Transcript of LakerMania, NBA Expansion, WBC Lessons, and MBJ’s Moment With Billy Gil and Wesley Morris

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The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by Sam's Club. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up 2 episodes of the Rewatchables this week. We did To Live and Die in LA on Monday, and then we did a special mailbag on Wednesday night. That was a really good one. We did it in honor of CR Month, Chris Ryan and Craig Horlbeck. Were on the mailbag. So if you missed it, go check it out over the weekend. Um, lots going on in this podcast. I deliberately waited until, uh, tonight, Thursday night, because I wanted to watch March Madness. But there was also some NBA games I wanted to see: Charlotte-Miami, San Antonio-Phoenix, and the red-hot Lakers in Miami. Um, and it turned out to be a good idea because a lot of stuff happened. So we're going to talk basketball at the top, Then Billy Gill's coming in to talk about, uh, the World Baseball Classic and what we learned and what we liked and what we didn't like. And then last but not least, our old friend Wesley Morris. We are going to talk about, uh, not just the Oscars, but the year in movies in 2025 and Michael B.

Jordan and a whole bunch of things. So we have basketball, baseball, movies. It's all next. Let's take a break. Pearl Jam. And then, uh, I'm going to talk basketball. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by Sam's Club. It is that time of the year when you just got to get in your car and go somewhere. I've done that plenty of times in my life. Nowhere gets you ready to go quite like Sam's Club. Snacks, the gear, super low prices on gas. They got a bunch of stuff that keep you and the whole crew rolling. And here's what you got to do. You got to join the club of Yes And at sam'sclub.com/yesand. You must be 18 years or older to purchase membership, and membership is subject to qualifications. Visit sam's club.com/yesand for details. All right, so I'm taping this top part of the podcast Thursday night Pacific time. Just watched a lot of NBA March Madness. March Madness was really fun. We had a North Carolina terrible loss for them. We had Sienna do, trying to do the 1-16 thing against Duke. Had a couple other good games. We've lost a couple top lottery picks now.

We lost Caleb Wilson already, and then North Carolina lost, and then sadly we lost AJ, who was really good. Today as well. But NBA. So initially I was going to do this gimmick, 10 things I'm watching heading into the last basically 12, 13 games of the season. And the top thing was, are the Lakers for real? And then the Lakers go into Miami. They're down in the second quarter. And it just looks like, oh man, third game in four nights. They won these two in Houston. Looks like they're luggage in this game. This is probably a throwaway game. They got in late the night before. And then Luka just goes to another level. Luka ends up with 60 points. Luka, let's see, in, in March after going 29 and 37, then he goes 40, 31, 38, 34, 36, 43, 39, 37, 37, and then 60 tonight. And look, his stats have been basically around the same for the last couple years, but it's different when you're watching them. There, there's joy and a swagger that he has back. I know he has some, some personal stuff going on and maybe he's channeling it to the basketball.

Whatever is happening, he's locked in. He looks great. And there's so much going on with this Lakers team. I hate talking about it because like when I was at ESPN, they would always be like, lead with the Lakers, lead with the Lakers, no matter what's happening. I thought this Lakers team had no chance to do anything. It's basically a 3-man team with a bunch of role players. The guys didn't make sense together. Just watching Luka, Reaves, and LeBron all together, it just didn't fit. And then something has shifted and I've watched, I've watched their last 4 games intently, including both Houston games and then this Miami game. The 2 Houston games are really impressive because they had back-to-backs in Houston and you normally, when that happens, you usually split one of them. You're either, you're there or you have to leave and then come back. And it's just like, it's always a disadvantage to the road team. So the game last night, which was televised, and it just seemed Shengun was back and it just seemed like the classic, all right, the Lakers already got one, Houston will win this one. And last 5 minutes, I felt watching it in real time, it, it was like something clicked in my head with the Lakers.

We were like, shit, in these 'cause I don't like the Lakers, as you know, you're watching going, shit, last 5 minutes, they have Luka. This is bad. This is bad for the other team. Like, so the Lakers have turned this team, as long as they can keep it close for the first 43 minutes and they have that last 5, now all of a sudden they have this, they have this incredible offensive player. They have a team that makes a lot more sense around him than it did even 3 weeks ago. And you just start to feel like they're gonna pull out some of these games. Whereas a team like Houston, who's been bad in crunch time, right? No point guard, toilet ball offense. Ime Udoka looks like he's in a half coma and you feel like something bad's gonna happen with them. You feel the opposite as you're watching Lakers. So what changed? First of all, I think JJ Redick has to get credit for a lot of this because you're, you're in this conundrum with your team where you have this generational offensive player playing alongside a guy who wants a new contract, Austin Reeves, who's a really good offensive player who could potentially be the lead offensive guy on some teams.

And then LeBron, one of the greatest players of all time, not totally willing to accept a super huge role change, which you could feel. There was a little, little push and pull. There was always like, all right, now it's my turn. And LeBron doing some of the old school stuff. Something has flipped and I don't know what happened with the communication between the coaches and LeBron. I don't know. LeBron, one of the smartest basketball players we've ever had. Maybe his supercomputer brain figured it out. He's embraced this different version of himself. And we've seen this version in the past. Like, there was like a not as— there was a, a more offensive version of it in the Heat in the middle years, especially that great season when they had the 27-game winning streak, when it seemed like he was gonna try to shoot 60% for the whole year. And he just like didn't have a high usage rate, but whenever they needed him, he could make a play. And he was just so additive everywhere. And he was rebounding, playing defense. And he's kind of moved toward that version a little bit more where he doesn't need the ball a lot.

He's figuring out how to affect it when he is off the ball. And then they're, they're doing all these little cheap plays. Like he'll take off sometimes on these, in these long passes from Ayton or Luka if the defense is sleeping and they move up, or he'll be like kind of hanging out in the, on the side, which he did in the Rockets game. It was great. Durant fell asleep, LeBron snuck in and then cut hard to the basket. Luka gave him a lob. All of a sudden this team makes sense as you're watching it. And it makes sense because LeBron's embraced, I'm the third best guy on this team. I'm gonna have to just figure out how to affect the game. I don't know what it means big picture. We talked about this a little on Sunday and a little bit on Tuesday on the pod. Just like the Lakers definitely look different, but what's, what's the ceiling? Are they the fourth best team in the West was a valid conversation. But the more you watch Denver and just something's off with them, and I don't know whether it's like a, a mild coaching thing or it's they just haven't been healthy altogether long enough or what's going on.

But all these games they're losing in the last 4 minutes, they're like the opposite of the Lakers. They've had 10 horrible losses, which really shouldn't happen when we have Joker. So I don't know. Like, I don't think the Lakers have a chance in hell against San Antonio or OKC. But at the same time, I went to see San Antonio on Monday night and there's a young team. You saw it in the Phoenix game tonight. Like, you can play junk defenses at them, do weird things, let Wemby score, try to take out everybody else. They're all this stuff they're gonna try to have to figure out in real time. And Fox, is the only major guy they have who can, who's actually been in real situations offensively, right? Guys like Castle, Vassell, like either those guys haven't played in big games or they're just young. Dylan Harper, keep going. And I do feel like if it was San Antonio Lakers, which it wouldn't be until round 2, 'cause the Lakers are up in the 3 seed, it would be a fascinating youth-first experience series. But Just big picture with the Lakers. I do think it's real.

I don't think they're at the level of San Antonio and OKC and maybe even not even Boston with Tatum back, but that next tier of teams, I think in a playoff series, could they win 4 of 7? Could they go 4-3 against anybody else in the league? Yeah, maybe. Is LeBron gonna stay committed to this? It sure seems like it. He seems re-energized. And then there's, You know, we talked about this a few weeks ago on the pod about Luka for the point he's at in his career. Like why hasn't he had more high MVP finishes? I think he had a third place and a fourth place. You look at it now with 12, 12, 13 games to go and the fact that Denver has been arrow pointing sideways or arrow pointing down for 3 months. I mean, they've basically been a.500 team since mid-December. There's a case now for Luka to be above him in, above Joker in the MVP race. And I think if I was doing it now, I would have SGA 1, I would have Wemby 2. And I think Luka versus Joker is a real argument now. And it's funny because Joker had this historical run to start the season.

The first 2 months, he was incredible. Wemby's had a really, really great 2-way run. The last couple months, and Shay has moved into this Jordan-Kobe game finisher level, right? So it's not like all three of them haven't been great candidates, but what Luka has done offensively and how they built this team around him, they had a chance to win like 54, 55 games, which is nuts. Like Aiton, you don't know what you're getting from him night to night. Marcus Smart is just gonna go 2 for 9 every game, 2 for 7, 3 for 9. 2 for 6. Teams are just gonna leave him open down the stretch. Doesn't matter. They don't really have a bench, and yet they're gonna win 54-55. So Luka's doing his job, and he, he— I had him somewhere first, second team, kind of on that bubble with a couple other guys. He's clear first team though. I think we know who 4 of the first team guys are if Cade can come back and get enough games. But to answer my own question from the beginning, I do think this Lakers thing is real. There's a spirit to them, there's a swagger and a competitiveness that you can see when you watch it.

They seem aligned. Everybody seems to know what their role is and what they're trying to do. And I, I think JJ's done a really good job. So I'm beyond monitoring it at this point. I just, I, I assume this is what we're gonna see from them the rest of the year. Wemby on the Spurs had a really important game tonight and he's, I think they're 22 in their last 22. There's still a very, very stealth case for him for MVP if they can pass OKC. But they came back from a big deficit. Phoenix played really well. It was fun. It's— Phoenix has good games against— like, they played really well against Boston Monday night too. They're really well coached. They're really good at kind of making you do things you don't want to do and attacking you and in unconventional ways. And today they were just throwing a junk defense at San Antonio and seeing if they could handle it. They couldn't for most of the game. And then near the end, they come back, make a couple plays. Phoenix missed 2 free throws, then Wemby had the ball last 10 seconds, made the MVP jumper to win the game.

And it was interesting watching the reaction after. Crowds chanting MVP. They do this thing where they bang the drum. They made the playoffs for the first time in a couple years, so they made a big deal about that. The crowd's chanting MVP. They interview him after the game. His teammates are chanting MVP. He's like already beloved there. And I just thought it was kind of a moment for him where it was like, this is real. We are a really good team. We just beat another playoff team at home. Our guy came through in a real way. I said on, on Tuesday, I, he's the best player I saw in person all year. I don't know if that means he's the best player in the league, but his impact on defense, play to play, quarter to quarter is similar to the impact SGA has offensively and Joker has offensively. And then you think the stuff he can do offensively, there's a case. So, um, just big, big, big picture where the Celtics have been rejuvenated with Tatum and just look like they're the best team in the East, whether they can keep it going, we'll see it.

OKC going for back-to-back, uh, and we know when they're healthy, that's gonna be the team to beat. San Antonio as this precocious, are they the '90 Bulls or the '91 Bulls? We'll see. Denver as the, I don't want to play that team, but maybe I do veteran team with, you know, one of the, one of the best players of the century. And then the Lakers who were in that class with the Knicks and the Cavs as, and, and now the Pistons, 'cause we don't know what's gonna happen with Cade of like, I think that's a contender, but I want to see more. And I can't believe the Lakers are in that class, but I think they are definitely in that second tier. And I think the Spurs are in that first tier with OKC. And I think, I think Boston's kind of in between that first and second tier. But what we've seen with Tatum, it's been great. All right, a couple more things really quick. The Giannis situation's just super weird. Probably talk about it more with, with Zach on Sunday, but this has been a soap opera basically since the summer. The trade request, not a trade request.

No, I want to stay. Do I want to get traded? No, I want to commit. No. And just, Trying to read the tea leaves of this, and now it's gotten to the point where they want him to shut it down. They have a chance to get a top 8, top 9 pick, and he wants to come back as soon as he's healthy again. And they're starting to— there's— it's starting to get a little uglier. I'm watching that one. The 5 through 10 order in the East, Toronto, 39 wins. They're the 5th seed. Atlanta's won 11 straight. They're somehow the 8th seed. Charlotte, who's been a top 5 team for 2 and a half months now, at least from advanced metrics, they're still the 10 seed. They're 2 games over.500. They absolutely killed Orlando tonight on Del Curry night, which was great. But the 5 through 10, how that shakes out and who you do or don't want to play, the only team you definitely want to play is Philly because they're not going to be, they, they're just not going to be able to put it all together in time. I don't think in round 1.

And I probably want to play Orlando and I probably want to play Miami. Atlanta, the way they look now, I'm not sure I'd be crazy about seeing them. And Charlotte, I mean, you watch tonight, like Charlotte will just be up 25 in the beginning of the second quarter. You don't even know what happened. So I want to see how that shakes out and also how that shakes out correspondingly with, can the Celtics catch Detroit, which I don't think they can. Cade sadly got hurt. He's got the collapse young. They have a 4-game lead. And I think with the schedule, I was, I was staring at it trying to figure out a way the Celtics catch them. I don't think they can. So Celtics will be the 2 seed. So they'll play the best playing seed, playing team. And Detroit will be the 1 seed and might end up with like Charlotte with Cade coming back from this major injury. So just watch that order there. Tatum trying to get back. Everything where he was as a basketball player in real time, game to game, as a Celtics fan, has been one of the most compelling things I've seen in a long time.

There was a game Monday night, they're playing Phoenix, and it was a classic Phoenix game, right? They're up most of the game. It actually felt a couple times like Phoenix was going to win, and Jalen was just incredible. And at some point it was just clear, like, Jalen's going to have to be the alpha tonight. And Tatum was over on the side like he was Sam Hauser. And everything was running through Jaylen at the top of the key, one-on-one stuff, or they're sending picks for him. And Tatum was an accessory, and that's the way it should have been. And it's not a big deal. I'm not saying like, no, it's, it's Brown's team, anything like that. It was just interesting to see him settle into that for a game. And it made me think like, I don't know, like in the Golden State game, Tatum was better, but I don't know if it's fair to even ask him to be the guy who could be the alpha in situations like that. And the Celtics already have a guy who's been one of the best alphas in the league this year. And maybe that's just gonna be the setup, but you can see when one guy's going for it, then the other guy takes over for 2 minutes.

Like the ceiling of this team when you combine it with the bench and all the role players and stuff is really, really, really high. So watching him get it back in real time has been a delight. I'm so happy to just see him playing basketball again. OKC at Celtics, March 25th, next Wednesday. That's the game. Because what we haven't seen yet is somebody just throw the kitchen sink at this guy and really try to be physical with him and take him out, take him out, and maybe even throw a little semi-cheap shots. OKC is your team for all that stuff. So I wanted to mention that the worst 4 in the lottery. So there's 5 teams right now. Indiana has 15 wins, Washington 15, Brooklyn 17, Sacramento 18, Utah 20. You really want to be in the top 3, it's 14%. Plus if somebody jumps you, you stay in the top 4. It's a 4-player draft with a drop-off. So just how that all shakes out and what kind of tanking we're gonna get into as we go down the line, I think is gonna be pretty compelling. Leading us to the 2 big topics that people have been going nuts about this week.

One is the All-NBA MVP minimum game number. Which kicked in again with Cade, who I think is at 60, even though he's played 61. I think he only counts for 60. So he'd have to play 5 more games to be eligible for All-NBA. I'm a voter. I think it would be absurd, like legitimately absurd to have this season finish it, mark down all the All-NBA teams for posterity, mark down the MVP voting, and Cade's just not involved. It's like he didn't exist in the season. Absurd because we're three-fourths of the way through the year. They're the one seed. They've completely overachieved for what their talent is. And he is the number one, number two, and number three reasons that's happening. And he's not going to make All-NBA now because he got a legitimate injury. I tweeted today, if Silver just said we've dropped it from 65 to 62, I don't think anybody would complain. Really what they should have done, it should have been 62 games or 2,000 plus minutes. 2,000+ minutes is a lot. Like Maxie, Maxie's at 61 now. Let's say he doesn't come back with his hurt finger. Maxie right now is 3rd in the league in total minutes, but he didn't, he, he didn't play enough to qualify to make an All-NBA team.

Like, that's, this is just stupid. We, we did this wrong. We overreacted. I wish I had made a bigger stink out of it. So you almost have to see it play out with some examples before you know how stupid it is. 2,000+ minutes, 62 games. Seems totally fair to me. And really, like, if you go back and you look at the All-NBA and the MVP stuff, the only really egregious one was the year after COVID when Embiid, I think he missed 21, played like 51 games, missed 21. It was a 72-game season and he was playing 30 minutes a game. And I think, I think he played like 1,500 minutes, something like that. He finished second MVP. And I think he was 122nd in minutes played. That's where maybe it gets a little, it's like, all right, maybe, maybe that shouldn't be eligible. Now it was post-COVID, it was a weird season, but 2,000+ minutes, 62+ games, one or the other, preferably both, and you should be eligible. I just don't like this. We're like, we're gonna have a snapshot of this season and it's not gonna capture the season. We might, Booker is very close to being out.

Kawhi is almost definitely gonna be out now. Maxi's going to be out, and we're going to end up with at least 2 really goofy third-team All-NBA players. Um, we'll see what happens, but I'll be complaining. Get ready for me to complain about this a few times. Um, all right, last thing, it's tied together. Charlotte had Dell Curry night tonight, and it was really cool. Steph and Seth were there, the family was there. It was great to see the Currys. He's beloved in Charlotte. He played He was the first guy I think they drafted. He has been announcing games there forever. He's been just, the Currys are royalty in Charlotte. And the big, the bigger thing to me, just watching it, that franchise has had a complete facelift over the last couple years, which we've talked about a couple times. They drafted well, they changed owners, they got rid of Michael Jordan, and they hired a really good coach. They have an identity. They even have, Lamelo Ball, like, really engaged. Like, he was great tonight. Um, so it can be done, is my point. Because as, as we go to the last thing I wanted to quickly talk about here, because expansion, all that stuff broke on, uh, on Monday, and it broke in a way that made me a little suspicious, almost like it was being leaked that this is going to be a possibility because they don't know whether they have the 23 votes yet or not.

They were talking about between $7 or $10 billion per team. So let's, let's go low just for fun and we'll say $7.5 billion per team. That's $15 billion total. And I've been talking about this for 5 years. I, I, I have podcasts from '21 and '22 where I was telling you guys that Seattle and Vegas were gonna be the expansion teams. So if it's $7.5 billion per team, that's $500 million cash that would go to each of the 30 teams. They do not have to share it with the players, and that's why they want to do expansion. Or at least some of the teams do, because it's just, just pure flat-out greed. They didn't make enough money from the media deal, obviously, which is $7.6 billion. Now they have a chance to make another $500 million. And I've had people say to me like, hey, Simmons, I thought you, you're the one saying how deep the league is. Why wouldn't you want expansion? Here's why I don't want expansion, because we have 9 teams that don't give a shit at any right now in a 30-team league. The last thing we need to do is add 2 more teams that don't give a shit.

They either need to fix the don't give a shit part about the 82-game season, or they need to relocate 2 teams and do that as an expansion. I cannot accept, as somebody who loves basketball, I cannot accept adding 2 expansion teams and having 11 tanking teams 3 seasons from now instead of 9. I just don't see how that's a good product. I don't see how that helps anybody. And the bottom line is there's 8 to 10 guys who truly matter. Those are the teams that have a chance to win the title, and everybody else is either treading water, overachieving, or tanking. We don't need more of that. Football has figured it out because football, um, you have the, the, the quarterbacks are really the only stability for the 7, 8 best teams. Other than that, you have the salary cap, which is prohibitive. You have the schedule and the stuff they can do with the Patriots this year at a fourth place schedule. Next year their schedule's gonna be really hard. They can keep tilting the seesaw against teams. You can't do it in the NBA. So to add two teams, I've just seen, I'm old enough now to remember when this happened a few times over the course of the league, and it always screws up.

It always leads to haves and have-nots in a really crazy way. And I would accept it if they put in like the right tanking rules, which they're claiming they do. I want to know what those are first before you do expansion. The other thing is, couldn't we just relocate a couple teams that aren't doing that well? We— I don't want to call teams out, franchises out that are doing terrible in revenue, that are clearly have been struggling with bad ownership in the places they've been in, like in New Orleans. Right? Like Memphis, Draymond Green called out this week because basically saying they don't even have like a hotel for the players to stay in. They've been small market, they just gutted their team again. And yet the Charlotte piece of this is why you can't say like, well, basketball can't work there. 'Cause I would've said that about Charlotte 3 years ago. So to me, how do you get, how do you get a team like New Orleans to be competent again and properly owned and not a place where everyone in the league, whether you're a player, an agent, anybody knows that that's one of the worst situations in terms of taking care of the health of players, injuries, all the injury maintenance, all that stuff, like facilities.

Everybody knows about New Orleans, right? Memphis is another one that maybe from a revenue standpoint, small market, They're okay owned, but is a team that should, should, if you're just, if we were just doing this, let's pick 30 cities that should have an NBA team. Seattle would be picked over both of those teams. Like, let's just call it for what it is. So you really have to make the case for me that those teams can succeed before I'm ready to add other teams. And here's the other thing with Vegas. Why is Vegas a good idea? Vegas already has 4 professional teams. Vegas isn't that big of a city. Vegas, young people don't, you know, party and drink and gamble the way they used to. Every story I read is about how Vegas, from a tourism standpoint, it's getting a little dicey. They may have, might have overbuilt it a little bit. Why is this like a surefire bet for expansion? Seattle, 100%. I've been saying Seattle should have a team for 20 years, ever since they stole the team away. Vegas, I'm not sure. Like, do we, A, do we need 32 teams? And B, if we're adding 2 teams, should Vegas be one of the teams?

I still have real questions about this. And should we just relocate, or relocate, I don't know why I'm emphasizing the re, should we just relocate the franchise that would immediately triple in value or double in value the moment it moved to Seattle? So my question is, why couldn't you at least explore that side with one of the franchises before you talked about Um, just adding two other teams. I don't get it. Um, I really want to know more. So this vote's coming next week. I'm not convinced they have the 23 votes, but if they do this, it's a money grab. And they could say it's like more jobs for everybody. Okay, cool. This is a money grab. This is going to make the league worse. I will plant my flag in that because we are just going to have more teams doing all the same shit that we hate now, this tanking stuff. So the only way you could do expansion is if it's tied together with some real rules to make these teams actually care about competing and not being an embarrassment. Like the fricking Nets the other night, down 60 to 24 at halftime.

Like the Wizards give you up 83 to bam out of bio. Like nobody wants to see this anymore. So we don't need two more teams doing this. So this is a bigger decision that they have to make. They have to decide what are the 30 best cities for the NBA? Do we have 30 cities that can handle the NBA at the highest level? And if we do, maybe we can expand, but now we have to bring in all this tanking stuff to make it possible to expand from a position of strength and not a money grab. So that's my take on expansion. Uh, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back. Billy Gayle is gonna join us to talk about World Baseball Classic, and then Wesley Morris and I are gonna talk movies. That's next. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What makes basketball so exciting? All the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. The craziest thing, I, I mean, Wemby stuff he's doing every game. There's 2, 3 Wemby moments a game where you're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that.

The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll, he's going to the basket, somebody throws him an alley-oop and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley-oop, but it's not an oop. It's just kind of an alley. And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100% never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA though. Try Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA and a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman. He just told me that. Plus they're giving you a chance to win courtside seats, custom merch, and more. Michelob Ultra. Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at mclaubultra.com/courtside. McLaub Ultra Courtside 25-26. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2025. Ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at mclaubultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, and prizes and details. All right, the Duke Billy Gill is here, one of our big WBC fans here at The Ringer. I got into it, I enjoyed it. I don't really know the protocol though of rooting for your country versus rooting for players on your favorite team, and I was battling the whole time because I was rooting for different Red Sox guys to do well while also rooting for America, but then I was really happy for Venezuela.

It was about the least patriotic I felt in a while. So you went to some of these games, what was it like?

It was incredible. So I've gone in past years. It's always been great. I put in, Bill, for a credential request. So I went there as an official representative of The Ringer. So I was there going on the field, taking pictures of people, making a presence known so that the baseball community knows we're in the game. We're here to cover this sport. The environment is crazy. It's great, but it's sad because the environment in that stadium is not like that for the next 4 years. And it won't be like that at any Marlins games this year, which is disappointing, but Man, Miami can host the World Baseball Classic. I have a question for you.

Wait, can you hold that thought? Can you perform your question to me?

Yeah.

Is it weird to go to a place that has just a certain set, pretty depressing level of energy, and then all of a sudden you go there and it's fucking awesome and you're like, I'm in the same place where it's, it's basically sucks?

I'm not used to it being that great. 'Cause since they built the stadium, the Marlins have made the playoffs twice but have not hosted a home playoff game. 'Cause one was the weird COVID year.

Yeah.

Where they were on the road and then they switched it to like 3 years ago, I think, or 2 years ago they made it. But it's that first round is that wildcard round where like the host city hosts all the games and it's like best of 3. So don't travel. So there's never been a playoff game there, but because of the roof, it gets really loud and it's a great environment. But I'm also one that I've become accustomed to smaller crowds. I've become accustomed to like the row in front of me will be empty. I can kick my feet up. So it's kind of like when it's too crowded, like it's— that's nice, but like I'm ready to get back to my comfort. Like I have plenty of space. I don't have to wait that long in concessions. Like I'm good not having a ton of people around me, you know?

Yeah.

So I like the energy, but I got my fill. We're good with that energy for a little bit.

I think it felt festive. What was your question for me?

It was great. There was live bands going around. I don't know how it is that like certain— you have to go through security. With a clear, like, bag, like in every stadium policy, right? But somehow you can go in with a trombone and you can go in with like a massive drum and you can take in all of these instruments that seemingly could be dangerous weapons. But like a purse that's like 16 inches by 16 is a no-go. Like, I don't understand that security works. So here's my question to you.

Am I—

it's similar to what you were saying. Am I a bad American, because going into the championship game, I was actively rooting for my country to lose to Venezuela.

So I bet on the Dominican in the semi— the Dominicans in the semifinals against the US, um, because I've always, I've always enjoyed the baseball players. They've been very good at the Red Sox, and I didn't really, I didn't really feel that patriotic about it in general. No. In the finals, I was like, I'm going to root for America in this one. Yeah, this would be— I want Roman Anthony to do well. I was really excited. He did well in the previous game. But as it went along and it was so clear that it meant like 100 times more to Venezuela, it was hard not to be like, all right, I'm happy for these guys. This is like the greatest sports moment of their lives. It would have meant— would it have meant even like 1/10 as much to America? No.

No, that's why, honestly, coming into the game, so I was like walking around, I was asking people like, oh, who you rooting for? And like, yeah, I want America to win. And last time in the World Baseball Classic 2023, America also made it to the final and they lost to Japan. And there was the classic situation where Shohei Ohtani is pitching against Mike Trout. He strikes him out.

Yeah.

They end up winning the championship and it means so much to Japan. I wanted America to win that one. This one, America just had like not the best attitude throughout the tournament. Where you had Scubal coming and going, and then he kind of started feeling it. And then in the semifinal game where they were playing the Dominican Republic, he drove back from spring training. He pitched the day before in a meaningless spring training game for the Tigers, drives back that day because he wants to be with the team. And there's like this whole article written about how he drove through a rainstorm to get there, which is like, I'm not applauding this. Like, welcome to Florida. It rains all the time. Like, This wasn't a hurricane. What are we talking about here? But we wanted to applaud him because all of a sudden it seems like between the semifinal and the final, America kind of figured out like, hey, this is fun. We should try to want to win this instead of saying the wrong thing every possible chance they got, including Bryce, who at the end was very gracious and he was shaking the hands of Venezuela and all that.

But earlier in the tournament, they ask him about it and he's like, I'd rather win the Olympics than the World Baseball Classic.

Like, buddy, Yeah, just keep that one to yourself.

Just don't say that. And then there's all the players from all the different countries who are all excited and they're saying, even Quique Hernandez, who, who was playing for Puerto Rico, has been to 5 World Series. He's won 3, and he's saying winning the World Baseball Classic would be more important, which then caught the ire of Derek Jeter, who on the broadcast, they say like, what do you make of all these players that say they'd rather win the World Baseball Classic than the World Series? And he's like, Sounds like players that have never made the World Series. It's like, there's, there's plenty who have, who are saying this, but also like Derek, you're on the broadcast for the World Baseball Classic. Like, can we pretend to care just a little bit about this? Or like, also, you don't add anything to any of these broadcasts. Just sit out the World Baseball Classic, Derek. Like, we're not going to miss you. It's going to be perfectly fine. So the Americans had kind of like not the greatest attitude throughout it. You had the situation with Cal Raleigh and Randy Rosarena where he didn't want to shake his hand.

And then Josh Naylor, who plays for Canada, decided, I want to troll Kyle Raleigh and go to try to shake his hand. And then he also didn't shake his hand. And the Mariners seem to be falling apart. There was no injuries or serious injuries in this World Baseball Classic.

Yeah.

But the Mariners, I don't think are going to survive the World Baseball Classic, even getting all of their, their team back healthy because they all seem to hate each other now, even though they'll downplay the situation.

That's funny because they had great chemistry last year. The WBC could have just completely eroded it.

Yeah, I mean, Randy Rosarito told Cal Raleigh to like shove his handshake comment like up his ass, which is kind of like, this is going to be awkward. I think when we get back and managers are going to have to kind of sort that situation out. So I didn't think that a team was going to fall apart that wasn't playing in the World Baseball Classic, but we have to keep an eye on the Mariners now to see what's going on. But overall, I thought great tournament. Here's another thing, by the way, Mark DeRosa might be the worst manager, I think, in the history of baseball.

Just bring in Miller for the 9-2-2. What are you doing? He throws 102. Nobody's touching him. Just get an inning at him. What are we doing?

Did you see they were asking him about it after the game? So in the press conference after the game, they were asking him like, why didn't you bring him in? And he's like, well, I told, you know, I wanted to respect the Padres. It's like, respect the Padres? Did you see what was happening with Venezuela? Their manager Omar López had 3 different teams call him and say, hey, you played a semifinal game last night. Do not pitch our pitchers back-to-back nights.

Yeah.

And he said, you know what, I'm gonna pitch 4 pitchers back-to-back nights and you guys can deal with it. Because that's exactly what he did.

Like 4 guys that pitched the night before, the Mets fans were fine with it. They did it to, they did it to Whitlock on the American team where he pitched 3, 3 times in 5 days.

Yeah.

And his last appearance in the finals, he, he gave up the winning run. His, his, his miles per hour was a little bit down. Big topic with Red Sox fans right now. What's it? Just, just ready for Whitlock to be on the DL in like June. 'Cause he pitched 3 in 5 days. So back to back, I don't even know.

Whitlock's a guy on the Red Sox, not to make this too MLB-centric, that I have wanted to work out for your team for the past like 5 years.

He was really good last year.

Drafting him.

Yeah.

No, he was really good last year, but he was gonna be a starter and then they eventually moved him and figured him out like in the bullpen.

He's a reliever.

Yeah. It's not as useful to me. I, I liked it when he was like a 5th starter.

Yeah. No, he's a reliever. I think, going back to the team thing, this was one of my issues rooting for America or being in the mindset of I should root for America. This is the country I live in. First of all, the World Baseball Classic has not been around since like 1892. Like, this is a relatively new thing, so it can't be like we have to root for our teams. I think you can kind of go where the heart wants, especially in the gambling era. But I was watching like the Dominicans and the Venezuelans How they're just reacting to a double in the third inning and they're, they're just going crazy. They're so demonstrative. Everybody in the dugout's flipping out. And our, our team was basically like, okay guys, we got 'em.

It felt so, I was embarrassed.

It felt so forced. And even Bryce Harper, when he hit the game-tying home run in the bottom of the eighth, when he's coming around, he did like a salute and he's like pointing at the flag. Like, I don't know why it felt like forced and it almost felt like angry patriotism. But when then you see like the Dominicans and the Venezuelans are playing against each other, they're hugging each other at home plate and it's like competitive, but like they're enjoying it where the Americans seemed like, like forced to like, well, how about the Braves?

They weren't even like at home plate. They were kind of over on the side like, all right, we'll go greet them.

Yeah, it was weird.

The Roman Anthony, Roman Anthony's my guy. Obviously he's Red Sox and he has the big go-ahead homer in the game before. And it wasn't like if it happened for the Dominicans or the Venezuelans, it would've been like a borderline just, they would've lost their minds for 5 minutes.

They, I don't know.

It bummed me out.

The American bat flips felt forced to me too.

Yeah.

Where it was like, well, I see how far, how high the Venezuelans are throwing it. Like, let me try to throw it higher. I think overall great tournament. Have you turned on this whatsoever?

Are you in on this? No. You know what's interesting? First of all, way in, enjoyed it way more than I thought. The ratings were really good, and I'm not a ratings guy because I don't understand how the ratings just get better for everything every year. It's like ESPN every month, it's like highest blank ever, and just who— it feels like you can finagle it however you want. Yeah, but anecdotally, people cared about this. People in my life cared about this. Everybody that likes sports that I know feels like they were at least monitoring it, and then The last two USA games, I feel, I feel like a lot of people in my life watched that cared. My dad really cared. He was really upset that Anthony made the last out. He was like, I hope, I hope that's not going to be bad for him for the season. I was like, it'll be fine, dad.

Yeah. He'll be playing in like 2 weeks in real games.

You know what I really loved the most was how you vacillate emotions. I was mostly rooting for America, but when Judge made an out after Harper tied the game, and you could be like, all right, Judge, let's go, Aaron, finish it off. Like, part of me was like, I hope he makes it out. Yeah, I hope it becomes a story.

You want, you want your enemies to fail. Like, it's so weird because like, I, I like, I don't like Ronald Acuña Jr. because I'm a Marlins fan and he's a Brave, and I find him to be very annoying. But I felt good for him, and they're crying on the field the whole time. You mentioned the Red Sox. Did you see the stat where the Red Sox outfit field. So they had like a, like all of the countries that hit home runs, who hit the most home runs throughout the tournament.

Yeah.

And it's listed like the Dominican Republic hit like 15 home runs or whatever, 12, 11, whatever it was. And then they had like the US, I think had like 11 or 12. And then just Boston Red Sox outfielders, 10 home runs in the World Baseball Classic.

You guys, you guys, our over-under is 86.5 for wins. And I think the Red Sox are gonna be legit good. Like I think they're +300 on FanDuel for the division. That team's like kind of loaded. Yeah. And as long as they don't have any pitcher injuries or anything weird like that. But Anthony's the big thing. I mean, that was why his, his homer that he hit, the go-ahead homer, I was really glad he had that moment. 'Cause we're kind of counting on him to have like the Drake May major jump in, in year 2 and Abreu too. I, I thought, I thought it was a good showing for them. It's weird to root for the guys on different teams that are your guys and kind of monitoring them. You end up like, it's like a parent with multiple kids on different fields that, you know, some, some, uh, youth sports event or something.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, one other thing with the world baseball that I, that I, uh, I really liked, um, how it's going to trans— all the stories now about how it transfers to the actual season becomes like its own cottage industry for, for media coverage. 'Cause we have fantasy baseball coming, we have the season starting, and just how it, how it swings your opinions either high or low, I, I think is kind of, kind of entertaining.

I think in 2017, myself and probably everyone else that was watching the World Baseball Classic when the US won was like, Marcus Stroman might be the greatest pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball. I need to draft him in the first round. Round. Yeah. Like I need to draft him right away. And then he has like a classic like Stroman situation where he is like really good one year and then he is like not great the year that you draft him in fantasy. But yeah, people are definitely gonna be drafting and overdrafting certain players based on World Baseball Classic performance. I like—

Abreu is gonna be one of them.

Oh yeah, for sure. So you mentioned the ratings. Almost 11 million people watched the championship game, which is crazy. I think it was up from like 7 million or something. Yeah. The, the previous championship game. It was the most watched World Baseball Classic game ever. Baseball's riding this high coming off of the World Series and coming off of the World Baseball Classic. And I'm a little bit worried that once the regular season starts and everybody goes back to their teams and you lose the excitement that the World Baseball Classic games had, that people are going to be like, oh, like, yeah, we're back. We're back to baseball now because you don't have like the playoff intensity. You don't have the World Baseball Classic intensity. And now it's like, okay, this is game number 7 of 162.

Yeah.

We can't be like playing trumpets and bat flipping and jumping over, you know, the dugout fence every time someone hits a home run. Now we need to get back to like, you know, baseball decorum.

You know, I, I see the point. I just think we're so loaded from a season standpoint with good teams in huge cities with real baseball tradition. Players I care about in both leagues, young guys coming up, even like we mentioned Anthony, but there's a bunch of either rookies or second year guys that people are like super excited about. Just watching like what's happening with the baseball cards, the, the, like you mentioned last time, the Pittsburgh, the 19-year-old, the rookie, the shortstop, whether he, who knows when he'll come up or will he be like a May 1st guy? Will he come up at all?

I don't know.

But his card was like exploding during the year and it just feels like they have a lot of Lot of guys.

I hope they don't do the games with the, with the rookies where they like wait until—

No, they're all doing it. The Red Sox are gonna do it. The two pitchers we have, I, I, I hate it. It's one of the worst rules that we have in sports.

The extra arbitration year.

Yeah, it's terrible.

It's so, it's so dumb.

It's terrible. But like, like the Dodgers going for a three-peat is a real thing. Like Judge, who's now hitting his mid-thirties, you know, and, and somehow became embattled coming outta this World Baseball Classic. I saw Mad Dog did a whole thing about it on ESPN that I enjoyed. Like he's, he's a, he's a real figure that people have opinions. My whole thing is like baseball needed to get back to people in your life just having arguments about different baseball things. And I felt like we started to lose that a little bit as the sport became more and more stats and more and more random, basically. And now it feels like you talk to people like, are the Dodgers ruining baseball? And half the people in my life would have like a real opinion on it. You know, do you think Aaron Judge, is it his fault? People have opinions on this. What about Roman Anthony? Could he be the next guy for Boston? There's like 30 of these now. Who's the best pitcher in the American League? We just have good arguments again. And I don't— I feel blessed, right, as we head into a massive labor short— labor strike.

Well, I mean, this is the thing.

Baseball can't get out of their own way, right? Because like they're riding this momentum and they're going to mess this up at the end of the year by having a lockout. Like 100%, they're going to lock out. And it's like, Why are you guys doing this? Like, why are we trying to ruin a good thing? Just kind of agree to something, figure it out, realize that you can't afford— I mean, they're not going to miss any time. Even if they have a lockout, they'll figure it out so that they don't miss any games. If they miss games, it'd be the dumbest thing they could possibly do.

Did you see the revenue thing where it was, it was talking about the percentage that the leagues make and they were like 21%, 21%, 20%, and then baseball was like 2.4%. Because so much of the revenue is being driven by a couple of these teams. So much of the salaries, everything, and clearly something's gonna shift.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, as a TV sport, we were all worried about it. Now that I have all the RSNs, so as that all shakes out, but it seems like from a rights standpoint, they're gonna be good. I like the fact that Netflix got involved with the World Baseball Classic and these different non-traditional networks are trying to figure out ways to kind of grab a bite of the apple from them. So that's a good thing.

It seems like a lot of people want baseball. I was a little bit worried last year and like, I'm not one that gets like into the TV rights situation or cares that much. Like I'll figure out where to watch the games. But when it was announced that they were gonna leave ESPN, I was like, oh, this isn't good. Like this is gonna be the end of Sunday Night Baseball. Like what's gonna happen here? And then like, because I'm a weird guy and I like grew up watching ESPN, worked at ESPN a little bit. And like know the personalities, I'm like, what's going to happen to Tim Kirschen? I'm worried about this. Where's Kirschen going to go? I don't want to see him on MLB Network. Like, I can't— my heart can't take that.

Yeah.

So ESPN is going to have, I think, weekday games now, but then like everyone's going to have games. There's going to be games on Apple, there's going to be games on Netflix.

I think this is what we do now. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like a game show trying to figure out who has what game.

But I think, I think part of that is good though, because in theory, each of the networks will be trying to make their one day a week the most relevant game. So hopefully then we'll get good presentations and good broadcasts from all of the networks. And it's not just kind of like mailing it in, hey, here's like a random Wednesday night baseball game, but we also have Sunday night and Tuesday night or whatever. So like We could just throw a fourth team on here and who cares what it actually looks like?

We've seen—

I'm excited about baseball.

I am too. We've seen this happen in NBA this year with, uh, you know, like NBC's doing that Sunday night game, right? With Tirico. They're making it almost like trying to—

they feel big.

Yeah. They're trying to give it the NFL Sunday treatment for NBA and it feels like a bigger game. Like it feels like they care more. They're sending the— everybody there is at the game. Like the studio show's there. Tirico's doing it. to have like the Jon Tesh stuff and it just feels bigger, which I think what some of these places will do with baseball. I was just looking at the World Series stuff on FanDuel. The top 8 teams for odds right now: Dodgers, Yankees, Mariners, Mets, Phillies, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Cubs. And then the 9th one is Atlanta. These are all like big teams that have tradition and like big fan bases and really good players. Seattle's probably the one like non-Giant fan base, but they have, you know, J-Rod, Cal Raleigh. I really like Naylor, a good pitching staff.

I love Naylor.

Like it's a fun team. And even Toronto, which I think is gonna be a little different this year 'cause they lost a couple guys, they've had some injuries already, but they were in the World Series last year. People know who they are, people know who Guerrero is. So I think we're in a good spot, Billy. Baseball might be back. Who knows? The Ringer, the Ringer might have to figure out some sort of podcast thing.

Wow.

We— I don't know. I, I took 11 million people for the World Baseball Classic. It makes you think like, shit, there's a market out there.

Yeah, maybe there's— maybe people care again.

Maybe they care. All right, Billy Gill, um, how you feeling about, uh, you never gave your opinion on Bam's '83 on this podcast, so go quick.

Okay, so Bam's '83, I was in Sweden when it was going on, so it was 3 AM, but my phone starts blowing up because like I'm in group text and they're like, Bam has 72 points right now. So it's like 3 or 4:00 AM and I'm like, I wake up to these and I'm like, well, I, I can't go back to sleep. So I'm trying to sign into like my FanDuel Sports Network Florida subscription that I have.

Yeah.

Of course, 'cause I'm in a different country, it's like the country code, this doesn't allow it. So I'm doing the old school, just following along on my phone.

Oh, the mid-'90s. Yeah. Like the, the 976 lines. So, yes.

So I'm watching like the ball move, like the little graphic up up and down the court and I'm like, man, they keep fouling. Like, this is kind of crazy. What's going on here? I saw that you were kind of a defender of Bam's 83 points.

Oh, I'm a full defender. Yeah.

Yeah. Place your bets. A lot of people weren't like, yes, stop him. I'm surprised that Eric Spolstra did it. 'Cause it seems like with their whole like Heat culture stuff, like, oh, this seems like beneath the Heat to try to do something like this. But I loved it. I mean, obviously I'm biased here 'cause I'm from down here in South Florida, but I love the fact that they did it. I was thinking that they might do the thing where they take him out and like, oh, we can't pass Kobe. And they're like, no, screw that guy. Like, we're, we're gonna pass Kobe.

No, it was cool that, that they, and I think it helped that he was such a liked guy. Yeah. And that he's so not that kind of player who would like chase stats. And you know, everybody was supportive of that. It seemed like the most fun random game to go to. Like there was like real joy in the stands. He got to like 75. They're cutting it like, you know, Miami is— can kind of come and go as a basketball crowd. People were like deliriously happy as this was happening. It was really fun to watch.

Well, the Wizards are a crap team too, right? Like, why— like, stop him. Like, it— like, you guys can play defense. You can— like, why don't you double him? Why don't you take the ball out of his hands in the first quarter?

The Heat had like no starters out there except for Bam. It's like, just take him out. Let everybody else be. It was, it was a disgrace. And this was my big case was like, like the, the, the Wizards, like this is, we have 8 teams tanking now. We have 9 'cause Milwaukee's trying to tank. So it's, it's almost 1/3 of the league. That's a way more of a disgrace to me than Miami being like, Bam Adebayo's a great guy, he's having the night of his life. Let's see how many points he can get. I'm never gonna be offended by that.

I didn't like that, that so many like players and coaches came out and, and like Swaggy P, like former players, then just like, ah, I don't respect this It's like, shut up. Like, no one cares what you think. Why, why do you have to ruin this? Why do you have to ruin a fun thing here? It is weird though. Like, if you look at the all-time list, that then just bam, Adebayo is number 2 on the list. Not that he's not an all-time great of all time, but he's, he's not an all-time great.

You know, I've heard people say that, and if you go to every sport, there's fucking weird things in there. There's people that have had like, you know, 4 homer, 4 homer games in baseball. Like, that guy had 4 homers? Yeah. And in football, same thing where like, I don't know who, remember Flipper Anderson had the receiver record forever? That receiver on the Rams, it was like 330 yards receiving or whatever it was. And it's, it's never who you think is going to have these records. I think there was some Kobe stuff with it too. I think people just love Kobe and they kind of want, they liked how it was Wilt, then Kobe, and now Bam's in the middle of it and he's not a scorer. But I mean, everybody loves Bam and it was the night of his life. He had never had 42 points in a game. Yeah. So I don't know if, if you like sports, it's weird that you wouldn't like that one to me. But anyway. All right, Billy Gil, good luck with the— did you do your fantasy baseball draft yet?

My fantasy baseball draft is next Tuesday. Keepers are in though, so that has been locked and we're moving forward now.

We have to turn in keepers tomorrow night. Me and my, uh, my buddy Hans, who's my, my League of Dorks partner, my AL Keeper League. And, uh, I can't even tell you the Google history, just searching any sort of info I can find on Joe Boyle of Tampa or Eric Lauer on the Blue Jays, deciding whether we want to keep him for $3. Do we keep Narváez at $7? As they just Googling all his spring, it's pathetic. It's such a waste of time.

How many keepers do you get to have?

We have 10. So we have 9 keepers. Oh wow. Now we're battling for who should be the 10th and it's just a, just a colossal waste of time.

I love it.

Wait, so you can, you can keep like half your team?

Well, we have 40-man roster.

40-man roster?

Yeah. Including minors and reserves. Yeah.

That's insane.

I gotta mail you the thing. You won't believe it.

And it's one, and it's one, it's only one league. It's only AL.

AL over there. Yeah.

So you're, you're just full of like random crap players.

This is why we're talking about whether we want to protect Eric Lauer for $3. Oh my God, that is deep.

One of— so we don't, we don't do auction. We do like the round still. So ours is you can keep 4, but it's 4. You can only do it 2 times. So like you can only keep them twice and it's 4 rounds higher than you drafted him the previous year. So I went in and I, and, and Stanton got dropped last year when he was injured. So he was just out there. So I picked him up on a flyer, just put him on my IL, and I was like, I'll play him when he comes back. But also next year I can use him as a 20th round pick. So I was like, I'm using this for future situations.

Savvy.

So I had Giancarlo Stanton, but then the reports are he can't open a bag of chips, which seems impossible. And I'm looking at, I'm like, well, he has 3 home runs or 4 home runs already in the spring. So I guess the chip situation has been resolved. He didn't play in the World Baseball Classic. I could get him in the 20th round, but also I know he's just going to injure himself because that's what he does every year. So am I going to waste one of my keepers on him? I ended up not doing it. So we'll see what happens with that.

The move is always if, if the evidence is you're going to really regret this a month from now and be kicking yourself, maybe don't do it. I'm always stunned by the lack of information in this world we live in now where information is everywhere. Like Twitter, you can't search for anything on Twitter anymore. If I, if I want to find out like Joe Boyle, Tampa, give me like the last 5 days of tweets about him. Like fucking pizza comes up. Uh, Reddit, not nearly— nobody's starting like a Joe Boyle thread, right? So then you're looking at— are you expecting— no, I'm not. So then you're, you're Googling news stories and it's like, oh, Joe Boyle's in that one. And it's like just this tiny little tidbit paragraph. It's just not a lot of info. They don't care about like the diehards.

We need a return to like the true honest-to-goodness beat writers in baseball that are there in spring. They leave their family for a month and a half. They live in like Lakeland, Florida, wherever their team is situated. And they're like giving us all the information on everyone. Now it's just like—

Just a lot of dispatches 3 times a day, different things about different players. Yeah. We don't have that anymore.

Now you just go there, they're hanging out, making contacts or whatever it is that reporters are doing there, if they're even attending the games. The managers don't even bother giving you actual honest assessments of what's going on with the players. It's become a travesty that's going on in journalism these days, Bill.

Well, fortunately we have websites that can show us the miles per hour compared to last year and stuff like that. Not that I've ever been to those. Maybe I have. Okay, fine.

Are you excited? Are you excited about ABS's debut? We didn't have it in the World Baseball Classic. We didn't talk about that huge controversy at the end of the US Dominican Republic game where it was clearly a ball. Game ends like that. Dominicans are eliminated.

That's gonna happen.

It missed by half a foot. Oh, the inning, same thing happened the inning before against Soto. Like it was just a bad strike zone and, and American umpire. So somewhat suspicious there. I don't know if he's on the take or what's going on.

Was a little weird. All right, Billy Gil, you can, you can listen slash watch to Billy on the, on the Ringer Tailgate, a great show that has continued to go during the offseason as well as you pop on Ringer NFL from time to time and all over the place. Good to see you. Thanks for staying up with me.

Hey, thanks for having me.

This segment is brought to you by the all-new Audi Q3, made for the Yes Life. We're about to break down my NBA best-in-class pyramid, the guys playing well above the rest of the league. We just did Ringer 100, actually. Um, I just turned in my votes and I really, really battled with myself about whether I wanted to put Wemby or SGA in the top spot, and I'm not gonna tell you what I did. But that top 4 of Wemby, SGA, Joker, and Luka is about as good of a top 4 with everybody playing really well at the same time that we've had in a while. So any pyramid would have to start with those 4, and then you go down that next level and it's got Jaylen Brown and Donovan Mitchell and Cade Cunningham and so on and so on. But I think that would be the, the top 4. And it's like the Audi Q3, those guys, that top 4 I mentioned, they're delivering a level of performance and refinement. That puts them in a category of their own. The other fun thing about that 4, all of them are so different, right? SGA's, he's the guard.

Luka, I have no idea what position he is. Joker's like a center, but he's also a point guard. And then Wemby is just one of the freaks of all time that we've had in the NBA. Those guys are the NBA best in class. They show up and play on a totally different level. The all-new Audi Q3 brings that same energy with faster acceleration than ever before, room for adventure in a digital stage that puts The whole game plan right in front of you. Say yes to performance. Say yes to the all-new Audi Q3. Learn more at audiusa.com. All right, so coming up, it's my old friend Wesley Morris. We used to work together at Grantland. He has a podcast called Cannonball for the New York Times. And, uh, we had vowed to talk about the Oscars after it happened, so we're coming in right as, uh, we went for too long, so I cut the first like 7-8 minutes and we went right into when we started talking about one battle after another versus sinners. So here that is right now.

I mean, it's been a long time. It's been 30 years of having this man in our lives and wanting the institutions to acknowledge how great he is at his job.

Well, the origins of— It could have happened for him with There Will Be Blood, and he just went against the buzzsaw with No Country for Old Men.

With No Country for Old Men, yeah.

Right? So the 2008 Oscars, And sometimes that happens, right? Like Sinners, I think in another year could have won all the major ones that they were up for, which is basically everything except for Best Actress.

That's his point about '75, right? I mean, '75, the year, the movie year for 1975 at the '76 Academy Awards. And, you know, those 5 movies, Barry Lyndon, Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and, um, Nashville. Nashville. Um, I mean, come on, like, 4 of those movies are gonna lose. And, you know, historically, I, I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest about a year ago.

Yeah.

Um, and, you know, the, the least— I mean, the least impressive of the 5, and saying that, like, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the least impressive movie of those 5 movies is a wild thing to say. And yet, like, that is the one that is perhaps least discussed, I guess, like, in these last 50 years, it's the one that's come up the least often, at least in my life. But Milos Forman, he's one of my— I love him. I mean, every single movie he made, pretty much, especially the Hollywood ones, are chef's kiss.

Well, we talk about— this happens in sports too. Sometimes a category is loaded. Sometimes you have an MVP in the NBA, and it's like, holy shit. A lot of guys this year. But then we also talk about distance, which is something we've been talking about in this podcast forever. Like, how will we remember it 5 years from now? Will we think the right movie won? Will we think the right director won? And stuff like that. This one, because it was one battle versus Sinners for months and months, and then it felt like Marty Supreme was going to nudge some stuff in there, basically because it came out last. Mm-hmm. This is something Sean had talked about, about just how late the Oscars were this year. And by the time we actually had it, it did feel like a lot of time since all of these movies came out, right? And it probably hurt Chalamet the most. But I do wonder 5 years from now what we're going to think should have won. Because I think there's people really strongly in both camps. You could feel it in the audience for the Oscars. Like, it felt like Sinners was by far the most popular movie in the room, but that doesn't mean anything.

Yeah, every nominee, like, you know, from the craft folks to, you know, Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler and the movie itself, you could feel— I mean, even that production number, right, when they did "I Lied to You" as part of the two songs that got performed during the show, you could feel the energy in that room for that performance. And it's not just because you had people— Like, there were too many great musicians on stage.

Right?

Raphael Sadiq and Brittany Howard and Rhiannon Giddens and Shaboozie. I'm not putting him in the great musician class yet, but, like, he's good at his job. You know, Chris Stone Kingfish Ingram was up there. Buddy Guy didn't even play. He just stood around. It just was— it was extremely impressive just to have those people up there kind of, like, contributing 5 seconds of music to this, you know, 90-second operation. But you could feel in the room that those people were at a concert, right? And they were reacting like they were seeing, you know, the people they were seeing on stage, on stage for free. Um, so yeah, I don't, I mean, 5, 10, 15, 50 years from now, I will say that one battle after another, and I don't know if this is, this feels like it might be true in your life too, Bill, given the amount of time that I know you've talked at least about Sinners. And almost certainly one battle after another. You live in Los Angeles, like a town that has such long— I don't know when to say ambivalent feelings about Paul Thomas Anderson, but you know, I mean, like the question always was, you know, who's going to make the next one studio-wise?

And are the movies going to make any money? And so I spent a year and change, almost a year now, talking about Sinner. I've never had the same conversation twice. And I don't imagine I'm going to have the same conversation in 5 years talking about Sinners. And one battle after another. I don't know. We should talk about this. I feel like, you know, of all PTA movies, this is perhaps the most, at least in my life, this is the most contested one. And it's the one where the contest, for me at least, feels like, like it, um, it just really sucks to have these arguments with people, movies against each other. Yeah, well, to pit those two movies against each other, but also the camp of people who really feel like One Battle After Another is just really doing Black women dirty. Yeah. And is operating on this continue— I mean, you and I have talked about this particular—

I thought it was the biggest flaw of the film question before.

Yeah. But see, I, the, the, my thing about what is going on in this movie is I think its best mode and perhaps the best way to understand it is like something adjacent to a cartoon, like a political cartoon. Right. And the question that I, that I, that I. The thing that excited me so much watching it that first time, which I'll never, ever forget, I just was so exhilarated and watched it in IMAX, and it looked so good and felt like it weighed 4,000 pounds, was the sheer fact of Teyonah Taylor as an elemental energy and a physical presence, right? I felt like he was giving a Black woman the treatment that he gives these white men in his movies.

He was—

He'd invented a character, and you know, Pynchon has a lot to do with this. Thomas Pynchon wrote Vineland, the movie that this movie— the book that this movie's based on. He came up with a character who is, in the world of this movie, a Black woman who has as much weirdness and complication and, like, wrongness as the white guys do. And that, that in the world of Paul Thomas Anderson is a form of— that is, that is equality. But then undergirding that is this— are these, are these questions of, like, just American politics. Forget, like, leftist, you know, white supremacist military industrial complex, but just like what the fundamental grimy roots of this country are all— the soil they're growing in. And without really having to hit that drum too hard after the first 33 minutes, you understand what the stakes are. And they don't have to be too specific about what the politics are. I never got hung up on the fact that these people believe in 4 things, and one of them is freedom from fucking fear. Yes. Amen. I didn't need— I didn't need more from that because I feel like this is a chase picture.

Yeah.

You know, chase— a Chase Infinity picture, a Chase picture between, you know, two white men for a Black woman. And, you know, let's go back to, you know, that's a 400-year-old American story. You know, I mean, I just kind of like the brazenness of it. I liked its disrespect, but I'm also— I'm so, um, I don't know, comfortable with, and at this point, um, here for, and really, I've absorbed all the critiques of this movie in light of the— in the light of the way I just laid out what I think is exciting and exhilarating about it. Because, you know, there's also— it's attached to this other history of how Black women have been represented in art, culture, and, you know, American commerce, if we're going back to, like, you know, 1865 and before. Hmm.

I thought both movies— you gave me a lot to work with there. When I left the theater, my biggest flaw with the movie, which I talked about after, was I was just— I was like, that person was a bad person. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I still don't understand why, why they killed the people at the bank.

Yeah.

That was like, that's— that crossed the line, right? And then basically dumps her kid, which is another terrible thing to do. And then there's this letter at the end that we're not even sure she wrote that tries to—

why aren't we sure she wrote that? I know we, we talked about this before, but do you have any more clarity on why?

But there's a theory that he wrote the letter, so to give the daughter closure, right? Um, okay. But listen, big picture, this— I felt the same way you did, like, in the theater, where I was like, this is just fucking cool. I'm just so glad there's a movie like this, which is the exact same way I felt about Sinners. And I think, I think the, the 2026, the big picture when we look back at this on the, on the year, is just like creative IP from scratch, right?

Yes, yes, yes.

Sinners is literally from scratch. One Battle is adapted from a book, but either way, like, just two wholly original movies.

Vineland, if you read Vineland, you're like, how did he find this movie?

Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying like, at least there was a germ of somebody else's idea. But just like how creative both those movies were, I think, I think it's pretty inspiring. And then you talk about a director that we've been on this three-decade odyssey with who finally has his moment, and then Coogler Who I would say probably has the highest approval rating of anyone in Hollywood right now. I don't think I've heard one bad thing about him. Everybody loves him. And he'll have his moment at some point and he'll have his PTA moment. I don't know when it'll be, but he'll be on the stage and people will lose their minds. But, uh, but two great ones and that now they're kind of linked in some weird way, I think.

Uh, yeah, I, I love, I mean, thank you for putting it that way cuz I do feel like these movies are talking to each other in some way. And I never felt good about them being pitted against each other. I know that that is the horse race nature of the way we think about the Academy Awards, but I don't know. I just really feel like the things, the events that unfold in Sinners have such, like, dimensionalizing— consequences for what happens in one battle after another. Right? I mean, you are— This is two movies about Black people in America and the forces that are trying to almost literally extinguish and expunge and absorb and rid white people of, or for white people to sort of capitalize off of. Of, in the case of Sinners. It's just, I don't know. I do feel great that these seem like the two movies that people were most enthusiastic about. And you could feel, just in the terms of the way the winners broke down, I don't remember exactly how many Sinners wound up with versus One Battle After Another, but it feels close to me.

Yeah.

But, you know, then there— I mean, can you talk about Sean Penn for a second?

Well, there's a lot of stuff to work with with Sean Penn. You know, I talked about with PTA doing that, doing basically the triple crown of movie director writing, which is Woody Allen, Robert Benton, James L. Brooks, Bong Joon-ho, and the Coens. And that's the entire list basically, right? So you have that. Yeah. You also have Sean Penn moving into 3 Oscars.

Was that Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson?

So Katie Hepburn with 4. I call her Katie.

That's how you roll.

No, Hepburn with 4. But yeah, the 3 Oscar club is not large. But you remember I wrote that, so I did that Oscars piece for ESPN Magazine in the late 2000s where I created the scoring system.

Oh yeah. Okay.

Basically to try to prove that Meryl Streep was by far using advanced metrics to, to prove that Meryl Streep was the greatest actor or actress of all time. And the scoring system was best actor, actress wins 7 points, nominations 3, best supporting Oscar wins. 3, and then supporting nominations, 1, right? And what was interesting about it, so Meryl Streep under the scoring system had 65, and, and Katharine Hepburn 52, and Jack Nicholson 40. Those were the 3 biggest. And what was interesting was getting to 20 was hard. There was like this weird cutoff with 20 where it was only Nicholson, Tracy, Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, Brando, Lemon, Denzel, Dustin Hoffman, 29, Newman, De Niro, Hanks, Peter O'Toole, Al Pacino, Leo now with 23, Gary Cooper, Frederick March, Anthony Hopkins, and now Sean Penn with 20.

So that's, Sean Penn's got 20.

That's less than 20 actors. And it's, and if you're thinking about, it's way harder to do this with actors than athletes. Be like, who's the greatest? Let's rank 'em. You can't do it. It's the eras are different. But it is a nice little list of. Kind of actors that mattered over the last 100-plus years, right?

And Sean Penn was right on the cusp, but now he's in there. Yeah, not one of those— I mean, it's funny because Sean Penn is probably the least likely to surface in a conversation that isn't among, you know, like, our little circle.

Right. Well, I also think with the— of the great actors, with the other actors, it seems like a lot of people felt like he was one of the guys. And that was the thing, even in the '80s and '90s, before he won an Oscar, like, that's one of the best actors we have. And he's always had that. But it felt like it went away the last 10 years, and he just was hitting a pretty weird point of his career.

I think he just made weird choices. He went back to directing these— I mean, I don't think the movies were inherently strange, but I mean, commercially speaking, I mean, he was never really interested in the box office. He was following his instincts, and some of those movies were—

Or just, you know, that Dakota Johnson, um, well, he had that one where he was an assassin taxi cab movie. It's just like he, he, he kind of didn't trust his taste anymore. At least I didn't. It was like, there's a new Sean Penn movie. And I'm like, all right, I don't, well, I don't know if I trust that it's going to be good.

He does have this side of him that kind of wants it. Like, that's the only way you can, I don't know how else you explain I Am Sam, right? A movie that we all agree it's okay to laugh at the execution of a thing that is also excrable as storytelling and filmmaking.

Well, let's say Simple Jack in Tropic Thunder was basically its ultimate destiny. It was such a ridiculous choice that it had to be parodied within a decade.

But I mean, it also— it said to me, because all these— all the great actors have that one performance where you're like, It's too much. You've gone too far. You want something too desperately. And sometimes going too far really does take you to the Academy Awards and put you on stage with an Oscar in your hand. I'm looking at you, Mr. Son of a Woman Al Pacino. But that is also a performance that comes, what, 10 years after the one that really breaks him, which is— which is Scarface. He does, um, he goes from, I think, Injustice for All.

Well, he has the great '70s. Yeah, it's Cruising, Arthur Arthur, and then Scarface.

And then Scarface. And I think Scarface is the one— I mean, he, Nicholson, and Dunaway all break at the same— like, they crack at the same time. Mommy Dearest comes out in '82. I want to say Scarface is '82, '83.

Yeah. 83.

And then it's '83, Scarface. And then The Shining is, is that's '80.

Yeah. Um, don't forget about De Niro kind of going sideways too during all this.

But you know, Bill, I have a scandalous feeling about that. I think Raging Bull is, is him cracking.

Yeah.

That's the thing that like, I mean, he wins an Oscar for it, but he's not the same after.

Well, there's also, he's a different actor. There's also massive amounts of cocaine going around in Hollywood. So anytime I look at, anytime I look at late '70s, through, like, about '86. I never know what's going on. It explains a lot of choices, a lot of the movies that were being made, a lot of the ups and downs of actors. Who knows?

I just love that, though— I mean, and we're not— The thing that we're losing is the ability to sort of have this conversation, right? Like, we cannot— I don't know who generationally— Like, Michael B. Jordan wins Best Actor.

Oh, I can't wait to talk about that.

But like, what are we— what does the equivalent of talking about a Faye Dunaway, Meryl Streep— I mean, and Faye Dunaway is just a person who I think was just one of the great '70s actors who, like, just shattered. She went— she went— she didn't go too close to the sun. She flew into the sun, right? And tried to come out the other side of it.

Tough.

In Mommy Dearest.

And a tough hang by all accounts.

Yeah, sure.

I think on the set, I think she was pretty tough to handle. And then Bobby Daris broke it, and then that was it. It got weird.

When those cameras rolled, wasn't nobody more willing to do whatever needed to be done. I still think Chinatown is one of the— Her performance in Chinatown is the— I don't know if I said this to you before. I feel like I've said this to you before.

What is it?

Maybe— I just think that that is the greatest psychological performance I think I've ever seen. I mean, maybe Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher is close. But Chinatown, it's just like she knows from the beginning of the performance what she's acting. But then she has to hold on to all of that. You know, she's keeping a secret from her— The character is keeping a secret from herself. The actor is keeping the character's secret while also keeping a secret from us. Nicholson, she has— she so wants to get caught and, like, unburden herself of this that she is willing to get involved with a fucking detective, right? She wants to get caught. And all of those things are in that performance every single scene. It is just the way she uses her hands, the, the fluttering that her mouth does, her eyes, the breathwork in the delivery of those lines. Oh my God, her death. Like, just what she looks like dead.

Oh my God.

It's just, it's just one of the greatest performances of all time, period. Well, who won that year?

Well, she—

was that Ellen Burstyn?

Yeah, she didn't win that year. That was Ellen Burstyn. It was, uh, yeah, Ellen Burstyn.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Okay. So I think, I think we're—

I love that performance, but—

Man, we're probably, we're probably doing that one over again 5 years later. Hope so. If that, that gets a redo.

But Ellen Burstyn is great in that movie though. That's the kind of thing you want to see actors all— this Ellen Burstyn in that movie, to me, I don't know how you feel about this. That's Chalamet in Marty Supreme.

Oh, explain. What do you mean?

Just like a really unpleasant person. Trying to live life, right? Like, I don't like that character. I know where she's coming from. I know where she's trying to get to, but she is so abrasive and so hard to, I guess, quote, root for, unquote. But the actor is delivering the thing that makes the character human, and the human part is unlikable. This is a desperate, narcissistic woman whose dreams might not ever come true. And what you're watching Ellen Bernstein play is just the anger of those dreams failing, but also, like, loving this kid and letting this man into her life. But, you know, 'cause it's Kris Kristofferson, you better let him in. But also, what does it mean to have him there? Anyway, I don't know.

Do you like that performance? Well, the Oscars loves those kind of characters, right? Nicholson won with that, with As Good As It Gets. Same thing. Horrible guy, and now I'm starting to like him by the end of this.

Like, they, they love this. I hate that movie.

I know you do. No, you hate that. We've, we've discussed in the past. The greatest thing about the Alice movie is that it led to the CBS sitcom Alice with Linda Lavin and Vic Tayback. It's one of the weirdest movie versus TV show adaptations we've had. But '75 is a good example because that was when Art Carney won for Harry and Tonto and beat Pacino in Godfather Part II, which was one of the great performances of the last 60 years. And then Faye Dunaway doesn't win for Chinatown either. But this is what happens. I do wonder, it's a really tough one because I thought Chalamet was great. Marty Supreme. It's also a movie I probably don't ever want to see again. It's, it's, it was a one-timer for me. Now what's interesting is I've only seen One Battle once, and I'm not positive I'll see it again at some point, but I haven't been racing back to see it. But I've seen Sinners 4 times.

Interesting.

So I don't know whether rewatchability like affects some of this stuff with great movies. Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it does. But with, uh, Marty Supreme, he's so great in it. But I, you know, I, I thought that movie was He just kind of needed to take a shower after. It was a lot.

I think that's why it didn't— I think, you know, something happened with that movie and its response, and the response to it. And I think what you're identifying is something like what people felt. You know, I— You know, we did an episode of Cannonball on the reaction to that movie. And part of that conversation that I had with Sasha Weiss was just like, reading the comments that got filed on Manohla Dargis' review of the movie. And, you know, she loved it. And the comments were like, "You are out of your mind." "That is the least pleasant time I've had at a movie ever." "I didn't finish it. I walked out." "He is a reprehensible character. Why are we cheering this asshole?" And I think that, you know—

It's a little like One Battle with what we talked about earlier with that character. "Why am I cheering for this person?" Yeah, but the thing about One Battle After Another is I'm talking about the Teyana Taylor character.

Yeah, yeah. But Porfidia, I mean, Porfidia is still the, is still the mother of, of Charlene slash Willa, right? So the person you're really rooting for there is, is Charlene. Um, so I feel like the, the thing about, the thing that makes Marty Supreme great is also the thing that makes people hate it.

Well, it's a 1950s ping pong movie set in New York, and, you know, it's heavily Jewish, which I'm sure, like, affected some people's thoughts of this Holocaust movie.

Yeah, it's like such a Holocaust flex.

It's, it's, uh, and there's some crazy ping pong CGI stuff. Like, I can see why people are like, the fuck is going on here?

Um, I also think I liked it, though, the way that they sold that movie I think people went thinking it was gonna be like a, like a cute— I think the ping pong confused people, right?

I think people really thought it was gonna be like, yeah, like he's just like doing a tour. Um, now it's— it was yet another movie that was super creative and had an insane performance at the center of it that was like, wow, I haven't seen anything like this in a while. I just— I said this at the time. We did a really long rewatch of All About Sinners. I thought, uh, I thought what MBJ did in that movie, I just couldn't believe how good he was. And I, I don't want to say I didn't know he had it in him, but I had kind of reached a point where I wasn't sure he had it in him. And, uh, I thought that the subtleties between the two twins, though, kind of that '70s macho that he had to have, um, I thought the accent worked. I thought that ending, which I just, I just loved the ending of that movie, and I thought he was so good in that final scene.

The epilog or the epilog?

I love the epilog.

Um, yeah, I love the epilog too. But I love the epilog.

I just thought he was so good. And I, and it was a classic, like it was like watching when you have like an NBA player who toils away for 10 years and finally wins the title. That's how it felt watching it. You know, it was like, oh, he did it. He put it together. He did it.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, that is the metaphor that I used in some. So I, you know, I watched him with Sean and Amanda win that, you know, SAG Award.

Yeah.

Um, and you know, there was that image of him like looking at, like, just looking down at the floor with his hands on his head. And I don't just, that really stuck with me. And you know, it's like an image that got like, that was used to stand in for the rest of the acceptance speech.

And to sort of be a metaphor for how we all felt about him winning, was just like, "Whoa!" Well, even having Landry from Friday Night Lights in the front row and him doing this, like, MBJ has been an important part of pop culture for this entire century. Like, you go to how important he was the first season of The Wire, he's in Friday Night Lights, which was this beloved show that people felt like— This whole generation of people felt like they saved it. It was gonna get canceled. They saved it. And then he became a big part of the Renaissance. And then, you know, Fruitvale, which is a really— I actually watched Fruitvale this week.

Oh, did you?

And I forgot how good it was. I hadn't seen it in a while. It's not, it's not a movie you're gonna watch 20 times. 'Cause it's, it's just so—

It's hard.

It's so hard to watch. So then with Fruitvale goes right to Creed. Resuscitates the Rocky franchise, right? And, and that was one of those things where it's like, oh, I'm rooting for these guys with Fruitvale guys. I hope— I can't wait. Had them on the podcast. Can't wait to see what's next for these guys. Then it's like, oh shit, they're doing Creed. Like, what's going on?

Did you think that was weird at the time?

I was worried about it.

Yeah.

I was worried the same way I feel about the Miami Vice remake and Heat 2 now, where it's like, Obviously, I hope this works, but are we sure, guys?

I mean, the Miami Vice remake. Woo-hoo! By the way—

well, and he's going to be in that, by the way. But it's just like, he just has found a way to permeate culture over and over again. But I never— I thought that ship might have sailed on the Oscar for him. It felt like he was moving into, like, kind of where Jamie Foxx ended up in the 2010s, like action movies, maybe a couple dramas, maybe some fun cameos, but Could he carry a movie and be a best actor? I didn't know.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I, well, what year is the, I mean, I don't wanna get hung up on Jamie Foxx, but like The Soloist, whatever year The Soloist, I guess The Soloist is in the 2010s. It was in that great, he had a great 2000, he had a sort of great 2000s, right?

Yeah.

Um, that includes, I think, one of the best performances of the 21st century, which is like him in The Soloist. That's a, and Downey is great in that movie too. Um, and it's, you know, Joe Wright at the, at his, at, at his peak Joe Wrightness. Um, I like Joe Wright. I don't know. That movie is very moving. If you've never seen The Soloist, it's got two slam dunk performances in it, and it's got such good imaginative filmmaking from Joe Wright. Um, and you know, it came and went. It, it's one of those movies. It wasn't trying to win any Oscars, came out in April or March or something. Hmm.

Well, you know the thing with MBJ? So the way he— and he'd been doing press for this movie for a fucking year, right? Just sitting in a seat. But he did a really good job of just kind of played it close to the vest. You don't really— didn't have any damaging quotes or some weird anecdotes.

He's just not going to sink anything. But go on.

He was just getting first downs, just moving the chains. And, and Chalamet, and I don't think this was really 100% fair to him, but he, it felt like he's been promoting shit for a year and a half.

Yeah.

And he's just been on The President. He's involved with one of the Kardashians, which the people have a feeling about that. The movie was polarizing. Then he had a couple dopey interview moments, and at some point he hit that really rare fuck that guy potential, which happens sometimes where people kind of go, fuck that guy. But nobody's like that with MBJ. So I do think that helps.

No, it's the opposite. It's the opposite, actually. I think his humbleness really— I mean, or at least the perception of his being humble.

He's really like that, though.

Yeah. I mean, I'll never forget him talking whenever he came on your show when Was it, was it before Creed?

He came on 2013. He came on, he came to my house in 2015. So it wasn't even Creed? No, he came the second. I had him 3 times in like 6 years.

When was the first time?

2013. He came to the Greyland Studios.

Okay.

And that was pretty dope. And by the way, I coached him at the Celebrity All-Star Game too. And he was like, we're basically trying to get him the ball. Kevin Hart just was ball hogging.

Shocker.

But he— the, the couple interesting things with him just growing up, he was Wallace forever. Like for a decade he was Wallace, but he also had the Michael Jordan thing. It's like Michael Jordan, Michael B. Jordan. So you're not as good as my— and that Michael Jordan thing really hung over him the first 10 years of his career because just because of his name. I don't feel like he shed it until Fruitvale. I think when the Fruitvale thing was just incredibly important for him in a whole bunch of different ways. And it's a really important movie, you know? And you think, like, that movie happens, what, 7 years before George Floyd, whatever. But it was—

but it comes out at the same time basically as Trayvon Martin, right?

And it's a pivotal movie for a lot of reasons, but it was pivotal for him because it was like, oh, shit, Wallace, Vince from Friday Night Lights, the guy from Parenthood. Like, you know, just to note, Parenthood.

I forgot about that.

Um, but he broke through all of it, and now he's minted.

You know, I had a whole little— I really believe this. I don't know if I should be ashamed of myself for, like, having this feeling, but I feel like that B is doing a lot now, and I never think about Michael Jordan I never think about 23. No. Ever, ever, ever. I don't think about him at all. I think about that B as being like an action verb. You know? Like, that is— Oh, yeah.

Like a verb.

Yeah. Michael B. Jordan.

Yeah.

Like, it's just something— it's a sentence to me.

Right.

And I just— he's such a fun— even, you know, like, Yeah, I would not have voted for him for Best Actor. I just wouldn't have, because I'm really not— I'm so much less about my feelings when it comes to these things. Who would you have voted for? I would have gone Wagner Moura, Timothée Chalamet, although I would have probably gone back and forth between Chalamet and Wagner Moura in the secret agent. But those would have been my top 2 options. And I know that DiCaprio, you know, I woke up like this. I feel like he kind of can do these things in his sleep. But he did a version of the same thing in Killers of the Flower Moon, and it was terrible, right? He was not good in that movie. And he's got such control over the material here in One Battle After Another. I also think he's better directed in One Battle After Another, which is a wild thing to say about Martin Scorsese directing DiCaprio because, you know, that relationship.

Right.

But I just think that the comedy of this movie is what he could lean into. And there's so— that the comedy in One Battle After Another is so elastic that it just gives all the things that DiCaprio is good at someplace to go. Like, I think that that stretch from when he gets to, um, uh, Sergio Sancarlos's— Benicio del Toro's, um, um, karate studio to the moment that he gets caught, um, with the taser falling off the roof. And his— the way he performs that being tased is up there with the, with the, with the Quaalude crawl from the house to Lamborghini in Wolf of Wall Street. Right? That's just such a good— the physical comedy dimension of how he plays Pat/Bob in One Battle After Another. I'm not gonna say it's underrated, but it's a huge part of what makes that performance really good. Anyway, I would've gone Wagner Moura, Timothée Chalamet, probably DiCaprio, and then Michael B. Jordan, 'cause I'm not crazy about Blue Moon. I hate to say it. I do not love that movie. And I feel like Ethan Hawke is kind of, like, trapped in the gimmick. In the shrinking, in this, in this short man gimmick.

Yeah.

Um, I just didn't feel the tragedy of that story or even like the sadness of it.

I, I had Chalamet and BJ basically like 55-45, and I'm not even sure which way. Like, in your ballot, like, if I— in the odds, I think I would have voted for Chalamet ultimately, but I would have agonized over it for 3 weeks because I, I just thought It almost have to— and this isn't fair to do this— what's a harder performance? And both of them were so hard. Hard.

Yeah, those are hard performances.

First of all, playing twins that are different but not too different, but definitely different where you could tell them apart. And what some of the choices Jordan made with that, I thought were— it was— I thought that stood out. But Chalamet, that's just an insane movie. I don't I don't know how many actors could have even made that movie work. And that, so I think I'd think I probably would have landed on Chalamet, but I would have loved to see somebody try with Michael B.

Jordan. I think Michael B. Jordan might have a Marty Mauser in him somewhere.

Maybe.

I would love to see him. I would love to like let, but that's a really, I mean, Michael Jordan, Michael B. Jordan's 39. Timothée Chalamet's 30.

Well, he's, did you see his age difference? 3 Oscar nominations already before 30. It's like. About as rare as it gets. I, I do wonder if Chalamet just goes to New Zealand to film a movie. Let's say he's filming Dune 3 in friggin Dubai, wherever, and he's just gone the entire promotion season. And I know they needed him to promote this stuff, and that was a big part of the movie itself, is that they had to blow this out and do all these like outside the box things to get people to go see a 1950s ping pong movie. But I do wonder, and it worked, right? It worked.

Yeah.

I do wonder if he's just gone, like Leo style, where he's just out.

Can you do that and still be with a Jenner Kardashian though? Is that possible?

Maybe not.

I don't think that's how that works.

Maybe he's wearing Chrome Hearts suits at Knicks games. Like, this is just— so I don't— but what's happened here now is now he's moved into the you have to escape the fuck this guy area. And you evolve out of it, and then people are like, "Oh, I like this guy again." This is the Ben Affleck Argo scenario.

Well, okay, this is where I like— this is why I came here.

Yeah.

Listen, let's just talk about what his life looks like if nothing changes personally, right? Because on the one hand, this guy is in a really shitty position. He is doing— he is the only person at his level of actorly fame doing the thing that we complain— we like plebeians complain nobody does anymore. Nobody gives— nobody's just like telling the publicist to go in the other room while I do an interview. Nobody's like just hanging around for some internet content for somebody who needs it.

Nobody's promoting stuff the right way. It's like that we talk about tennis players and golf and golfers this way. Why are these guys aren't interesting? They need to be more interesting. And then he was actually interesting and people are like, this guy.

Yeah, I just feel like, do you want Taylor Fritz to be your movie star, or do you want this Timothée Chalamet? Taylor Fritz, by the way, for people who aren't paying attention, is a very sleepy, uh, tennis player who's good at his job but is also something you bounce a basketball off.

What about— what about everybody on the women's side right now?

Sabalenka.

I mean, I'm—

you mean tennis-wise or acting-wise?

Tennis-wise.

I mean, Sabalenka is fun. I mean, she says some crazy shit and she doesn't apologize. Well, sometimes she'll apologize for it, but she speaks her mind. She's—

I don't know. I've never had a Sabalenka conversation with anybody at dinner. Hey, what do you think of Sabalenka? It's never happened.

All right, fair. But I'm just saying, if y'all want to talk about a very fiery tennis player who's great at her job, Aryna Sabalenka is there for you.

Have I told you my Serena theory, by the way, before? I'm going to interrupt you and then keep going.

Oh no, go on.

That would be my number one draft pick for a pro sports thing, would for her to come back right now. Oh man, it would be so compelling. I'd be so into it. What would be more fun? Just come back. Just come back to us.

Doing this to ourselves.

Just come back. Do this. Just come back. You know she can do it. What would be more fun? It would, you know, like if Tom Brady came back, it would be like, this is terrible. Please don't do this. If Serena came back, I'd be like, what time is she playing?

But first of all, what an insult to the rest of the field. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say that.

Yeah.

Whether it turns out to be true, whether you could be right, right? Like she does get to the quarter semis and finals of events that she enters.

It's the greatest tennis player of all time.

Yes. Sure. But you know what she's not out there doing every day that Elena Rybakina is doing every day? Right.

Just hitting forehands for 5 hours.

She's just playing tennis every day.

Yeah, I know. That's what would be so compelling. Anyway, I interrupted you.

I, I just, I don't, I don't, I can't, like, it's hard enough watching Venus lose in the first round 5 times a year.

So you're still, so you're pro Chalamet because he's interesting and I, I completely agree. But I also think he was, I think he was in the limelight for too long, and I'm not the first person to make that point. Sometimes people— you can burn people out on your persona.

I also don't love the Wigger thing that he was on for, you know, getting Marty Supreme rolled out, right? Like, he was doing that thing that makes everybody, you know, anybody who's attuned to, like, you know, our minstrel past, he was very comfortable sort of fucking with that. And it wasn't in a knowing way. I mean, I guess it was knowing, but it wasn't— He was leaning into and not questioning or challenging this thing. He was daring us to notice and comment on it. And that didn't feel great. But at the same time, again, like, he is doing— He is the kind of star that we say we want to have. And, you know, I think it is polarizing in a lot of ways, but, you know, I, my coffee girl, Chloe, you know, one of the coffee shops I go to in New York City, you know, Chloe, nothing is going to break her from her tinted glasses.

I like that you name-dropped Chloe like we knew who this was.

Chloe at Culture Coffee. Chloe at Culture Coffee. I mean, if y'all know, you know, I mean, the, the third, the Culture on 38th and 6th. Like, she— there's nothing— she is worried about this relationship with, with, with the, you know, him going into the Jenner-Kardashian family.

How can he not be? Like, imagine this is my son, be like, yeah, so he's dating one of the Kardashians. You'd be like, what's he doing? Why?

I mean, but I think that that is part of— I mean, it— we know the story that it just doesn't— it doesn't always end well for the people who go in there.

Oh, really? Is that what you've been hearing? Listen, I think this is ultimately, from a career-wise, from a career standpoint, this is great for him. Big picture. 20 years from now, we will look back and we'll think like, this is awesome. You needed, you needed to get punched in the chin a couple of times. This happens in sports. This happens in movies all the time. We've seen the greats. Sometimes it's good to get a black eye and have a broken tooth and then bounce back from it.

I really love the way he entered the Dolby Auditorium. I don't know if you caught any of the red carpet stuff, but I did not see him stop and talk to anybody.

Well, he was walking to his assassination, basically. Like, he knew it was going to be one of the worst nights of his life.

He was going into a roast. He certainly had, I'm gonna get roasted energy, and he looked like Kevin Richardson from the Backstreet Boys.

Yeah.

You know, but he, he had some real, like, I'm gonna get Rickled, I'm gonna get Rickled energy going in there. He was strolling real hard.

He'll be fine. He's a great actor and, uh, good things will happen to him.

Yeah.

I, I told you I thought Jesse Buckley had the best performance. Male or female of this century, and you, you made a noise. You didn't really like that take.

I didn't.

I mean, you didn't— you weren't in the handnet. You're just not an emotional guy.

Oh, have you met me? Stop. Uh, I think that— I think the problem that I had with that performance is I just didn't understand why the movie existed, and I sort of felt like it was an acting exercise in search of a reason to be.

I liked it.

And then the end comes, and like many other people, although I know a lot of people who got emotional at the end and were furious that it made them emotional. But the end really works. And, you know, I think that it's got to be said, Bill, like, that is maybe the greatest birth scene. Like, I mean, I know Vanessa Kirby also has a really tough one.

You feel like it's actually happening.

Yeah, that is a really— I don't know how you— there's some things I don't know how you act. And giving birth is just one of those things where I'm just like, wow.

Well, there's also been some really bad versions of it too, which, you know, sure.

But I mean, they usually don't take place in a forest.

Hamnet. Hamnet for an hour, 20 minutes taking place in a forest. For an hour and 20 minutes, you're like, what the fuck with this movie?

Yes.

What the hell? And then all of a sudden— but all of a sudden— but this is— I think you have to— the last 20 to 25 minutes are so good, you just don't even remember the first hour 20. It's like it turns into like, you're like, is this the greatest movie I've ever seen? And you just forgive the rest of it.

Bill, so you're saying what I'm saying?

Yeah.

You're just also loving the movie because you expunged the first hour 20.

I thought the ending, the whole last stretch was so good. I didn't care that I was mad at the first part.

Once she leaves to go to the theater, I'm like, okay, when she said in the theater, it was great.

Uh, best Oscars in memoriam ever. It took them forever to figure out how to do this.

What do you think took them so long?

I don't know. I, I just think, I, I think it took them forever to understand This is one of the only parts of the show where everybody's like, I didn't realize he died. I didn't realize she died. Oh, I love that person. Like, you could almost put this as an actual TV show, and I think it would get ratings.

Okay, so you're a genius at that sort of thing. I don't know what you're talking to me for right now when you could be writing a pitch.

It's just like, here's our in memoriam for the year death show. But the, the Rob Reiner thing, the only thing they fucked up And I was so happy they did that. And obviously one of the worst Hollywood stories we've had. They did a great job. Billy Crystal was awesome. Didn't break. Introduced—

he was gonna and he didn't—

never broke because he's a pro. They show all these people from the movies.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's like 4 seconds. Like, you bet. We— I, I just— I was like, can we sit with this for 5 minutes? Like, we have— you know how long Next, I was just about to say it.

I was been waiting for to see Daphne Zuniga at the Academy Awards.

What are we doing? I want to see all these people one at a time. I was— I just couldn't— they like quickly skipped over it. And like Meg Ryan was out there. I don't— I'm not even sure all the people that were out there.

I don't even know.

Michael Douglas out there? I don't even know. I don't know.

I don't know. It's a great question. I mean, there's— was Danny DeVito?

I don't I don't know.

Oh wait, did they do it?

Did— uh, no, they didn't.

No, they didn't.

He has no reason to be there.

No, no filmography reason.

Like, I thought I saw Fred Savage. I'm like, why is Fred Savage out there?

Oh, interesting. Was like patinking.

I, I don't know, but I don't know, but I thought that was great. I thought they did. I really liked that. So they go through half of the memoriam, and then Rachel McAdams comes out and does like a whole Diane Keaton thing. I'm like, great choice, good job. Way to talk about some of the best females. They go through that, and then they end with Streisand, which on the one hand was almost like watching one of our parents try to speak. It was like, oh, God, I hope this goes well. And obviously she doesn't have the voice anymore, but it was weirdly touching because she meant it.

Yeah, because she meant it.

I would add Jane Fonda out there with her. Actually, I thought Jane Fonda and her should have been together for that.

Did you see Jane Fonda? What she said?

Well, she was joking, but it was one of those, I'm not totally joking.

Yeah.

I don't know. She was like, I made 4 movies for them.

I read it in Spanish, so my Spanish is not good enough to pick up on the nuances of sarcasm, but it just seemed like she was saying, I read it in El País. So I'm not sure. I mean, the sarcasm might've been lost on me, but it seemed like she—

No, Fonda. Fonda had to be out there.

Um, yeah, I think she should have. I don't— I wonder what happened. I wonder how they asked, who they asked, when they asked them.

We know what happened. Streisand's like, I'm only doing it if it's me. Oh, interesting. I'm, I'm not sharing the stage with anyone. It's got to be all me.

Yeah. I just kind of loved how, like, she just, she just like woke up and was at the, at the at the theater ready to do this.

You know what else I love? It tied into one of my other favorite things. When somebody who's old, who had an awesome, incredible career, still carries themselves like they were just as famous as they were 50 years ago. Yes. And I mean that as a compliment, not an insult.

It's—

I just know my mom always has this theory. My mom's had this theory forever that somebody who is beautiful at like age 18 carries themselves like that for the rest of their life, no matter what they look like when they're 60. And it's the same thing with famous people. If you hit a level of fame that you're just that way your whole life, like, I'm sure Faye Dunaway, before she died, when— I think she's dead.

No, don't put that out there.

Faye Dunaway alive?

Yes, she is.

I'm sure Faye Dunaway right now, if you met her, would be carrying herself like one of the biggest stars in the world. I just think You almost like have to buy into it to be that famous.

Yes.

I, you know, you're purchasing it. You don't, you don't lose it.

This is like, you know, I mean, I like to talk to people about this. And if I had a different show that I was doing where I was just having people on and talk about how old they feel, you know, Max Linsky had a great show called, um, 70 Over 70. And it was just like, like people of note over the age of 70. Talking about what it's like to be the age they are. And I am like, one of the things that comes up on that show is like, how old do you feel you are? And I think a lot about like, what is the age that you are going to feel when you're 85 years old? Mine is 32. I have felt 32 since I was 27. And what's yours, Bill?

How do I feel right now?

No, I mean, how do you, what's your spiritual age? Like, what do you, 44. How old do you feel as a, as a person?

44. 'Cause I can't play basketball anymore. Okay. I mean, I probably could. That's a great answer. I would just get hurt.

That's a great answer. Like, but when you think of yourself, you think of yourself as a 44-year-old.

Yeah. 'Cause I'm, okay. I'm still, I'm still locked in.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so fun.

I think that Barbra Streisand, I wonder what she would say her age is. Like, I wonder what she would say. Is she, is she like the 19-year-old girl who got discovered singing at the Bonsoir in the Village? You know, or, I mean, she was younger than 19, I think. Um, like what age? I think that, you know, Jane Fonda is also one of these people. How old does Jane Fonda think she is?

Um, I guarantee she feels— she still probably feels like she's a hot 42-year-old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that she probably is still doing workouts, workout videos. Um, and I think that like for movies, I just think it's really important. Like Denzel, I think Denzel still thinks he's 25.

Oh, you could see that in the Spike movie.

Yeah.

I think that was a performance that he's probably 10 years too old to do. And he's like, fuck it. Is there a chase scene? I'm in.

I mean, and it really, it can sometimes go bad, right? It can sometimes ruin movies. But I mean, a lot of the time it brings out something really interesting and special. I think that's the thing that I love watching about Denzel now is that even when the movie is bad, or like he is even bad in the movie, he's committed to whatever it is he has decided to do in front of those cameras. And it is youthful.

Yeah.

And like, the youthfulness of it is really powerful.

You know, we have, uh, it's CR month on the Rewatchables. I'm sorry you weren't part of it.

These movies. Yeah, I just finished To Live and Die in LA, a movie I will tell y'all, y'all are gonna kill me. I've never watched it. So I watched, you know, I mean, one of the great things about the show is I'll just listen to episodes.

I mean, I've seen it, not even have it set up.

Yeah. I mean, well, now I— that's— this is one of the ones where like I watched it, couldn't believe I've never seen it, forgot freaking had directed it, listened to you guys talk about it, and was like, I cannot wait to smoke this movie.

Well, so next week we have, uh, we did The Nice Guys, and one of the things I brought up was Ryan Gosling's— not to step on the rewatchables, but we Ryan Gosling's 2016. He is the nice guys in La La Land. And I was saying how one of the awards I would love to have in the Oscars is just the MVP for the movie year, like how we do in sports.

Yeah.

And it could be a movie, it could be director, it could be a writer, it could be anybody, but like, who is the most impactful? And it would kind of be shaded toward if you did at least 2 movies that were consequential in different ways for some reason, or somebody that just owned the year. So I think for this year, if we did the MVP, I think it would be PTA because of what he does. The, the, the 3 awards he wins for that movie, which, as we discussed, not a long list for that. Also gets Sean Penn, um, an Oscar. Um, another great Leo movie, Chase Infinity.

He basically The money.

The money. The money that it makes and will continue to make. And then some of the stuff it did for some of the actors in the movie. And then the Benicio Del Toro gets nominated, Teyonah Taylor, the impact of it on all these different careers, plus how it did. I think he's probably the MVP, but I wanted to talk it out.

Yeah, I think— oh, I like that. I feel like I think it's hard to argue in that, you know, I don't know when the— I don't know when in like the NBA, for instance, when this— when— I mean, it always seems in the NFL that it's just statistics that determine it. It's not like feelings.

Yeah, NBA, it's weird because NBA is regular season. So I always thought there should be an award, like a playoffs MVP, but movies are easy because it's just like 2025. Who, it's basically who owned the year.

Well, but what I'm saying is, what I'm actually asking is, in your evaluation of Paul Thompson, I mean, you did not introduce this, so I'm assuming it's inadmissible. Yeah. But the idea that—

Oh, do the Oscars have to tie into it somehow?

No, it's the opposite. Does there have to be— is there a history that you can take into consideration when making your choice? Right? Like, do you think about the fact that it's taken PTA this long to get the MVP?

I think part of it's narrative. Part of it is—

he's even been one of the 3 finalists for an MVP. Do you know what I mean? Like, he's never even been to this dance before in, in the, in the way that he's been there.

Yeah. So if you did '07, that gets really hard because you could say that Daniel Day-Lewis, that's one of the great performances of all time. Yes. Or you could say, yo, the Coen brothers. This is their whole career was leading up to this, and they've completely resuscitated Josh Brolin. And what they did to Javier Bardem and create one of the great villains of all time, and they— Cormac McCarthy and Tommy Lee Jones, it's like this exclamation point in his career. And they're probably the MVPs of that year. But, and by the way, this is completely stupid. I'm fully aware. Like, this— I'm sure there's movie nerds like, this is the worst thing I've ever heard. Shoot me. Don't do this to me. But it's a, it's a fun idea. Like kind of who won the year.

It's kind of an interesting idea, right? I mean, like there was the year Sandra Bullock was definitely the MVP. I think it was the next year, wasn't it?

No, maybe it was like for Blind Side.

2009. Yeah.

I mean, she had Blind Side, which she taught us how to think about race.

The, well, yes, of course. I mean, I can be a better, better Black mother than this man, than Michael Orr's Black mother.

Never really considered all the stuff that movie made me consider before.

But I mean, you know, The Proposal and The Blind Side and the way that like it completely kind of changed our understanding of what it was that Sandra Bullock could be in late, like sort of mid-late career.

It's a great point. Uh, I love, not only did you embrace my idea, but you came up with an awesome MVP season. The Sandra Bullock to do the rom-com. Win the Oscar. She's also hot in The Blind Side. Like, it's kind of like MILF Hall of Fame. It's in that she really like graduated into this like different level of whatever and this sass. And I— nobody knew she had it in her.

That was the other great thing about that thing, right? Like, because the, the thing that makes like her year, for instance, really interesting is that you just didn't think of her in all the ways that you were sort being allowed to think of her, which is as— well, I think the sass without having to sort of suffer for it.

The sexy sass, right? So we had Inglourious Basterds that year, and we had Avatar, we had The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow won picture and director.

Yeah, Cameron, that's a, that's a big one.

And, and she beat her ex-husband Which was a fun one. So she would've gotten, she would've definitely been in a finalist.

She would've been a finalist.

Yeah.

But I mean, I think that that's Sandra Bullock's.

That's not, that's not, see, this is a fun exercise. The MVP. Yeah. So I think PTA was the MVP, but I'm willing to accept other, I mean, the other, the other candidates include Coogler. Coogler, a hundred percent. Who would've been like, if it's just the MVP, I mean, you could argue with the Coogler, you could argue the Case. Part of his case would be the movie reverting back to him 25 years later.

Ooh. And yeah, that's a good one.

Which is that he's not the first one that came up with that, but also like what that movie meant to Warner Brothers too.

Uh, right. Yeah.

What it meant to Michael B. Jordan. Yeah. It's a good battle. It's a good one. By the way, we mention this every time we talk about the Oscars dating back to when we were at Grantland together. And even we did an Oscars preview, I think. Was that on ABC or ESPN?

Uh, I don't—

right before I got suspended.

I think it ran on both.

That was right, right before I left. It was right before I left. Um, when we did, we did that whole, uh, Oscars preview that year, and there was a reason I brought this up, because we were— we had all these like fake goofy awards for it. Yes, that were super fun. They did add the Best Casting this year, which I enjoyed, and it made me wonder, are we gonna start Cause I still feel like Best Young Star should be an Oscar. And I know they've talked about this on The Big Picture too, like under a certain age. I don't know if Chasity Finney, she might be one of those who's a little older than people realize.

She might be. I don't know. Like, it depends on what your cutoff is. Is it 16 is your cutoff?

No, that's, that's—

you want older?

And I'd probably go under 18.

Under— oh, under 18.

That's fine. Chasity Finney was older than that. Obviously, or you could have the breakthrough star Oscar, like somebody, but I guess that would be— yeah, see, they, they could get complicated.

Like Noah Jupe, the— I think it's Noah Jupe, the kid from, from Hamnet. He, he's probably your winner.

Would you have pet Oscars or no?

Oh, come on, Bill.

No. Can you imagine like Hooch, Hooch getting robbed in Turner and Hooch? Some other, some other animal won.

Sorry, Hooch, I don't know what to tell you.

Hooch, you did too much campaigning.

All the animals now are CGI anyway. Like, I don't even know what the real animal is. You'd have to prove that you used an actual living animal, which then creates all these moral and ethical concerns in your use of the animal. I don't think it's worth it.

So does Chalamet win an Oscar in the next 5 years?

Ooh.

I mean, it's funny because I was going to ask you how many more Michael B. Jordan— how many more nominations Michael B. Jordan has.

Oh, I, I think a couple more. I mean, he's in that stage now, and the Oscars does— they do make you earn it a little bit. They— you had to have been around.

I mean, Bradley Cooper— think about the people that do not have Academy Awards after like X number of years.

But what would Bradley Cooper have won for?

I'm not saying he was robbed, I'm just saying—

Wedding Crashers.

Oh, come on. Although he was—

that's like amazing.

There is a sneaky supporting—

oh, there you go. That's— so should there be an Oscar for comedy and should there be an Oscar for horror? Should they just add those? And would you turn the TV off when they were awarding them?

I would not.

I personally would not.

If we are talking about going down this really bad idea route, no, because you know, it's true, there were no comedies, there were no Best Picture nominees that were like pure comedies this year for the most part. I mean, really at all. I mean, K-Pop Demon Hunters is the funniest movie I saw last year and not nominated for any of the top awards. Um, original screenplay. What is wrong with y'all? Um, but I think that one of the interesting things to think about is I don't want a genre category that leave the, like, bring back the MTV Movie Awards for that. But what I do think would be interesting, Bill, is removing the genders from the acting categories.

Oh, wow.

I think it— I think we gotta call these people's bluff.

See, I don't—

call the industry's bluff.

You're losing too much history with that, though. I think that's the only answer.

I think you're creating new history. We're creating new history.

Yeah, that's a brain breaker for me.

I just think we gotta try it. We gotta try it because at least then we will know something about this organization, cuz it's not like it's the Oscars. It's not like people— I mean, I'm sure there would be industry people who would hear a statement like this and be like, have you really thought this through? But I'm just saying like, it's not like the Oscars doing it costs work.

So who would've won if it was just one actor Oscar? I think Jesse Buckley would've won. Jesse Buckley would've won. Oh, I remember what I was gonna say when I brought up that Grantland thing. Because if you notice, I pivoted beautifully, but I actually—

Yes, I thought you remembered.

No, we've been talking about this for ever since we've been talking about the Oscars, not knowing the votes. And this is a William Goldman thing. He would talk about it all the time. At least the numbers. It would have been amazing if Chalamet lost by like 5 votes.

Oh man.

Can you imagine?

I think Sinners probably lost by 5 votes.

By the time we got to the weekend, everyone thought Sinners was going to win.

Yeah, I mean, I'm telling you, if they'd had another week, I think— I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. We could have found— we could find out that Frankenstein came in second.

Well, there were, you know, there were too many awards. There were too many award shows in general. I said this to Sean last week.

You mean leading up to the Oscars?

Too many awards. And the Oscars, it was too late. It shouldn't be like right before March Madness. That's fucking crazy. Put this in February. It's like, let's get the year done and move on.

Well, I can tell you what does happen if you do that. Michael B. Jordan is not a Best Actor winner. I think people turned against Marty Supreme. We kind of talked about that. And I also think it took people a second to really understand, including me, honestly, what it was that Michael B. Jordan was doing for that movie. Because the movie is so good that it doesn't even need him to be as good as it turns out he is. Right? Like we, you, me, and Van talked about this movie. We made it an instant rewatch. You made it an instant rewatchables. And I, you invited me and Van to come talk about it. I, what did we say? Who won the movie? There were only two options.

Who won the movie? We said Coogler because we said Coogler, but partly because of that crazy deal he did and just how insane it is that he created this movie from scratch and got people to go see it. If you actually like, do the one sentence of, this is a vampire movie set in the 1930s. Like, it's like the degree of difficulty was like a 9.95, but the Marty Supreme degree of difficulty was also high.

I was just about to say, it did not need Michael B. Jordan to go out here and act a fool to try to get people to come see the movie, right?

Right.

The way Marty Supreme needed Timothée Chalamet to do some interesting stuff to try to lure, put some butts in some seats.

Well, next year's, next year's Oscars is gonna be A lot different because The Odyssey is just gonna win 27 Oscars. No other movie should even come out. It's just gonna be The Odyssey across the board winning everything.

Watch, I'm, I'm sighing and moaning and groaning right now.

You'll be the first guy in the theater.

You know how I feel about Christopher Nolan. I'm just like, I, I'm not even opposed. I'm just All right, I don't know.

We gotta go. I kept you too long. I know, um, I know. I'd love for you to come back on because there's TV stuff we got to talk about at some point.

Okay.

Are you watching DTL? Yeah, I saw DTF. Sorry, I saw them. It's fucking weird one.

I, I, I don't, I don't like what— I don't like it. I don't like it. It's— we should talk about Love Story because I'm— are you watching that?

Are you kidding? Am I watching that? Okay, this is my wife's Super Bowl. I was gonna say, she's watching 3 times each episode. Watches it, goes to her mom's house, second watch, then third watch over the weekend. Oh my God, she's been waiting her whole life for the show.

We gotta have— okay, then I want to talk to Carrie because, I mean, I, I What a wild show and a wild show to have. I know we can talk about it later, but like, it's a wild show to have now that the country and the world are falling apart. That we, I don't know, I don't know what this Middle East situation is going to mean for us. It's definitely not good.

I would say not promising.

Not good. But here we all are strung out on a show about two, one very famous white person and his girlfriend, and how much she does not want to get sucked into the vacuum of the thing that could probably kill her. Right?

Fame, paparazzi, the whole thing, plus this family that had a bunch of deaths.

Yeah, it just feels like this— I mean, in a completely accidental, backhanded way, even more than, you know, Heat at Rivalry solving other problems, this show is really about like this mess that we are in, and I don't even think it knows it, except it comes from Ryan Murphy's Funhouse.

I guarantee you it doesn't know it.

It might not know.

Between this and Heated Rivalry, I think this has been my wife's, uh, favorite TV year. We're all— it's only mid-March. The combo of those two already, if we can keep this pace the rest of the way. I gotta be honest, banged out all 3 episodes of The Madison with my queen Michelle Pfeiffer.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good one. Okay, so you told me to watch it. I will, I will watch it.

Well, you love Michelle Pfeiffer as much as I do.

It just looks like a catalog.

No, it's, it's— you'll like it. Listen, we have to support Michelle Pfeiffer and Gwyneth Paltrow for the rest of their careers. Those are our types.

I, yes, I mean, as you know, I mean, I'll do anything for—

uh, I would love to bring you on after the last JFK: A Love Story. So, uh, so mark it in your calendar now. Good to see you, Wesley Morris. Don't forget about Cannonball, uh, that's his podcast. I've been on it. I haven't been invited since. I've only been on once. I'm always available, always ready to go.

Fret not.

All right, good to see you.

All right, nice to see you.

Thank you. Bye. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Billy and Wesley. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo as well. Don't forget, two rewatchables went up this week— To Live and Die in LA and, uh, a special mailbag. And the next episode of the Rewatchables is going to be The Nice Guys. Yeah, that's going to be up on a Monday night. I'm going to be back on Sunday after Celtics-Timberwolves. Uh, we're gonna be live on Netflix, me and Zach Lowe. So it should be around 7:30 Pacific time, uh, when we're going live. So enjoy the weekend, enjoy all the basketball. I will see you on Sunday night. Must be 21+ and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game and 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.