Transcript of Luka’s Strange L.A. Ride, a New York Sports Drought, Lost NBA Nicknames, and a Big Mailbag With Max Kellerman

This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Crazy Stupid Love. Next week, we're kicking off CR month on the rewatchables. Chris Ryan, all Chris Ryan movies, movies that Chris Ryan loves. We're starting on March second, 6: 00 PM, ET on Monday, live on Netflix. We are doing Sicario. People have been calling for this. Really, since we started the podcast, it's one of CR's favorite movies, me, CR, Sean Fentany. We are doing Sicario. Then the next one we're going to do is Fargo. Those are the first two, Sicario, Fargo. So catch up on both of those. You can watch Sicario on Netflix, and you can watch the rewatchables on Netflix and get it on Spotify wherever you get your favorite podcast, which I hope is the rewatchables of this one, or any of our great Ringer podcast, including Wait a second with Jason Contepcion, which we launched last week. I was the first guest. Chris Ryan is on this week. They're talking about Prince Edward and the Epstein files.

This is quite a podcast. Really excited about this one. It seems like people really like it, too. Coming up in one second, Max Kellerman, who is on Game Over with Rich Paul. That's a podcast that we added to the Ringer Podcast Network a couple of months ago. It's great. It's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And Max and I are going to... Every once in a while, we just like to get together and talk about sports for over 2 hours long, and then we can't believe how long we went. So we're going to talk about a whole bunch of things. I'm going to do a mailbag with Max. It's all coming up next. First break, our friends from Pearl Jam, then Max Kellerman. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The football season may be coming to an end, but things are only getting started on the court, on the hardwood, on the wood, as some people call it. Fanduel, the number one choice for same game parlay is live betting and much more during the NBA season. Don't forget, with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win.

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I'm waiting Max Kellermann is here, podcaster. You've done it all.

Now I have, yeah. That was the last little piece of this podcast.

Boxing announcement, TV host.

But that's all old news.

Studio host. Yeah, done that. Yeah, now podcaster. We were talking before we started about the difference in doing this stuff now. You're doing game over with us with Rich Paul. Tell your heart, not your heart, your Jalen Brown, Luca thing. Then I'll tell you what my thought is on that.

I'll have a take on the show. Rich Paul and I went to the Lakers Celtics, Pat Reilly game. We're sitting catty corner to Pat Reilly because we're in Rich's seats. I'm watching Jalen Brown and I'm watching Luka Donchik, and it is clear to me, it's clear, it's not hard to see, Jalen Brown is better than Luka Donchik. She's a better player. I say that, and then someone me a link or an article that someone said, it acted as though that's a crazy take, but they wouldn't engage with the argument.

It gets aggregated as Kellermann. Jalen is better than Luca.

Yeah, Kellermann is stupid, but I assure you that is not the case. I may be wrong, but it's not going to be because my logic is flawed. Trust me, it won't be because my logic is flawed. It will be maybe because the analogy is like, Isaac has a formula for gravity. It describes all this phenomena. It describes it really well, but not perfectly. There's a little planet that shouldn't be quite where it is. Einstein comes along and says, Well, here's why. Then that replaces Newton because it's a deeper level of understanding. If I'm wrong about something, it is usually because there's something deeper going on that I haven't considered. I love when someone can point that out, as you must know, That's awesome because you deepen your understanding of things. But that's not what they'll do is they'll just say, Max is stupid. This is a crazy take. No, it's not. I'll tell you the take. Luka Donchik can get a high percentage shot for himself whenever he wants. I'm super interested in this as a theme in life, energy policy in the United States. Greenhouse gas is like, that's settled science. There's no real It's a controversy over.

It's manufactured controversy. Everyone understands it's bad for the atmosphere. Okay, for the ozone.

No, I got you. So Luca is saying he's an incredible offensive player.

I'm just trying to We got to do this succinctly. So short term incentives, we need energy now, right? Because we have all these demands. Trump long term incentives. And this is a phenomenon that you see all over the place. Unless you have a structure set up with long term goals in mind, a lot of times you'll find self destructive behavior because short term incentives are such that you want to... So that's the premise, okay? So Lou can get a high percentage shot whenever he wants, right? But it's like a running quarterback. The short term incentive is get a first down, keep the chains moving. However, if you always bail and run for the first down, you will never develop as a pocket passer. Your short term incentive It has hurt your long term development, absent some structure that says, No, wait a minute. We want you to develop this way. Luka Donchik, because he can get a high percentage shot whenever he wants, it has stunted his development as a player in a lot of respects, right? Because why wouldn't you do that? You want to score on this possession. But as a result, guys are standing around, they're not playing with energy, they're not moving without the ball, they're not touching the ball, they're not in rhythm, they can't get hot from outside.

It et cetera, et cetera. Then on top of that, he complains on every call and doesn't play defense hardly ever. Maybe the worst defender, one of the worst defenders in the game, even though he has the size to play some defense at least, right?

Yeah, it's surprising when he has a good defensive possession. He had a couple in that Celtics game. Yeah, it was like, Oh, he actually guarded Payton Pritchard. He did.

I didn't know he could do this. He drew an offensive... Good for him. Jalen Brown is not as skillful as Luka Donchik. He cannot get himself a high percentage shot on every possession. As a result, in order to be really effective, he must play the right way. And so he does. He makes the right read. He does the hard stuff if he needs to. He will draw contact and get the and one, not looking for the foul, but because he knows if he goes hard, he is likely to draw it. He will hit the outside shot. He will defend the way he's supposed to. He will do all those things. I think a lot of fans, you look at all the things that Luka can do. Oh, my God, that's incredible. Then you look at the offensive numbers and say, he must be better. But if you watch the game and look at the actual effect on the team, I'd rather have Jalen Brown than Luka Donchik. I mean, partly that's dependent on the personnel and all that stuff. But right now, he's better than Luca Dantzsche. Now, if someone would like to engage with me in that argument and say that I'm wrong, go ahead.

Show me where my logic is flawed or else deepen my understanding of it. But that's not what happens. People go, It's crazy.

But you're talking about looking at a player through the prism of winning, which is what I do every time I evaluate basketball. Does this person advance my chance to win?

Versus- What else is there?

Well, but there is the second side, which is, no, this guy's awesome. Luka is a better player because he's a generationally great scorer, and that's what makes him better. But I always gravitate to what you just said. When I think about Jalen Brown, he could fit into any situation and to figure out how to be impactful. I don't think he's as talented as Luka Donchik is, but I think it's easier to have him involved in different types of winning teams and combinations. Whereas Luka, it's like a weird basketball thing where you have to build the exact team around the guy to make it work. I actually think LeBron became a prisoner of this a little bit in the second half of his career because he liked the specific style that he played with. Then you started to have to put pieces around him to fit the style.

What he But he made them better. True. He used his gravity to make everyone around him better, which is why when any time a LeBron team acquired a role player-But it was always a certain type of player, right?

It was either a big man who had his hands up, it was a wing a 3D wing. Then occasionally, I always thought his best type of teammate for what he needed was that freelancer Kyrie type. That's what Wade was for him the first two Miami years, specifically. Takes some scoring burden off him. The more you just push all the chips into him creating everything, then you're really looking at a certain type of player.

What was interesting about- He needs a crime partner. Who doesn't do it without a crime partner?

Well, Harden is somebody that I think they tried to build these specific teams around him of just types of guys. Dallas with Luka. Yeah.

Harden and Luka.

Harden and Luka. Then they got Kyrie.

Harden and Luka are extremely similar. They're extremely similar. The difference really is Luka's bigger. That's actually the difference when you really think about their games, Luka is Harden 2. 0.

They both have cheat code stuff going on where Harden had that. He could either engage you and get you to foul him or do the step back and all that start. It was just like, Shit, how do you stop this? Luka has the size that if you have the wrong guy, and you could see in that Boston game, the wrong type of guy. Whereas then they played Orlando. Orlando was more size. It was harder for the Lakers to do that stuff. But I think the bigger point that I agree with is that you can settle in a bad as an NBA star because some things are too easy. Other things you don't have to work on. He doesn't move when he doesn't end the ball. He's not an impactful defender at all. Jalen, one of the reasons that- He's not a defender at all a lot of the time.

He doesn't even just... A lot of times, he's just not playing defense. He's not even down the floor.

But he has the instincts to do some of this stuff. Yeah, of course.

He's a genius.

He's got the quick hands.

As Zack said the other day to you, he's like a basketball genius.

Because Bird and Jokaj, I think, are two examples of guys that weren't like the defenders you think. But they were both impactful in their own weird ways. Jokuj still is. He gets steals, he jumps passing lanes.

Not like Bird. Bird was for his day.

Bird made all defense one year.

More than one, I believe. Bird was considered back then a good defender.

Yeah, he was like a free safety. Luca- He gambled in passing lanes and stuff.

But yeah, for sure. But see, you brought up Kyrie before. The reason the way I evaluate it, the way you evaluate it, is actually the correct way and the other way is the incorrect way. Unless you're making the argument that when I say better, what I mean is the most transportable skills. Even then, it transports to all these different scenarios. Even then, you just said that, and I agree, you have to build a very specific team around Luca, and Jalen Brown fits into more different kinds of teams. So that argument fails, right? The other argument is that, well, if you just isolate all the things he can do, he's more skillful. But then it becomes a question of how are you deploying those skills? So Kyrie Irving, in my view, is He's the most skillful player who ever lived. If you went skill for skill, but he is not the best player who ever lived, and he's not the greatest player who ever lived, he's not the winningest player, but he's the most skillful. Now, how do you deploy those skills? That's why because there are... He lacks the size, first of all, but also the wisdom in certain respects to deploy those skills the way someone like LeBron might or someone like Magic Johnson might or someone like that might or Larry Bird or someone like I think that- So when you say skillful, you mean most pure skills?

If you went for it.

Because I would say- Can he dribble with his right? How does he go to the left? Can he shoot?

Kyrie- Can you finish with both hands? Can you double clutch finish?

His layup package Like finishing under the rim, greatest of all time.

Do you have a little step-back shot. You have a pull-up shot.

You have a counter for everything the other guy does. Step-back three, yeah. Kobe was also like that, had every skill you could want, right? Yeah. But being the most skillful, which is why I think a lot of people have Kobe second to Jordan, which I believe is overrating him, not by much, but by a little. I think we talked about that. He's one of the greatest players of all time, probably not quite as good as a lot of his fans think he was because they see Michael Jordan, but oh, my God, his skills are the next generation of that in certain respects.

Social media feeds some of that, too, because social media only feeds you the best things that a guy did. Then as the years pass, it's like, Kope.

Dude, it's the same thing.

Another game winner.

It's the same thing with music. That music today always sucks, right? Because the only thing you remember are the hits.

Leonard Skinner in Oakland in '77. There's no fan like this.

This happens in hip hop all the time. Then there's that, and I think you and I discussed this maybe not on the last pod that we did, but there's also this thing where you go, In the old days we had, and then you name everybody. Who do you have today? Hold Are you comparing this year, 2026 to 1951 to 1985 to 1997? Or are you comparing 2026 to the history of everything? Both those combined to play the hits for Kobe.

Well, and Luca will be like this 20 years from now because they'll see some of the montages. I always call them the That guy was a problem video because it started with Jason Whitechouke of Williams. You could cut these three-minute clips of him, and he looks like he's like Bob Coosy for the 2000s. You're like, Oh, my God. How many all-MBA teams did this guy made? It's zero.

He was incredibly great to watch. The lead was pushing him and Vince harder because they look different than everyone else.

The thing with Luca, I've been thinking about him a lot because we talked about it after the South of the Laker game on my pod with Zack, and it was the first time the Laker fans are really getting the other side of the Luka package with the winding after every call, with the just not getting back on defense, all the little stuff. The stuff that Dallas got fed up with, ironically, I don't think they should trade it, but stuff that they were getting fed up with. The counter to all of this is Dallas almost won the finals in '24 with him. Got to the conference. With a team that was built around him that I still feel like game four of the Mavs Celtic Series, which I went to, and Luka fouled out with five minutes left after. I thought all the fouls in that game were legitimate. He was bitching about it. He was doing, though, let's go. Let's do a review. They review it. It was still a foul. Then there was this moment where Kyrie had a chance to stick it to the Celtics and win the game. Sometimes with the finals, it could be game four, it could be game three, it could be game five.

You're always like, this is the game that's going to decide the finals. You just feel it. I still think if Dallas wins that game, they might have stolen the series. When I think about Luke in a big picture context, we saw it. They almost won the finals with a team built around him, which means you could do it again. The irony of this Lakers team, it's the exact team you wouldn't want to build around him. Three guys who need the ball. Any two of them don't really know what to do if they don't have the ball, combined with some of this stuff, the stage of LeBron's career.

You got to look at Polinka. I mean, that's who put together the team, let's be honest. It is not ideally designed for sure. What you say about Luka is true.

But he made the best trade probably the decade but still has done a bad job with the team?

We have to see how that all pans out.

Now, they sold the highest high out of Davis.

Yes.

What the maps- That Davis was a car with 190,000 miles on it that they were like, No, it's running great.

The warranty is like four years, 11 months, and 364 days. But yes, their return for Luca, they didn't shop it. It didn't look like, right? But the fact that they moved him, I understand. What you're bringing up is a really good point. In those playoffs, he looked so much more valuable than, say, Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi Leonard looked like a not one-dimensional in the sense he doesn't play either offense or defense, but very much a scoring wing who can play defense also and maybe can get you into your offense, even if that's not ideal. And Luka looked like a multi- No, this was Mahomes' chief stuff. Multi-dimensional. How are you going to beat this guy? Yeah, Exactly. It looked like Luka had separated himself from the Kauais of the world. That's when I was like, oh, shit. Luka is that much more valuable than Kauai Leonard?

Well, remember the Mavericks? They weren't favorites in the finals. They were probably plus 160. Everyone was picking Dallas. Boston had home court advantage. They were statistically one of the best teams. It was Luca. It was just like, yeah, but Dallas has Luka. Now he's two years older than that. They're not going to do anything this year. But LeBron, LeBron It's not going to leave, it looks like.

Okay, so this is what I mean about, can you deepen my understanding of something, right? This is the best argument to me that Luca is in a position not dissimilar to Kobe when Kobe would take all the shots.

The 05: 06: 07, Kobe.

You look around and you go, This ain't it, right? Okay, this ain't it. The best thing for me to do is to score on this possession because these guys can't do If DeAndre Ayton doesn't want to play the way he ought to play on the team- We knew he was going to stink, though.

I did. I thought it was- Anybody would follow basketball.

Bill, I thought it was a pretty good pickup.

It was like fool's gold. It was like when people were believing in Anthony Joshua.

But wait a minute. Joshua won some good fights. Sure. Deandre Ayton made the conference final.

He did. It doesn't mean you want him as your center.

But who was available on the market? What did they get him for $7, $8 million? I don't know. I remember picking a pretty good pickup. It's not the ideal guy, but who was better on the market at that time? They didn't have a big.

It was a default center. I mean, the move is they should have worked with LeBron to try to trade him over the summer last year and try to get a whole bunch of stuff for him, put him in a different situation. You could see where this was going from day one. The other move could have been to trade Reeves. But the part I don't understand, I talked to Laker fans about this, and it's really fun to tease them where they're like, No, man, this wasn't the year. This is a transition year. We're looking at when we have cap space and 27, and it's down the road. If I have one of the six best guys in the league, I'm never wasting a year. I'm on record.

Especially in his mid-late '20s?

I'm just never throwing away. He's 27. I'm never throwing away. It's the same case with Milwaukee, where I thought the only defensible thing with them, I didn't like the Dame trade at all, but it was defensible because it's like, we don't want to squander a Giannis here. We have one of the top 20 guys of all time. We're not wasting a year.

I think you have to ask yourself, are we giving ourselves a puncher's chance or are we really one of the best teams if we make this move?

But if you have one of the guys, you always think you have a chance.

A puncher's chance. But I don't know if I'm willing to mortgage the future for a puncher's chance if I have one of those guys.

If I'm in the same conference as the OKC, and I'm the Lakers, and it's so hard to put together, I need eight guys to beat OKC. I can't beat them with three.

I'm not even about OKC.

Well, now we didn't know about San Antonio last summer. But now I'm in the conference with OKC and San Antonio and Jokić.

It's a lot.

I have no chance with the team I have, so I'm selling pieces at this point.

But that's the point. Luca is supposed to be a center on the level of Jokić and Wemby and SGA. He's not. He's not. Definitely not this year. He's a half step below those guys, and he's 27 years old. But even if you have bad teammates, you should be able to be enough to convince people that, yeah, we still have one of those guys.

I don't think his teammates are that bad. We do the Ringer 100, where we just rank them every month. Reeves was in the top 50. Lebron was in the... They have three of the top 50 guys.

But there's only one guy who plays the right way on that team.

I know, but I'm just saying it's not like they don't have assets.

Reeves is like Austin Reeves plays basketball the right way.

But Windhor said that on TV this week about- Did he? Just when it's Reeves and Luka.

Oh, yeah, I saw that.

It's a good point. I've said it to people that I talked about the Lakers with. It's like when it's the two of them, there's chemistry. When you put LeBron in, it just starts to feel like- But I'll include Luka in the who doesn't play the right way.

I don't think LeBron has been playing exactly the right way. He knows how, but he's old. I don't think Luka does almost ever.

Well, LeBron is like Hopkins now. He knows exactly what he can and can't do. He's Hopkins at 48 and a half. I like when you're here because I can do boxing jokes. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to basically make this a six-round fight. I'm going to throw away the first six rounds and then do the bow constricter thing. Lebron is like, I can do these three things. That's all I can do. I can do head esteem, fast break. I can do step-back threes, and I can post up.

Rich loves the idea of LeBron playing as the roller. Being Carl Malone. I love that idea, too. A smarter Carl Malone. He's the same size. He's 6'8, 9'2, 60, and he could shoot from the outside.

I think it's so tough. I know you've talked to Rich about this, and the three of us have talked about it. It's so tough to take somebody who is one of the best of all time at what they did and then tell them, Now you're this.

But this is not like... I'm saying Carl Malone. This is like, at one point, is he the best power phone who ever lived? Can you be that guy? Yeah. That guy would be... And DeAndre Ayton had a quote recently about Clint Capella, he doesn't want to be that. Rich Paul talks all the time on our part about starring in your role. If DeAndre Aiton was willing to star in his role, and LeBron was willing to star in his. But all that said, Bill, when you look at this entire roster, Reeves is the guy. Watch him on every possession, both ends of the floor. He's not a great defender, but he's playing defense. He's smart, he's looking to make the right play, and he's just good. He's just not 6, 8, and not like he can't jump out of the gym, but he's a really good player.

Yeah, I was wondering if they're going to put him on the table for Giannis. I'm just wondering what's happening with LA in general because the Dodgers owner bought the team. They brought Lon Rosen over as president of business. Lon Rosen, his lifetime guy, is Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson had that thing with Polinka where he left, and it doesn't seem like Magic's involved, but there's no love loss with that. In general, it just feels like we're moving toward some post-Polinka universe where we'll be like, Thanks for the Luka trade.

Andrew Friedman's involved somehow. That's the real reason the Dodgers are in this position. It was the first thing they did. When the Red Sox hired Bill James back in '02 or whatever, remember I was doing Around the Horn? I said, They're going to win three of the next 10 World Series. In year 10, they- I wish I could have believed that. In year 10, they won the third one.

Wish you had told me that because I never thought they were going to win one.

Ruined my life because they were just out it. If you get the smartest guy and you have money and you're playing money ball with money, it's hard for everyone else. That could be the Lakers, though.

That's why everybody's so scared right now.

Yes, because that's what the Dodgers are. As soon as they hired Friedmann, who, by the way, just put a system in place and then didn't even have to run it, really. When I see him involved with the Lakers, I'm like, Oh.

Well, it's resources behind the scenes of just intelligence and analytics. Who knows who they're going to bring in, but it's clearly there's going to be some shift. They were famously, I don't want to say cheap, but I don't think they were extravagant behind the scenes. They were run by Jerry Buss's kids.

It's a family business.

Yeah, and for better and worse. I think if LeBron just doesn't decide, I want to live in LA, they just had all these weird lottery picks assembled. Lonsal Ball, Julius Randall, Brandon Ingram.

Yeah, they kept- It would have been a 40-win team for 10 years. They kept fraughting seconds in every draft.

Yeah, and probably would have added some stuff. This episode is brought to you by Michalow Club 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 mean, Wemby, stuff he's doing every game. There's two, three Wemby moments of 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 hoop. It's just an alley. Every time he 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 Michelobultra, the official beer partner of the NBA, and a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellermann. He just told me that. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win Courtside seats, custom merch, and more. Michelobultra, superior, is worth playing for. Enter now at Michelobultra. Com/courtside. Michelobultra Courtside 25, 26. No purchase necessary. Open to US Residence 21 plus.

Begins on October first, 2025. Ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at Michelobultra. Com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. I want to talk New York sports quick with you. Good. Fifteen years without a title, unless you count the liberty, which I guess you can.

Yeah, sure. But let's just be honest.

When you're talking about the You have two teams in every major sport.

We're not talking about hockey. I'm sorry. Nhl, people got really mad at me a bunch of years ago because I said there are three major sports in the country. By the way, I'm big in boxing, right? I'm not pretending that boxing is more popular than it is at the moment. Reason I'm with Zufa is because I want it to be more popular. Hockey is a popular sport in certain circles. It is not one of it. There's not a big four, there's a big three. It's baseball, basketball, and football. I think- Yeah, I would even say the fourth one would be college football. Yeah, I mean, in New York, I think you're right. In New York, the fourth one...

No, the Rangers are pretty big.

The Rangers, yeah, I would say so.

I'd say the- Because the Rangers, they lost the Cup Finals in 14 in the Kings. They've been in three conference finals ever since. That's the most success you've had in New York.

But Dolan used to hang his hat on when the Knicks sucked.

So you have Jets and Giants. Giants won the last title, but no conference finals for either football team since '11. Knicks have made the final since '94. They made the Eastern Conference Finals last year. Nets, 2003. Nets, 2015 World Series. They made the NLCS in '24, and the Yankees have one title since '09. Islanders, 2010 Conference Finals. If I had told you, so what were we doing in 2010? You're in Sports Nation. What was your job? You're the ESPN. You're doing something.

I may have been- Whatever you were doing. I may have been at CNN and ESPN So Yankees win the World Series in '09.

And I say to you in '09, there's only going to be one more New York title for the next 16 years, and it won't be the Yankees. What would your reaction have been to that?

God damn it. I wouldn't have even necessarily not believed you. There are lots of things working against New York in the modern age in sports. Number one, the city is big enough to support two teams. When people talk about salary caps and resources, New York is such a megalopolis, right? That it's It supports two teams in every sport, basically. So you've diluted the resources. Boston, which is a much smaller city, has the entire market from Northern Connecticut up to Maine and doesn't share it with anyone. They have comparable resources.

This is the Padres argument. It's the only team in San Diego. They do over $500 million in revenue. They're not competing against anyone.

Not competing. And New York is... So take Los Angeles, right? In Los Angeles, one of the tough things about doing radio in Los Angeles, sports radio, is when the team sucks on the East Coast, sports radio is as hot as ever. People are pissed.

They want to talk about it. It's angry sports radio. It's angry sports radio. Austin Sports Radio, the best thing that ever happened was Drake Mays sucking in the playoffs. It was the best thing that ever happened in every show.

That sales is going crazy.

Is he good? Does he have it? That's their... Like a king's in shit.

You think Doug Flutey is tall enough to succeed in That's the NFL, right?

That can carry you from- Tatum versus Brown is Boston sports nirvana. That's all they talk about.

Oh my God. It's umbride. On the West Coast, in LA, if you suck, they'll go to the beach. They don't need you anymore, right?

It's really just Dodgers, Lakers here. Yeah, that's right. Then the USA, USA football a little bit.

When they're good and then- A little bit. But what I mean is, but in Boston, but New York has a bit of LA in it. Not in the sense that they don't care a lot about sports, but New York is Wall Street and Broadway, and there's a A lot of stuff going on. I get the sense that in Boston, sports, they're one sports team. They're not divided by anything. It's not the Red Sox and is more important to them relative to everything else in their lives than the one sports team is in New York.

I think Philly's like that, too.

Philly's like that. I think those are the two. Chicago with the bears, I think is...

Bears cubs, probably.

Yeah, probably. Even though they're large enough to support two teams certain sports.

My theory with this was always the worst of weather, the more the teams matter. Which is then you go to Canada where it's like hockey is like life or death for everything. That's it. We won the gold medal and within a day, it turned into a political thing. Yeah, no one cares. In Canada, they lost the gold medal. They're going to be talking about it five months from now. Oh, my God. Why didn't we keep McDavid out for the first... Why did we take him out after 33 seconds in the OT?

It's so funny being in Canada and watching SportsCentra. If you're in... And it's Bizzaroland. The R and the E are reversed. And in that little Bizzarro universe, hockey leads and the NFL is buried. It's NHL, NHL, NHL, little NFL, little MLB.

Tiny bit of basketball.

It's exactly It's Bizzarroland. But so that's one thing about New York sports. The other is there is enormous pressure in New York to try to make the playoffs every year because there's a lot of money to be made. And But a lot of times, if that's the incentive, the Patrick Ewing years, if the Knicks made the second round of the playoffs, they made a ton of money, just stay competitive. Yeah, and this ties into tanking. But is it ever in your strategic best interest to maybe wait this year. Don't trade for that veteran where you're mortgaging the future. That veteran is not even that good to begin with. Mikael Bridges? Yeah. I mean, Mikael Bridges, if he was 10%, the Knicks are interesting. They've created a team where if Everyone does their job just right. You get a little lucky with injuries on the other team, you could win a championship. But that's the only way.

That's what happened last year.

Josh Hart has to shoot it better than he does. Mikael Bridges has to be a little more physical than he is. Karl Anthony Towns has to maintain his best play on both sides of the ball for two months without stop. You're just asking. They have no margin for error, and maybe not even then.

So what's the Yankees excuse.

Well, okay, so this goes for all the teams. You can think about when Prokerov bought the nets, it was the first thing he did. He jammed in enough talent to be... He built your dynasty, or if you have one in Boston, right? He immediately acquired enough talent. They ought to make the second round of the playoffs. That's about it. They're not going to win a championship, but they'll make the second round of the playoffs. There's this enormous pressure in that neck of the woods to just be competitive. And in the Yankees case, same thing. They can't ever take a year off without making the playoffs, not intentionally. They have to be competitive every year. They have to sell the boxes, and they have the TV. They care about their TV ratings, and they are competing with the Mets, but their owner is poor by the standards of a sports owner, and the percentage of revenue he spends on the team is not top 10.

I wouldn't say they're business savvy.

The Yankees.

I think the Dodgers looked at the Far East, and they had it because they had some other stars in the '90s and 2000s, so they had a sense. But they now looked at this as like, this is our second revenue stream in our second city. Now we're selling everything overseas, and we're selling all this stuff here with the dominant baseball team in California, and money is no object. Ohtani leads to Yamamoto. Now, they're the first stop for any Japanese baseball star who might be coming over. They're going to want to play for the Dodgers. The kids are going to grow up dreaming to play for that. They figured out something the Yankees probably should have figured out. And they tried. You had Metsui and people like that.

Not for the first time. The Dodgers, I mean, this is very different circumstances, but the Dodgers, once upon a time, there was an untapped pool of talent that no one understood, Hey, if we just get the All-Star team from this pool of talent, we'll just be really good. That's about the '40s?

Yeah.

The Negro Leagues, half the good players in baseball were excluded from the Major Leagues. The Dodgers, basically, imagine if you had a time machine and you're like, You know what? If I was the GM of a team that really sucked back then, I just go to the Negro Leagues. I tell everyone to go fuck themselves. I'm going to put together a Negro League All-Star team, and we're going to beat everybody because you idiots. Because none of the talents that I looted all over the league- That's how racist everyone was back then, though.

That's how racist they were. Because they were like, people won't come out. And it's like, you know what? People like winning. I don't care what decade this is. Of course.

So they went out and got... They put together a Negro League All-Star team before anyone knew what was going on.

Yeah, they got Campy and Newcom and Robinson.

You got a second basement and a catcher who are in the conversation for the greatest of all time at their position to this day. And you didn't have to have a shortstop. You had a Hall of Famer there. You didn't need a first basement. You had a Hall of Famer there or a center fielder. You had a Hall of Famer. So wherever you needed help, you went out and got a guy who is in the conversation for best ever.

It's crazy. And then you have the Red Sox kicking the guys off the field, which led to...

Good going, Boston and New York. Yeah, that's great.

Tough one. So the Yankees are retiring CC's number. My buddy Jacko, lifelong diehard Yankee fan. He said, The only Yankee numbers that should be retired are 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 15, 16, 32, and 42. So that would be Derek Cheater.

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMagio. Who else did he say? Mantle.

Mantle. The Dickey Berra combo at number 8. Sure, at 8. Thurman Munson, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, and Rivera, and he's done. That means who he thinks shouldn't be retired. Billy Martin, one. Joe Tori, six.

I disagree with that.

Maris, Rizuto, Pasada, O'Neill, Mattingly, Stengel, Jackson, Pettit, Guidry, Bernie, and Ceece. It's the question of how many numbers are too many, and some of it gets tied into in baseball. If the guy makes the Hall of Fame, usually retire his number.

This is what I would say about some of that. You could argue Pasada, right? I would say the others are good arguments to retire the number. The late '90s Yankees, the 1998 Yankees are easily the greatest baseball team of all time.

I think Bernie's. I was surprised to know Bernie.

I'm going there. That's exactly where I'm going.

Bernie has to be on there.

Bernie Williams. Everyone knows the legend of Mickey Mantle, everyone. We're old as fuck. In our generation, everyone knew Mickey Mantle. Bernie Williams was the switch. Okay, spare me the defensive metric, arguments, everything. I'm just stating facts. He was the switch-hitting, gold-glove-winning, batting champion who used to hit between 20 and 30 home runs, probably the best hitter in baseball, the best contact hitter in baseball with plus power who played an up the middle position for years, certainly in that conversation.

Before we realized how valuable it was to spend actually your money in the middle of the field instead of the sides.

Bernie Williams, when he was Coming up, it was night. You have to understand, in New York, public enemy number one for the Yankees, this may have changed for some reason after... Well, not for some reason. When the Red Sox started winning the World Series, this probably changed. But when I was a kid, public enemy number one for a Yankees fan were the Mets. Red Sox were two. There was a really- You beat us every year.

Why would we even be the enemy?

But also because the Mets got good.

It was It was a good and strawberry run where it was like, oh, shit.

They were bigger than the Yankees.

This is like New York's town now.

They sold more tickets. They had more interest. The kids in school were wearing Mets caps.

It was miserable as a Yankee fan. I was in Connecticut for high school during that. The Mets took over.

Miserable for a Yankee's fan. We hated it. By the way, there was a chant, the Bleachers. I was ableacher creature growing up. I was up in there all the time. It was at the end of this chant where it was always a very insulting thing toward the right fielder. Then at the end of the chant, you would start with Mets suck, Red Sox suck. Then you would say, whoever they were playing, so let's say it was the Rangers, the Rangers suck. Let's say Ruben Sierra was in right field for the Rangers. You'd say Root Sierra sucks. Then you would say box seats suck. Then you would say that side, in other words, the other side of the aisle of the bleachers, suck. Then anyone who's watching this who happened to be in Yankee They'd be in those years would be like, Oh, my God, I can't believe someone remembers this. Then you would turn around, spin around with your hand like this and say, You all suck, okay? But what came first was the Mets before anything. Mets, yeah. Yankees fans hated the Mets. Bill, by 1987, there's no pitching. They're just miserable. The Mets, they didn't win in '87, but they won in '86.

They had one of the great pitching staffs of all time in '88. It looked like they were going to be good for 10 years. I would read in Yankees magazine, Yankees signed this Puerto Rican kid who was 16 or 17, and he's going to be a great lead off hitter. He's going to hit 300. He's going to steal 50 bases. Bernie. Bernie Williams. But it turned out better than that. He was the switch-hitting monster who hit 300 every year and led the league in hitting and hit for power and hit dramatic. He was the best postseason player we had.

It was You left out the part the Red Sox thought they had him.

Oh, my God. It was miserable for me that whole time.

It was more miserable for us because it was like, this is how we're going to finally stick with the Yankees. We're going to take one of their guys and he dickteased them, dickteased them in the 11th hour. Yeah, that's right. He came back to the Yankees. So he got booed every time at Fenway after that.

To have that guy hit and clean up like Mickey Mantle once did. To me, he's definitely. And win four World Series, his number should be retired.

Gator, as much as I love the Gator, I can't see it. Pettit.

Well, I could argue- Pettit with 200 plus wins for you? There was a really good article. I can't remember who wrote it on espn. Com five years ago, maybe more, maybe 10 years ago at this point, making a Hall of Fame argument for Pettit that is so convincing. It's very persuasive. He's saying, If you look at everyone born between this year and this year who pitched in the major league, right. Okay, he's pitching through a steroid era.

Stereability wins, play All that stuff. Yeah, he dabbled.

Yeah, all that stuff. But if you look at it, he was one of the top two or three pitchers of a sizable number of years. This is my Garvie case.

Right. Where Garvie is still not in, but it's like, well, if I wanted a first basement from 1973 to 1986.

No, that's the problem. It didn't go to '86. It didn't even really go to- Or '84? When did they- Not really.

Padres was '84?

Yeah, but the Padres, he had fallen off by the Padres. He stopped being great. I want to say off the top of my head, like '82. Garvie may not have had a long enough prime. Guidry came up late.

Well, Giddrie definitely didn't have a long enough prime.

He didn't, but he won. Giddrie, if you look at his Cy Young finishes, and Guidry was never a bad pitcher. Even at the end, he was still inning for inning, a good guy.

It was a good whip case guy. He was one of the original ones. Matt, only it was the same thing, probably not long enough.

No, but- But the Celtics have this with all the retired numbers we have where there's some flimsy ones.

Sometimes the owners, they just want to get some goodwill, and it's like, We're going to retire this guy. It's going to be a great day. Come on down.

You have to retire Mattingly's number. He was the most popular New York athlete between... I'm trying to think, post Mickey Mantle. Was there a guy more beloved in New York than Don Mattingly pre-Jeter? Certainly a baseball player.

He definitely was more beloved than Ewing was.

Or If you just keep it to baseball, I don't think there was a more beloved Yankee. Thurman Munson, but I think actually Mattingly, maybe was a little, even though he didn't win the World Tour, was a little even bigger than Munson in New York.

Mattingly was unbelievable, too. He's one of those when I think about the Curry era versus the Mattingly-Larry Bird era, where Curry, if he's in the '70s and '80s, he just has ankle problems, and he probably plays seven years. We're like, Oh, remember that one game? He had 60 points. But now we have all this technology, and he fixed his ankle stuff and fixed his lower legs.

Maddingly was the perfect place for him.

Maddingly just had a bad back, and we didn't know what to do with that in 1984. Same thing with Bird. Bird's body just started to break down. We had no idea how to take care of it.

Indiana guys. We had all these guys from Indiana with bad backs.

Probably like shoveling during the winters. That's the problem. What New York team are you the most optimistic for before we head to the mailback?

I think the Giants right now because of hardball. They I love Jackson Dart. I'm one of these guys, I'm outraged when you'll see a real, well, they'll be like, Stop me when you get to a better quarterback than so and so. They won't even mention his name. I think Jackson Dart is 100% an elite talent quarterback. The question is, will he be in the right situation?

More, can he stay in the field?

That's the whole thing.

Is he going to have- This was the Drake May thing last year. They were so determined to not have him take I actually thought he changed the way he played a little bit, mostly for the better. But you can't be reckless as a quarterback in the NFL because you're just going to- No, he's got- Especially the heads bouncing against the- He's got to slide.

Yeah, he's got to just slide, dude.

He can't do it.

Yeah.

I'm with you in the Giants because you could argue terrible injury luck last year, fourth-place schedule, new coach. We've just seen it too many times. Every year, there's one or two teams that fit the recipe, whereas NBA, you can't turn it around. It's a miracle if you're even the Charlotte Hornets, where you went from like, sucking to being like, We might be a dangerous eight seed.

That's the arc you can have. And part of it's also just the number of games. It's like, in the end, imagine an NBA team who was hot through the first 15 games of the... Or through 18 games, you're hot, right? Well, that's it. Season's over. You just won the first game of your playoff schedule, right? Right. That's football, just not a lot of inventory.

All right, we're going to take a break and do some mailback questions. Sometimes Those are the greatest financial victories aren't the huge flashy contracts in sports, but the mid-level moves that maximize your cap space. Just like Tax Act, helps you get a great return by finding every deduction, even the small ones, to maximize your refund. We are in the zone right now for this. In great returns presented by Tax Act, we look back at the best decisions GMs have made to land an inexpensive player who paid huge dividends down the stretch and owners that have seen their team valuation skyrocket. Well, Kevin Durant was not inexpensive, but you remember in 2016, the Warriors had just won 73 games. They lost game seven in the finals. At the same time, there's this crazy salary cap spike that their front office is planning for because they think maybe they have a chance to get Kevin Durant. Well, what happens? They cleared enough salary cap space. They somehow got Kevin Durant. The 2017 Warriors become, I think, the best team in the 21st century. They win again in 2018. They make the finals in 2019. It was all because they planned ahead and made great financial decisions.

Great returns. That was presented by Tax Act. This tax season, simplify your moves, maximize your refund. Visit taxact. Com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact. Com for details. All right, mailback questions. Questions from actual listeners who sent in to bspodcast33@gmail. Com. As always, I'm going to remind everybody, please no more tanking emails. I'm at my capacity. It's a nightclub. We've closed the doors. We've blocked the front door. No more tanking. This is from Alex in Charlottesville. Is Beef stew the best nickname in the NBA? It's not in the same category of how the ants are nice men or cool nicknames or how big Aristotle or Timelord are funny.

Offnight. Offnight's the best nickname in the NBA. What's Off-night? Off-night. What's his name? Mitchell.

That hasn't caught on, though. Beef stew. Everyone calls Isaiah Stewart beef stew.

I know, but I know, but Offnight is his nickname.

It's pretty good.

It's a pretty good nick. But Biefstew is the best.

Offnight is my favorite. But Beefoo is the best. So Offnight is your favorite, but Beefoo is the best one where it's become the guy's name.

And where the guy is featured is like a a deal.

This leads me to a deeper question of what happened to basketball nicknames. I wrote down something that I love from over the years. Okay. Earl the Pearl. Yep. Jellybean.

Kobe Bryant's dad.

Magic, obviously. It was amazing. Bad news. We had two Bad News. We had Jim Bad News, Barnes, then Marvin Bad News, Barnes. World. Lloyd Free just became World B. Free. That's right. Then he changed his name. The Iceman, George Garvin, probably the best one ever.

I agree.

Leonard Truck Robinson, who just became Truck.

By the way, even something simple like the X-Man.

That was cool. X-man is a good one. Mountain Man Bill Walton. Pistol, Pete Marevich. He just could have been Pete Marevich. He became Pistol Pete. Clyde the There were a couple of boos over the years. Who? What was the guy's name? There was a boo in the 1990s. I'm blanking. Cornbread. Cedric Cornbread, Maxwell. Never Nervous Purvis. Big Game James. Then we even had World Wide West, who's not technically a player, but he had a nickname.

Big Game James is such a great one. It should have been... I never heard of Big Games James.

Big Games James.

It should have been with it pluralized.

Big Game James is easier to say.

Big Games James, to me, it should have been, but it's not. It's Big Game James.

The best two recent ones we've had, PG 13, which I was single-handedly responsible for. I was ready about it.

You should be proud. Yeah.

Boogie Cousins was amazing. Demarcus Boogie Cousins.

You know what? Boogie Cousins? That might be the one.

It's a great one. Best one of the last 15 years.

Boogie Cousins might be the one. No, Boogie Cousins might be the one. It's a great one. Pistle Pete is great, I agree. The Iceman is just so cool.

Truck's great. Truck's basically, what would a Truck Robinson do? You know what he's going to do? He's going to grab rebounds. That's right. He's like a truck just clearing people out.

But Boogie Cousins, I think Boogie Cousins is my winner.

Well, so in this era, we've moved to- I don't think of it as a nickname because I think of him as Boogie Cousins. We moved to first names and initials. All right. Sga, J-Dub, Luka, JT, Kat, Wembe. That's just where we landed. Joker, it's a nickname, but it's also his name. I have five guys that I think could really use a nickname. All right. Jalen Duren.

Something reboundy, something- Big, strong, intimidating, menacing guy. Do you have a nickname for him?

Well, I had some available ones that we haven't had in a while. One of the ones I was looking at was Night Train. We haven't had a good Night Train in a while. That's true. Boogie Man is another one. Nobody's really done. We've had it in boxing. There's good boxing nicknames. Yeah, there are. And UFC will have some good ones, but not basketball. But I feel like he needs one. I think Austin Reeves would be a game changer for him. If we called him Slick, he was just Slick Reeves.

Well, he had the white mom, but didn't he? Didn't they try that? Something quick.

Khan can nipple. Khan might be good enough because Clay, Clay became good enough for Clay.

Khan What he's doing as a rookie is...

Kahneman has a negative connotation, so you can't really use that. The initials get tough with the KK that can go in bad directions. But Kahn might be fine, but I also think he could use one. Jalen Johnson, Rich Paul client. We have Triple J for Jaron Jackson Jr. Double J? Yeah, something with J or J-squared. I don't know. Then here's the one that I really want us to work on. No more tanking emails, but I will accept nickname emails. Stefan Castle. That's somebody that needs a nickname where it's just his name's Velcro or one of those names where he's just with you wherever you go. Crazy glue. That's why I love Off-night.

Off-night is good. I love Off-night. I was like, Oh, my God, that's the best name I've heard in so long.

The biggest name that's sitting there for somebody is sniper. We haven't had a sniper yet. It could be Knipple. Like, Sniper Johnson, Sniper Jackson. Snapper Knipple, I don't like how it sounds. No. But sniper, I think could really... And shooter is another one because there was a Mark Wahlberg movie shooter. So it's just like, if we just started calling Clay Thompson shooter, I think that could have worked. But I really need the people to send me some good possible names.

I think your observation is correct that we have gone from nicknames to initials.

Initials. We just got lazy. Yeah. And boxing has still... What are the best boxing nicknames, though? Of all time. The Executioner was a classic.

It's like the Hitman. Hitman, Tommy Ernst is an Alzheimer. Tommy Ernst is an Alzheimer. The Motor City Cobra. Marvin Hagler. I mean, he changed his name to Marvelous, but originally that was his nickname.

The Italian stallion, Rocky Balboa.

I'm trying to think what was the best. Adrian Bronner had a good one, The Problem.

Oh, that's good. The Truth was one of the organic think names we've had this century, Paul pierce.

Carl Williams in the '80s, the heavyweight who was the truth.

Carl, he was the initial truth. But we also had Walter the Truth, Barry, which was a huge one. But then Shaq said about Paul pierce after a game, That guy's the truth. Start calling him the truth, and it stuck.

So maybe if- By the way, Black Mamba started in boxing. Before, Kobe was a Black Mamba, Floyd's uncle, Roger Mayweather, who had a junior lightweight belt and a junior welterweight belt, was the Black Mamba.

Well, Kobe gave himself the nickname, which I don't know what your ruling is on that. It always makes me- Well, I just read on a real- I just ran on a real. The self-nickname.

Yeah, I read it on a real. I saw it popped up on my IG. It was originally, there was some campaign they wanted to do for Michael Jordan, and he passed on the nickname.

So the other thing-I don't know if that's true or not. I think that I think that is true, but the one, I remember Kobe test drove a couple of gimmicks because he was into Apex Predator for a while. That was the other one, then settled on Black Mama, but that was his reinvention in the mid 2000s. The crazy stuff about Kobe all these years later is, as this was happening in real-time, we were like, What's this guy doing? This is weird. Now it's fucking cool. Mamba mentality. Everybody's in. Yeah, it fucking worked. He was way ahead of us. How it reminds us that AR-15 is the Reeve's name.

Austin Reeve's name.

I've never really called that.

Ar-15 was used much more last year than it has been this year.

Cahal is excited because he thinks Matherin can fill the heart and void for the Clippers. He's a big Clipper fan over there. He's very excited for the Matherin Minutes. Sorry for your troubles. Alastar from Sydney. We get emails from all over the globe. He said, On your last pod, the debate about the merits of Darren, Darren Peterson versus Ajay DeBança. Debança is what I'm going De Bança.

I'm hearing De Bança.

It's going back and forth. We're going to need a ruling. Okay, what do you want to do? Maybe Trump should have said something on Tuesday.

I'll say the opposite, whatever. He said, De Bança calls himself De Bança, but now it's I don't know.

We'll figure it out. But anyway, during that podcast, Kyle Mann, one of my guests, casually mentioned that Peterson has a Michael Myers tattoo. Alastar was disappointed. I wasn't more excited about it because I love Michael Myers. Sure. If he'd had a Neil Macaulay tattoo from heat, I probably would have had a reaction. I knew about this, which is why I didn't react. Does this make you like Peterson more or less that he has a Michael Myers tattoo? More. I think it's a little more, too, because it fits into his personality of the quiet kawaii type, quiet killer.

What it makes you think is he's coming to get you. If that's going to be his mentality, he's coming to get you, I like that a lot. But I saw your reel on De Banza, and I agree. I think when you're really looking at it, even if Peterson wasn't taking himself out of games, one guy is 6'6 and the other is 6'9. 9, and the 6'9 guy is super athletic.

Could play either forward spot, et cetera.

I heard you say that what's the downside for him? Andrew Wiggins is a pretty good player.

Like better Andrew Wiggins.

Or maybe it's more like a more athletic Paul George.

Yeah.

And that's a hell of a player.

What's really great about this draft, and we talked about a lot in the last pot, is just when you're talking about guys with real all-MBA potential, it's not just like, Oh, who should we take? Oden Durant was like this where it's like, Fuck. On one side, this could be the greatest scoring forward we've ever had. On the other side, this could be Patrick Ewing. And that's when the stakes change. I always gravitate toward more of the short thing. I was in the Durant. I was in the minority, but I was like, Durant is going to be one of the best scoring forwards of all time. I know this is going to happen. I just watched it at Texas. This is who he's going to be. I'd rather have that than the guy who's had multiple I have a couple of injuries already.

Not to bring up tanking, but as I said, I said this on game over with Rich, I was telling him, if I'm a Utah jazz fan, this is a special set of circumstances this year. I understand tanking is generally an issue. There's no denying that. However, this year, it's less of an issue than people think, because if I'm a jazz fan, I'm not mad that my team is tanking.

I've been in this spot a couple of times with the Celtics. I was not mad as it was happening.

Right, it depends. It depends on the situation.

It's two months of your life. We just went through this with the Patriots, with the Drake Maydrav.

There's a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, right? Here it is right now. If you're the Utah Jazz. You're not a destination for free agents or guys clamoring to be treated. You have a couple of really good forwards whose games should complement each other right now, but you're spending some money on one of them. And there's considered generational talents in the draft.

It's two months of your life, which is the most important piece of it.

But Bill, if you are, as long as you're one of the worst four records in the league, you will be able to draft a hell of a player. So your job is, for any fan of the jazz, make sure to have, I don't care what happens, you better have one of the worst four records in the league, right? If you don't do that, you screwed up so royally. So I get it if I'm a jazz fan. I would get it if I'm a Wizards fan. I would get it if I'm a I thought.

Nets, definitely.

Yeah, Nets, Pacers. I understand.

Maybe Mavericks. We might not see Cooper Flag again. Kyrie's already said, I'm out.

I understand it. So if you have a league where there are 10 teams tanking, but a half a dozen of them, the fan base is like, yeah, this is not the Sixers who did it for five straight years and weren't any good.

Their fans had Stockholm syndrome with it. They talked themselves into it. They're like, We're out thinking everybody with this strategy.

If you've set up a system of incentives, again, and you're telling everyone they're generational players in this draft and they're a handful of them. You don't have to draft one overall. And you got teams with good nucleuses where you're looking at them and you're going, oh, actually, that's nice.

Indiana is the best example. Indiana, you put one of these guys on their team, they're immediately scary. I'm fast forwarding to another email because you were talking about Utah. This is from Eric. He says, and I haven't heard this point before, Danny Ang is doing it again, and nobody has noticed yet. He's following his 07 in Celtics blueprint. Start with the star who can't win alone, Laurie Markinen/Paul pierce. Acquire the second-tier star who's a specialist, Ray Allen, Triple J. And now the third step would be trade for a mega star because you have the other two guys. Plus the lottery pick. Could that be Yannis? The problem with this theory is there's really the KG in this scenario is Giannis, and there's no other KG. The only other one I can think of is Devon Booker, and I don't know why Phoenix would trade him.

Yannis He has the personality where maybe Utah is not a deal. He might like a nice small, quiet situation better than LA or New York.

I honestly have no feel for...

Me neither.

Whether what he really wants.

But according to the Disney movie that I saw, it seems he likes a small town.

Right. But it's like with LeBron, I thought at some point, I remember before the decision, I was just convinced it was going to be the next because I was I think this guy wants to be the greatest basketball player of all time, and the move is to go to the Knicks. And Dolan screwed it up, and that story has been.

Did I ever tell you that? I don't remember if I told you this on the pod did last time, but I ran into Clyde Frazier, Day of the Decision on that little breakfast spot right across the street from Madison Square Garden. We had lunch together and just we were commiserating over what had just happened. But I thought it was super cool that I had lunch with Clive Frasher.

Because you could have had LeBron and Wade on the Knicks. Come on. You could have been talking about that that day.

Well, I mean, really, the issue there was not LeBron.

The issue was- That was the people that worked for the Knicks.

When Pat Reilly said, I want a piece of the team, and the Dolans wouldn't give it to him, but Arunson would, that's it. If the Dolans just say, Okay, here's a taste. Stay here. We'll give you control of operations. Obviously, LeBron would have been a Knick.

They didn't think a GM's As that important back then, I don't think, in the same way. Because I remember Red R. Beck almost left for the next once when I was a kid. And then they just basically like, Here's another 75 grand. It's unbelievable. It wasn't like now.

You will throw money away. Franchises will. They still will. Mid-level exception guy or a baseball veteran. All right, we'll take a roll of the dice. It's 8, 10, 12 million a year. It didn't work out. We'll eat some money and move him. But a GM, if you have Masai Ujiri or something like that. You could see, oh, wow, he did it in Denver, he did it in Toronto.

What's Brad Stevens worth to the Celtics? He just got them under the luxury tax somehow. He saved them $300 million a share.

It doesn't count against your cap or anything. If I'm running a franchise, that's where the money goes. It's best used to an actually great executive.

That's what scares me about the Lakers. Exactly. Because they know this.

I always thought it's like Leo Mazzoni in the '80s. Ever, Jared, didn't matter who they took, had a career year in Atlanta.

Or the Spurs shooting coach. Or the fix Kawhi. Kawhi fell out of 15 because nobody thought it could shoot.

Stoutland, the offensive line coach in Philadelphia. If you have that guy and If I ran a franchise and I wanted him, well, they're giving him 2 million a year already. Okay, here's 10 million. Here's five times.

Put a zero on it. Here's 20 million a year. You're paying 8 million here for Deirdre Ayton.

Right. Now, not not just because by reputation or he appears that way, but if a guy has a track record, if it's pretty clear that it's him, what is that worth? That people are like, Well, coordinators only get that. He'd be making more than a lot of head coaches. So much.

Next question from Jay Johnson. Which team, given their history, is most likely to win the draft lottery, take Peterson, and have him become a complete bust? The obvious candidates are the Kings or Wizards. Portland jumping up and taking the wrong guys in play, given their history. On the flip side, which team could Peterson land on, most likely to have the right infrastructure to help him succeed. So I wrote down for worst. I mean, Kings is always a worst case in there. Kings, 100%. But can't sleep on the Pelicans, the history of New Orleans basketball, and them taking seemingly perfect assets and them going sideways. That's true. I think Memphis is in there. And then the Wizards, just because of their history.

But Sacramento is lapping in the field.

Kings, they're minus 500 in that argument. Nets, I'm not sure because the Nets, young team where they could just let him do his thing.

They're the Clippers. They're jinked. They're a jinkst franchise. Might be I think.

Best teams, I think, would be the Mavericks, Pacers, Hawks. Pacers would be interesting because Halliburton has the ball a lot. Nemhardt has the ball a lot. Peterson, we're not sure about what's going on with him just in general.

Right, but one of the things we're not sure about, other than the injury stuff, is he a point guard? Probably not. He's 6'6. Not ideally. I don't think ideally. I think ideally, he's like, Okay, ideally. When you think of the triangle and Michael and Kobe, They weren't exactly point guards, but they weren't exactly not point guards either. Maybe they didn't dribble the ball up the floor, but the offense really did run through them.

That's where the league is starting to go. You can even see the Celtics this year when they had White and they had Pritchard and they had Simons. Yeah, combo guards. Combo guards who can run offense and they can run off-ball action. But I love that if your off-guard is a combo guard, in fact, and then you already have a primary ball handler, like a point guard. Halliburton doesn't need the ball all the time either. Anyone with the Pacers, the ceiling team is the Mavs. If you put him, that's exactly what they need. He's basically with Kyrie, and then eventually they get rid of Kyrie or trade him, and he takes over.

By the way, Kyrie Kyrie has such an opportunity here. Kyrie can elevate his historical standing by so much on this Mavs team because you do want some veterans on a team. You want everyone at not exactly the same age. You'd like some veteran presence, right? And Kyrie could rehabilitate this image as at times immature or too focused on other stuff or somehow causing a distraction. If he became the vet, the good influence, veteran leader on this Mavs team, if this Mavs team won two of the next four chips and Kyrie was a big part of it, where would he rate all time?

The problem for him is you're in the same conference with OKC in San Antonio I knew. And that shit's got to happen fast.

But this is the thing about Cooper Flag. I think there's a tendency if there's a long, non-center white guy that he gets... People talk about Luca with Larry Bird. They're not very much alike, actually. Their games are not that similar. But they're white guys who are about the same height.

And talk a lot of shit.

And talk a lot of shit. But Larry Bird made every team he was ever on so much better.

I don't think there's really any similarities with them, but I think people think that.

Bird shot it a lot better, too.

Bird was a- Bird could fit into any scenario. He's a better defender. What we were talking about earlier. Yeah.

Here's the thing about Cooper Flag. I think there's a tendency to look at... And by the way, it's not even like people are twirling their mustaches. We're racist, right? It's that...

Is that what racist is? Yeah, right.

In the back room, they tie the girl to the tracks and everything. Yeah, the bad guys, right? But I do think that we're human beings. We typecast. We generalize. That's how we think about things. Cooper Flagg is athletic. He is a really good defensive player.

He is a- He's an elite defensive player.

Cooper Flag is the guy I want on my team. You could argue more than anyone in the NBA going forward.

For assets?

Yes. You could argue because- I think Wemby. Sure, but given Wemby's physiology at seven foot million...

What Wemby did in the Pistons game the other day, I'm still thinking about.

If Wemby stays healthy, forget it.

Because the thing with Wemby, this to me is the last level of being a great player. He cannot have a good game and still be the best guy in the game. Pistons game, he sucked, but he changed 20 shots on defense. And then he's the guy- And offensively, it looked like a mess.

It didn't matter. Then he's the guy who is saying, I'm playing hard in this All-Star game. As Rich Paul points out, That actually had an influence on the other guys.

It was him, it was Ant, and it was the two Detroit guys. And those four guys lifted the game. Lifted the game. Everybody else caught up in it.

There's no argument. You want Wemby, but I'm factoring everything, including height and how that may affect their physical decline later on. Cooper Flag is so good. I don't think people... And he's not even shooting it well yet, but he probably will.

And he's not 20 yet.

And he's not 20 yet. That Kyrie gets healthy, and now you're doing Cooper Flag next year already.

And a top seven, eight pick.

That's what I'm saying. That might be the spot where it's impossible. So when you say, Hey, but these guys and those in the conference, right? So are the Mavs if they get a guy like- Don't forget Joker.

No question. Don't forget Ian Edwards. He's in there, too. It's funny. He talks about the cross-racial comparisons, which I've always loved, where we just compare white people to white people. Knippel. To me, it's like when I watch him, and he's getting better, he's like flag. He's actually been adding stuff since a year went along.

He also plays defense, by the way.

He's way closer to Clay Thompson than I think people would see because the instinct is just to compare him to every white shooter that's ever existed.

I think Clay is a great comparison.

But there's a little Havlicek, too. A little shorter. There's Havlicek stuff in there, too. Havlicek played 50 years ago. I never saw Havlicek. Just on Moving without the ball, constant movement, just knows how to play basketball, can play their position, rebounds, can affect games when he's not really shooting that well.

No, if you think of Knappel as just a shooter, that's a disservice to him.

Yeah. Honestly, I love Clay, and I think Clay is a Hall of Famer. I think he's a better version of Clay because he can do more stuff and he rebounds.

Clay, of course, was capable of getting hotter than anyone who ever lived.

And Knappel might have that. We'll see. He's made 200 threes already as a rookie. So Jay Johnson sends us in, Keep referencing tanking solutions. You overlooked that the MLB has solved some of this already. Any team participating in MLB revenue sharing can't participate in the lottery for three straight years. Is This happened in the White Sox in the 2025 draft. They were one of the worst teams, but they picked 10th outside of the lottery because of the penalties. Do they need to start thinking about financial stuff when they think about tanking? That could be one of them. You can't be in revenue sharing anymore if you're in the top eight of the lottery three straight years. I've been pushing for 75% off all tickets if you fall 25 games under 500. From that moment on, it's 75% off. Rich- And season ticket holders are getting money back.

That will stop it. If you want to stop- We're penalizing.

Then other people are saying, Oh, this is another one. He had a 5-2 format for the first round with the one and the two seeds, the seven, eight. You win the play in, but you don't get the three home games. You get two. Hold on.

Say that again.

Five, two. So you get five home games, two in the road for the one and two seeds. So that there's real incentive to finish in the top six so you can get the extra home game.

But I don't think that's where the tanking becomes the issue, right?

But it's just all general, all trying reward teams.

Rich had an interesting point about this. What if the lottery was for the players? So De Banza is the first pick. That means he gets the first one. So he has his choice what team he wants to talk to.

See, I really like this idea. Me too. I had a separate version of the same idea about the top five put in their pick, who their first choice is. It's like the top five agree. It is Darren Peterson is the number one pick. Darren, come on up here. Here are the five teams. You get to choose. It almost becomes like a reality dating show. He goes up and he's like, I pick the Indiana Pacers. He's like, Oh.

That also does a thing where the draft in the NFL is such an event. The NBA draft is not the same event, but it could be if you played with it a little bit.

That would be amazing if they did it that way. John McGrady, this is off our Luca conversation. He said, Why is the Luca versus Shay argument not at the top of first take in every debate show all the time? Since 2018, Luca was the undisputed best player of that class, Shay took his place overnight. Two years ago, Luca beat Shay in OKC in his way to the finals. Now it's Shay's League. We talked about Luca like he was the next face of the League for six years, and we have abruptly stopped. Is this Nico's fault or did the trade flip this?

Can you imagine saying, You know what's going to end the run for Luka, at least temporarily, as even being considered the next phase of the league or the potential best player of the league, a trade to the Lakers.

Right. But it feels like that's what's happened.

100%.

It feels like that's what happened. I felt like when he showed up last year, that the Laker fans loved him. They were like, This is amazing. You could feel it. You could feel it shipped away from LeBron, even in the stands. Jerseys were popping up. Now we're out of the honeymoon phase, and the Laker fans seem way more like what we talked about earlier. Is this fucking guy going to play defense?

Is this guy going to bitch after every call? Magic Johnson was not a great defender, but Magic did not play. It's Luka's style of play and the personality that goes along with it is becoming hard to root for. And that's a tough situation to be in.

That was the next question I got. It was from Josh from Statesborough, Georgia, which asked if there had ever been a greater group of winers than this year's Lakers mentioning not just Luka, not just LeBron, Marcus Smart, who's in that old guy, I'm not even good anymore, but I'm going to wind about everything, Reeves, and he suggests that they go after Draymond to really cement it.

I think a lot of what's happening in the NBA now is actually soccer culture affecting stuff because it's been going on for years at the highest levels of soccer, selling calls and faking injury and faking fat.

I just want to point out, guys have been bitching about calls for a long time.

Not like this.

Not like this, but it's- Every single.

It's unbelievable. Also, here's the easiest solution. Foul hunting, I could get rid of that. Make me Commissioner for not even a day, for one minute, and I'll fix that stuff. If the ref thinks you're hunting for a foul, don't call it. If you think the player's intention was to make a move in order to create contact, technically, because technically he was able to make the move quick enough or fake the guy into position, so then he could create contact, that was the Don't call it. Swallow the whistle. Done. That's the end of the James Harden, Luca Donchit style of play, which is not fun to watch. Ultimately, it's a consumer product. Just legislate out the shit you don't like.

They've tried to get rid of some of it, and it's worked, but there's ways to go. One more break, and then we're going to finish this. All right, next question from Robert Hill. Doing an NCAA tournament for TV shows, what would be the four one seeds?

For TV shows all time?

I think he's talking drama because he said consensus would probably have Game of Thrones, Sopranos, Wire, Breaking Bad. I wrote down, I think the one seeds would be Sopranos, Thrones, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad. I think the two seeds would be succession, West Wing, The Wire, probably the Americans or The Shield, something like that. And then everyone would get mad that The Wire wasn't a one seed is how this would play out.

To me, you can't even mention other shows with The Wire. I watched The Sopranos and I thought, boy, this is the best drama I've ever seen on TV. I didn't watch The Wire when it came out because every single person I knew from every walk of life said it was the greatest thing ever, and it somehow turned me off to it. I I can watch it till 10 years later. The Wire is not just the best TV ever made. It's the best TV by so far ever made. I don't think you can include it in the tournament because it takes the drama out. These other shows are not comparable to The Wire.

I would have for my actual one, if it was me, I'd have Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, and Thrones.

Okay, I never watched Mad Men. That's one that I just didn't watch.

Those would be my four. But I don't think enough people would have The Wire in there because I don't think it was as watched as people realized.

No, it wasn't.

But Game of Thrones- So it was either people loved it or didn't know about it.

Game of Thrones can't be in there, Bill, because once they got away from the books, which I didn't read.

That wasn't their fault, though.

Nevertheless, it's part of the TV show.

It became awful. I've been watching Sauna for a half hour every day. First two seasons are unbelievable. I think people forget how incredible the show was and how they have 60 characters and 97 plot. That was great.

By the way, I got two shows that I would put above a lot of...

I thought like, You don't like my theory that the wire would be the two-seed caused by a 72-hour controversy, people just being flipping out?

Oh, yeah. That's a great idea if you want to create controversy, for sure. Yeah. Breaking Bad, there's no denying It's quality. It's excellently made. I found it tedious because I thought it was super predictable and because I've been conditioned to watch shows with five different story lines going on at once, 90 seconds, 90 seconds, 90 seconds. It was just an up close look at really one storyline.

And you knew where it was going. That's not the rewatchability as some of these other ones. I watch the Sopranos every two, three years now. I think I've gone all the way through it four times. I've gone through the Wire 3. I wouldn't do Breaking Bad a second time.

I'll give you two shows that I've seen in recent years, I think, that are, I think, better than a lot of those shows. Dark, which is, I want to say it's on Netflix. It's a German show on Netflix.

Wow, from German shows to me.

Dark, but dark is like, oh, wow, it's going there. Okay. It's nothing to do with Nazis. Actually, that might be one of the criticism I have of it for a reason I won't reveal because it'll ruin the show for everyone. But it's an incredible mind-blowing show. The other that I had so much fun watching was The Last Kingdom. The Last Kingdom was the most fun I've had watching a show in a long time.

Bayly from Lynchburg, Virginia, wants to know what NBA player past or present, would have benefited most from using the limitless drug? I love limitless. I've talked about this a lot.

Me too.

I had it as number 16 on my 50 most rewatchable movies of the 21st century. It caused a riot. Fifteen? It's higher than that. I Watch it every time it's on.

But limitless is...

What are people's beef? So you're a limitless head. Come in. A hundred %. It's fucking amazing.

What are you kidding? It's the fantasy, right? You take the pill and now you have fun.

Well, so for the email question, an NBA player that could He used it to clear a big mental hurdle, fix a competitive mindset problem, or fix a glaring hole. And he said some examples would be Vince Carter, Shaq, Ben Simmons. So I was thinking, guys who had it all, but something was missing up here. I still think Ben Simmons was the greatest athlete I've seen on a basketball court who never put it together. And Vince Carter, who is going to be a Hall of Famer, if he is in our day, I can't remember.

He is.

At his peak was a 25 point of score. I also think he Probably could have been one of the 15 best players of all time and wasn't. So I think he has to be mentioned.

I don't know about that with Vince Carter. I think Vince did really well for himself. He was not... Vince Carter was a little bit... I love Vince. I credit him for When Rich Paul says, Star in your role, he understood, unlike someone like Carmelo Anthony, who was an incredible ISO scorer. And as the league changed, maybe couldn't accept that maybe there was a different role for him now.

You're talking about near the end of the career.

Yeah, as their career. But like, Vince played 20 years. Half of him.

I know, but I just feel like the ceiling for Vince was so fucking high.

He had a lot of Zack Levine in him in the sense that he's not going to create with the ball in his hand the way Someone like Kobe could.

I think- So you don't think the limitless... So the limitless drug for you would be Ben Simmons?

No, because Ben Simmons was an emotional issue, I think, more than anything. I think he was a very smart basketball player.

Well, the guy in limitless, he has His emotional issue is he couldn't finish his book.

That's right. That's true. And it unblocked him.

Ben Simmons needed an unblocking. He was afraid to get fouled.

I think of a guy with all the tools, if he were a smarter A player.

James Wiseman?

Well, there's a good one.

I mean, I'll tell you- Could James Wiseman have been the best version ever of J. W. D. D. D. If he had the limitless drug?

If he had the limitless drug.

He's just 25, 20s.

Who's the player? You're like, Man, if that dude was just smarter or faster processor.

Can I offer you Lamar Odom? Instead of him taking other drugs that he brags about now, he just took the limitless drug.

But Lamar wasn't a stupid player. He just...

Chase Buttinger? Chase Buttinger. One of the great athletes who never Hall of Fame volleyball player and a great basketball. I'm trying to think of- I'm trying to put it together.

No, I'm thinking of a guy, and it's not that he doesn't know the game, but someone, Kyrie Irving, who, skill for skill, is not the- Kyrie Irving on the limitless drug. If you gave Kyrie Irving the... But the thing that's tough about Kyrie is he doesn't have a low basketball. He has high one. But it's more like he's not at times judicious enough about when to deploy his different... His bag is so deep that he needs to know, he needs to be... It's not an IQ thing. It's a what wisdom thing. He needs the wisdom to know which tool to take out of the bag when. I think that's really the thing that's stopping him from, and partly because the bag is so deep, he can do so many things, that's one of the things that's stopping him from being in the conversation among the greatest who ever lived.

So we've seen this in baseball with Barry Buds, who actually had his version of His limits are struck. What happens? His eyesight gets so good, you can't throw him a ball. He just won't swing at it. He always swings at strikes. He puts up stats that are hilarious to look at the baseball reference to out. And he was already really talented to begin with. He would have been a Hall of Fame left fielder without the '98 and after.

Hall of Fame? It would have been Ted Williams. It would have been Ted Williams, Stan Musial, or Barry Bonds. It would have been that had he never touched PEDs.

So the PEDs became the limitless drug, pushed him up. So if that happened for Kyrie.

Well, you know what the PEDs were for Barry Bonds? So let me take it to Superheros, okay? Captain America, it was. Captain America was a 98-pound weakling who took Supersoldier Serum. And what that did was it optimized the human possibilities, like the limitless drug, but physically. It's like if instead of a 98-pound weakling took Supersoldier Serum, what if you gave Batman Supersoldier Serum? He's already physically better than everyone else, and now you're putting him on the stuff that makes him the best possible version of himself.

So it'll be like Yannis in 2020. We just gave him the limitless drug.

Barry Bonds was putting up mid-four on bases and high-six sluggings, which is like some of the best- He was like 42. No, in his prime, which is some of the best numbers anyone's ever put up. Then In his late 30s, suddenly he woke up. Same external factors, ballpark, everything the same. He woke up one day at like 36 or 37, and his on-base percentage was in the sixes. He was slugging in the eights. It's like, come on, you're making a mockery of the game.

I think there should be a baseball Hall of Fame. I don't know how many people would be in this part of the Hall of Fame. In my basketball book, I had the Pantheon, and it was the top. It was a pyramid. The top level was the best guys ever. In baseball, there's this whole different version of just guys that you will always remember seeing in person. I saw Bonds when he was just before all the PD stuff. Great. I saw him as a left fielder on the Giants just when he was great. It was just different to watch him play left field and then come to bat. You knew he could steal second base. It was just memorable. I felt like Ricky Henderson was like that.

Oh, in 1985?

Ricky Henderson in the '80s was amazing to see Dwight Goodman was like this. As a rookie. Pedro was like this. There's certain guys that I just think stand out.

People talk about Kofax in the previous generation.

Yeah, for sure.

Aaron Judge, right? Or Shohe, obviously, both of them.

Honestly, judge is like that. Yeah. He's so fucking big. When you're in person at the games and he comes in, it's like seeing fucking Paul Bunyan.

Yeah, it is Paul Bunyan. Yeah, you're like, Oh, my God. He's in the baby Ruth Mickey Mantle lineage of physically different than ever, bigger somehow, hitting the ball farther than everybody.

I think Betz is like that. Because he's such a great player. He's such a great baserunner. He's such a great defender. You will listen. Everything he does is so different than any other player.

Our kids went to school together when they were in preschool. Esther, who was, I think, in the same year as I took her to an Angels game because the Yankees were in town, and I pointed out to her, she's little, I don't know, three or maybe five or something. I said, That is Derek Jeter, and that is Mariana Rivera, because Rivera came in the game. I was like, See Mariana Rivera? Just remember that you saw him in person. Because Rivera... Rivera is like, I have... I think, I don't... Stop me if I've said this to you before, but this is from Greatest Hits, Volume I have levels of clutch like Dante's Inferno. The highest level of clutch is down to you're down to you are maybe the best who ever did it, and under pressure, you're the worst who ever did it. You're in that A-Rod was there for a while. Peyton Manning was there for a while. There were guys like that. The highest level of clutch is the Michael Jordan Mariano Rivera level. Mariano Rivera has the lowest adjusted ERA in baseball history. What did he do in the postseason? His ERA is one-third of his normal ERA, which was the best ever in the postseason.

It's a 0. 7 in 142 innings.

He was so great. The fans who went against him and got a run on him in the ninth remember all the parts of the hitting. It's usually like a dink hit and a steal and another dink hit.

It's an error. There are people like that. I'm so glad I told Esther, that is Mariano Rivera.

One thing that Mariano had, so he would be on my list, too, of the guys you just remember seeing. He could come into Fenway and the crowd would be going nuts, and he would come out and he would just walk and have that Mariano vibe. He would psych out the crowd before the ending started. We were like, Fuck, we're not going to get hit on this guy.

He had something about him. Look, he's the only unanimous selection to the baseball Hall of Fame in his first ballot. He had something about him that was like, if you took the Old Man in the Sea and took the passage about DiMagio and just you could put Rivera instead of DiMagio. What about the great Rivera? I heard his father was a fisherman. It's the exact You could just substitute DiMagio with Mariana Rivera, and the book reads exactly the same.

There's two other good things with that. One is, you mentioned Jordan. When he hits the shot, there's that awesome photo of all the Utah fans. There's the blown up photo of all the Utah fans' faces just knowing their fuck. The ball's in the air. They're all like...

It's Jordan. You think it's going to not go in? They just know it's going in.

But we weren't old enough to see Russell in person. But this has been told to me many times. And It's been in documentaries and stuff. When they would introduce the players in the other team, they would all come out and stand next to each other. Now they run out. They do the jumps into each other. Sometimes they don't even come out. But they would come out and they would stand all next to each other. They would announce Russell, and he would come out and just stand there with his hands behind his back. The crowd would get psyched out because he never lost.

They would just see him and be like, Fuck. In high school, what's the stat? In high school, college and the pros, he played in, what was it, 21 game sevens and won every one? It's something of this.

He won every game seven.

He lost in 58- Not game seven. Deciding games.

Deciding games, yeah.

Deciding games in his life. I want to say maybe he had one loss or he was undefeated. Come on. Especially when you get to a deciding game, the teams are pretty evenly matched, usually. Normally, it does come down to who has the best... Who's the guy you want on your team? Who has that guy?

That's the case for him in the pantheon. For sure. Greg from Chicago. The love for the '80 hockey team over the last couple of weeks. Do You Believe in Miracles got me thinking the great sports calls of all time. He wanted me to do a whole podcast about this or do a bracket or something. But it did get me thinking, just off top of my head, no research what my favorite ones were other than Do You Believe in Miracles? I think Down Goes Frasher is second.

Down Goes Frasher is- Down Goes Frasher is unbelievable.

It's Cosella's greatest work.

He just keeps saying it.

He's so shocked. Down goes, Frasher. Down goes, Frasher.

By the way, what's crazy is he did that for one knockdown. Frasher was knocked down six times in that fight, right?

Oh my God.

Poor Frasher.

The all-time bad matchup fight.

All-time. It's the rock, paper, scissors, 100%. It is- Then he went back for seconds.

He's like, Maybe this time I'll beat him.

Yeah, this time it won't. But you study it when you talk rock, paper, scissors in boxing, when you talk styles make fights, Frasher Foreman. That's That's the number one thing.

I don't believe what I just saw. I wrote down.

I don't believe what I just saw. By the way, Lamply has a great one with Foreman when he knocked out Michael Moore. It happened. It happened. It happened.

That was a great Great one. We'll see you tomorrow night was a good one. Then Joe Buck, after game 4, ALCS or Game 5, I can't remember which one, but he says, We'll see you later tonight because it was past the date. That's right. It was like an homage to his dad, but also awesome. Yeah, that was awesome. Lundquist. Yes, sir. For Nicholas. Then Have a check, steal the Ball, and Giants, When the Penet, were the two we grew up with. Have A Check, Still the Ball, Giants, When the Penet, were the two.

It's so interesting to me, The Giants, When the Penet, because there's one of the great American novels, Underground, right?

Yeah.

Delilo. It's about the loss of American innocence. It's a thousand something pages. The moment he uses to show innocent America is Bobby Thompson's home run, which it later came out that they were stealing signs. I found that so interesting that you're trying to get the perfect moment in American history, pre-Watergate, pre a lot of the cynicism, or so it's told. Here it is, Bobby Thompson's home run. This is pure Americana and an innocent time. It turns out it's total bullshit. Everything was just... Nothing ever changes. It's the same shit all the time. They were stealing signs. There was no innocence. There was no purity. The irony of Dalilo choosing Thompson's home run as the moment to make that point makes the novel even better for me.

You just saw that with the Olympic gold medal.

With an in hockey.

Yeah. When we won in 1980, it was all anyone talked about for a month and a half after.

We were big underdogs, though.

No, but I'm saying after it happened, we were just living on a high forever. It was like, Jim Craig is going to sign with the Atlanta Flames. I'm like, great. I'm now a Flams fan. Then Ken Mora was on the Islanders. It's like, I hope they win the Cup. I love Ken Mora after they got the Bruins. It was like unity somehow. I was still rooting for those guys. Here, we won them. Within 24 hours, it became a political controversy. Because that's just how everything has to go, apparently. Derek from Bloomington, Indiana. What current NBA player do you think would represent the USA the best in curling if they practiced?

In curling?

Curling.

Okay, hold on.

We take a great athlete We're just like, for a year, you're just going to learn how to curl. I just might- Steph. That's where I had Curry. Hand eye, attention to detail. I would pick Steph. I think he could figure it out in a year.

However, pre-2020- He's tall, though, which would be- Pre-2022, fate of the universe on the line? Iguida. No. No.

Yes, Steph. Well, I wonder, is there a size thing? Maybe it's somebody's shorter. That's a good point, too. Maybe it's like a Dame Lillard three years ago type thing. Curry is short enough.

Yeah. 6'3. I mean, he's tall, but he's not like, freetishly tall.

I wonder if it has to be like 5'9, 5'8. Is it like Jose Alvarado?

Is Curry actually 6'3 or is he an MBA 6'3?

No, he's taller than me. I'm 6'1 and a half, and Curry was... And Curry is 6'3. I thought Curry had an inch of me. These guys are all taller than you think. Nash, you assume is like, Mighty Mouse. When you meet him, he's like a good 6'2 and a half. He's taller than I am. Kyrie is another one.

Kyrie is not 6 feet tall, something like that?

A little more? No, he's higher. I think he's like 6. He's 6'1, 6'2. This is the only question I made up. Okay, Max, top four boxers right now because nobody here is going to be on my mailback. What's your, Max, top Are you including Terrence Crawford or no?

Because he's technically retired right now.

Don't include him because he's technically retired, even though we know he's coming back.

Alexander Usik is the heavyweight champion of the world. My guy.

You know what he does? He just wins parlays. Just put him in with any other, anything. Pick a sport, anything.

First of all, he's cruiserweight champion, undisputed, beat everybody. He and Evander Holyfield, two greatest cruiserweights ever. Division has been around about 50 years. He moves up to heavyweight, but in an era of super heavyweights. These aren't your father's heavyweights. These are 250 and 60 and 80 pound guys. And not only does he beat three of the top guys in consecutive fights, he does it twice. He beats them each twice.

Never really favored by that much in any of the fights because of the size difference.

Well, certainly not against Dubois, maybe, but not against Fury and Joshua. And against Tyson Fury, it was really interesting. Fury, great fighter. Fury, who's six 8, 70, 280. By the middle of that fight starts to look like he's playing with Usik. He's winning the fight and he's playing with him and having fun. It's like this is maybe a mismatch. Usik comes back and fit because talk about a deep bag. Usik's bag, no matter what adjustment you make, he makes a better adjustment. He's Kobe if you're trying to defend him. He has a counter for every single thing you do.

These are my favorite boxers, the problem solvers.

Every sport.

This is what I love about- This was Leonard's underrated quality was, Shit, I got to solve this over the next half hour.

Cooper Flag. That's why I think he's going to be so good. Whatever you throw at him, he figures it out. And so that's Ousik. Then, Shakoar Stevenson. Who just put on a clinic against Tiofima Lopez, Madison Square Garden.

Silence the Doubters. I was never a giant... I wasn't a go-out-of-my-way-to-watch-em guy for Stevenson.

But that was a masterpiece. He's like a Pernell Whitaker, Floyd Mayweather, or any one of these incredible boxers who you just can't hit. So good luck beating them.

So Uzec Stevenson.

There's a guy named... Remember this, if you're into boxing or you want to be, Noah Inouhah, who is who is called the Monster in Japan, who keeps going up weight classes. He was tiny, but he keeps going up. Now he's up to junior featherweight. So he's getting to be more still small, but not as tiny. And he keeps just dominating everybody in every weight class. Can really box, make adjustments, very fast, twitchy, big puncture.

What do you think the lowest weight for the casual American boxing fan to get invested in?

You got to feel like this guy, I could take You can't feel like I can take this guy because he's too small. If your average American sitting on his couch watching a fight- You say junior lightweight?

How low can we go?

I think we can go down to feather weight. I think we go to 126 pounds. 126 pounder walks around 145 pounds and can kick your ass.

Well, when did Pacquio really become... When did he cross over? What weight class was he in when he really crossed over? So he started at flyweight. I know.

But he also was the lineal champ flyweight. It's not like he just turned pro and then started moving. And then he skipped certain divisions. But I would say when he got to a featherweight, 126 pounds is when he crossed over because he obliterated Barrera.

I think people check out under that weight. You might be right about it. The guys are just... The punches are flying. It's just hard to get a... It almost seems like a different sport.

Zufa boxing. That's where we go down to, is featherweight. Smart. Yeah. By the way, Zufa boxing, speaking of cruiser weights, I said, Holyfield and Usik are the two greatest cruiserweights ever. The guy who's in the conversation for number three is Jai Opetiah, who's an undefeated Australian cruiserweight. He is universally recognized as the champ. He's the Ring magazine champ, right? But Ring magazine does not... What they do is they recognize who is the champion. They're not sanctioning fights and stuff like that. They're just like, Oh, that guy beat everyone. He gets our So what boxing has been missing is a mechanism by which the best actually fight the best. Jio Pitaya just signed with Zufa Boxing, who I work for, and Jio Pitaya is defending his Ring magazine, which means you're the champ, Cruiserweight title, but importantly, fighting for the first ever Zufa Championship belt against this American Brandon Glanton, who is like a Joe Frazier, Dwight Braxton, come forward and try to kill you every round type guy. It's going to be a sensational action fight, and that's Mark J. I'll be calling it.

That's next week. Yeah. Who's your number four in the top four?

So four, if I had to go beyond, in a way, probably Bam Rodriguez. Bam Rodriguez is a little smaller than in a way, but is a southpaw boxer puncher who can fight his ever-loving ass off. And like in any sport, Bill, what's the first thing you look for? It's not impossible to be a world-class elite, elite guy without this, but the fast twitchies. Is this guy electrically fast? And then is he skilled and all that? Bam has that stuff. Plus, he's tough, plus, he hits hard, the whole package.

What's our best division right now?

Best division in boxing?

I'm still nostalgic for the super middleweight run we had in the... What was that? Early 2010s.

With who?

Just all those dudes we had all in a row, the Calzaghi All those guys.

Kessler and Andre Ward, like a Super 6 tournament. It was amazing.

All of a sudden, we had nine guys who could just beat the shit out of each other. You know why?

Because this is why. This is why I was so hopeful, and this is why I went with Zufa boxing. I did not have opportunities in boxing. Is boxing has always lacked the they. You know what they should do in football? You mean the NFL? You don't mean these other league. You know what they should do in basketball? You need the NBA. There's never a they in boxing. When you look at MMA, there's a they there. It's the UFC. I got a call from Dana White and talked to nick Khan, and it's like, Yeah, we want to do this. I think, Oh, wait a minute. For the first time, there might be a they in boxing. I want to be a part of that.

It's usually a they, but it's like they were crooks.

Right.

They did something illegal.

No, Frank, actually, the closest thing that boxing has ever had to an actual they was Franky Carbo, who was literally a mobster. When the mob controlled boxing, that's the closest thing that boxing ever had to a day. When you talk about this, the reason you remember the Super Middleweights is because they organized a tournament. It was called the Super 6, and it took place over a couple of years. It was great. Where they took the six best Super Middleweights in the world.

We also had six best, too. That's the other thing.

We did, but the fact that they all fought each other elevates them in your own mind because you're like, you could... So that's what we're doing here. You want to turn boxing. Every other sport is a Super 6 every year. Every year in football, basketball, baseball, there's a tournament, and you find out who's the best, and that's what it should be in boxing.

This is a mailbag question I got, but it's perfect for you. It's from Justin R. In Ann Arbor. Lifelong Pistons fan, he says. Was trying to explain the Pistons to a friend of mine. Made the connection to who Ron Holland reminds me of. Old Dirty Bastard. In the Wutang of the Pistons, he's definitely ODB. Not on every song, but he was in the track, you always feel him. But then what's Beef stew? I'm not sure there's actually ever been a hip hop artist quite like Beef stew. Just think about that one. I just knew you'd have some thoughts.

Old Dirty. I have more thought. First of all, Detroit, people who said, including Rich Paul, to me when I was like, They might be ahead of schedule. Once they beat the next the way they did, I'm like, Could they win the championship? He's like, They don't have a second banana. They don't. That's been shown. It's too hard for them. It's too hard. Old Dirty was, first of all, his first album is one of the most underrated of all time. It is an absolute classic. A classic. There's so many great songs in that album. It's insane. Dirty is... If someone says, Hey, he's my favorite hip hop artist of all time, I understand because he his mind, too. If Old Dirty, any song that Old Dirty was on- Ron Hall is not good enough for the Old Dirty comparison for you. Exactly. Old Dirty is like, if you want to... Who is he? He's like a sixth man, but your sixth man is... This is the all-time team, and your sixth man is Kobe Bryant. He's a relief, a setup man, but it's Rivera in '96.

It's like Bill Walton on the '86s, so it's just coming in.

Yeah, he's coming in. It's like, That's not even fair. Old Dirty was just pure adrenaline. Okay.

Anthony in Pittsburgh wants to know if I have any concerns about Jake May being a victim of the Moreno curse.

Never getting back.

Losing a Super Bowl second year, can't make it back. The only other definite victim is Kaepernick. Joe Burrow is in play. Brock Maybe, maybe. But he says, on the flip side, the braided blessing, if you win a Super Bowl in year two, you're destined to be a Hall of Famer. Kurt Warner, Rob Liesberger, Mahomes. I don't believe in any of this stuff. I think Jake May will be back. But we didn't talk about Jake May, so I wanted your take. People have certainly heard mine.

I was very high on Jake May. He's the guy you want. I'm high on my guy, Jackson Dart, by the way. I think there's some great young quarterbacks in the league. The way he lost that game, there are some games like when the Giants played the Ravens in the Super Bowl, I would have much preferred to not have been in the Super Bowl that year.

That's how I felt about this Super Bowl with the Pats. That's the- Which is easier losing in Denver.

But in this case, Kerry Collins was not the future of the Giants. How Drake may respond to this is going to be the whole shooting match because he got the whole... What was it? It was Sam Darnold, who was like, I'm seeing ghosts against the Patriots, right? Yeah. That's how he was playing. He was playing like, I'm seeing ghosts.

I just want to know if he was hurt or not. At some point, we're going to find out But we may never find out because it was illegal if he was hurt and they didn't tell us. They'll get fined. They'll lose a third-round pick. The thing about- It's like a torn rotator, a tear in his cuff or something.

But the Seattle defense all year, It didn't jump out to me as much as the Rams did because the Rams were like a clutch third down defense or the Texans because the Texans' pass rush was insane, and it made their secondary, which was good, look even better. But when you think about the overall of the Seattle defense and then the fact that the head coach is a great defensive play... Everyone wants that offensive play call or his head coach, but the Seattle has that just on the defensive side of the ball. Then they also have an offensive coordinator who's good enough that he's now going to be a head coach.

And the pats had things you could pick at, like a scab, which they did. We noticed when you do this, you're passing. They said after the game, they would tip off, run, or pass. Well, that's not good. We noticed we could attack your right side and you wouldn't have enough boxers. We noticed your left tackle was moving right because he's a torn MCL. They were just picking it apart.

Let me tell you what it reminded me of. The way Belichick would coach against young quarterbacks back in the day.

Like in the Ram Super Bowl, even. Exactly.

You're like, that's what it was like McDonald. That was the game was really McDonald.

You're on the fence with Jake May, it sounds like.

No, I really like him as a player. But now the part where we find out, it's like a fighter who gets knocked out early in his career. In his first title shot, he gets knocked out. Does that mean, well, okay, he's hit his ceiling, or does that mean that he learns from that and comes back better? Many Yeah, lost early in his career. It's okay, you can lose early in your career.

Leonard Durán won in Montreal. That's right.

But yeah, that's right. Leonard lost. But that wasn't... Drake May suffered a different loss than Leonard did. He was dominated. He was out of his league. Right? And so I want to see how he responds to that. If he responds to it well, the Pats are in great shape. But he got to respond to that one. That's the game I wish... If I was a pats fan, I wish he had not played that game. I think there's enough damage from a game like that. I don't know if you learn from that or if you are demoralized by it. I'd like to see.

The more I think about it, the four games in a row is probably the cumulative effect of combining him not being healthy. But just getting the shit kicked out of him for eight straight halves.

It was shocking to me. And there are some people you just get a sense that they're going to come through under pressure. I thought that about C. J. Stroud. I thought C. J. Stroud, when the chips are on the line, I like the cut of his jib. I think he was the opposite. He was awful.

I know, but the weird thing with May is they weren't even using him the way they used him during the season, which is what makes me think he was hurt. They used to roll him out, and he was so good at throwing the run and throwing deep on the run. They It was like, wow, but it was like, I can't do it once.

No, and you saw that throughout the playoffs, actually, where when he would make a big play, not just with his legs, but it could be a hidden big play. It's second, but it's also second and nine, and you need to keep the chains moving He escapes pressure and hits the receiver and you go, Man, that's just a Super Bowl type play. He made those even when he was having bad playoff games. I saw those late in games. You did against Houston in the charges. I did not see that against Seattle.

Will W. Writes, I think the WWESPN mix is weird. They haven't figured out how to put wrestling promos and news next to sports like the NBA, NFL, interviews on SportsCenter. Yet, it always seems uncomfortable with the ESPN host and the in the KFAB. They try to toe a line of not acknowledging it, not participating it. Do you find it weird? I do. I think it's very strange to watch wrestling on, and I'm a lifelong wrestling guy. It's weird to see it on ESPN. I can't get used to it.

I know what you mean.

Cody roads was on there two days ago. It's like, Let's talk about Cody roads. Big pay-per-view coming up.

I'm like, The fuck are we doing? It would almost be better if it was like it was in the old days where it was presented without acknowledging. The premise was, this is really happening.

Pretending it was the whole thing's real.

Then it makes more sense on the But ESPN is entertainment is the first letter. It's entertainment and sports. I think it's in a weird spot.

Look, we both work there, so it's always weird to talk about it. But I think the company in general with the content. It's in a strange spot right now.

But look, you know why they take the WWE or they want it because it does a great number and it also hits youth culture. Yeah.

The same reason when I was there, they thought UFC was cockfighting, human cockfighting. They never were going to go near it.

Okay, I was once in a meeting, and I was friendly with Dana since Zufa bought the UFC because I was the only guy in boxing, basically, not hostile to it. Because my basic feeling, first of all, I love knowing who wins in a fight. To show me any two, like an animal's fight, whatever. I want to know who wins in a fight. Turns out killer whales destroy great Whites, by the way. Not even a fight. They prey on great Whites. That was a big one for me when I found that out. I loved UFC. Originally, it was high concept. It was who wins, the karate guy or the kung fu guy, the boxer or the wrestling.

Have you ever watched those first five, six years of UFC? Of course, I watched them live. Sometimes they would not even the guys wouldn't even be the same weight? No, they weren't.

There's no weight classes, no rules, the whole thing. It was amazing.

It was honestly like blood sport with Van Diem.

It was amazing. Then really what it was was real wrestling, real professional wrestling. Anything goes. Then when Zufa bought it, and I also thought like, Hey, this is catching on with young people. Hey, boxing crowd, instead of being hostile to it, let's use this as an entry point to, Hey, you like combat sports, kids? Maybe you like to watch us, too. But instead, everyone in boxing was hostile. I wasn't. Dana liked me on boxing. He's a big boxing fan. I went to dinner with all the UFC roster, like Couture and all those guys at Il Milino in New York in the year Zufa bought it. What was that? 2000, 2001 or something like that? And was always really way into it.

Espn, they never...

Espn, I was in a boxing meeting once in Bristol, and we were getting a whole corporate thing, which sometimes it feels like just meant to demoralize you. It was like, we need to figure out a way to do a really big number but not spend any money. That was the message. I thought, Dana White and the UFC, they'll buy the time for me. Forget about giving the money. They just want access to the airwaves now. I tried to broker something. Remember, they were on- It was no.

They were on Spike for a while.

That was huge for them.

Yeah, that was the breakthrough when Spike had a channel.

But of course, ESPN should have embraced it way before they did.

It's funny because when I look back, I thought, I thought '09 through '13 was like, I've said this over, it was an awesome time to be there. They really took chances. They spent money. They were really committed to creative stuff. This was when I did my favorite stuff there. In some ways, they were really ahead of the game. Soccer, I thought they were really ahead of the game. They felt like, Let's get in on this and we'll try to build it. This could be the next global sport. And they were right. And then they ended up, ironically, losing it to Fox after they had helped build it up. Ufc was the big miss, I think, for them because they could have got in really early ground floor and it would have eaten up innings. Instead, they were always fixated on baseball, making sure they had the baseball. We got to do another baseball deal. We need the Sunday Night Base. It wasn't matching what the habits were. Young people weren't watching baseball the same way, and people were gravitating toward their own teams. The concept of national baseball over the 2010s was dying, and UFC was where young people were going, and they just missed it.

Yeah. I mean, you have to figure out, if you're ESPN, what are the shared experiences that people all across the country want to watch at the same time? And a fight of one kind or another, whether that's WWE or UFC or boxing. If they know the character's involved, they'll be interested. Baseball is an extremely local product. And this is- And baseball is now screwed up, how you think about it, because the playoffs really do matter as much as they ever have.

Of course. In the last 20 years, it feels like that's back. We're seeing like, MBC is pushing opening night, MBC, the Dodgers against the Giants. And it's like, I'm still not sure people want to watch other teams unless it's the playoffs.

I was going to do this as a five-minute max on the pod. I'll turn it into a two-minute max if you want to hear it.

Yeah, let's hear it.

The NFL, because of the nature of the sport, a lot of times the NFL is praised for everything. Do everything like the NFL, they do it so great. But really, the number one thing they have going for them is back to my long term, short term incentive thing, right? The short term incentives in baseball is grab this money from these local deals. Of course, why wouldn't we want to take this money? But it turns it into a very local sport. The NFL, because the inventory is so low, can't be as local, must be a national sport, partly because the nature of the sport is so brutal, you can't play that many games. And since there are fewer games, it's easier to build up, tell the story, watch the game, break it down afterwards. And because there's so little inventory compared to the other sports, everyone in the country can follow every team.

Well, plus you have the fantasy and the gambling.

For sure, but that exists in basketball, too.

Fantasy is dead in basketball.

There's no reason for that, really.

The load management and the injuries have killed fantasy basketball. I don't know anyone who plays fantasy basketball anymore.

I don't know people who play fantasy baseball anymore either.

To tell you the truth. I'm I'm still an AL keeper. Tell me about that guy in the Yankees who throws 103. I'm looking at him for the minor league draft.

That's a real hardcore sport. Yeah. I think what killed fantasy for a lot of people was daily. Once I started playing daily fantasy football, fantasy football, I don't have the patience for that anymore. Daily fantasy? I have multiple teams on the same game. I get all different permutations I like. I can play for 50 cents.

Have you done guillotine?

No.

Guillotine is good because it's just a giant league and one team gets caught every week and their players go back in the pool. Oh, that's pretty good. You can be out right away. I actually won the league we had last year, and it was really into it. It had a natural ending.

It's so time consuming. Yeah, that's the thing. To play daily fantasy is just- It's not acceptable.

No. I'm not proud of it. No. I think of the AL keeper, our drafts at the end of March, I got to start studying who the changes were and rosters.

You ever see those TED Talk type things where the guy's like, this is how many he'll graphically show people. This is your life, each one of these. This is how much you're awake and you got to take half of that. Here's actually the amount of time you have in your life to do everything you want to do? Now, subtract fantasy sports.

Oh, my God. I have a friend who quit fantasy football 20 years ago, and he said it was... He feels the same way. It's like when he hears people talk about quitting smoking or heroin. He's like, I've just added all these hours. I'm not stressing out because Odell Beckham got hurt in the second quarter.

But that's the other thing. It went from freebasing to crack. Daily fantasy. It's quick, cheap dopamine. It's amazing.

Well, now that's moved. Some of that's moved to the gambling and the props. These are all phases that eventually Actually, the same game Parlay, that will move into something else.

Yeah, actually, it's the same amount of time spent on it.

It's just like-Yeah, it's just moving around. Shifted a little. I had so many more mailback questions, but we're at the two-hour mark.

I got to ask- We've been sitting here for two hours? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

I know. Every time we do a pod, it flies by. We didn't talk about game over. Rich is on there in the beginning, and Rich was always like, I'm going to shoot from the hip. I'm going to say my... So you guys start the pod. Every time we do an episode, news comes out it, and people are going nuts that Rich is saying this stuff. I think he mostly loved it, for the most part. I'm sure there were some professional pieces.

I think he stands by what he says. A lot of times He's being tard by what I say. People are attributing the stuff I say to him because he's sitting next to me. The Austin Reeves thing, I suggested that they should think about trading Austin Reeves because what other commodity do they have other than Luca that's worth something on the trade market, right?

The discourse about the pod has been fascinating. Other podcasts weighing in on whether this should be a podcast. But it seems like we do this every time there's some new genre that moves into podcasting because it's like when Draymon had a podcast. It's like, wait a second. Instead of a press conference, this guy is just going to talk directly to the whatever. Why not? In this case, I think because he reps all these different players and has all this extra intelligence, obviously, part of the game for people listening. What's he trying to say? Is he carrying the agenda as somebody else? And it's been fascinating to watch from afar.

When Rich called me a year, almost two years ago at this point and was like, Hey, what do you think of this? And I was already working on something at that point. I thought he's kidding at first. Yeah. And then I realized he was serious. And I stopped and thought about it for a second. And I would think, I thought as a consumer, I would consume that. I would need to know. I'd have to watch that. I'd have to listen to it. So, yeah, for that reason.

He gets the rhythm of it now. And like I talked about on my pot on Sunday, he had that, Ann Edwards is the best part in the week take, which I thought I disagreed with it violently. Of course. But I thought it was a great take because it's like, you could at least defend it. You're not saying it. I think where we've gotten in problems with take culture over the years is people saying a take for the reaction and not because there's DNA strands of believing in it. And his case was like, I think the best player in the league should be able to play both ends, period.

I agree.

It's like, all right, that's what you think.

Jokić is the best player in the league. If Wemby is not, right? I think Jokić is the best player in the league. But it's either Jokić or Wemby. By the way, when was the last time the two best bigs were the two best players in the league.

See, I don't think this is fair to SGA because he's been out for two weeks and everybody just forgets how good and dominant he is. I think the difference with Wemby is what I said earlier about, can you have a shitty and still be the most impactful player in the game? Him and Jokuj are the only two. Jokuj could go 6 for 21 and still be the best guy in the game. Is SGA much better than Jalen Brown or Cade Cunningham or Ant Edwards?

Or is he much better than those guys?

I think he's better. I think he's a little better. But he's what we talked about earlier with- At this moment. You build the team around Luka that accentuates all the stuff he's good at, which is what Oasis did with them.

Which is what they did.

But I do think I think he could fit into different situations.

If you said, I need to try to win a championship this year, and I could take... If Jokic, Wemby, and SGA are available, I don't have to think about that very hard. I could name two that I could have.

I'd have the easiest chance with Jokuj to build a team around him. If you're giving me the concept is, I'm going to have really good players in this team, who am I starting with? And he'll have really good teammates, I'd go with Jokuj and Wembi. And then who? Because I go with I think Wembi is second.

Right. That's what I'm saying. So when you say, Well, it's not fair to SGA, it is fair to SGA. We would both take Jokuj first, Wembi second. I think I want to see by the end of this postseason, by the end of the playoffs, let me see who I That first. Wemby.

This is why it's recency bias with Wemby, though.

We can't do a three-hour podcast, by the way.

No, this would be the last topic.

I mean, I can. I don't have to pick my daughter up until five o'clock today.

I saw this in the Pistons game, I was thinking, because they were just so clearly trying to beat the living shit out of him. That's the question we don't have. The answer we don't have is over 10 weeks with teams doing this as a strategy. Like Drake May in the playoffs, we're just going to beat the hell out of you and wear you down. What's he going to look like in June?

We're on the same page. The question remains, when was the last time two bigs were the top two players in the game? Obviously, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain counted.

I would say Duncan Shaq, if you count Duncan as a big guy, which I would. I would also- Duncan Shaq were the two most important guys in the early 2000s.

I would also, but I don't think it's clear. Well, that's not clear cut now, anyway. I could say Duncan or Kobe.

No, it was Duncan and Shaq were the best two guys from zero, zero to zero, four.

They were. From zero, zero to zero, four. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, fine. You can even say 99 because Duncan won in '99, and he was the best guy that season. That's a five-year stretch.

That's 22 years ago. It's been a generation since two bigs were the best in the league. And what about before then?

Well, Jordan. Yeah. It goes back to Kareem.

And then Magic. It's Kareem and who? Kareem and Will. And Moses. Kareem and Moses at one point.

Kareem and Walton, '77.

I would say, but the last, I'd say Kareem and Moses in the early '80s. Kareem and Moses in the '80s, '81. Then the next time, it was 20 years later. Now it's 20 years later again, and here we are. That means stuff just changed.

They're going to test Wendell a lot.

A lot.

Detroit Detroit was like, this is what we're all going to do now against this guy. We're going to elbow him and chip him and push him.

They have a guy who's Duren. Yeah.

We're going to take... If he's getting a dunk around the basket, we're going to hit him as he's dunking.

But that's just the offense, Bill. You said it earlier. That's just the offense. He has an enormous impact on the other side of the floor.

It's not just against big guys. I said this the other night. Just look at what he did to Kade and SGA. It's impossible. These guys that are around, they live on the 12-footer, 10-footer, and it's just gone. You can watch their brain break in real-time.

You're not floating anything over this guy.

Yeah, it's like, fuck. I'm crossing that off. Okay. It's honestly like, it's a little like boxing where you see when somebody fights, you talked about Stevenson It's like, All right, here's my plan. I'm going to go into Stevenson. I'm going to start. And then it's like, I can't hit him. Now, what do I do? By round four, you're like, Fuck.

Or Wemby is, this is going back to Belichick again, right? He'll take away your best two things that you can do. I think You're number one, your two best receivers. He better beat you on the third receiver. Wemby takes away more than one thing that you can do. He takes away multiple things you can do. It's not good.

You know what teams guys are doing to him now? This must be in the book. Because teams have figured out, they are over the course of the season, they figure out stupid little things. Like with the Celtics, we always had the bigs. I say we look them on the team. The bigs set the pitch 25 feet from the basket, and they do these little handoff screens. So what teams have been doing lately is they go around the big and they try to crash before it's the handoff and try to screw up the play, make the shot clock. So the Celtics are now adjusting on that. With Wemby, he's got these athletic guys like the Castle types, Ron Holland. They're just going right at him into his body and double clutching and making him go vertical, but bouncing off him and then just trying to get a foul on him, basically. And this is like a new strategy.

What you just mentioned, a couple of guys. The thing about Wemby is if he wins the title this year as clearly the best player on the team.

It's like a Kekeme '86 type level stuff.

Even if it's like he was off offensively because they had a defensive game plan for him. He averaged 18 points and 13 rebounds, which is off for him, right? And four blocks or whatever it's going to be. His team could still easily win. The opposite of the Cade Cunningham problem. You have five different guys who are the second best player. Who can do it offensively. So it is, I think, much more likely than people realize that the Spurs win the Championship this year.

Well, you know that 40-20 row, right?

40?

Teams that get to 40 wins before 20 losses.

Before 20 losses, yeah.

I think you told me that. Only four teams ever. And so saying there's only three this year. The Celtics lost to Denver last night, so they're not going to be in there.

Right. And there's obviously a strong positive correlation there. They beat Detroit at Detroit. They beat Denver at Denver. They've dominated OKC.

Their ceiling. Yeah, it's like you got to factor in how high the ceiling is when they look good and their ceiling is as high as anybody.

Then I think you get knocked down a peg because they lost the in-season tournament to the Knicks. Come on, that's one game. Stop.

Zack and I talked about it on Sunday a little just like the... When you have young guys who've never been in there, you just never know.

You don't. But that is just to say that you could figure out exactly how to play Wemby. It could really screw up his offensive game. The Spurs could still beat you and he could still kill you on the defensive end. They got a lot.

Max Kylian Munch, game over Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then the boxing. So where's the next one? Give us the promo.

Zufa Boxing, March eighth, the cruiserweight champion of the world, Jai Opetiah is defending in a... Who's an action fighter, by the way. When he won the title, it was from one of the best in the history of the Cruiserweight division. He got his jaw fractured. He couldn't close it. I think on both sides, Opetiah in the third round and fought the next nine rounds with a fractured jaw against one of the best who ever did it in the division. Wone the title. He's a south ball. He can box, he can punch. He has a ton of heart. Australian, 200 pounds. That's Cruiserweight division. He's the best 200 pounder in the world.

It's basically like the new heavyweights. Right.

The guys from the '70s. The regular size heavyweight. He's fighting a pressure fighter, action fighter, very determined, Brandon Glant and puncher. It's going to be an explosive fight. The winner gets the first ever Zufa Championship belt.

The Zufa. Big Z on it?

What happened with these sanctioning bodies through the years is-IBF, WBF. This is the reason there are 17 weight classes. There's 17 weight classes because they want more sanctioning fees. Every time you fight for a sanctioning body belt, they charge you a sanctioning fee. There's 17 of them, and there are four different sanctioning bodies. It's four times 17. There's 68 different titles. But it gets worse because each sanctioning body now, or several of them, have multiple champions in each division. They say, Here's our regular championship belt. If you get injured and you can't defend, you'll be our champion. But then we have an interim champion.

I was like, Yeah, we should have an NBA.

Then they have a super duper championship belt. They call it the diamond or this or that, where if you unify the title with another organization, you're now their diamond. So they have so many belts because they want all those sanctioning fees that not only is it all diluted, but the belts themselves are They're not like... The Zufa belt is diamond studded. You know how it's like a notch in the belt? Every title defense you make, they add a black diamond. They etch the win into the belt, and then a black diamond as added to the belt, like a notch in your belt. That's your title defense. What's amazing about it is because Ring magazine, that championship belt is lit. Whoever holds that, that's the champ. But it is awarded to someone who has done that. It's as a recognition. It's not like we're forcing you to do X, Y, and Z. There's no real mechanism for the best to fight the best. The difference is the Zufa belt will attempt to Will, if you fight for Zufa, you're going to have to fight the best guys in the division. Here is the first one, The Ring magazine, The Real Guy, Cruiserweight Champ, Jio Pataya, in a sensational, it should be a sensational action fight against Brandon Glanten.

First ever Zufa Championship belt.

Okay. Yeah.

Good?

Is that pretty good? That was good. Yeah. That got me excited. I like the cruisers. Yeah, the cruisers. Max Kholerman, great to see you. Thanks.

You too, always.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Max Kholerman. Thanks to Gehow. Thanks to Everybody at the Ringer. Thanks to Eduardo. Rewatchables, don't forget Monday, 6: 00 PM, ET, live on Netflix, Sicario as the start of the CR month. Then this Sunday, we're going to wait until after the Celtic Sixers game, me and Zack Loe, Sunday night, maybe Jason Tatum is going to be in this game. We're going to find out, but we're going to go live on Netflix right after that game. It'll be around 10: 30 ET on Sunday night. Have a great weekend. See you on Sunday. Must be 21 plus and President Select States for a Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and President DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Get me a problem call 1-800 Gamble or 1-800 My Reset. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connected or mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. 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 877-77-7867.