, even though it feels like almost too much right now.
You can feel it. And I've talked about this before with the UFC and WWE have been really smart about strategically picking these weekends that were kind of dead weekends last weekend. Which seemed like it was gonna be a little bit of a slower weekend cuz basketball had finally slowed down, hockey had finally slowed down. It was a little more manageable. It was the, the week after the Kentucky Derby and that's always a crazy first Saturday, Sunday. And yet last weekend had an, a pretty good UFC card. My son thought it was the best UFC card of the year. There was a WWE event that was being promoted all the time. This week has PGA tournament. It just feels like everybody's gotten better at both stretching out their schedules, but then also targeting dead weekends and then just kind of flooding us. And I'm, I'm, it's the first time I ever really remember feeling like I have trouble staying with everything. Like there's, there's just too much. Like I haven't really watched a lot of the NHL playoffs this year and I usually love the NHL playoffs. I just haven't been able to watch that much.
I wanted to ask you about that. 'Cause ever since I've known you, you'll text me on like a Tuesday night and it's like, you watching this Pelicans game? The announcer did something crazy tonight.
Right.
Wait, what? That's on?
Yeah.
So I always feel like you're the highest consumption person I know. Yes. But you feel like you've reached your limit?
Well, especially 'cause all of the TV and movie stuff that's out there too. And then like Survivor 50 is really good this year. That's another 90 minutes that has now been thrown into, into my week. But the, the combo of like the basketball with how they, how the college football seemed to just get longer and longer and how January is now just absolutely loaded. And we kind of finally get a breath in February. I'm complaining about free sports, although I guess they're not free because we're paying for the streamers, but it feels like there's less breaths in the schedule. Whereas like, even like when we started Grantland in 2011 and there was the NBA lockout. And we were panicked. We were like, what the fuck are we going to talk about every week? What are we going to do? I remember when I was a kid, when they had the baseball lockout in '81 and then the other one in '94. And it just was like traumatic. It was, it was such a monkey wrench in the day-to-day life and there wasn't stuff to replace it. Now there's a million things to replace anything with.
And I wonder if that's part of this is all the leagues in the sports field pressure. To constantly be in front of us. Does that make sense?
It does. I mean, Thanksgiving Eve is the funny one for me that when you and I were growing up, what was Thanksgiving Eve? The Survivor Series. It's a Thanksgiving Eve tradition. And that's not a sports night I'd really spent much time thinking about at all.
Yeah.
The NFL schedule leak that just came out, Packers-Rams Thanksgiving Eve. And that's a funny one, right? Because we know when the NFL came for Christmas Day, they wanted to stomp on the NBA. When they started programming those Saturdays in December with really good games, they wanted to stomp on the college football playoff. Who are they stomping on on Thanksgiving Eve?
It's just attention. The attention economy.
It goes to your point though. They just want to be in front of us on another night and get the money they can get because you open up a new window and somebody's going to pay for it.
So everything crests with the NFL with this, this Thanksgiving thing, which you just brought up, this Wednesday night game that they'd never had. 3 Thursday, Black Friday, Sunday and Monday. There's going to be 5 days out of 6 where we have NFL, including 3 on Thursday. So part of me wonders, is the NFL just trying to break up families and trying to get everybody divorced? I think that has to be asked.
Yes.
Right. It's more single, more single male sports fans, maybe better for the NFL. I don't know what they're thinking there, but the Wednesday night thing blew my mind because that's a pretty, you know, that's like when you're in college, you come back and you go out with your high school friends, right? When that's a day usually people travel, like even we've, we've struggled with even trying to program that from a podcast standpoint because you can see the audience goes down for those 5 days because everybody's traveling, everyone's with family, people might watch football, that's it. And the NFL's like, We're doubling down. We feel like we can actually own this entire stretch. Family and us, that's, those are your two options. And Wednesday night is just aggressive and part of it's Netflix. Netflix, it's great for them, right? They, they're like, they want these signature one-off events versus like having the, the week-to-week stuff. So they have the Wednesday night opening game in Australia. They have the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. That makes sense. From a Netflix standpoint. I don't get it from an NFL standpoint except for money and attention.
Money and attention, which you can see because all these games on Thanksgiving are bangers, right? Packers-Rams, Bears-Lions, Eagles-Cowboys, Chiefs-Bills, and then the Black Friday game is Broncos-Steelers. So you're not just trying to dominate a holiday when you have a captive audience, you're trying to post a huge number.
Yeah.
Which really started last year. Remember they put Cowboys-Chiefs on Thanksgiving? And what people forget is that game had more viewers than either of the conference championship games last year.
Unbelievable.
It was the highest rated non-Super Bowl game of the season. Right. 57 million people watched that game. So with the end, it's almost just like you're, you know, shock and awe, trying to get fireworks. You know, you could put a crappy game on there and it would do very well because it's Thanksgiving. People are at home. They want to watch football. The NFL is not trying to do that anymore. They're just trying to completely dominate.
Also really hard to pi— figure out what's an awesome game. I talked to Gabe Spitzer at Netflix about this 'cause he knew, you know, they, they obviously have at least some say in requests for what they could put in for the Christmas game, right? And when you, you, the basically the only thing you can have some sort of sense of is who's playing who. So it's like, if we really like the Patriots and we really like the Chargers, could we make that a request? And be like, Patriots in LA against the Chargers. Can that be our Christmas game? But how do you know? Like, we have such— like, would the Giants be a team you'd actually want to request for Christmas? 'Cause they have a 4th-place schedule, they have a new coach start, they might be really good. Maybe they're this year's Patriots. Or would you say, well, the Patriots are in the Super Bowl last year, let's get them. And then they have the year from hell and they're 6-11 by the time the game happens. So yeah, I look at these things and it's like, these games all look great. But the, the only one that's actually probably really reliable is Eagles-Cowboys, because I know those two teams hate each other.
Is Mahomes even going to be in that Chiefs-Bills game? How's this ACL stuff going to go? Are the Bills going to be good? What are they going to look like next year? I just, you don't know. So on paper it looks great. But I understand the philosophy of the Packers, Rams, Bears, Lions. These are all like the signature teams in the league, right? We have 12 out of 32. They're not putting the Panthers. No.
Right?
They're not, they're not rolling the dice with like the Raiders.
Yeah.
And you're also putting something that's a rivalry no matter what.
Yeah.
So you're not doing Cowboys-Falcons.
Right.
Cowboys-Jaguars. Because that's like, you know, at the very least it's going to be a division grudge match.
All right. So let's say we're in the room. We're two of the owners. And We're worth a lot of money. The league is, has all these media deals in place. They've figured out this roundabout way of using the Paramount thing and the chance to be able to renew, to basically redo a bunch of their stuff at the end of the decade, combined with the NFL Network selling to ESPN. So now they've just kind of moved some games around and made them worth more. It's like, yeah, we have these 3. Doubleheaders, Monday Night Football, ESPN games. We're just gonna grab those 3 and we're gonna sell them the highest bidder, Netflix or YouTube. You guys tell us. We're gonna sell the opening night game. NBC, sorry, you don't have that anymore. Do you have a problem with that? Do you have a problem with that? What is NBC gonna say? Hey, that's not fair. Um, what they're really doing is weakening the Sunday Fox and CBS games. They, they, they're getting destroyed. From the 1 o'clock and the 4 o'clock on, or in our case on the West Coast, the 10 o'clock and the 1:15, whatever they are.
I think those games are going to probably suck this year, right?
I agree. And this is what happens with peak sports TV is you do hit the wall. There aren't, there just aren't that many good games. Now, fantasy and gambling can make a bad game into a watchable game for some people, but there just aren't that many at the end of the day. Which is where you get to 18th game, where you get to expansion, right? Then they start to— the wheels start to go in motion. But you're right, man. If, if you're an NFL owner right now, just think about this, how far we've come from 1993 when Rupert Murdoch came in with crazy money, $400 million a year.
Yeah.
$400 million a year. I remember talking to Jerry Jones one time and he was like, when they brought that offer in, he was sitting next to Pat Bowlen, the owner of the Broncos, and he goes, we, Brian, we were just kicking the shit out of ourselves under the table. Just kicking each other with $400 million is amazing.
Right?
Can you imagine that?
How many broken femurs there would be for all the money going around? Because there's like, there's like 3 Ruperts right now. You know, you have so much crazy money because the streamers want in, they want more NFL, and the networks know that if they lose the NFL, they're, they're toast. They're gone.
And then you have, you have streamers versus networks with two different agendas that are perfect for the NFL, right? If you're a network. You want the continuity of every Sunday I have a game, every Sunday night I have a game, Mondays I have a game versus Netflix, YouTube, um, Amazon. They're like, we just want like impact. Amazon's a little better at the continuity stuff. Netflix didn't want to have a weekly game. They wanted to, you know, their schedule, the way it works is they want to populate their main screen with like, here's the biggest thing this week. So they only needed like 3 or 4. YouTube. YouTube's the one I can't really figure out what they want. Because they already have the Sunday Ticket. And just having these one-off games, like, does you— I don't even— does YouTube even— this almost seems like a vanity thing for YouTube. Like, we're YouTube, watch this, we have NFL. But it's not like they need it. I think Netflix needs it a little bit.
The streaming strategy is fascinating. And also because they can always change their minds.
Yeah.
The networks are like, as you say, we need Sunday football. We need these two time slots, or if you're NBC, we need the night game. We need that every week. That's like part of that's, that's what we have to have to keep this network alive. But if you're a streamer, you can be like, you know what? We're not interested in full seasons. Oh wait, renegotiations coming up a couple years from now. We are interested in full seasons, it turns out, because football's so popular.
Yeah, I would argue for Prime having the Thursday Night Football has been really good for them.
Yes.
Um, and they've figured out their strategy with all their sports stuff is I think a little different than anyone because a lot of it's ad driven. Um, they, I think eventually they're gonna have a lot of product stuff on there that you're gonna see over the next 5, 6 years. They're gonna figure out a way to integrate when you're on Prime. Oh, I like that ad. You click a button and all of a sudden I'm buying a pan or I'm buying Dave Chang's cooking something with some Momofuku sauce. I'm like, oh, that sauce looks good. And all of a sudden I'm ordering it. So they have like their own set of agendas. Netflix has the, we're the, we're, we're in front, we're the leaders. We just need to keep populating our stuff with one-off stuff, whether it's the Kevin Hart roast one week or Stranger Things or NFL.
Elderly Mike Tyson.
Right. Or the Press Box with Brian Curtis. Like who, whatever it needs to be.
We're still waiting on the call-up on that one.
It might be, I think they're waiting to see how many football games they were getting. Um, YouTube, I don't understand their strategy. I don't— I can't really elaborate because I think sometimes— and you saw this with the Amazon, with the Masters— to me, that's a pure vanity move. They don't really need the first round or first two rounds of the Masters, right? But you get it. And now, like, all the higher-up level suits are like, going to Augusta, we have the Masters. And now you, you Basically, you're in this like secret society for you just get to go in, play the course, you get to worm around. Um, I don't really understand YouTube. So what is YouTube? What do you think is motivating them?
Well, I, I, I, I'm kind of with you. I don't know if they know what their strategy with sports is yet, but there's this great luxury at this point in history to not know. If you're Fox, you can't lose the NFL because then it's The Masked Singer and season 800 of The Simpsons and that's it, right? You're, you're, you're toast.
Yeah.
But if you're a streamer, you can play around with stuff. You know, what if we have old Mike Tyson come out and fight? What if we have Mayweather-Pacquiao?
Right.
What if we have a guy climb a building? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, you can play around and just sort of see what works. You know, you still have to hit numbers and all that kind of stuff, but like, I don't know. And to me, it's like building a sports division is a big step up, right?
Dabbling in sports.
Hey, let's go get Ian Eagle and let's go get Greg Olsen and let's, you know, put together a little fantasy announcer booth and, you know, get one of the networks to produce a game for us. That's dabbling, right? That's a level. If you say we want a sports division where we have people hired working for us all the time, week after week of NFL programming, that's a lot. It's a lot of money. And it also takes a lot of talent and know-how. And when you and I have seen this, you know, week after week watching the NFL, not every network is as good at that as others. So then you bring yourself under this microscope. Are we doing this right? Does our, do our games suck? Do our replays suck? Do our announcers suck? It's easier to dabble.
Yeah.
And they're listening to all the media critics and podcasts like this, and that's where they're getting feedback from basically. 'Cause they, they know not to trust social media and things like that. So it's, first of all, you cannot listen to anything or you can be like, did we do that? Like when Amazon, when they had the outage. During the, what was it, the last minute of, what was it, the playing game or it was the playing game, right? It was Charlotte and Amazon just disappeared for 20 seconds and everyone went nuts. Like that's a catastrophic moment for, for people running sports and Amazon. That's your worst case scenario. 100%. But for the most part, I don't know, these, it's, it's pretty hard for an announcer to ruin a game. It's pretty hard for a production to ruin a game if you care about Who's playing and, you know, they can, they can only do so much. Like NBC has thrown away the pregame and halftime shows for every sport they've covered for the last 20 years. Nobody really cares, right? Like the basketball show now, I don't know what they're doing, but nobody cares. It doesn't matter.
Um, with the football piece, so if they add another week and it's clear they want to go now. I, I thought it was really notable that they pushed the Super Bowl all the way to February 14th. The Super Bowl always without fail has been the first Sunday in February, and it's either February 1st through February 7th without fail.
Single digits. No longer.
Single digit number of February. Now we're at 14, and I almost feel like it's a feeler to see this is how it's gonna work for us when we go to 18 weeks. What kind of number do we get if we, if we push it back? And I don't know where this part ends either, because think about this from the beginning. So they, and they're also insisting on doing the preseason. So you're talking August all the way through February now. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's 7 months. It's not a 7-month season. That seems crazy to me.
Right?
It does.
It does. But if you were going to grow, Wouldn't you grow into February?
Right. Like staggered through the way. I don't know. There's something about the way the schedule was set up where college started, people were kind of back from summer break and all that stuff. Kids went off, school started for little kids. Kids are in college and then the NFL would start. And now it seems like they're kind of conceding that territory to college football. And college football's the other one that like, Indiana's first game last year was August 19th. Their last game was January 19th. It's a 5-month schedule, not counting all the practices.
Yeah.
So you're showing up in Indiana in mid-June and you're going all the way through the middle of January. That's insane.
Week 0 is like one of the concepts that makes me laugh about peak sports TV, which we got to in college football. We have Week 1, but before Week 1, we have Week 0. Right. And there are games, right? It's like, but 0's not a week.
They're, they're not good games, so it doesn't count as a week, but it's Week 0.
But it's something to watch.
Yeah. But February to me, that's always been the dead zone of sports.
I think there's a famous quote where somebody asked a sportswriter, why did you, why'd you quit? And said, February, because there was anything to write about. So if you're the NFL, what if we stretch that another week and we just keep going and bet that you're not going to want to watch regular season NBA as much as you're going to want to watch us. Right.
February was always first for the sports community. It was vacations. There was always conferences in February and early March. It was always kind of the time everybody reset. And then March Madness would hit. Now March Madness is gonna get longer. Like, what are they, what are they, didn't they add like another 14 teams or something?
And they were about to, they did. 'Cause you know, like 60, 60-odd teams wasn't enough to pick a champion.
This is one of the things I wanted to, to talk about. These different leagues are doing stuff that everybody is like, please don't do this. Like, not only the fans. but the people that play and coach the sports are like, yeah, don't do this. And whoever's in charge is always like, nah, actually we're gonna do it. Thanks for the input. Like the NBA, I think pretty consistently across the board, every— everybody is saying the season is too long. Kurt Goldsberger had a great piece for us today about all the leg injuries. And, um, it's something him and I had been talking about behind the scenes for months about is there a way to to actually capture, is, did something change? Because you could see in the basketball reference minutes from 12, 13 years ago, like the league leaders in minutes versus the league leaders now, people are 500 minutes less. It doesn't make sense, but it does make sense when you watch how it's played, all the leg injuries. And I, where are we going with all this stuff?
The bet that's being made is that they will take the money And they will watch us roll our eyes and they'll say, you're going to watch anyway. I know you're going to watch.
And let's—
you and I could do a self-audit about this, right? Did we need a 7th team from every conference for the NFL playoffs? Absolutely we didn't. Those teams have sucked by and large, year after year. Did you not watch those games involving the 7th team?
That was one where I was like, you got me. I kind of like this. Yeah, I was— I wasn't against that idea. If they added 2 more teams, I think that's now a mistake.
NBA play-in game. I think you're pro, if I remember correctly.
Yeah, I'm pro.
You're pro.
I've enjoyed it.
So they, they bet that they could have teams that would often have a losing record or be right around.500 and they would put 'em in the postseason and that Bill Simmons would watch.
And you watched NBA Cup. I watched. Am I a bad barometer though? Because I'm gonna watch anything.
Yeah. But I'm just, what I think is like, what would the backlash look like? What if, you know, what would the NFL have to do to, to, to actually put a number on the scoreboard where they're like, ooh, people really hated that.
You know, this is a good question because somebody asked me this. What's the number for each sport that would make people go, what the fuck are you guys doing? Right? Which, so the NFL said, we're, we're gonna have a 20-game schedule next year. People would be like, what? You, No, no, no, no, no. We're tapping out. You can't do that. And I think for the NBA, just staying even is about as far as they can push it. Like, if they went up to 90 games, I think honestly people would revolt. Sure. I, I think that would be awful. College football, I don't know what the number is. Indiana played 16 games last year. Yeah. Like, think about that. That's, that's more than the 1972, as many as the 1972 Dolphins played.
Oh my God. And somebody is, was at the University of Texas, you know, win an 11-game college football world.
Yeah.
I, it feels like a ton, but I've watched every week of it.
Right.
It's amazing. And it's, it's, it's fun. Everybody's like, oh, this sucks. It's a new world. It's like, eh, I haven't reached that point yet.
So you're good as you're good from late August all the way through January for college football.
I mean, I'll tell you what, you know me, like I'll watch any football game starting Thursday. I'll watch all day Saturday and I'll watch all day Sunday, Sunday Ticket. By Monday now, I'm dragging a lot.
Yeah.
I'm just like, Joe and Troy come on. I'm like, I'm not, not watching this, but I feel like I'm dragging.
You're worn out. That's what that first weekend of the NBA playoffs is like. By like the 8th game, you're like, oof.
It's like, I love this. I'm in, but I'm drag— this is— I'm tired.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you what it is, is, you know, you've heard all these people talk about how confusing the world is now with the streaming services and how hard it is to watch things. They're not wrong, but they also lack the historical perspective of you and I, where it's like, it is also in certain ways easier to watch everything now.
Yeah.
There are more college football games at the click of a button than there ever were when I was a kid. Right. Even when I was in college, like Texas used to have a pay-per-view game when I was in college. Like, here's one of our crappy games. Let's just put it on pay-per-view if you didn't come to the stadium. Like, it is now, there's so much, it's easy to watch stuff. Now, is it a pain in the ass to go from streamer to streamer and back and forth to television? Yeah, it is. It totally is. I understand that. But there's tons of stuff on. There's tons of stuff on without really trying to watch anything.
Yeah, my life has spanned this entire kind of run we've had because I'm old enough to remember Game 6 of the 1981 Finals, tape delayed in Boston. This is the Celtics winning the title. It was not on live. And I was, I was in 5th or 6th grade and had to go to bed, then wake up for the game. My dad woke me up at 11:30 so we could watch the game to see what happened. The other choice would've been to just listen to it on the radio. But when you think about like all the NBA games that were lost over the years, they were NFL. I, I've talked about this before, but it sucks so much to be an NFL fan if you were in a city. If you were like a Jets fan and you're living in New York City and they would do the thing where they would—
sucks to begin with.
Well, that sucks to begin with, but they would show Jets-Giants. You would only have 2 games. So it'd be 1, 1 and 1, and no thing can compete with the home team. And that was it. You didn't get to watch any other teams. So you're really tied to the, uh, the little game breaks, the halftime stuff, the highlights, the, the ticker on the bottom. That was kind of all we had. So I look at the stuff now where we're arguing about, it's really hard to find where every single game is on. Like, that's a decent problem to have. I think what's weird to me is like the Lakers playoff game the other night in LA was not on normal TV. And that's where that— this goes back to the question of how much money is enough to actually make it less likely people are going to like your sport. Because there's just— LA is a huge city. It's got people of all kinds of backgrounds, and there's people that just aren't going to pay for Peacock in LA, right? That probably love the Lakers, that either had to go to somebody's house who had Peacock or just had to find out what happened afterwards.
And that's where I think you lose the narrative a little bit. At the very least, like, the games in the local cities, I feel like, should be on normal TV.
That reminds me of old school NFL when there'd be a Cowboys game when I was a kid that wasn't sold out by Friday. Oh, that's right. And you start to hear the sports radio thing. It's like, oh, should we get tickets? We're not gonna be able to watch the game.
What about the home blackout?
The home blackout, which is now nobody even understands that concept. But back in the day, there'd be this thing.
Remember that?
End of the week, you start to hear the—
Well, you have to explain this because there's probably people listening who don't even know what you're talking about.
You had to sell out the game or it wouldn't been on, it wasn't on, on local television.
So if you lived in Cincinnati and the Bengals were 10,000 tickets shy, they would, the team would then have to decide whether they wanted to buy the 10,000 tickets themselves so their fans could see the game.
They would give 'em to charity sometimes. That was, yeah, I remember that being a thing. But you'd start to hear this murmur late in the week. It's, is it time to go buy tickets?
Right.
'Cause otherwise we're not gonna be able to see the game again. It's just like a totally different era of sports. But was that the, was that the ga— the Laker game that was a $90 get-in price? That was the cheapest Laker ticket of the season. Was that Game 4 versus OKC? Do you see that?
It was like 80 bucks to walk in the platform, right? Well, that's happening now with World Cup. The tickets are starting to drop big time. Remember they priced it at all these crazy heights and now it feels like the get-in price is, is gonna keep going down. World Cup is another thing. I mean, you could argue this is the craziest sports content year we've had. Olympics, football getting longer, um, adding, adding World Cup. When does Winter Olympics start?
We, we did it.
We did it. That's right, Bill.
Bill, I got bad news.
That shows you how much I watched.
February 6th through 22nd. You might remember some hockey.
Yeah, I did watch the women's hockey and the men's hockey. That's But honestly, that's how much sports I've watched. I don't— all this stuff is starting to blend together, dude.
I'm with you. I just feel like— I mean, I'm like Mike Tirico. I feel like Mike Tirico. We're just like rushing off to call another huge event.
The Hughes Brothers. It feels like it happened 10 years ago. It does.
It is so much stuff.
3 months ago.
It's so much stuff.
Yeah.
Again, like, I think if you went to young Bill and young Brian, it'd be like, this is a dream. Because do you remember those nights where you'd be like, there's nothing on, I'd kill to watch a sport?
I know I'm starting to really have trouble, like, as I just proved with the Winter Olympics, the stuff is just going in one ear and out the other when you're watching it. And unless it's something I really have to focus on, which is basically for this podcast, NFL and basketball, um, I'm just finding like, like the baseball playoffs last year, which I watched a ton of, And now if you quiz me on what happened in the '25 playoffs, I'd be like, well, Dodgers played the Blue Jays. I remember that. Game 7. Who did the Blue Jays beat in the previous round?
Starts to get iffy.
I'm like, I, I don't know. I watched it. I never used to be like that. Mariners? Mariners?
Blue Jays, Mariners, I think.
Mariners. That's what it was. It was the Mariners.
If we, between the two of us, we can reconstruct the last 6 months of sports. We'd have to help each other.
Well, it's like I had Letterman on last week. And one of the things I asked him was about like with the 6,000 shows, do you, you did, you know, you did 6,000 shows across the board. Do they all start to blend in together after a while? He's like, yeah, I don't, you know, remember little pieces, but you don't remember it like the, like when Jimmy Kimmel goes on his show for the first time on Letterman's show, he remembers every moment of it. And I wonder with sports, the influx of it, if that's just going to be what happens with our memories. Where there's so much content, there's so much glut that 3 months after the Winter Olympics, I couldn't remember if we had the Winter Olympics yet. And part of it's the media.
It just, everything goes fast.
Yeah.
I was looking at, I, for some reason I went to ESPN.com's homepage. I'm not totally sure why the other day, but I went to that homepage. Wow.
What was that experience like?
It was, it was different. Kind of, kind of like going to the old apartment building you, you know, lived in when you were a young, young, young adult.
They didn't have archives for their writers anymore. If you remember a writer, you're like, you just have to hope they wrote something.
It was like going to the old apartment. The apartment had been torn down. That's what it was like. But I can't remember the— it was one of these sports stories that leaked out of your brain and mine, but some huge sports story the night before, and it just wasn't— it was barely on the homepage. And I don't even blame ESPN. It's just the world moves very fast now. There's not the SI cover that comes out on Thursday and you're like, okay, that was a week. That was what happened this week, right? Our brains are just Ugwood's like, oh, there's something, there's a WWE thing tonight. What's up? What's going on? Ronda Rousey and it's fighting tonight. Okay. And you just sort of ping pong to the next thing.
It can't, it couldn't have been this much slower 45 years ago.
I think it was. I honestly, you know what? I don't think the, I think if you and I were like a living Agate Page, it wasn't that slow because there's just a lot. There was a lot going on, but we just couldn't watch it. We didn't have access to it. Not on a, not on a Tuesday night.
Well, I wonder if part of this, so social media basically starts for what it looks like now, probably like 18 years ago, 2008, 2009 range.
Sure.
Before it was, we were in the bookmark economy. If I wanted to find out about anything, I had my whole slew of bookmarks. I had websites I went to, I had writers I liked, I had a couple message boards for my favorite team, like the old school message boards. That was really it. And I would start my morning and I would just go through all the bookmarks. Now I just probably go to Twitter or I go to a couple of the Boston sports Reddit pages, and that's kind of what I do. But I'm like, I wish, I wish I'd I wish I could actually go back to the old bookmark thing, but if you'd be bookmarking things that wouldn't even be able to know how to serve you the content correctly. And The Ringer is kind of anomaly in that respect. You can go to our website still and see all the stuff we have. There's not a lot of places that are easy to do that now. Apple News is one that I always go to now every day, and I always look to see, because I, I subscribe to that. I get all the different websites, and they, they do a pretty good job of curating what's going on.
And that's like the closest I have to a bookmarking experience now.
I agree. Because if you're anywhere else, people, and again, we've, we've benefited from this being in the sports business, but like everybody jumps on small things now.
Yeah.
So it feels like nothing is, it feels like everything is big. You know, people are like, you know, I mean, just imagine like when we were, when we were young, Mel Kiper seemed like a lunatic because he cared that much about the NFL draft.
Yeah.
And now he's a normie. Right. Because there's every Twitter account you follow cares about the draft and is already caring about next year's draft, even though it just ended. And so just everything seems big, you know, it just, everything seems important. And then I think at the end of the day, nothing seems important or as important.
Or everything seems big, but it's not like the J, like for, for the Boston fans right now, the Jaylen Brown, Jason Tatum trying to interpret all of these little weird videos. I'd almost like if we had this in 1982, this is all I would've done as a little kid is try to figure out, wait, McHale doesn't maybe like Bird and just gone driven myself crazy. Now you can, you know, Jalen's done multiple Twitch streams. He just did some other interview. Tatum now just did an interview. Then the people around them. Then you have T-Mac being able to dine on a weekend of pretending he hadn't talked to Jalen Brown when he obviously did. And, um, all of it's kind of meaningless. Like, we're going to go through it now with Giannis over the next couple weeks as people decide if he's going to get traded. Um, And that's another thing is like people trying to sift through the bullshit of the quote unquote information reporters. Is this actual information or is this, there an agenda behind this information? What, how do I, you know, in real time you're trying to decipher it like a police detective.
What are the next few weeks of LeBron gonna look like?
Speaking of which, it weird, it started this week with the weird McMenamin story about he was upset that JJ Redick got a game ball and he didn't. So he walked outta the locker room. I was like, what is this? You're 41. They already told you you're the third best guy in the team.
It's like one last time, right? Like when they have the movies, you know, the action movie with all the elderly action stars. This just feels like we got one, we got one more in us.
Well, this is what I've been pushing for with the Warriors for weeks, and I actually think has a real chance to happen, is LeBron going to the Warriors with Curry, with Draymond. They trade Butler's contract and a pick for Anthony Davis, and they just do the old guy team. And just go and sell out in every NBA city. And if you're LeBron, you have two choices. You either— see, now we're doing a LeBron segment. You can't fucking resist. It's like heroin. But if you're LeBron, you either take the minimum and try to win a title, or you do the Expendables in Golden State and you just have this two-year, you know, you're everywhere, you're a sellout everywhere, you're the biggest story wherever you go. And in a weird way, you've stolen some spotlight from OKC and San Antonio, who are the teams that are going to win the titles. The next couple years. But you have something different. You're basically like in the Hulk Hogan after he gave up the title to the Ultimate Warrior, but he was still the biggest sellout that they had, but he didn't need the title. Or like what Andre the Giant was like.
I think that's what's sitting there for LeBron. I think that's his only move left. But this goes back to the attention economy. If they do that, there'll just be stories that come out of that all the time, which is one of the reasons you would do it.
You think LeBron's interested in the attention economy?
I do.
I do.
I do think he is.
Do you think Draymond Green's jokes would go over better with LeBron than they did with Charles Barkley?
What'd you think of that? I know you talked about it, but tell my audience.
I just watched that moment. I'm like, is Draymond Green— is he—
are we sure that—
first of all, are we sure that he's good? Maybe we're past that as an announcer. But second of all, like, to be a good announcer, I think you just have to have that ability to let people make fun of you a little bit?
Yeah.
Do you have the ability to eat it? Charles Barkley has a great ability to eat it. Stephen A. I was saying this, when the Knicks lose to the Thunder in the Finals here in a couple weeks, Stephen A.'s gonna come on there, hang his head on the show.
Yeah.
Ah, 4-0. I can't believe it. I was so excited. And he's gonna let himself be vulnerable. Can Draymond do that on television?
There's that. And then there's also, as we've talked about many times, when you do those shows, it's professional wrestling and you have to sell the other person's moves 100%. And I don't know if he's a move seller.
You have to let the other guy get their stuff in.
Yeah. Like, there's a, there's a respectfulness that you have to have in that situation if you're him. Even though I thought Barkley definitely seemed to be provoking him a little bit, which I didn't think Got enough, you know, he's basically just saying to his face, you guys are done, it's over, you know, and it probably— odds are Draymond Green is gonna handle that that well, but then he handles it the wrong way and comes back at him with something that wasn't even really factually accurate. And it was just awkward, you know, it's like exactly what you don't want when you're on those shows. Like you watch the Amazon show, which I think is the closest we have to a good show right now. There's a mutual respect with all those guys. They're not gonna hang each other out to dry. But in general, the Inside the NBA piece is interesting because it's the first time they've really had backlash. And I don't know how much of it is fair and how much of it isn't fair, but they've also been in everybody's life for such a long time that it's kind of, this is an inevitable way that this could probably end.
But that whole thing has felt off the whole year. I love that show, but the ESPN Fit, some of the time that they have, the fact that they don't have the same time they had after the games, which is when I really thought that show was at the most important time. Important. And to me, like, Shaq's— Shaq is the biggest issue with the show. Like, it just doesn't seem— it seems like he's there because it's fun to be on the show, but it doesn't seem like he follows basketball at, at a high enough level anymore. Like, he doesn't know who people like Baylor Shireman are. Like, you're on a studio show covering a sport, you know. You, you have to— there has to be some sort of a modicum of following the, the game. So it just feels— it's like watching— a little like watching the Warriors, ironically, where it feels like, uh, they're having trouble trying to reinvent themselves.
It's an interesting experiment of can you take something that's so awesome in one place, that is Turner Network, and just transport it to the other place? Would it be the same? And the answer is no. Kind of the same. Same in a lot of ways. Yeah. You know, when they were doing their obits the other night, that had, you know, that felt like inside the NBA. Yeah. They were talking about Ted Turner. That felt like inside the NBA. But then there are moments where you're like, mm, something just feels different.
They have a chance to flip the narrative again these next couple rounds, I think. I think, uh, you know, the basketball's better. There's more of a spotlight on them. It'll be easier for somebody like Shaq because there's only 4 teams left. He can just watch the game and figure out what happens.
He knows the players.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll know who Shaquille O'Neal, just Alexander, is. But yeah, look at this. This is what happens. One other thing I had for the schedule stuff before we go. So the NBA season, 82 games, 6 playing games, 4 playoff rounds. Conceivably, a playing team could play 114 games in a year. Cleveland and Detroit, we'll see what happens tomorrow night, but are on pace for 28 playoff games. So combined with the 82, that puts you at 110. I can't remember what the record is, but I think the, I want to say like the, oh, maybe the '05 Spurs, somebody in the mid-2000s played like 108, 109 games, something crazy. Um, there's no world in where the basketball, they'll scale back the schedule.
I don't think they're not giving money back.
It's actually more likely they're going to add teams.
Yes. And, and create more inventory.
Hockey's definitely adding more teams. Yes. The WNBA, to everybody's horror, is definitely adding more teams. More teams, which people are just stupefied by. And then baseball might be adding more teams.
Which was dead 5 minutes ago and then now it's back. Yeah, I'm just, here's the thing is whenever there's a playoff expansion, I always get a little nervous because you can never take it back. Right. You know, we're talking about this with college football now, right? Are they going to go to 16? Are they going to 24? What, you know, what's going to happen there? And the thing is, I'm always like, I would be happy to experiment for a year and see how we feel about this. But the thing is, you can't do that. It will never come back because you'll get money and then you'll say, well, who wants to give money?
I'm trying to think, have they ever unwound? They really haven't. The only thing they've ever unwound was the 2-3-2 with the NBA Finals going back to the 2-2-1-1-1, but that wasn't taking away games.
It wasn't taking away games. And it just, it feels every, I mean, it's like, you know, it wasn't that long ago that college football was 2 teams.
That was, that was it, right? Yeah.
It was the, you had the bowls, but it was the BCS match 1 and 2, and that was it. And then you bigger and bigger and you can never go back. And that's the thing. In a just world, you'd be like, okay, we, we did too much. Let's just scale it back a little bit. But we know that would never happen.
It's weird when everybody in the league seems to think The NBA should cut 10 games. Mm-hmm. And yet there's no way they will.
And the, and the players are cutting 10 games. It's just, they still play them, you know, the players just sit out.
Well, the irony is when they get NBA Europe going, I'm talking about that later in the podcast with Ryan Smith briefly, because the Utah Jazz owner was on, he's coming on later. Um, there's probably a world where if they can get, so I'm talking 25 years from now, if NBA Europe can get to the place it needs to get to where we just have an actual world championship. Where they have the schedules kind of aligning, and then it's like a best of 3 with the champion of the NBA and the champion of the— or they play it in October of the next year, however they do it. I just feel like if you, if you gave Adam Silver, if you got him drunk and gave him some truth serum, I, I would think he'd be like, this is what I'm really thinking. The actual world championship. 'Cause the league's in a crazy spot where most of the best young players are from not here. Which Perkins has been, uh, talking about on TV. He's making it seem like we've lost our cars to Japan. We're losing, we're losing basketball. It's like, I, people are fine.
Basketball's still good. I don't really care where the guys are from, but it is a little weird.
So we'll get a world championship and then guess what? We'll have more games.
And then it'll be like, should the world championship be 3 or 5 games? It should be 7. What about 9?
I don't know what, what month can we put it in?
You know, so it sounds like to recap, you're not delighted by the NFL ads, but you'll also watch all the games every week, which is where we are. I've stayed, I've stayed. College football, you're okay with more football? Yeah.
I mean, it did feel like a grind. I remember when Joel and I went to the national championship a couple years ago for the Ringer and it was on a Monday. Remember? And it would've been like a huge, I think it was a divisional round of the NFL. The night, the day before. And I was like, and we get like Monday, we get to the stadium in Atlanta. We're looking at each other like, whoa, this is a lot. That was a national championship. NBA, you'd go lower. Lower.
And then baseball, which is headed for a strike. I wonder where they're gonna end up.
It feels like the season could easily be shorter.
That's one where, especially with the pitcher injuries and how hard it is just to keep everyone healthy and feels like 144 would be perfect. But then you know, everything's locked in.
Yeah. And they lock, we all lock into the playoffs. Like, here we go.
Yeah. You could, you in baseball, it feels like you could actually make the baseball playoffs maybe even a little longer. Well, we'll see.
Yeah. And again, I don't want, I don't want to go there because once we do that, we'll never, we'll never go back.
To the current— what, the current stage, you know? The only one that I, I kind of like is the PGA, where— move to the spring. Yeah, just the PGA being like, you know what, we're doing some of this wrong. We got to have more West Coast stuff. We got to have more stuff in prime time. Let's like rethink some of the— some of our ideas. But the PGA is not going— we have more majors now. We're now having 6. Like, the PGA, that having the 4 majors, I think, has been really I, I think like they have 4 anchors in their schedule that the casual fans like myself can just jump in and be like, oh, PGA's this weekend, here we go. All right, Brian Curtis, how's it going with Joel Anderson? Love the guy. How's it going with Shoemaker?
You know I love the guy. I love both those guys. It's all Texans on the press box.
Somehow I've been working with you and Shoemaker now for 15 years.
Can you believe that? It's a long time.
We're sending like our work relationship to the 9th grade in high school. That's how long we've all been together.
In a couple of weeks, it'll be 10 years at the ringer.
Yeah, I can't believe that. 10 years together on this website. Unbelievable. All right, Brian Curtis, great to see you. Thanks for popping on. Thanks, Bill. And now it's time for today's With the Assist segment, presented by State Farm. Basketball, full of unpredictable moments, big swings, clutch plays. Last-second finishes. You just never know round to round. But the one constant is having teammates you can rely on. And throughout NBA history, we've seen some unforgettable duos. Everybody— you can almost feel it through the decades. You got Kobe and Shaq in the 2000s. You have MJ and Pippen in the '90s. You have Bird and McHale and Magic and Kareem in the '80s. You're going through Towns and Havlicek in the '70s. The great duos. Are we gonna have one now? In San Antonio, I think it's gonna be Wemby and Harper are gonna be when 50 years from now we're talking about the great duos from the late 2020s, early 2030s. Maybe it's those guys. I would say the best duos in the 2020s, you'd either go Brown and Tatum or you would go Jokic and Murray. I think for two players that just, just seem like they brought the best out of each other.
Jokic and Murray in 2023, probably my favorite duo combo where it just, we felt like they might win title after title after watching them in the playoffs that year. Well, just like in basketball, life can throw unexpected moments your way. And guess what? That's where State Farm comes in. They've got easy-to-use digital tools like the State Farm app and neighborhood State Farm agents as well when you want to talk to a real person. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. All right. People have been asking for him ever since the Celtics got eliminated. People thought you were too mad to come on. Then people thought maybe you're never coming on again. They didn't know where your head was at. The Patriots are falling apart. The Celtics fell apart. The Red Sox season is over and my dad is here. How you feeling?
Well, as you just described, I'd also include the Bruins, not only losing, but Not getting the Toronto draft pick. So I was trying to decide when you said I had to come on today, which sports team hat I was gonna wear. Yeah. Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, or Red Sox. And I decided I don't like any of them right now. So I'm wearing my Ruby's dad hat.
Your dog Ruby.
Ruby's our special needs puppy.
She's, she's had some trouble in year one. Um, who gave you that hat, just out of curiosity? Uh, Michelle, who walks Ruby and Winnie. Yeah. Okay. All right. So Bruins, you sit down for the lottery, they have to go back from 5 to 6. The Maple Leafs, it's just one.
Instead they go up every year. Every year somebody jumps ahead. So what happens? They—
Maple Leafs jump up, get the first pick, and now they're—
oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. And you and I were on a thread with our nephew, uh, Brian. And so that, that was just the coup de grâce on top of everything that's been happening to our sports teams.
And now we have this, whatever's going on, Jaylen Brown, Jason Tatum. Is Jaylen Brown still on our team? Jaylen Brown's still on the team. He was on the Jennifer Hudson Show this week. Um, I saw that talking about stuff and, uh, yeah, he's done some Twitch.
He's out there. You know, I wish instead of going on the Jennifer Hudson show, he was back in the gym dribbling and shooting free throws.
He's resting his body.
Yeah.
So you went to Game 7.
I went to the 4 home games. We won Game 1, looked really good. And then I saw 3 terrible losses, including Game 7.
Yeah. Yeah. So what, what do you want to happen? Do you, would you, you're just talking as my dad, the, the Boston fan, Celtics fan. What do you, what do you want to happen? Do you want them to keep Tatum and Brown together or do you want to move Brown when his value's high?
Yeah, it's a hard, hard question, but if the package was perfect for Jaylen Brown, I would move him in a heartbeat. I don't know what that perfect package is. I'm just kind of tired of watching him and, okay.
And us, you know, 10 years, 10 years of watching his offensive game. You, you've, you're good.
Well, something I, I think, I don't know if ref, the Philadelphia got it into the referee's ears, but I watched the tape of a couple of the games. Almost every time he goes in to make a shot. He pushes off. Yeah. And they don't usually call it in the regular season, but it, it's apparent that he can't get his space unless he pushes. Whereas you see some of these other guys in other teams and, you know, they get to their space quickly and shoot quickly. But I, I'm worried. He's turning 30. He's gonna, his athleticism is what has made him the star he is. He's been having difficulty now getting his jump shot off without pushing. He can't make free throws. He's a black hole in terms of the ball going into him and not moving. Yeah. And he can't dribble. I, I, I don't understand after 10 years where he can't dribble, but—
Well, I'm higher on him than you because—
Yeah, I know you are. You've always been higher on him.
Well, I, I always valued the durability. I always thought he played hard and gave a shit, and I think The more we step back from the season, I think it was pretty weird that Tatum just showed up with 6 weeks left and they had to figure out how to incorporate that in real time. It was fun to watch, but it doesn't seem like they ever— they had these 2 styles and they talked about it. Jaylen talked about it after Game 7 when he said, I felt like we were playing more like us in Game 7. Well, why do you think that? 'Cause Tatum wasn't playing. 'Cause you guys were pushing the ball up. 'cause you had the ball more. But I do think fundamentally, you and I, you know, obviously the listeners aren't privy to our phone calls. We always talk about stylistically, Tatum likes to bring the ball up, take his time, figure out what he is gonna do. Whereas I think Jaylen likes to move faster with the guards. And it's the first time I feel like maybe they just want two separate things on a basketball team.
Well, it's an interesting, uh, point because I'd say for the first two-thirds of Jaylen, of Tatum coming back, he deferred to Brown. Yeah. And Brown was still the alpha dog in the offense. Tatum was more a lot of time in the corner the way he was as a rookie. Yeah. And then when they got into the playoffs, it kind of switched and Mazzulla shortened the bench. And to be honest, I know you and I have talked about it. I don't want to see either Brown or Tatum bringing the ball up. I want to see a guard bringing the ball up. Yeah. I don't want to see Tatum dribbling until there's 9 seconds left and he does iso. And I don't want to see Brown bringing it up and losing the ball over and over. I want to see White or Pritchard bringing the ball up and, you know, play Brown and/or Tatum at the high post or, you know, move them around. We stop moving when those two guys bring the ball up.
I say you, that one Twitter clip, somebody did a great job of pointing out what Philly was trying to do with, yeah, Jalen, where it was just basically like, fine, go one-on-one, knock yourself out, you'll make half of these, but we're not letting the 3-point shooters do anything. And they stayed home with everybody and it was a lot of Jalen going against good defenders trying to like bang against them and get his spot. And that would be the same thing with Tatum.
It wasn't just that though. It really struck me after watching the Knicks-Philly series. I think Philly was really, really happy to see Tatum or Brown bring the ball up. Yeah. Because when they went iso, Embiid just stood there. He wasn't moving around. He didn't have to move around. He wasn't wasting energy. Yeah. We weren't tiring him out. In the fourth quarter, he was wide awake. And you watched the Knicks and it was a completely different way of attacking Embiid.
They moved him all around and yeah, they wanted him in pick and pops all the time where he had to like come out.
And Tatum and Brown bringing the ball up. How many times did we have 7 or 8 seconds left and suddenly somebody had to take a shot and Embiid again never moved.
Yeah. So, well, it's funny, they were doing that to us with Keita, the pick and pop stuff, or especially with Vucevic. Bryant, um, just trying to get him where he'd have to jump out a second too late on a 3-pointer. And then the Celtics were never doing that to Embiid, which was just bizarre.
Which, you know, oh boy, here we go.
Did you put Joe back in second row?
Uh, I'm not going there, but if Tatum and Brown consistently are bringing the ball up so that Embiid can just stand there and be lazy, and rested. That's a coaching decision. That's a coaching strategy. If I'm the coach of the Celtics, I have Missoula, I have, I have my guards bringing the ball up and I have the ball moving all around this. And I have, I have Embiid tired by the fourth quarter.
Well, this goes to what I said, I said like last week about it felt like they treated that Philly series as kind of a tester. For what they were gonna do in round 2 and round 3. Let's see, what do we have with Vucevic? What do we have when Tatum brings the ball up? What do we have if our bench shorter? And they never took Philly seriously enough until it's too late. You and I were both struck by Stevens's press conference, which was riveting. And he, he seemed both pissed off that they lost to Philly. I think he knew that Philly wasn't that good, but also pointing out like he didn't even think we were that good. He made a point of pointing out the 3-11 against the best teams in the league. He brought up Shireman and Hugo, which Hugo, which I thought was notable and how important Hugo's gonna be for them next year. Meanwhile, Hugo got buried after the trade deadline. So I don't know, I felt like they weren't 100% aligned watching the press conference. I agree.
I mean, you and I talked about it afterwards that One of the great things about the regular season and how they overachieved, which was great 'cause none of us expected 56 wins. Yeah. Was they used 10 or 11 people. They didn't tire out Brown and, and Tatum. They had wings coming off the bench over and over and running. You know, one thing about, you know, I'm not a, a real fan of Walsh, but boy, he, he runs his tail off. Yeah. Hugo runs his tail off. Shireman runs his tail off. What happens when they're not, when they're sitting on the bench? Isolation again. We, we saw it except for the championship year, every year for the past 4 years, isolation. But you bring those guys off the bench, they're moving all over and, and they're getting offensive rebounds.
Right. And they're pressuring, like you saw what the Knicks did with Maxie for 4 games.
Yeah.
Just chasing him around, using bridges on him. We had all the guys to do that, but We had the best— it was a real, really bad coaching series. And I thought, I, I've said this, I thought Mazzulla was great there in the regular season. I, I just wonder big picture, what did they learn from it? You know, the, the, the trade that they made to get under the luxury tax, getting rid of Simons really didn't change the team because one of the things that made that team, the thing you and I liked was they always had two guards out there. Right. And it was, it was 2 of the 3 at all times, and one of them was usually hot. And, and if 2 of them were hot, they were beating anybody. But usually you could get one of them going. Pritchard's trick or treat. White, the shooting was, was, you know, I thought, I just thought they put a lot of miles on them. I wonder like about thinking about things they would've done differently. Would they have put less miles on White and Brown and not really cared where, what seed they got?
'Cause that, I thought that was one of the lessons of the season is it doesn't really matter what seed you are. It matters how healthy your guys are in April.
Right. It, two thoughts on that. I can recall during the regular season, 3 or 4 games that we won because Simons got hot. Yeah. Nobody, nobody else was hot. He came in, he got hot, and he would play the whole fourth quarter. And it, you know, that trade made a huge difference obviously in terms of our depth at not just shooting guard, but a guard who could make a shot. You know, our, when our shots aren't falling and we don't have those subs in there grabbing offensive rebounds, we, we're just a, a static team. Yeah. We're not moving.
Well, do you feel like the window is these, these NBA teams have these 4-year windows. This is a team that just lost in round 1. Right. You know? Yeah. And it's, this is a team that made the '22 Finals and '24 Finals. We thought they were gonna make the finals last year and they had the crazy Knicks clap. Tatum gets hurt and now you look at teams like OKC and San Antonio and they just seem so much better set up, you know? Yeah. Unless, unless there's an awesome trade, right?
You know, and they do have some, they have a trade exception. They, they have the mid-level da da da. The, the other thing that struck me though, and you've just brought it up about seeding, In retrospect, I would've preferred to have been the 4th seed. I think we matched up really well with Detroit. Yeah. I think we matched up really well with Orlando and 8, you know, and the 5th seed as well. And we put a lot of miles on Brown to get to the 2nd seed and he just looked a little tired to me in the playoffs. Playing all those minutes.
Um, can I throw a trade at you that I've been thinking about?
Does this involve anybody from Milwaukee?
No. Oh, okay. I'm starting to get nervous about the Giannis stuff. Yeah, I keep thinking of that segment I did on my podcast a month or so ago about older big men and what the track record is for year 14 and on. And right, um, you know, with Tatum and Brown you always feel like with those two guys you can build around them, figure out some sort of strategy. And Jalen turns 30 next year. Tatum's younger than he is, and that's like a 5-year window. Giannis, it might be 2.
Yeah, that's a good point.
And so now, now we're condensing this window where you're also going against OKC and San Antonio who have all these young players and they have all the contracts staggered and the ability to add all of pieces. It's like, you know, you have these lightning in a bottle seasons, and I think we had one in '24 when we were able to get Porzingis and Jrue, right? And everything kind of aligned. And they spent a lot of money for that season. They, you know, the, the opponents fell in the right way.
I think that's happened to the Knicks this season where, well, the, what you just said, the opponents fell the right way. Yeah. Uh, which didn't happen. You know, we faced a Philly team that If we played them 3 weeks ago, we would've swept them.
We faced a Philly team that had one good week in them, and we just happened to hit them that one week, and then they died immediately. Yeah. So I just, I wonder, like, is this the time to take a swing? And I keep thinking about New Orleans and whether there's a way to, to get back Zion and Trey Murphy. With Jalen and some picks and whatever else needs to go in there and basically end up with Trey Murphy making half as much as Jalen and then taking this enormous flyer on Zion. Yeah. And trying to figure out, can you put Zion in, in a winning organization with a different fan situation and, and what's there? And if nothing's there, you bail on it and now you're paying Trey Murphy half as much as Jalen. Like, I wonder, I wonder if Stevens is thinking about stuff like that. Well, we both like Murphy. Um, a lot. All the smart teams like him.
Yeah. Williamson is so injury-prone, it's hard to, it's hard to know what you're really getting.
He's almost like the contract to make it work because Jalen's going to make like $58 million. But I wonder, like, because Brad is so outside the box with how he thinks about stuff, right, that I wonder if he's thinking Yannis 2-year window where I'm probably not winning the title anyway, or can I try to reconfigure this so I can have, you know, I gotta pay Pritchard. That's the other thing is they have to pay Pritchard $7 million this upcoming year and $7 million after free agent. He's a guy that's worth 20 plus. And do I need a center would be the other thing I'd be thinking of. Like if I'm trading Jalen, do I need a bigger guy? Like, do I have to, should I think about Sabonis? Do I think about Sabonis and a few, and trying to get more Sacramento Kings first round picks that are always first round?
He's another guy though that he hasn't finished a season in a couple years. Yeah.
Well, they, they shut him down this year. I'm just, I'm just trying to think.
Yeah.
Yeah. How many centers are out there that could make an impact? Do they feel like they need a center? Vucevic thing obviously failed.
It's, it's, My guess is, well, you, again, going back to the press conference, he's— Stephen certainly intimated that there'd be changes. Yeah.
He wanted more, he wanted more stuff at the rim. He wanted a more conventional team. It felt like he was clearly tired of the style that they played.
After that press conference, I did look at different teams and different big men. Doesn't necessarily have to be a center, but a big man. I mean, Utah has a couple of people as an example. There are teams. Yeah. That if Jalen was in the trade, I think you could get a big man and a, and a wing back. And, and I'm just not sure if, if Stevens is ready to trade Brown. He, he flattered him in the press conference and a couple days later in the newspaper.
And, and maybe that's the kiss of death, but I know, but that's, I've always wanted to keep these guys together. This is every, everything that's happened the last few months is starting to make me wonder like, Does Jaylen just want his own team? Yeah. And does— well, I talked about this a week ago. It just feels like the body language seems to be heading that way, in my opinion.
Yeah. You wonder, I mean, we sit so close to the bench. I always watch Tatum and Brown together. And it was, it was weird with Tatum coming back with so little time left in the season, but It was even, even weirder. You know, the, we went to that Game 7. Molly was able to go and we went to a bar first and we're sitting there and having a drink and there's two Philadelphia fans sitting next to us. They have Philly gear on and the guy says to the other guy, it's so great that Tatum's not playing. And I said, what did you say? He said, Tatum's not playing today. I was flabbergasted. Game 7, I just never expected he wouldn't give it, give it a shot.
I guess I, I didn't know he wasn't playing. But it's understandable considering he had a calf injury to the other calf that they pretended was a knee injury, but it was a calf injury.
But did I have any confidence when I heard that? No. Not too much confidence. No. No. Weird. I mean, the, the reality is I was there for Game 5. We're up 3 games to 1. You win Game 5 at home like you're supposed to, like all, like the other teams did.
We're up 13 in Game 5, right? Yeah.
Tatum doesn't get hurt in a Game 6. There is no Game 6. Would we have beaten the Knicks? I don't know. It would've been a fun series.
The thing I will never understand is why they put all those minutes on Tatum. That has never been explained properly. I don't get it. No, I don't understand it. I don't understand the quotes he had after about, But his right leg still isn't 100% the size of the left leg. And just stuff where it's like, what? You told— you said you were recovered. You weren't recovered. And if that was the case, then why wasn't he on a minutes limit? Why is Wemby on a minutes limit but he's not? Why was— there's been a bunch of guys in the league who, like, LaMelo Ball, the whole year was under 30 minutes because they were trying to keep him healthy. Why were we putting minutes on him like that? I agree. If I was Chisholm, that would be the— I would have like a meeting and be like, The fuck? Why did we— why did that guy play 43 minutes in Game 5? What are we doing?
Well, it seemed like there was such an impetus to get the second seed instead of the third seed, when in retrospect we lost 3 games at home anyway. Hmm. So it, did it matter? No. And we were a better road team at times during the year. Whatever.
Something, there will be some major trade. Yeah. I don't think you'll love watching Giannis, just for the record. If that's the trade they're— not, not really your type of guy.
No, I'm not saying that's the great, the greatest trade I is that's out there, but I certainly think they're gonna explore what can they get back from, for Jaylen Brown. I don't see Tatum being the traded object.
Red Sox, we don't need to talk about that. It's disgusting what's happened.
It, it's not just that, it's, it's frustrating, disgusting. Unreal that the, uh, the Fenway Group that has billions of dollars has become the cheapest franchise in the league with the highest prices to go to a game. Yeah. It makes no sense. And, you know, I'm not going to a game this year. I, I, I'm a re— I'm revolting.
Uh, and your, your son's rich and you're still not going. I mean, think about that. Well, look at third base.
We have a guy hitting.162 who's 5 feet tall. I don't, I mean, it's just an abomination what the Fenway Group has done to the image of the Red Sox. They got their 4 championships and then they said, that's enough. Yeah.
They were like, well, you suckers are now just gonna pay for tickets for the rest of your life. Yeah.
And you can come in the 8th inning and sing Sweet Caroline and buy your pink hats and blue hats and, and we're gonna make more money. Um, oh, that's a shame.
It, it gets risky when you start playing that game of chicken with your fan base. I think it does. Yeah. Especially in this era, you know, you're, you're, if people who are just like, well, if they don't care about the team, I'm not gonna care either. We've seen, right? We've seen the red, that happened in the early '80s a little bit, and it happened a little bit in the, in the '90s too. Where you could feel, uh, people are like, all right, is this how you're treating us? Then we'll go over here, you know? And there's 3 other teams and a bunch of other stuff to do.
Well, you can go online now and get great seats anytime you want, right? That's a really shameful position that they've put the fan base in.
And they also don't have the signature guy, which there's been years where they haven't, but they were, I think, putting all the eggs in the Roman Anthony basket, and that has not gone well.
Which is a, you know, is he fragile and injury-prone? I don't know. But once again, he's hurt. All right.
We've talked enough about the Red Sox. The Patriots are the other one. I know that's been the big topic. Well, the head coach has been the big dinner topic in New England now for 5 weeks.
It's not just that. We've talked about this for 20 years. Every time things seem pretty good with the Patriot franchise, something happens. Whether it's Deflategate or Spygate or, you know, some scandal or the owner of the team in a spa twice getting caught, or it's just one thing after another. And this is just the latest. This is a really bad story up here. It's not going to go away. It seems to have legs as a week goes by and then there's a new photo or a new story. And I feel badly. I really liked the— loved the job the coach did last year. Yeah. I thought he had the locker room really all going in the same direction. The camaraderie was great. We overachieved. We didn't have a bad, we had a, a somewhat easy schedule, but we overachieved. And now here we are again and nobody's talking about the players, right? No. The, the articles are about the coach. Yeah. Yeah.
We would've almost been better off losing in Denver. It turns out Drake's hurt, the Vrabel thing doesn't happen, and then all the dialog is about can they, Can they get back? Can they get there to the Super Bowl instead? I mean, they, they're gonna trade for AJ Brown on June 1st. It seems like a, almost a formality at this point, which would be the thing everyone talked about. I, the, and I've tried not to talk about the Raybould thing that much 'cause it's such a bummer of a story and they, you know, every side has kids and it's just, I don't know, it makes me, it's a little unseemly, but, um, I wonder like how you become The way he coached the team, where he's like the patriarch of this Patriots family, and everything is about family and team and being there for people and hugging each guy as they come off the field. And now, will that seem disingenuous as he's doing it this year? That's—
I think that's a really way— good way of phrasing the most important question that people up here are asking. What's it gonna be like? Is he gonna be in the hallway hugging everybody again? Are the players gonna look at him a little bit differently?
Or maybe they'll like him more. Coach is getting after it. Yeah, I know.
It's a sad story. You're talking two families, and I don't know the details. I just know what I read. I just wish I wasn't reading any of it. And just looking forward to the season, waiting for the schedule to come out today. But that's not the ti— Yeah, that's not what's in the paper.
So you care about the schedule? Brian Curtis and I just did a whole segment about this, that we think the schedule release day is ridiculous, but you like it.
I haven't seen the schedule yet.
No, but do you like it though? You like looking at it and being like, "Oh, we're playing—" Yeah, yeah, I like, I like— You just love it. "Oh, that looks winnable.
That's gonna be a tough game." Where's the buy?
Yeah, I like all that stuff. We talked about the reason I had Brian Curtis on was we talked about this content glut we have now and how the football's adding these extra games and there's gonna be a Wednesday night game before Thanksgiving and all this stuff. Right. You've been watching sports the entire time I've known you, which is my whole life. Uh, whenever it's on, do you feel like there's a difference now with the amount of sports that's on or is it just harder to find?
Uh, it's a little bit of an overload.
Um, so you feel the overload a little bit. Have you watched as much hockey playoffs as you usually watch?
No. Well, that's not unusual. Once the Bruins got knocked out, I don't watch as much.
Yeah, but you would watch, like, you would watch to root against Montreal and you'd pick random players. I've watched a couple of Montreal games.
I watched the Colorado game yesterday. Um, but my heart's not in it. I like the Bruins team. I, I thought They overachieved. I like the new coach. We're a couple players short. We don't have a first-line center, da-da. But I liked that we did as well as we did, and I have optimism for that team. They seem to have their act together.
Wow. Bruins, number 1 in your rankings.
Well, it's kind of weird, isn't it?
I'm gonna be back with the Pats. We still have Drake Maye. He's gonna be healthy this season. Their team's gonna be good. They've had some good drafts. I'm gonna be fired up.
I am too. I'm gonna be fired up for the— I just wish the focus was on the draft picks, the movement of first-year to second-year players' progress, stuff like that. It's just not there right yet. Yet. Maybe it will be.
You don't think he's gonna step down, do you?
I don't know. Would I be 100% shocked?
No. See, I wouldn't either. But I— to me, like, a leave of absence seems more— realistic, like he comes back when real training camp starts or something. But he, you know, in the NFL, that's pretty massive for your coach to just not be around for 2 months. I don't know how they're gonna handle it. And the owner is 88 years old, 86 years old, whatever he is.
Right. So, yeah, I, I hope he doesn't step down. I wouldn't be surprised if he does step down. Um, I don't— none of us know the whole story. Uh, I hope it isn't the story that the paper keeps printing, but I don't know.
I love how you're so forgiving of Vrabel, and yet you demoted Joe to the second row again. No, I didn't demote Joe. You did. You demoted him. I have texts where you said he's back in the second row. I've had it.
Well, that's private text between you and me.
You were done. You were so mad after the series. You wouldn't come on.
I was mad, but—
I couldn't even get you to come on today.
You were still mad. And I'm not defending Gravois, by the way. I know. I don't know the details, but it doesn't look good. And I'm not putting Joe in the second row, but I think he has a testing year coming up. That will determine whether he's here next summer. Wow. Yeah. In my mind.
What TV shows are you watching?
Uh, the 3 Chicago TV shows. I watched the movie you recommended.
Uh, oh, Crime 101. Yeah. Yeah.
I still don't understand how they got, he got the copy of the time.
Don't spoil it. Spoiler. Yeah. Don't, you can't spoil the movie. Okay. So you like Crime 101 more than Rip, or did you like Rip more than Crime 101? No, I like Rip more.
All right. I didn't quite understand either one of them at the end, but I'll have to watch it a second time. You know, I agree with you on the lead actor in Crime 101. He was a little too— passive.
Chris Hemsworth. Yeah, I just didn't think he was good enough. That was my biggest issue with the movie. And I've liked him in other stuff. Like, I thought he was great in Rush. Right. I don't know what he was going for. Yeah, I don't know what his, what his plan was in 101. I didn't get it. Was it— he like intentionally was hard to figure out, and I didn't think it worked.
I thought he, he just came across a little weak, uh, weakened personality, weakened demeanor.
Um, it would have been a great like early 2000s Russell Crowe. Yeah, during his Proof of Life era role. That was like what I needed from that. I needed like Just somebody at the peak of their powers, a little enigmatic, trying to figure out what they're thinking.
That's a good— he would have been good before he gained 200 pounds, but he would have been good. Yeah.
Did you see Project Hail Mary?
No.
What channel is that on? It was a movie. It was with Ryan Gosling. Yeah.
It was the biggest movie of the year. No? No.
I'll wait for it to come on cable. It's on Amazon right now. Oh, it is? Or yeah, it's on all those. You have to pay for it, but well, charges to your account. Just put it to— just charge it to my bill. What other TV shows are you watching? You love The Madison. I, I like FBI.
I like The Madison. What about the—
what about the Yellowstone spin-offs? You're in on that one.
Well, yeah, I mean, I like the, um, um, the U.S.
Marshals. You like that one? U.S.
Marshals. I like that one. I haven't The other ones, I think, starts tomorrow night.
You love the Madison though.
Yeah, I like the Madison. Yeah. I like the acting in the Madison. Yeah. You and I talked about it last time. I couldn't stand the two daughters of the two grandkids.
Yeah, yeah. Two of your favorite actors though. Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer. Yeah. Yeah.
And then I understand there's a season 2 already coming. Right. And a season 3, I think, already. You're not watching Euphoria? No. It's not my— Yeah, please don't watch that one. As you say, when I want to do something, you're not the demographic.
That one, I don't— I definitely don't think you'd like that. There was no new CBS shows this year. Boston Blue, you're okay.
No, no, I think it's poorly— You jumped out. I watch it, but it's poorly written. And, you know, I like, uh—
Donnie.
I liked him in Blue Bloods because he had an edge to him. He's too nice a guy in the new one.
But you never did The Pit. That was the shocking one to me. I 100% you would've liked The Pit. I don't get how you missed that one.
I did 2 episodes and then got caught up in life and haven't been able to get back to it. So maybe this summer. All right. Well, keep us posted.
All right. That, I thought you did okay. You weren't as angry about the Celtics as I thought.
Well, it's a good thing we didn't do this 2 weeks ago, a week and a half ago. All right. Yeah.
All right, Dad, enjoy all the sports this weekend. Do you have a PGA pick?
Um, Sheffler. Is that his name?
Sheffler? No. Oh, Schauffele. Xander Schauffele? Yeah, we call him Xander. Uh, Xander.
I like Xander.
Xander. Okay, there you go.
It looks like for me, Schauffele has been in a slump. Okay. Uh, his irons aren't doing so well, but All right, we'll enjoy it.
I'll text you over the weekend. We're gonna come back, take a break, come back with Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith. All right, we are taping this late Wednesday afternoon, so if anything happens over the next 24 hours, don't blame us. Ryan Smith is here. He's the owner of the Utah Jazz who finally had some luck in the lottery. What'd you do? What kind of tricks were you doing the week leading up? Were you like wearing the same shirt every day?
What superstitions do you have? I'm incredibly superstitious. And so what I decided to do was not go to Chicago. I mean, I've been there. I've been in that lottery room twice in the back room, or once in the back room, once kind of on the side. And then obviously last year with my wife on stage, Ashley, with all the kids sitting there. And man, that walk of shame, that walk of shame hurts. It stings for a really long time. And I was like, look, I'm 0 for 3 going to Chicago. I'm going to stay home. And like, I sat at home watching with my family, did our usual Sunday church stuff, went, went, went and sat there. And like, I'm 1 for 1 doing that. So that's a lot better.
Church. That might have been the key.
Maybe that's what you have to do now. Yeah, for sure.
I had, I said on the podcast.
Oh, go ahead. No, you go. We had a record attendance at church in Utah on Sunday.
Oh, well, they moved it to Sunday too, the lottery. Usually it's Tuesday night. For sure. Um, I said on my podcast the other day, I thought they need to go back with the lot. I don't like the representatives. I want the people in the room who have the most stake. Either give me all the owners or give me the GMs, like the people, because the most famous moments ever were Dave the Busher winning the Patrick Ewing lottery and like, just like almost losing his mind or Or Jerry West when he didn't get LeBron James that year in 2003. I want to see the weight of the lottery on the people who actually care the most. We've gotten away from that.
Or you're just twisted where you're looking at people for most of their life, most of their life, they've kind of been able to put their thumb on the scale for things or be successful, and they have no control over this.
Yes, that's exactly what I want. Um, all right, so walk me through the emotions. So you're supposed to be what number?
You were 4, right? Yeah, we, we were— we won the, we won the coin flip with Sacramento. Uh, not televised. Yeah, non-televised, but we were 4. And so, you know, you kind of, kind of hope in this draft— I mean, I think everyone was kind of had this, could you stay top 4? I mean, that was the discussion leading up, or how would you do that? And then You know, you know that our, our kind of floor is 8, and that's, that's kind of where you're thinking. And, you know, I was— I had to mentally tell myself I'm perfectly fine at 7. It's great players all the way through. And, you know, it was almost unbelievable for us. Like, I mean, first of all, when the envelope— here's what's crazy, like, one of our camera guys came down and gave me the envelope. I just got this today, actually. Wow. And so when that was pulled out, first of all, when Sacramento was pulled out, my 13-year-old lost his mind and just went down because he saw purple, right? And then the Jazz, and then we got in the top 4, and then obviously Chicago, Memphis, and then it was—
You've never moved up, right? This is the first time ever?
Never. Never, never. So the, the faith in the lottery system, I don't care who you are, is kind of sitting there. You're just like shaking your head a lot. And it's a, it's a crazy feeling. And I think, I think that, you know, I'm sure Sacramento has some of that feeling right now. I'm sure, you know, Brooklyn for sure. There's no way not to. There just really isn't. And it, if I'm a, if I'm a consumer of sports and entertainment or television or drama, like that's a pretty cool event, you know, because it, it's, you know, the pain. I mean, I, I had people show me videos of restaurants here in Utah, like erupting a restaurant, the entire restaurant. And it's pretty cool.
So we had the opposite. I remember the worst Celtics one. Well, there are two bad ones. We had the '97 and 2007. So it was Duncan was the prize one year, and then it was Durant or Oden. It was either of them. Let's get one of the top two. And the Celtics got 5th that year. And it was the opposite of those videos where the people in the bar is like, oh, it was like, you know, it was like a traumatic event. And you're just looking at the rest of it like, what did I just waste the last year for? Now you're out of the woods. Like you actually have the kind of team you want. You've had some, you've been in some lotteries, you traded for Jaren Jackson, you have Markkanen still, you never got rid of him. Now you have a top 2 pick, you have Ace Bailey. Like this is, this was a 3-year odyssey to get to this point, basically.
Yeah. Especially taking over as a new owner, a new ownership group where we come in. It's probably not how you want to design, you know, your, your tenure when you start, but this is a little bit where you just trust the team you brought in and you say, hey, where are we at? Um, and what are your goals? Honestly, like our goals are win a championship in Utah. It's never happened. As well. And I just don't think we're going to tiptoe into that, right? I think that it's going to require a running start, a little bit of help. It's going to require, you know, a different, a different level of building than probably maybe what it takes to make the playoffs. And even, even those groups that, you know, have done that in the past, just given our market, given our luck, given where things are, it's like you know, you've got to start, and, and that starts with, with our front office and our coaching and like how we're going to go through this. And we've been close. I mean, I took over that Donovan and Rudy team, um, you know, where, where Trey Mann destroyed us in the, in the corner there.
And yeah, and then at Staples at the time, and man, that was a helpless feeling because that was kind of ours to have. And then you know, kind of had to make some decisions after that. And so, you know, here we are, like, I like where we're going. I like the assets that we have going forward. We have all of our picks plus, plus, and a lot of young talent. And I honestly, I think every team's going to have to do this. You know, I think, I think, I think this is a lot of my point around the lottery reform and everything else is like, the way we're gonna have a certain number of teams that are going through the rebuild process and the rebuild experience and all have different sizes of markets. And you know, I think as a league, which I love, we'll, we'll ask ourselves really hard questions around what do we want that rebuild experience to be? Yeah. How long should it take?
I've heard you use that word before. It's interesting because the other word is tanking, but it's really a rebuild cuz you, you're trying to get to a much higher place than you're in. You, you guys became the linchpins for this in February, which was really the first time all the tanking/rebuild dialog happened. And I was part of it. I definitely did one of the first podcasts being like, we, we've gotta fix this. Like, this is the earliest this has ever gone. But from your vantage point, like if I owned the Jazz, I don't know how you would do another strategy, especially when you're looking at San Antonio who gets 2, 1, and 4. In 3 straight years. And now you watch them in the playoffs and all those guys are awesome and they're 20 and 21 and 22, the foundation of this 10-year contender. So if you see that, like, how do you not try to emulate that in some way? I don't know.
Well, I think first of all, I don't think there's an ownership group that wants to go through this, right? I think that's first of all, no one in the league wants to do this, especially like you look at our situation when we're, we're taking over. I mean, you want to do the opposite. Like, you want to go fast, you want to flex up, you want to show, you know, your fan base that like you got some juice and like naturally. Yeah. And so when you come in and you're like, okay, let me tell you what we're going to do. I know we got the All-Star Game coming here this year and we've been waiting on that. What we're going to do is trade our two All-Stars. Probably not a popular spot to be, right? But you, you've gotta have conviction, you gotta have alignment. And then, you know, you always start off with a retool, right? We're just gonna retool. Yeah. And then it gets to a point, what you're seeing with a lot of teams, they're like, no, no, no, no. If we're gonna lay up in a weird way, like don't lay up in the water.
You know, the water's 200 yards and we're gonna get on in 3. Like, like we've gotta, we've gotta figure out how to, How to get out of this position and right or wrong. And I think you saw this with San Antonio, the decisions become pretty easy in the top part of the draft. Yeah. Right. You're betting between some pretty amazing options there, being in those draft rooms and kind of being on the other side, it gets a lot more challenging or it's challenging all the way across, but You know, drafting 8 and 9 every year is, it's a little harder.
Well, I look at the situation you had when you took over, and I don't know how much you want to say about it, but you had Mitch and Gobert. You had the foundation of a team that was really consistently good, but had not done as well maybe as people were hoping in the playoffs, right? And it, I don't know if it had run its course, but it felt like it was hitting a little bit of a wall. And then you have a franchise guy. Who the rumors start immediately. He wants to go back to New York. He wants to go here. He wants to go there. And this is the conundrum of the league, right? You go through this process, you get a franchise guy, but then you also have free agency. You might not be able to keep the guy. Do you think there should be more mechanisms in place that favor the team when you've had somebody for, you know, 5 years, 7 years, 9 years with the— like, could there be luxury tax stuff, like benefits you could get for just having stability?
No, I mean, look, this was all pretty new to me, right? I mean, my first day, we, we were kind of in the middle of the COVID and we had like 2 days to like sign Don and Rudy, or 30 days. It was that short window, if you remember. I remember having 2 days before Monday before we've got to kind of go into it with Rudy. And I remember going up to his hotel room and being like, hey bro, like, what do you care about? You know? And actually, that was like my first meeting ever It was just him and I talking because we knew each other before. And there was a process in going and sitting down with Don and going through all that. And I think you almost, from what I'm learning about these championship runs, it's a little bit like you almost don't know what you need until you get on the track. And it's like this, I got to have a little more than the other team. So it's a little bit of a moving target. And so running its course of a team, you'll see that this year, whatever will happen, the narrative will be around a couple teams that get bounced out.
They just don't have enough and they've got to bring more than the next group. The hard part is when you're already asset down and you're over the cap, like we were into the tax. We'd given up a lot of picks for Conley. And so it's like, how deep do you want to cut into your future when you've been bounced in the first round like 3 times, right? You know, and I think what Danny— when Danny originally came in, he and I had a lot of real honest conversations about that. And ultimately he's like, hey, look, I've done this before. This is what we're doing. And like, This is how we're, we're going to think through this. And, you know, he had been coming from a place where he'd been knocking on that door with a really good team in Boston for some time that he had kind of put together. And then obviously the year he leaves, like they end up going back, re-adding one more piece, almost. You don't know what you got and it's just one more piece. Then that didn't work. And then one more piece. And, you know, having those assets to be able to do that is really important.
The year he left or the year you stole him? I mean, let's be honest, you kept stealing Celtics people. You stole, you stole both Aingeas, you stole Will Hardy. You said just go, just go back to the well with Boston.
Just keep taking our people. Doesn't answer my call.
Yeah, we tell Brad, Brad, your phone number is blocked on Brad's phone.
Yeah, but, but I think the other thing is also one of the things I do love, I'll just be honest and it's not to get on the OKC train, but one of the things I do love is just I mean, with Jokic in SGA is just how they haven't let the narrative come. Like, they've been pretty forward-thinking on both of those individuals about, no, I like this market, I want to be here. You know, you, you know, there's a lot of drama, there's a lot of narrative that comes out. Well, you're in a smaller market, you're in this or that. Like, it's loud enough for these players. You know, we see this in hockey. You know, so a lot of these players play the worst when they're in the biggest markets. You know, and I love the fact how they're embracing that market. There's nothing you can't do from OKC. There's nothing you can't do from Utah. There's nothing you can't do from Denver. There's nothing you can't do from these places. And I think that, you know, we, we've always had players who've had their best years in Utah, always growing up. Like, you look at Hornacek, you look at Boozer, you look at D Will, they'll all tell you after the fact, like, I had my best years in Utah.
Right. Why is that? You know, it's because they could come get locked in. They could, they could actually, you know, do it in, in, you know, it's interesting because we're in such a global media market where instead of one or two voices, there's everyone's got a voice, like, you know, and so it's, it's a little bit like we're playing in the United States and we're playing in Europe. Yeah.
There's a difference there. Right. Well, you're, you're unique in two ways. One, well, a lot of ways, but you came in, you didn't have new owner syndrome, because I always feel like when the new owner comes in, they feel like they have to do this crazy splashy move and, you know, shoot for the moon and try to improve the team. And that's usually when they get into trouble. You did the opposite. You had to basically start a rebuild. But then the other thing, you're— you are Utah. Like, you're from there. You, you, you belong to that whole area. You're really invested in building up not sports, but just the culture, the mentality of of what people, how people see Salt Lake, how people see the city and the state, which normally when people come in, like Chisholm, Chisholm bought the Celtics, was a huge Celtics fan, but also wasn't living there the last 20 years. Now he's back. Yeah. You, you were a Utah guy. You even had chances to maybe get some other teams and you were fixated on, no, it has to be this team.
Yeah. So, so when we went through this process, like it, it was, I would, I mean, there's no secret. I was looking at Minnesota. I, I, you know, I'd sold my company to SAP. You know, I've come from tech, you know, spent my whole career in tech, didn't do one thing else. And everyone's like, well, what company are you gonna start next? And I was like, you guys, I wanna do hoops, play hoops every morning. I love going out to Boston and just hanging with the Angels and like watching hoops with them. And I'd go down to summer league and play golf with DA and like, you know, I just sit next to him in the suite. Watching players and I was like, this is so fascinating. I'm such a junkie. And it was the only thing that intrigued me. And so when the opportunity came, everyone would say, hey, what are you going to do? What's next? And it's like, no, I— and I called Adam and said, hey, look, I'm really interested in this. And for whatever reason, opportunity came to me on Minnesota and the owner there, Glen, was super nice, Was he going to sell?
Was he not going to sell? It seemed like the situation was a little runaway bride, like, how's this going to go? And so we had worked down to it and we were getting really down almost to the dock level. We were drawing up docks and my wife was just like, what about our season tickets for the Jazz? And I was like, well, no, no, no, no. We'll— Minneapolis, it's only 2 hours away. We'll figure this out. And I think she knew how I kind of go all in on stuff and she's not going to see me as much. And she was just like, I just love with the boys, like, we're jazz fans, like, this isn't going to work. And then like, you know, you know when your partner's like not feeling something, right? Like, like I'm in day 2 and she's kind of not speaking. I'm like, all right, this isn't right. So I called Adam and I remember I was on the golf course. I I pulled over in the trees in the cart and I was like, "Hey, look, man, I can't do this." And then I went back to the family who'd owned the Jazz forever and just said, "Hey, if there's ever a chance I turn down something else, even if I could buy a little bit, if not, I'll just be the best sponsor you've ever had.
I'll do anything." They called back 6 months later and were like, "Hey, you still interested in that?" And I was like, Yeah. And a piece. Yeah. Awesome. Like, well, if we're going to do a piece, we're going to do the whole thing. I was like, what? And they're like, well, we need an offer. And I was like, I don't know what that looks like. And then ended up pulling up the Forbes valuation on my phone, ended up doing a deal. And then I was like, oh God, this is for real.
Forbes valuation. This isn't even accurate.
Well, I, I don't know what you go off. It wasn't like today. Yeah. 4 years ago was very different. Right, right. And then And then remember calling Adam and I said, "Well, we probably should talk to Adam." And Adam called and we were all on the phone together and he said, "Hey, we're transitioning the team in Utah and this and that." Adam called me back and was like, we were having another conversation. It was a little bit like, "Hey, look, if you're lucky in life, you get to work in the NBA, work in sports. If you're really, really, really lucky, you can be a governor." Yeah. He's like, "No one gets the team they grew up sneaking into the arena and then they grew up cheering for, like, this is unheard of. And like, so it's not lost on me, but that's also a lot more weight. Like, I know what it's like to be a Jazz fan. Like, I had a funny one today. We were in the drive, I just got back from Chicago. We were in the combine interview and, you know, interviewing all the players and I'm sitting there and, you know, in Austin and set all this up.
It was phenomenal. I did a great job. But Cam Boozer's in there and I'm, you know, I asked one question because I didn't say much the whole time. I was kind of auditing the class. But Carlos is also one of our scouts and a little bit like, you know, Carlos could only take us to the Western Conference Finals. Like, what do you think you can do, right? And that's the fandom coming out. Like, I know, I know the pain of not getting over the hump for Utah in so long. Being like when I took over and one of the second or third most winning franchise in the last 30 years without getting over the hump, it's kind of crazy. And so I think the lottery moment for every Jazz fan was like, boy, it's like whatever. It's just nice to get a little luck. It's nice to feel, it's nice to have the light shine a little bit. And I think there is a little bit, I mean, there's no way to not look at it the last couple years and say, "Hey, there's a lucky part of our game a little bit." Right? But if I look back at my career, I was extremely lucky in tech and when you were born and the timing of when I graduated, You know, college and where I went to work and what I almost went to go do but didn't.
Right. And so luck's a part of all of it.
I didn't even think of the part that the lottery was in Chicago, the biggest nemesis of the Utah Jazz, the two finals in a row. And somehow, somehow Chicago finally gave it back a little bit. Yeah. A tiny bit.
It's, it's, it's good. There's a lot of healing.
Probably still a lot of healing left. Still, still today. And then the other weird thing about this ladder is there's a top 4, and I actually really like the next couple guys too, but I think there's pretty clearly a top 4. And you guys have these indirect ties with 2 of the 4, right? Where you have Boozer, who played for the Jazz for years, who had the best years of his career and is now involved with your team. And then AJ, who went to Got pulled out, went to prep school there, went to BYU. I know you guys are a little bit involved with the, you know, success of BYU, so you've probably gotten to know him a little bit, right?
Yeah. I mean, I go to BYU's like a mile from my house, so like it's, it's kind of, it's my alma mater. It's where I went to school. It's where I play hoops 3 or 4 times a week. That's like part of why I live where I live. It's a little bit of like, you know, if you're gonna live in Raleigh or whatever, you're right next to campus. Like I like the college town feel. And you know, I also grew up here. It's weird. Like my parents, I was born in Eugene, Oregon. It's crazy. Danny and I were born in the same hospital, right? In Eugene. And my dad was, you know, there was 4 of 5 kids and he said, I'm gonna go from, you know, University of Oregon in the late '70s to BYU. You probably couldn't get two more polar opposite spots and moved us here. You know, he grew up in Washington State. My mother's from Palo Alto, California. And, you know, we kind of settled here. And, you know, I started a business here. I met my wife here. Like, I have a lot that I've been given because of this state and everything else.
And for me, it's not that, you know, I just went to school there. Like, I, I grew up running those halls because my dad was a professor at BYU. And like, everyone thinks it's like, oh, you're just in charge of Or you just like to be with hoops and sports and that? No, it's like, like it would be really weird because I started Qualtrics really, you know, from an academic room. Yeah. With my father, like at BYU. It'd be really weird if I wasn't all in on there and all in on Utah. It's a little bit of like that. Every time I go there reminds me, I feel like where I came from. You know. So, so it's cool that, you know, a potential top, top pick, or wherever it ends up, is like, is coming through here. And I'm sure all the Dukies feel the same way about Cam. And, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of how it's gone. I mean, I, I get the amount of texts I get from everyone from Duke, like, and you know, there's a lot of them, like, the decision's easy, like, whatever it is they're coming, you're So, and you got the BYU contingent.
It's, it's like there's a lot of drama around this and a lot of insight and narrative. And, um, it's gonna be an interesting 40 couple days here.
Well, the Utah thing I think has evolved really this century, but from where we used to think, like, I'm living in Boston, I know nothing. I'm just like, ah, Mormons, BYU, Utah, snow, Sundance. That's like all you know. And it really feels like that shifted over the last, I would say, 15 years. Now you have a hockey team and, um, there's just feels more energy around Sundance. Um, I think almost like peak now it's moving. Is it move? Where's it moving to? Colorado? Yeah, eventually. But yeah, I'm sure you'll replace that with something. But in general, um, real energy around the city. And then you also have this weird stuff, like you have the The stupid Secret Lives of Mormons show. There's Real Housewives show.
That's right, right out of Central Castle, right?
So, so there's all these different things going on with Utah that just didn't exist 30 years ago. What's, what's fair and unfair about the Utah thing?
So, so if you think about Utah, like, most people aren't from here. Yeah, like, I'll just say that, like, um, you know, you know, my dad's from Washington, you know. If I look at, you know, my My mom's from California. My wife's from Las Vegas. There's not a better place for family life. There's just not. I'm fortunate. I've got siblings all over. There's just something about Utah. I also think it's like, look, most states can only own one or two things authentically. What do you actually own for positioned as that no one else has. Right. And as we went through our jersey designs, and we've gone through this, I've been asking myself and looked over the last couple years, Silicon Slopes, the tech community, and the innovation in Utah, we're probably the number 2 innovative hub, and everyone's going to be like, "No, it's Austin," or No, there was a time in 2018, I think we had as many startups or IPOs as New York City. You start looking at that, and it's like, why? People can say, do Utahns sell out too early when they get businesses? But if you look at what's come out of here from this next phase of influencers and how the world works, and everyone has a different tie to folks, the amount of people that come in and ski here and visit here.
I just saw pictures of Connor McDavid down in southern Utah and the AMA. Yeah, I saw that, but it's crazy who comes through here. And it's like most time people vacation here, but I don't think we've done a very good job over the last 30 years branding ourselves.
Yeah, because you feel like a small market, but you're not. Yeah.
Oh, there's like, I said this on day one with the NBA, there's nothing that we have in common with a small market. You go to our airport, you can jump on a plane and go to Paris, go direct to Hong Kong or Seoul, Korea. You can go to London. Like, that's not a small market. You're not having to do connections, right? You've got a tech ecosystem that is insane. So if you come out here and get a job in tech and it doesn't work out, you can get 5 other jobs in tech. Right. Right. What, what we get branded for is because, you know, we don't have the urban living that most people associate with a big market. And that's because when you come to Utah, you actually kind of want to spread out. But we're the fastest growing, youngest demographic in the country. So what people also don't know is within Salt Lake City, you, within 90 miles, you've got 250,000 college kids that most come out here, want to stay here. And so you always want to bet on youth. If you take Stanford and Cal and Caltech out of Silicon Valley, you kind of don't have Silicon Valley, right?
What makes Boston special and kind of rejuvenating all the time is that education system. And so I'm super long on Cities and growth where there's always youth coming in and then what they do. The key is, and I feel like it's unique that my wife and I and our group, we're in a position to kind of take a little bit of the announcement or the baton of city building and community building. So right before I came here, I just announced a new health partnership for both of our teams. We're building this. We bought a mall, so 110-acre mall right in South Salt Lake, and we just put our Utah Mammoth hockey team, is 2 years old, the practice facility there. We've got corporate offices there, and then we just announced a new practice facility that'll be done in September of next year. For hoops altogether, but with their own separate worlds. So we just announced with Intermountain a 60,000 square foot healthcare facility that services both. That's like super innovative. And like, this is part of like our responsibility now with these teams. And we're, we're actually doing the same thing downtown. We're creating this arena district right in front.
We've got a Live Nation venue. Got a major hotel going in that's 5-star. Like, we're looking at this to be like, okay, what's everyone's experience when they do want to go to urban living? Because I know the experiences when they come out is awesome, you know, it's absolutely awesome. I mean, you got guys like Jordan Clarkson was here, he loved living down south and kind of having a house spreading out, like, and then you're 20 minutes from, 25 minutes from 7 ski resorts. We got the Olympics coming back. I So it's where I choose to raise my kids. It's fun. But there's a couple things we can authentically own, and it's like, come have the best years of your career and come have the healthiest mentally here, 'cause wellness is real. And— Go ahead.
How many people own an NBA and an NHL team in the same city?
Within the same ownership group? Together. Just stand back. No. Um, yeah, you've got— oh, and then Dolan, and then New York, and you've got Toronto, which is kind of corporate owned, or however that is. Yeah. And then you've got Leon Susan and what's going on in Washington, right? And we're all set up different, you know.
But you are a maniac competitor. So now you have these two winter sports, so you have NHL and NBA happening simultaneously. Like, I, I, what, what happens to you at night?
Well, so I prefer to have it like, if you're going to give me the heat, like, let's just do it all at once, right? Yeah. So we'll just go every other night. I've, I've told my kids, hey, you know, Dad works the night shift. Like, it's, it's what, it's what we do a little. And so like, we I don't think anyone in our organization was acclimated the first year of like, we all knew hockey was coming. Yeah. But I don't think we knew hockey was coming.
What's the crossover with the organization? Because some people will have, you know, basically somebody who's in control of everything. People will split it up both ways. How did you decide to attack it?
So I think we went and looked around at all the different models and we're like, okay, none of this is for us. I believe when it comes to organizational structure, you build around people and you you, you know, it's just gotta feel right. Yeah. Um, you know, I feel like a little bit, I kind of, you know, operating in tech, like no one's evaluated or I would say innovated around organizational structure as much as tech has. Like, you know, some people have one direct report, some people have 20, the span of control, no titles, titles, open floor, like, like however you're, you, You're just controlling. You can't control how people think these days. It's much more around the environment. And so it took a step back and said, okay, how do we want this environment to work? And clearly I didn't know a whole lot about hockey. So we were fortunate that we had a great GM and Bill Armstrong that came over. And then Chris Armstrong, who was actually a great friend. Tony Finau's actually a golf agent working, working in agency, but was a hockey guy. And represented a lot of hockey guys and he was a big part of the idea.
So those two kind of work together on the hockey side and Chris is a president, Bill's a GM, and they run that and report up to me. And then on the hoop side, which we can get into, I've got Austin now as our president of all basketball. And then you stole him too.
That was another one. Yeah, it's another, another Boston theft. That was your third one.
Can I at least— how many did you get?
You have 3 now.
Yeah, can I tell that story? Yeah, I think it's important. So when Danny came over, you know, he didn't really want to be the president of basketball because he'd already done that a long time. And, you know, I was more like, hey, what do you want to do? It's me, DA. Like he was actually super helpful in getting a team, and then it just worked out.
And, well, wait, wait, wait, going backwards though, you're friends with him a long time. You've been playing golf with him forever. Yeah. Even when he stepped down from the Celtics, my shit detector was blinking hard. I was like, first of all, I don't think he's giving up. Second of all, that's his buddy that just got the Jazz. I'm suspicious.
But there was like a 6-month process, and, and we're, we're together We're actually at the Hero, we're at Tiger Woods Golf Tournament. We're there with Tony Finau and he's not working for anybody at the time. And he won't tell me he is gonna come help me. 'Cause I don't think, I didn't think his wife and Michelle and their family, he was just gonna move to Utah. Well, he had some health issues.
He'd had a heart attack, the whole thing.
Yeah. For sure. And he didn't want to go from being the president of basketball to being the president of basketball over here. He wasn't doing that. Yeah. He wanted to kind of shift gears a little bit. But in one week I watched him in December, like watched like 6 different games a night. I'm like, dude, you just watched like 30 basketball games. Yeah. From college to everything. And you don't even have a job. Like, who's paying you to do this? He's got the iPad, the laptop, and the TV up. And I'm like, who? You just do this for fun now? I was like, "You might as well get paid for it. Come over and help." And then that started a process and he really wanted— It came down to what do you want to do? He wanted to help scout. He wanted to help with coaching and help manage the players and didn't really want to deal with much more than that. So he helped me. We came over, we started this process, we got into it. I just love working with Danny, but I was driving last year with my wife and me and Danny were going somewhere and she said, "Hey, what happens if something happens to you and Danny?" And I was like, "Well, that's kind of weird." Like, "Well, what do I do?
What do I do with the team?" I was like, "Well, let me tell you what you do. You call Austin Hange." And you tell him to come out, you're going to run it because Austin's an absolute star. Yeah. And I never had that conversation with Danny ever. He would never push anything. He's like, he just— that never happened. And then she was like, well, does Austin know that? Because I just saw he was interviewing for this president job or something online. Like, are you— don't you think you should tell him? Yeah. I was like, it's actually a good idea. So I call Austin that day. It was right after the transaction. I said, hey, Austin, I don't know if you know this, but let me just explain the conversation I had with my wife. This is how I feel.
You're my designated survivor.
I need to tell you. This is how I feel. We've never had this conversation or anything like this, but this is how I feel. And so you need to know that. And if you're interviewing, because I heard a couple other rumblings that someone was going to grab him, and I knew that if they sat down with him, it was going to be very close. They were going to do it. Yeah. Because you love that he's got the Ainge background, but he's also his own guy. Like, and I said, you, you need to know that you come knock on my door. Well, he called me back and he's like, Hey, if I'm going to go, I want to go now. And I was like, what? Okay. And by 5:00 that day, I had hired Austin as our president of basketball ops.
But you didn't tell Danny yet? No, I didn't tell Danny.
It had to work this way. Yeah. I was like, there's no way I could talk to Danny. No way. Too weird. And too— it's just, it's just like he would, he would like hammer me that, are you doing this because of me or this? Like, he's just that way. Like, he's, he's the hard math teacher. Yeah, that's just the way he is. Competitive as he is himself, he's, he's that competitive with his kids to go out a little bit and And dudes, I mean, Austin coached in the G League and yeah, but Austin, I knew Austin from BYU. He was a real, I wouldn't say he was unathletic, but he was a really smart point guard. Like I knew his basketball makeup. I had watched his career go and I was like, there's something different. But he's also, you know, he's also got that, you know, Boston organization, you know, he's very disciplined, very open. I don't know what to say. It's almost, you know, East Coast educated type vibe, like, yeah, with the Ainge background, which is like a pretty cool combo. Um, and, and so then I was like, oh no, I've got to call Danny.
And so I can't get a hold of Danny, so I'm like, someone told him.
Oh, like he was mad at you? You thought he was—
no, I can't get— I thought he was because I, I normally get a hold of him, but it was like a 3-hour period where I couldn't get ahold of him. So I finally get ahold of him. I was like, DA, like, we've known each other for like 15 years. Like, we built incredible trust together. And I think it's either gonna be really good after this call or you're gonna be really mad at me. I just hired Austin as a president of basketball ops and you gotta go figure out how to work for him. And it was quiet for a second, but there was no one more happy Yeah, then D.A. And it's just been awesome. And so Austin's in charge, he's running the whole thing. But, you know, part of this is like, for me, watching him and others and Austin go to work and, you know, knowing where to point D.A., you know, I'm sitting in that— I'm sitting in that draft interview room and I'm looking over and there's, there's Will with championships and the Pop pedigree today. Austin's got a ring. Avie Bradley's in there, he's got a ring, and I see DA with 3 rings and pretty much built the 4th.
Like, I'm like, all right, this is, this is a championship. I like, I'm not going to know more than these people, and I, you know, and I just need to, you know, make a couple hard decisions a year, be a tiebreaker here.
Well, the other thing with Danny is he's basically he's such an anomaly with the draft. First of all, you never know. I just know from all the Celtics stuff, nobody knows what he thinks until like the last week. That's why if there's any stories that come about Utah likes this guy, Utah likes that guy, it's like, I promise they're not true. No, Danny's not even going to tell people it works.
And I'll just tell you this, I just rode back with him on the entire plane trying to debrief, just trying to figure out what he thinks.
He won't tell you.
Yeah, I've been through this 3 times. He does not want to influence. Danny's a true seeker. He really is. He doesn't lie. I'm sure he loves you. Like, you call him, you're like, Danny, what do you think? He tells the truth, like, in a weird way, you know, or he won't say anything, like, or he'll look— he's not gonna lead something weird. But like, Danny's point of view is going to be something that— and I, I believe him on this. I believe that he did not know, you know, he was drafting Juan in that you know, in that famous Jason Tatum where he goes back to 3 and then Jalen going back to 3. I honestly believe he did not know who he was gonna go take until right up to it. And the reason why is because I kind of got a read the day before the draft with Keonte and then got a different read 10 minutes before the draft. Hmm. And so what I'm really excited for is that Austin can turn to his left and have that, that as well. And Austin's, Austin's an incredible, incredible talent evaluator. Like, you know, sitting next to that guy your entire life, like, you learn, you learn that side of it.
Plus, you know, but he thinks for himself. And so that's, that's what you want. And then, you know, with Will, being able to have these guys talk to Will, and Will's a unique coach, just awesome and, you know, young, and I'm excited to see what he can do.
The, the whole lottery reform thing, were you— are you involved in any committees yet? Have you jumped on anything? Were you involved in the reform?
I'm on the— I'm on the media committee, I'm on the planning committee, and I, I'm on the social justice committee as well. And, um, you know, I think they've, they've actually done a really good job of, regardless of the committee here, of just like— they had a bunch of GM calls They basically set up the hotline, you call us with your ideas. And our group has talked to the league and other people in the league 4 or 5 times just to say, "Hey," and the answer's always like, "Yeah, happy to schedule a call. I'd love to listen. Well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?" So in some ways, it's a little bit like us naming the Mammoth, we're putting it out to the The fan vote, which brings a lot of input in, but it's within a tighter group and that's hard to decipher. But I think the league is looking at it all and saying, hey, we're all partners in this. We want to get it right. Let's make sure we understand every view. I'm empathetic to the rebuilding, but I think everyone's going to have to almost take a step back and say, hey, what's best for the product?
It's not going to be perfect. And by the way, right or wrong, luck's going to play a piece of this. And then what happens when you get the teams, the humans, and the agents and all of that involved? It's all great until you get the people involved. Right? Right. And you see that with every CBA, there's unintended consequences and this happens and certain things trigger. But I don't know.
The only thing I really care about is that I don't think teams should, like what happened with the Spurs, I think they have to figure out 3 top 4 picks in a row, like little wrinkles like that. So you can't just basically, I know the odds are going to be stacked a little differently anyway, but it just feels like having that much luck 3 years in a row, they can kind of litigate a little bit. Yeah.
And so I think we'll come way more. I mean, there's stuff that's being reported on the side. There's stuff that's being reported on the other side of how to do this. But no, I think there's something like, is it, is it, I'll just speak for myself. Like I'd be okay now that we're the second pick, like, okay, great. You can't come in the top 5 next year. Right. Solves a lot of problems.
Yeah.
All right. The next thing is like, hey, if you just unrestrict the picks that are restricted 1 through 8 or 1 through 7, that also solves a lot of problems. I agree. Okay. And so I think, I think that that's fair and it's like, okay, then draft well. But when, when you're a team, I, I'm also super empathetic to the teams that can't get out because we are such a star-driven league and hockey. It's a little different. You're grabbing guys, you're developing them, you're putting them down in the minors. The reward for one ball or one spot in this sport is so high, right?
Well, they're in hockey. In hockey, there's so much volatility, even with the stars. Like, you see, like, Taylor Hall right now in Carolina, um, where all the— like, the Bruins had him, he was good. Like, these guys can do this, where in basketball you have these fixed guys that year after year, you don't have the same volatility.
Or the young guys. It's very rare for a young guy in hockey to come in and make immediate impact.
Like there's like a celebration. Yeah. Once every 8 years.
And then, you know, you look this year and you got Vijay playing in the playoffs. You've got, I mean, that's, it's pretty impressive.
Dylan Harper, all this stuff.
Yeah. Dylan Harper. Like it's, it's pretty impressive.
Do you feel like you're part of a new, 'cause I remember we've had these generations with NBA owners and in the mid-2000s that all of a sudden you had Cuban comes in, Wick Groesbeck on the Celtics, and they're like these younger guys that came in and they were, you know, younger, they were more from the tech side. They were not trying to blow the league up a little bit, but maybe push the league in a different direction. And now it feels like we're heading that way again with some of the guys from your generation, like, you know, like the Charlotte owners and, um, yeah, Chisholm's coming in with the Celtics. Like, it feels like something generationally is shifting and I don't know what. 100%.
It's, it's really clear. I mean, you've, you've seen the, the asset class of sports become something that's super desirable. You're seeing also the groups of people coming in shift from family-owned to more like kind of towers that have been stacked together. Like the Lakers. Yeah. Yeah. Ownership groups that come in. And I also think the days of no one's, let's just be honest, in no other world would you acquire a business for the size of the price of what Portland did and turn it over to somebody. That would never happen anywhere in business. Right. You'd never be like, okay, I'm paying this for this luxury brand. Okay. Yeah. Someone else, like, I'll come see it next December. That's unheard of. Right. And so now with, I don't know what's cause or effect, but like, as you look at the risk people are taking to get in here, I think long gone are the days where the principal or the main principal is not heavily involved. We're not going to see a day where a board's running it, a family office is just running it on the side. Those days are gone. They're gone in football.
They're gone in everything else just because of what it is. And actually, if someone's stretching this far to acquire one of these, they, they also really understand the community aspect of it as well. Yeah, because they, they care about that as well. And so I think that we're just in a new world, and you've seen it, like, in our world, it's, it's Patrick Dumond, it's Ishbia, it's, it's obviously, you know, Gabe and, and everyone up in Charlotte with Rick. And, you know, I think the wrestlers are, are someone new and coming in and like you look at the involvement, not only just with there or what Dunning's done in Carolina and now in Portland, like in around and what they're building out. It's a decision to say, hey, I'm actually could probably do what I want. This is what I want to go do. And like, I want to be involved. Now that's a tough balance as well because I know enough. Look, I'm a hooper. I play all the time. I watch basketball. I'm a junkie. I watch every game. But like in this draft, for example, I, I'm gonna say this, like our fan base shouldn't want me drafting this person.
Like when you've got the team with Austin and Danny and group, like you should feel a lot more comfortable than with me right now. I want Alpine and, and like, have a thing, but like how, how involved you get is like, you got to be a little careful because you need to be involved enough to give the team air cover, right? Because everything's not going to go well and you need to understand the body of work that people are putting in. But at the same time, that's what gives them air cover to be able to have a long tenure. I often find that when people are too far out of it Or they don't live in market. They become really reactive with coaches and GMs and stuff like that. When you're in it every day, you know that, all right, I know you're doing all the right things. We just need a break. Right. And I learned this at Qualtrics, just leading out, when we opened up in Europe, I was in every single detail in Europe and going through, and I remember my board coming to me going, "You know what? Let's pull the plug on Europe.
It's going too slow. It's not working." I'm like, "Hold on, hold on, hold on. It's here. It's here." And then 4 quarters later, the thing pops. Or when we started shifting our model and it's like, "Hey, this isn't working. It's super expensive." "No, no, no, hold on.
Everything's always taken longer than I thought." And if you weren't as heavily involved, you might have been overrun by the board.
Yeah. And so you got to have polar opposite emotions. To be able to manage it. You gotta be able to manage. I gotta be over-involved, but also let the team work.
But like when they come to you with the Jaren Jackson trade, ultimately you're, you're stamping that one way or the other. Like if you didn't want to do that, the trade's not happening.
Yeah, for sure. If I don't want to do it, it's not happening. Yeah.
'Cause you're taking on a big salary, you're giving up draft picks. Like you're not gonna be like, okay, I, I hate this, but I trust you guys. You, At some point you have to be a little on board.
No, and they want to read me in, but in our organization, the way we're lined up, they want to call me and talk about it. Yeah. But they also know that if Will, Danny, and Austin, or Will, Austin, and Danny are aligned, I'm gonna have a hard time saying— honestly, I'm gonna have a hard time really saying like, no, we shouldn't do that. And because I know that they've wrestled this thing down and thought through everything. 'Cause they attack it differently. No one's gonna get fired for the way they're thinking about this. And they know they can speak their mind. They know they can speak their mind with each other. And then when we do something, I've gotta be able to be like, "All right guys, put your hand in the middle. We're riding or dying with this thing." Right. I'm cool. The one thing I hate is, you know, just this revisionist history. And in sports it's all the time. We should have done this, we should have done— no, you were in the decision room. Yeah. Like if we're, if we're doing this, no one's gonna say that. No one's gonna say we should have, or I didn't say that.
Like if you, if you wanna say it, speak up right now. But this, 'cause the second we pulled the trigger, it was your idea as much as it was anyone else's. Is it daunting?
That's how we're rolling. Is it daunting to be in the West and watch these playoffs when you see San Antonio and OKC? In your conference loaded with these guys thinking like, Jesus, we don't just have one mountain, it's like two mountains next to each other that we have to climb here?
No, I think— I don't think it's ever, you know, I don't— I definitely don't think it's more daunting than going up against '23 and '19 or, you know, 1997, right? Right. Um, I think I think that, you know, they, they're both in a pretty good spot. They are mountains to climb. Um, I, I would argue that, you know, there's people out there that say we're right behind it with where we sit and everything that's going on.
I think with the lottery, I think you're probably third with assets right now in the West.
So I agree with that. But, but I don't think any, like, it just shows how competitive this is and like what you're shooting for. Like, you know, it is, it is what it is. And, you know, I know, you know, D-Wade's in our ownership group and like, and just talking to him and like knowing that history of what it's like and what you had to do and really asking about the grind. Like, it's pretty crazy to be able to turn to Danny and D-Wade and be like, walk me through like what you thought in you know, March. Yeah. Of this year when you guys won. And it was like, this was stressful. We didn't think this, this is who we were up against. We thought there was no way they had smoked us that. Then you get into the, the moment, then what happened? You know, it's like this changed it or this changed or this how it is. And you know, that's, that's kind of where it's at.
So those are two similar teams, right? The '06 Heat that Wade won the title with, and then the '08 Celtics that Danny won the title with, where in 2 years there was the move, and then there was the move after the move, and then all of a sudden they're in the mix. It's like, whoa, we're here, let's go. Like, that '08 Celtics changed in 9 months.
Yeah. And then even, you know, the battle within the series.
Yeah, there's that too. I'll be interested to see how you handle that. We haven't even seen that side of you yet when you're in like a conference final losing your mind on the On the sidelines. Wait, I had another question for you about expansion. Yeah. Which it seems like it got floated out there. Adam has the two cities he seems to want to have. Be interested to see if they could get the money for those two teams, but then everybody has to vote on it and you go from 30 to 32 teams, which is adding two teams to the league that you now have to beat. You're losing media share. Yeah. Do we have the right amount of teams? Like, where do you stand on this? Are you even allowed to talk about it?
I mean, there's nothing I would say that I probably wouldn't say publicly or privately or whatever it is. I kind of— I'm a guy, I kind of have one story. This is it, right? And so, you know, I think you need to zoom out. Because look, part of me is like, Vegas is extremely close, right? It's extremely close to us. Yeah, very close. I mean, you might have seen the jersey exchange we did with the Vegas Knights. Everyone's like, oh, you were just trolling the Knights in the playoffs where you put out that you'll exchange a jersey, a Vegas Knights jersey to a Mammoth jersey, and people are lined up around the block. It's like, no, no, no, no. The world doesn't understand that. Southern Utah is 90 minutes from Vegas. When we opened up with the Mammoth, the Knights were the hockey team. Yeah. And so on the selfish side, it's a little bit like, hey, that impacts our market a little more than probably most. As you look in the West, you've already got some hills to climb, two great markets, which I they are that are being floated. Like, I want to have to get to our ultimate goal.
We don't want to make it harder. And so I think there's a lot of people that could easily see or take that view of it, or take, hey, how much money are you going to get? Or that's the view. But if you look at everything that Adam's doing holistically, and if you look at where sports is, um, Why I'm so bullish on the NBA? We're probably the only league that can have the reach and the impact globally that this sport provides. So you look at that NBA logo. My, my sister-in-law's from Africa. She's from Zambia, who married my brother. Um, and right or wrong, what people think about NBA Africa Brands go over to Africa and it's really hard. It's really hard to translate over time. They end up into something different. But just being in draft interviews and seeing these kids who've come over, that NBA logo means something over there and it is the logo of basketball. And you're looking at Europe, we focus on the teams or this or that, but if you fast forward 20 years and you say, okay, NBA Europe, you know, there's a league with a chance to actually have a view of all of sports with that NBA logo.
It's, it's pretty amazing. And if, if Seattle and, and Vegas are part of that bigger picture, like, I'll do it. Like, I'm a partner. Like, I think that's a great Or we'll have that discussion. But I look at it more holistically as not a seller of the NBA. It's more of like, holy cow, we have a sport with a ball that has a great mobile viewing experience, one of the best. I can watch NBA games from my phone and I love it. Our reach is insane. And by the way, people can have a team, people can pick it up, That's how I look at it globally and say, "Hey, how many users are we going to have?" You always hear those stats that, "Oh, Manchester City or Man U has 1.2 million fans." If you look at the NBA in that way, I'm grateful that we're making the investment now for Europe. Someone already made the investment in the W. Someone already made the investment in Africa because we truly have a world who wants that product. And I think that's how I look at it. And that's a weird way, that's not a— can't— it just— so I think I don't look at it just those two teams.
I look at it as a global NBA brand, like where it can go. And you can see being a part of Vegas and it works. Yeah.
Because financially, you'd be getting like, let's say it's $15 billion for both teams. You're getting a $500 million check to give up a, a small percentage of your media rights. Yeah.
I don't, I don't really look at it that way.
But that's not how you're looking at it. You're like, not at all. It's the whole listing.
I get it. Yeah. Like it's, it's holistic and you know, there's not many sports that could be doing what the NBA's doing.
Yeah. Well, you can see the NFL, they just announced their schedule. They have 9 international games. They're clearly very wary of this.
They're super aggressive. Yeah, super aggressive. They're like, hey, I want Christmas Day, I want this, I want that. Like, like all these leagues, I mean, we're all like, you look at what's going on and I think that, yeah, we, we truly— I think Adam's vision's a lot bigger and I think they're doing a really good job with it.
Last question, walk me into that room of 30 really rich, successful people. It's the Board of Governors and you guys have to talk about stuff and argue about stuff. and you're just at this big giant table in some room, and you're all successful people who are used to getting your own way the entire time, and now you have to hash shit out. What is that room like? What was it like the first time you went in there?
I mean, it's hard. It's a daunting task. I mean, you know, if I take a step back and if I'm the league, it's like, okay, how do you have a room of 30 people who all have opinions, who are all going through something, that are all trying to kill each other, that have to come in together and like, what do I do? Do I just— and there's a couple camps that differently. I'm fortunate to be a part of a different couple different leagues and having like, do you just say, hey, here's the memo, here's what we're discussing, or do we actually care and open it up for debate and let everyone speak their piece and then try to make the most humane decision knowing it's almost impossible. Yeah.
And you have people with different— you have the small market teams, you have the, I don't want to pay the luxury tax teams, you have the, I have a lot of money, I want to win the title, I don't care what that costs team. You have the people that generate a bunch of revenue, they don't want to share it with everybody. So there's agendas everywhere.
Nothing's like one little quadrant. Yeah. It was like vectors. Like every issue is like 7 quadrants. Yeah. There's never anything that's like one quadrant. And so it's really hard. So on that front, I think going into these things, it's in anything, if that was your board or anything else, it's not probably the most productive way to have a meeting.
But how else are you going to do it?
You kind of have to do it. But yeah, there's no way else to do it. And I think what our current setup is, I don't think there's anyone in that room that doesn't feel like they can go and give input and they're at least listened to. And that's, that's pretty hard to do. Right. And so I would argue that, you know, whether it's Tom Dundon or whether it's, you know, even Jim Dolan or someone like— I feel like, you know, whether it's Mickey or like they're able to to do it and the capacity and the ability to Adam to hear and maybe even feel that I see you is, it's a gift. And so I think that, and look, I've been on someone that, I'll just be honest with you, I've been on the opposite side of maybe even my point of view at the time a couple different ways. I've been fine, I've been known that. They, I'm cool with how, I'm really cool with how we're, we're going and I'm even more bullish than ever on the NBA. And, and I'm excited to be doing this for a really, really long time. What's your fine?
What's your fine total right now?
You're down $500. I'm down more than that. How many?
Are you in 7 figures yet?
No, no, I'm not. I'm not Cuban or, or Draymond level.
All right, try to, try to keep that number below 7 figures.
No, it's, it's part of it. I mean, there's a process and I get it, and you know, it's just, it's just the tax.
Um, congrats on everything. I think it's been cool to watch from afar. No, I mean, you're, you're from there and all of a sudden you own these 2 teams and they become even better assets and staples of the community than they used to be, and have this whole thing going now. Hopefully you'll get some luck in the lottery. But that's the thing, you never know. You have these 4 guys at the top and it's like pick 7 might be the best guy in this draft. That's the NBA draft.
It is, it is such a, you know, and, and the funny thing is, is like, like I, I, I remember Will the first day a couple years ago, he is like, okay, great, everyone come. I don't care where you were drafted. I don't know what school you went to. I don't care anything. Like your life starts today, right? Like, like once the season starts, no one, no one cares internally, like where you were drafted, how it was. Like maybe you got veterans that have come in and in the second round and you know, you look at the Rudy Gobert, you look at the Jokic, it's like, it really has to do with like who, who we're gonna invest in and taking a 10-year view on this. And I just feel really fortunate with the group that has chosen to do this with us. Starting with Austin and then Will and D.A., obviously, like what a blessing to have that dude around.
You know, I remember being at the '22 Finals and they invited Danny to sit courtside with the Celtics owners for one of the games. And Will Hardy was really just involved. Or maybe it was '23, it was '22 or '23. When did you hire Will Hardy? Was it '23? Yeah, I think it was '23. Maybe it was the '23 playoffs. But I could see Danny looking at Will Hardy and watching how involved he was. And I said to my dad, oh no, Danny's studying Will Hardy. This is bad. Because we knew Will Hardy. Everybody loved Will Hardy. But I was like, so not surprised when you hired Will Hardy.
Well, people would ask and be like, he's like, I don't know. I like what that— I like what Boston— but Will was the youngest coach in the league at the time. Yeah, he was great. We hired him and he's been— I'm glad he finally gets to go for wins now. He's an awesome partner. Like, and it's, it's, you know, it's funny, like Danny Austin and I all golf with Will, you know, we're all golfers and, you know, it's, it's fun. Like we can all just go play and then the time the end of the round is, we have nothing else to talk about. So it's good. All right. Yeah. And like a lot of times they're managing me. I think it's like, hey, look, okay, whose job is it to go manage Ryan a little bit? And, you know, it's been good.
We're super fortunate. All right. I'm happy for you. Congratulations. Congratulations on everything. Thank you for all the time. Look forward to seeing you. I want to come to Salt Lake for a game at some point. So you should change your life. Let you know. Hang out with the Angels. All right. Good to see you. Thank you.
Let's go. All right. Take care.
All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis. And Ryan Smith and my dad and Gahal and Eduardo. Um, again, we don't know the schedule for Sunday yet, so check out on social media. We're definitely going live on Netflix at some point. Will it be after a Game 7? Will it be after 2 Game 7s? Will it be after just one Game 1? We don't know. We'll find out tomorrow night. And, uh, you have a whole weekend to watch Borat because that's going to be the next Rewatchables on Monday. Enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday or Sunday night. Must be 21+ in President's Select states for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President's Select states, 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 gamblinghelplineMA.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 talks about five guys he’s observing for the two major Game 6 NBA playoff games on Friday night (3:54). Then, Bryan Curtis joins to discuss the current state of sports programming before Bill’s dad hops on to reflect on the Celtics’ playoff collapse and to check in on Boston sports (22:38). Finally, Jazz owner Ryan Smith joins the pod to talk about the second pick in the 2026 NBA draft, rebuilding the team, the growth of Utah, and much more (01:43:22).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guests: Bryan Curtis, Bill’s dad, and Ryan Smith
Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo
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