Transcript of NBA One Guy (the East!), a Man City Punishment Primer, and Tom Cruise’s Bomb With J. Kyle Mann, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan New

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new Rewatchables. On Monday night, we did Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We do some horror movies this month. Uh, Friday the 13th is going to be next week, by the way. So, uh, I don't know if we're gonna do all horror movies, but at least we're doing 2, and maybe, maybe some more. Who knows? So that's happening. Don't forget the What Chaos podcast that we added. If you love NHL, please go check that out and check out Jeselnik Book Club. Those were the 2 latest pods. We have a bunch of basketball podcast stuff as well. We also have some written stuff that we've added with our relationship with Substack. Tom Pelissero, we talked about The Sweep. Brian Curtis launched his Substack finally this week. It is called Now They Tell Us. I thought the first installment was fantastic. He's gonna be covering all types of sports media topics. So if you love The Press Box, please go check out Brian Curtis and his new endeavor. Coming up on this podcast, J. Kyle Mann and I are gonna go through the East and talk about one guy from every team that we're particularly fascinated by.

And then Chris Ryan and Van Lathan were here because we did, we did the Friday the 13th rewatchables together. And Chris wanted to give us a book report on what's happening with this Man City situation. Which is the single most fascinating suspension situation probably in the history of professional sports leagues. So we talked about that, we talked about Tom Cruise, and we talked about, um, the Cable Star Hall of Fame were the 3 topics for that. So that's all coming up next. We're gonna take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Kyle Mann talking some hoops. This is the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel. Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would, earn points on eligible settled bets, win or lose. Keep collecting points, level up, and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever, and it's with FanDuel. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right. J. Kyle Manus here. He pops on this podcast a bunch during the NBA season.

You can also hear him on the Ringer NBA Show, and he does some video stuff for us too. And he loves rookies and he loves college guys. Which rookie, if I gave you AJ, Caleb, Boozer, and Peterson, now that we're a week, we're, we're within like less than 3 weeks to the season, which one are you the most excited to see? Combining where you felt before the draft. What happened in the draft, where they went to, and then all the buzz and all the stuff you're reading as we head into October 21st here.

Gosh, it's just, it, there's a flavor. It's a real Baskin-Robbins situation where if you catch me in the right mood, I could just give you any, any of these guys I'm excited for kind of different reasons. I mean, Caleb Wilson is going to have, like we've talked, you and I have a lot about this. I mean, he's going to probably win Twitter the most often. I think there's going to be many of those like Blake Griffen-y rookie, rookie year type moments where we're just like, did you, did you see what he just did?

Yeah.

Peterson will get hot, you know, DeVonta will have his moments. I think, um, I'd probably still just go Boozer. Just, I know that's the boring answer and he may be perceived as boring, but I think if you even watched him in the preseason game last night against the Hawks, he's trimmed his body down. He immediately was just doing winning Cam Boozer type of things. And so I'll, I'll, I'll stick with that one 'cause I had him number 1 at the end of the college season.

So you came to the LA office and you did a whole bunch of group chats with Mahoney and Varier, and I actually was in the office and I just crashed your Memphis and New Orleans sections of the, the pod. I don't think it's gone up with all of us love Memphis for being better than, you know, I think on FanDuel they're 29.5. And I think the biggest reason is just Boozer seems like he's gonna come in right away and be a 19-10 guy. I'm the most excited for Caleb just because of, uh, I think for the first month of league pass, I kind of know what Boozer is. As much as I'm gonna enjoy watching that Memphis team and their identity, Peterson, I think, will be hit or miss. There's gonna be games you catch him on the right night and you're like, oh my God, we haven't had a 2-guard like this since forever. AJ's probably in the worst spot. 'Cause I don't know how much he's gonna have the offense running through him and he's playing with Trae. But then Caleb, it just feels like it's, it's the ceiling has been removed for where it could go.

I have no idea where it's gonna go. And he's one of the guys, we're gonna do an NBA one-guy gimmick in a second, but he's clearly the guy for the Bulls where I'm like, I literally can't wait to watch this.

Yeah. I mean, and there's a lot of runway for him to, to experiment and be messy because they're not in a hurry to be good, obviously. And you know, he, he and Boozell, with, with Splitter. I'm just interested to see how he uses them. You know, they imported some shooting when they went and got the Buddy Hield thing done, just to— just to— they needed— they just needed another spacer to go with Norm Powell. So yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, he's gonna— I think you're right. I mean, Boozer's kind of the guy you just kind of set it and it's gonna just run. I don't even know what the appliance comparison would be, but you just know that that thing is safe. But Wilson is gonna— he's gonna have a— on both ends of the floor, I think he's gonna have electric moments where he just erased you know, chase down blocks, things like that. So I think night, night to night, I mean, the, the texting, I don't, I don't think there's gonna be as much of that with Boozer, right? They're like, can you believe what he just did? But it's just gonna kind of hover at the same speed, whereas Caleb's gonna spike really high at moments.

And he's also going to a fan base that desperately needed somebody like this since forever. Like, this is, there's real energy around this team now. We're gonna play, I'm calling this NBA One Guy. So we're doing the East today, you and I, and I'm gonna do the West on Thursday. But this is one guy from each team that jumps out to me from a kind of swinging the ceiling or the floor of the team itself. But also I'm really interested by the position they're in. So I told you I could have mailed all these to you, or you could have just played off me and you were like, ad-lib, baby, let's go. I don't wanna know any of these guys.

You like, I, you like to surprise me, so I figured I'd just say that. So yeah.

Well, I was gonna go in alphabetical order in the conference, but we'll go out of order 'cause Caleb was my Chicago guy because he's checked every single buzz box so far, but I'm gonna tweak it. It's him and Bozelis together. And if you read, if you do the training camp, like just reading the coverage of the team, those guys have already bonded and seem like they're, Bozelis is smartly aligned with him. But I also kind of like the matchup of the two of them together. That makes sense. to me is a combo. And I think there's gonna be something there. Like all the early indications are like, you know, somebody wrote a huge, I think it was ESPN wrote a huge Caleb piece and there was some anonymous quote from a team source and they were like, we think we have a guy.

Mm-hmm.

And when you start seeing stuff like that, that was like when the Patriots got Drake Maye. Like you see this with quarterbacks, sometimes you see it with the NBA. But when, when the organization is like, Oh shit, we have a guy. And it feels like that's happened already. But Boeselis, I think both of us had liked, never felt like he clicked with Donovan. But them as the 3 and the 4 together kind of makes sense to me. I don't like Nick Claxton necessarily as the center for that, but those guys as the 3 and 4, let's see what this is going forward long-term. Makes sense to me.

Yeah, we, we saw a little flash. I wasn't sure what to make of Boeselis when he was coming out of G League Ignite, but He's kind of slowly won me. He's very like chaotic good, which I think is what this tandem is going to be like. It's going to be— I said messy before with both of them.

Yeah.

It's like Boozell showed little flashes of playing in ball screen a little bit. I was revisiting a lot of that stuff in our, in our prep for our preview thing, and I was like, he's gonna have to— he still dribbles really high when he's in traffic. He's gonna have to work on a lot of those things. And not to step on, you know, a point I made about him with the With— and on, on our pod, we elaborate on it in a lot of detail. But I— this— the way Thiago Splitter rolled out, um, Denny, you know, last year, and the way that he empowered him to get downhill, I could see him taking a similar mindset with, with Bouzelis. Um, so that, that— in that sense, and defensively, I think that they're going to be pretty electric too. These are like 2 crazy, crazy athletes.

Yeah, it That was my thought too with Splitter. The Denny point, I didn't think of that, but if I, if I'm coaching this team, I just want both those guys to be going downhill and running and just being athletic, being in space. And both those guys can do it. I, I thought Bozelis really had moments last year and then there would be moments where he just didn't play and, and you never really knew what the objective of the team was. But I thought athletically he's top of the line.

Yeah.

And then Wilson is a level above him athletically. So you put those 2 together, and I just think there's gonna be some really fun nights. There's gonna be some ugly nights, but there's gonna be nights when the crowd, especially they haven't had a home crowd in so long that's really been pumped about the team. They're gonna have nights at home, I think, when, when they're gonna be flying up and down, especially Giddey. So if you're looking at Giddey too, like, this is like the perfect kind of toy chest for him.

Yeah.

these 2 athletes who just wanna run and wanna go, you know, to the rim. So I'm excited for those 2 together. All right, we'll go in alphabetical order from, from here on. One guy, Atlanta. My guy is Lou Dort for this team, and it's not a sexy pick. 27 years old, contract year.

Hmm.

Playoff 3s last 3 years, 39% in '24, 34% than 31% last year. And it got to the point where it felt like the other team was dying for him to shoot, right? It was like, we'll take our chances with Lou Dort. Presti dumped him. Never a great sign. I trust Sam Presti.

If—

and, and you, you could say it's salary cap, I get it. But if they really wanted to keep him like they wanted to keep Hartenstein, they would've kept Lou Dort. they felt like they'd be okay without him. But I look at him with Atlanta and I think about like, if they're going crunch time and it's McCollum and Dort, Alexander Walker, Jalen Johnson, and Okongwu, right? I kind of like it. And then you could go super small if you wanted, like super small, and just put Daniels in for Okongwu and just play Jalen as the smallest small ball 5 and maybe have Dort guard big guys. But He gives them a physicality and something that they didn't have. And I also think he's gonna have a huge chip on his shoulder. So to me, he's the swing guy for them. If he, if he could be 2024 Lou Dort, I think that's a massive thing for them.

Yeah.

It's interesting to think about like why Presti would offload him because I've, I've been kind of going through and, and looking at, you know, like Wiggins ends up with them as well. Isaiah Joe ends up with the Pistons.

Yeah.

It kind of made me have flashbacks to, you know, Presti with his connection to the Spurs kind of makes your mind go here where you're like, there was a funny thing that happened with the Spurs where they would have role players sort of leave the, the, their little community at some point. And we would value those guys super, super high. And I caught myself having a moment where I was like, is that gonna happen again? Are we gonna have that thing where they're, they're within, their value is affected by being within the Thunder ecosystem?

Like Danny Green syndrome almost.

Yeah. Or like, or what was it? Was it Gary? I'm blanking on his name. The guy who hit all the ton of threes in the, in the finals. Gary, whatever. Or Speedy Claxton. I remember, didn't he get a big deal after, I think it was 2003. I just kind of wonder if we might see that again. I don't know that that's the case.

So you're saying like the system role players, when they leave the, leave the nest, it's not the same?

Yes.

What was that Gary guy? Are we that old? We can't remember the guy.

Gary Neal.

Gary Neal. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd wondered about that.

It's—

yeah, you hit it there with the lineup thing. I mean, Daniels can guard up and guard bigs. This team still has a lot of overlap between their guys. Even like, you don't read a lot into preseason, you know, you try not to, but watching them, I'm like, I do expect Kingston to have a positive impact on them. Like, I think he'll play early.

Yeah.

But it still feels like there's— the roadmap is just not totally there yet. Like, I It kind of made me wonder, it got my wheels spinning about like, are they a team that's gonna have a potential to make, to push in? Because there is smaller—

Like a 2-for-1 or something?

Yeah, like some— I was trying to figure out, I was like, who, who could they put on? Because I was looking at it, I was like, Kyrie doesn't really make sense for Dallas and Atlanta to do business together because they both have kind of similar needs, right? It's like Dallas isn't like, well, we don't need more non-creators or whatever it is. And then I was like, maybe Garland. I don't know. I was kind of trying to look across the league about what kind of a guard or creator could give them more options because I kind of wonder at the end of the day if Jalen Johnson is probably like at the high— on the highest type of a team, like a 2nd or 3rd type guy.

Yeah.

You know, I, I've been wondering about that.

Well, they also had the ability to trade Dort if they wanted.

That's—

I was wondering that at $17 million, that guy is definitely a February piece. Atlanta is a team to me that seems unfinished, and a lot of it is tied around how he fits in. And then if Flemings is gonna be good or not this year, 20-year-old guards, I'm, I'm just not gonna make a prediction. You might, you might end up with Jeremiah Fears, you might end up with James Booknight. You just don't know. Boston, who do you think my guy is for Boston to discuss? If you had to guess?

Ron Harper Jr.

Oh, I do like Ron Harper Jr. No, I'm going, I'm going chalk here with Paul George.

Always down to talk Paul George.

36 years old, 17th NBA season. He's played 945 regular season games, 125 playoff games, and since 2019, a 7-year run, he's missed 213 games. including 41 and 45 the last 2 years. But then you flip it around the other way. In the 2020s, it's 22, 6, and 4, 39% from 3. Statistically sexy. Good, sexy statistical profile.

For his career. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And I guess I was trying to figure out if he's ever been in a better NBA situation. Which is weird 'cause he's not the same guy he was 4 years ago. But just from a, hey, Paul George, anything you do for us is a bonus. If you're good, that's fucking great. If you don't have it or you're a little banged up or whatever, we don't really need you. We have all these other young guys we can throw into your spot. I'm thinking, so Jalen played 2,443 minutes last year. which Tatum basically is just gonna take because Tatum's back. Tatum is usually around 2,600, 2,700 minutes. Hugo and Shireman were around 2,200 combined. I think if, if I think they need 55 Paul George games during the regular season and 1,500 to 1,600 good minutes. So he doesn't play all the time, but when he plays, he's around 28 minutes. You can switch with him. I think him and Tatum together are gonna be really fun to watch. These 2 tall guys who can guard every position on the floor. And they've sold me on the, this guy will actually play off Jaylen, Jason better than Jaylen did, which is just gonna be true.

As you know, I love Jaylen Brown, but I think he could be a really additive piece to them and I've talked myself into it. So tell me either I'm crazy or I'm right.

The idea of Paul George is one of the all-time, like the idea of a player. He's one of the, he's like first ballot on that because you're right. The statistics are like, you know, 15, 20 years from now when people look back and talk about him, it's gonna be pretty, interesting because he at times has been an elite pick and roll at 6'9, has been like an elite, you know, pick and roll player in the league. He's been an elite movement, not just catch and shoot, but he can move left to right when he's shooting the ball.

Right.

He can really pass the ball too. I think he's one of the all-time, like, for guys his size that are smooth, fluid handlers, like, he's, he's great. But I think the thing that is, those things change as you get older, obviously, and I think you're going to see it in smaller doses. I think where he's going to jump on and improve some of what Brad Stevens was trying to improve on in crunch time for them is he's a good— he's a better passer than Jalen is. And I think he's a more dependable decision maker than Jalen is. He's bigger. He's definitely at that stage of his career, like that 2022-ish kind of like Iguodala phase where— and this is part of basketball is once you hit a certain age, you become incredible at stripping people. This is, I found this in my own life.

Yeah.

I just think, 'cause I was rewatching the matchups between, it's so funny that these guys ended up playing, getting traded for each other, Jaylen and Paul. He was irritating Jaylen because he just anticipates and, you know, I think he's gonna become more of that type of a player. Like, yeah, not necessarily shuttling and mirroring guys. I think the other thing for the Celtics too is people keep looking at this as like a 1-to-1 Jaylen versus PG thing. I think, and I'll, you know, I laughed a lot over the years whenever you would talk about Payton Pritchard, about him taking responsibility, but he's just gotten better every single year. So I think it's gonna be just an aggregate, aggregate, like guys taking a bite out of what's left there in Jaylen's absence. And I think Pritchard is one of them.

Yeah. If you just think about it holistically, the offense is gonna run through Tatum and then Pritchard. And if Tatum's not in the game, the offense will probably run through Pritchard. but maybe a little Paul George too. And I—

In spurts.

Yeah. I, I wonder like how much they're gonna stagger these guys and not have 'em out there. But I've talked myself into it because I thought he was really good in the playoffs last year and that was coming off a 25-game break for whatever he tested positive for. And then he came back for 10 games and then the playoffs, but he was really good in the playoffs and we've seen these NBA guys, as they hit their mid-30s, they do have a— they only need one good year from him. Next year he's an expiring, and they have Hugo and they have Shireman, who they're going nuts about. And it's a— to me, it reminds me a little of the Philly situation where you have these other options if somebody doesn't play, right? It's like Paul George isn't playing tonight. Well, we're fine. We have Shireman. Walsh played 1,200 minutes last year. Harper, and then Hugo, and they'll patch it together. But I, I think the, the ultimate goal would be what does this look like in the playoffs in a series? Can you count on him every other night? Things like that. I, that I have no idea.

But I do think they can get 55 games, 1,600, 1,500, somewhere in there minutes. And I think that fans are gonna like him. I, I can't believe I'm saying that, but I, I just think he's an additive player. You like him less if he's one of your 2 guys that are gonna decide whether you win the title or not. But he's like not one of their 5 guys. So we're gonna decide whether they're a title team. He's in a much better situation. So I fully drank in the Kool-Aid. I poured it all over myself and I don't, I think he's gonna be additive for them.

I think, I think he's regressing a little bit into like overqualified role player status.

A little bit.

100%.

Totally. And, and, but, and, and I, but I think that's okay. And I, you're thinking about like the best basketball situations he's been in. This'll probably be the best. I just keep thinking about cumulative passing when I think about the Celtics. You think about Derrick White, you think about Jason has always been a little bit better at that. Not that everything's about Jaylen, but he's always been the better of the two about getting off the ball. I just think they're gonna have a lot of good passers on the floor where it's not gonna bottleneck. And if you think about the teams that Paul's been on last year with Embiid, with Maxey, with the— it's just the ball didn't move quite as well.

No, I think this will be one of the better. Yeah.

Yeah. I think this will be— he's gonna be an overqualified connector too.

I, I think I still don't understand the trade, but I at least understand the trade. I wouldn't have done it, but I get why they did it. And I think it was a basketball decision for them with the minutes and all the players. And I just don't think it was sustainable with those 2 guys. I think they thought, we've hit the ceiling with this. We won the title. We need to get outta this. Brooklyn. I have Michael Porter Jr. for this one because I thought about Demin, 'cause Demin, there's some interesting stats with him. Like he had this crazy month where he shot like 44% and he has size and I'm intrigued by him. But I went with Porter because he's the total internet podcast package. He is first team All-NBA trade machine. He'll be in the trade machine until the deadline in mid-February. Well, he'll just be, just throw him in. He's got the good stats, bad team stuff. He's a really good— and I think Randle's like this too— we don't want to finish in the bottom 3. Can you win a couple games for us and get some stats and maybe push us into the bottom 5 or 6 so we're not in the bottom 3?

And then, uh, just as maybe the craziest interview of anyone in the league, I wrote down just some of the things he, he said. He wants Texted Jokic how to approach and date a Slavic woman, and Jokic left him unread. This was a tidbit. He once said a McDonald's All-American high school team would absolutely beat the women's Olympic team. He said he wouldn't date anyone who has dated another NBA player. It's just an automatic cross-off. He said the Porter family has vices. His brother loved gambling and he loves women. He shared that he accidentally put Adam Silver's number on Snapchat. Do you remember this? This was a few years ago. That happened.

No.

He said in a podcast that he tests potential girlfriends by throwing on Andrew Tate to see how they react. And then back in 2020, he said he thought COVID was used for population control. So I'm, I'm excited for him in a free agent year. I don't know what he's capable of. We have more podcasts to go on. Um, I don't think he's really— I think he's gonna be letting it fly and He's a trade machine guy. Michael Porter Jr., I'm in.

Yeah, it's interesting. Some of the risk for somebody who gets the, gets shots up, the, some of the riskiest and most harmful shots that, that, that Porter takes are when he's in front of a microphone. And I was just thinking that whenever you relaunch the Hottest Take, you were giving me the tour and showing where that, where that would be taking place.

Bring him, bring, just bring him in.

Bring him in cold. Yeah. Just bring, bring Porter in cold and just like turn the mic on him. Just let him start speaking and you'll be able to just kind of trim trim it into episodes, right?

We'll get like a half hour of straight content.

Yeah.

Look, he's an expiring contract, I think at $37 million. A good team is gonna trade for him.

Yeah, for sure. I think, well, Detroit would've made a whole lot of sense. It, isn't it interesting that you hear people, I think Bernthal was talking about this 'cause Bernthal's dad was a basketball coach, I think, or something. He was saying your, your personality, your play style reflects your personality. And it is so It's fucking funny how Porter Jr.'s personality absolutely is reflected in the way he plays basketball, which is no conscience. Just, yeah, absolutely doesn't, doesn't second-guess anything. But he's still, for all the joking around, it's like he's 6'10 and he is just an incredible, you know, he can get his shot up in any situation, even if, even if it's a closeout, even if he's driving again. I mean, he hits shots over Anthony Davis. Like, he's just— He's, uh, he's one of the most talented shooters in the world and he happens to be 6'10. And you're right, some team is gonna look around and just go, let's add that. And I've also been encouraged by him coming to this team. He— his quote, something sensible that he said was that he wanted to be an even better off-ball player. It's like, in a way, he kind of knows who he is.

I was glad he wasn't coming in there and just being like, all eyes on me. He— it's, uh, it's not a harmful way that he plays.

He's 28 years old. This'll be probably his last big contract. If you catch him on the right night coming off screens and just firing, he seems unstoppable. I think he, from all the guys from this decade, I think he's gonna be the number one blank was a problem video that we have in 2039. I think there's gonna be a 3-minute Michael Porter Jr. thing where it was like, was this guy the best part of all time?

Do you see the, do you see the prompt I put out last night? I said we should, I said we should just start challenging ourselves to see how hard we can make it. Like just to pick, Oh, what player? Somebody, yeah, somebody suggested we make a Kosta Koufos, he was a problem video, and I'm working on that in my spare time right now.

Interesting. Yeah. Like a, like a Greg Steamsba.

Yeah.

Steamsba.

Yeah.

You'd have to really pour up some tape for that one. But yeah.

All right.

Next, next team is Charlotte. Naz Reid is the easy pick for this. 27 years old. Last 3 years, 14 and 6, 38% from 3, 25 minutes a game. Beloved teammate. I think he's a guy who could be on the floor in the last 5 minutes of a, of a good game.

Oh, we know that. Yeah.

Which they needed. Here's what's interesting to me, because they traded LaMelo and you would think the Charlotte threes would go backwards. They made 16.4 threes a game last year, which led the league. That's a lot of threes. Miller, Khan, Coby White, Grayson Allen, who they have now, Naz Reid.

Mm-hmm.

And O'Neal. Those guys combined, just those 6 made 16.4 made threes a game last year. And I wonder, is this team on, could this team potentially make like 19 threes a game? 18.5? Like what, what's the ceiling for that? And then how much of an advantage is that gonna be? 'Cause we're, we're seeing this in baseball where they look at all these different inefficiencies for regular season. And lately it was like defense or, you know, like Tampa Bay just always zags against where everybody's going. And with Charlotte, I wonder like if you're making 18, 19 threes a game, is that worth like 10 wins? And then could Naz Reid play 30 minutes a game instead of 25? Can he play with both with Diabate and without him? Or are they gonna play him at power forward with Steinbeck? But I think how they use him is gonna be the key to this team.

Yeah.

Because I like all the other pieces.

Yeah, it's, it seems like that's been the recurring thing you hear from people is just, you know, they want to get these threes up, but how are they going to create them? And you assume that, you know, LaMelo not being there, I kind of think it might just be a little bit of a stylistic shift because you don't have like the elite, you know, passer, playmaker, pick and roll guy. But I've kind of wondered if they might go a little more Warriors-y where they're depending on their, their movement shooting and just kind of playing and then getting cutting from that.

I think that's something they wanna do. I think they wanna have, I think they wanna run a lot of the stuff through Miller and Khan and then Coby White obviously too. But a lot of where it's just way less predictable than just LaMelo dribbling the ball up.

Yeah. And something interesting and underrated about Naz is he can handle the ball really well for his size. So he'll be able to like space the floor effectively in a way that Miles didn't. And then he can drive his position really well so that he just, he's a really versatile piece. Um, we'll see if the Wolves fans there, how heartbroken they are at the— over the course of this season just missing him. Not just because he was a great vibes guy, but he, he is really, really versatile, like really, really skilled for his size. Shot heavy, heavy volume spot-up 3s last year and hit 40% of them. So Charlotte really leaning into their, their shooting thing, even if the means to the end is going to be a little bit different this year.

He's always been a good per-36 guy. He's always been a good eye test guy. And I like the fact that, you know, in, in your head it feels like he's been around forever, which Lou Dort's like this too. It's like, you're only 27?

I was getting 2019, right?

Or you could have told me he was 32, I would've believed that. But yeah, he's only 27. So I think Charlotte, the, the other key for them will be how much, how much can Khan, how much can stuff run through him? Right? 'Cause we forget, Cotton really flamed out the last 3 weeks of the season and I, and in the playoffs. And I don't know how healthy he was, but it cost him the Rookie of the Year. But these year 2 guys, and we're gonna see with Flagg too and a couple others, like year 2, you make a huge jump. You're now, you're used to the schedule. You've worked on conditioning, different things to get, you know what you kind of need to do. And I think for him, he'll be, I think he'll be in good shape, but I also think he's gonna be ready to run. plays an offense for them, which, I don't know, I always felt like when they did pick and pop with him and he had the ball and it's either he was throwing it back to whoever set him the pick or he was just playing off the pick and shooting, I always felt that was unstoppable.

Yeah.

And I wanna see, like, can he do that with Naz Reid? Can he do this? And then the other one is Steinbeck. What is he gonna look like for them as like a rebounder? 'Cause it feels like they're a little light on rebounders anyway.

Okay.

For Cleveland, it's clearly Peyton Watson. 24 years old, signs a 4-year, $88 million deal. Kyle, his first 3 years, he was 7 points a game, 19 minutes a game, 33% from 3. In the '25 playoffs, which is less than a year and a half ago, he played 14 minutes a game for them. And then in '26, It all jumped up mainly 'cause of this 19-game stretch he had where there wasn't a lot of Jokic. And he was like 22 a game. He was hitting 3s. He looked like just an awesome 2-way player potentially. But he also had the ball a lot. Now he is going to Cleveland. Guess where he's not gonna have the ball a lot? Cleveland. 'Cause they still have Mitchell and they still have Harden. We've never seen him succeed with a lot of minutes in the playoffs. We haven't seen it at all. They paid him like a playoff guy. He's in the salary group right now. He's Ayo, Brooks, Giddey, Jabari, Hartenstein, McDaniels, uh, Nembhard on the Pacers, Vassell, Coby White, Zubac. These are like proven really good. I'm not one of the 2 best players on your team, but I'm right underneath.

And they're paying him like that. And as talented as he is, I'm— I don't know if he has it or not. Like, I just don't— I don't know yet. And I think anyone who says, oh, we definitely know from that 19-game stretch, I don't think you can say it. I don't know how it's gonna play out. So where do you stand?

I mean, he's definitely gonna take a hit in terms of the organic, just cutting style that— of just flying around Jokic that comes— that comes with playing with him. It's a little bit different playing in such a heavy, heavy ball screen situation. And you're playing with 2 guys who are rough spacing bigs. I think you could argue at this point, Jarrett Allen and Mobley. So that'll be different too. But I mean, the catch and shoot stuff with him, he's— his shooting has really, really improved. He was almost 40, 45% last year from on his catch and shoot. So I think he'll be able to serve that role. It's just kind of, he's going to have to be hyper-efficient, I think, to justify The payment that he got for, you know, based on— he has a lot of kind of upside ambition. I don't know if this is like a Jeremy Grant thing where he's going to pursue that and pursue that, and then we're just kind of— and then we're like, ah, I think you're probably better over in this box. We might be on that path.

Yeah.

But it'll be interesting to see how he responds to being a little bit in tighter kind of parameters, I think, as opposed to who, who spacing-wise was he working around in Denver that was really somebody to move around? I mean, Aaron Gordon, but Aaron Gordon's become a pretty good shooter over time. So this will definitely be a much different spatial spacing challenge for him in Cleveland.

I feel like it's either gonna go awesome or it's gonna be really rocky and awkward for the first month. And I, and you could give me either. Look, I thought Denver should have kept him, and I, if I have Jokic, I'm just paying the apron and the tax. And obviously the Cronkites have a ton of money 'cause they just bought the Angels and they keep buying sports teams. With that said, I was more surprised from the Cleveland side of this. And I know they were able to shed some contracts and kind of figure out how to Scotch tape this together and make it work, but they don't have a lot of outs if this doesn't work 'cause they gave Mitchell the extension. Mobley's making a lot of money. They're back in, in the Harden business for 2 more years. And they kind of like, they don't have a choice with this. This has to work. And we've never seen him as a side piece of a really good playoff team where he doesn't have the ball a lot. And I just wanna see it.

Yeah.

How is he gonna play? 'Cause at Denver he looked awesome, but he had the ball. Like it was, you know, the, the team didn't really have a choice. They had to run a lot of stuff through him and he did really well. But How is that gonna work in Cleveland?

We'll see.

It's a, it's a pretty big number risk 'cause those guys I mentioned are all, with the exception of maybe Jabari, guys who had real, like Ayo, Brooks, McDaniels, Zubac, Vassell. Like these are guys who played in big games and kind of know their role. And I'm not sure you know your role with them. Okay, we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna go through the rest of these. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. On FanDuel, a player leaving the game doesn't have to mean the end of your bet. It's called pinch hit protection. If the player you bet on exits the game and is replaced by a pinch hitter, your bet stays in play with the player who takes his place. Because in the postseason, managers are gonna make moves, lineups are gonna change, and FanDuel gives your bet a way to stay in the game. I agree with what Cousin Sal said on Sunday. I think we're headed for a Tampa-Milwaukee World Series. Just seems like the perfect matchup as we head into, uh, A lockout. And also both those teams are really good. I am on Ben Rice for homers basically every Yankee playoff game the rest of the way because he's on fire and he's the only one on that team who's hitting and I don't think it's gonna stop.

So there you go. When you're making your player picks this postseason, look out for pinch hit protection. Check it out in the FanDuel app or visit fanduel.com/bs to get started. FanDuel, your home for home runs. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything, and whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time To get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Detroit Pistons. I wish this wasn't the answer, but I think it has to be. Duran is the most fascinating guy in this team. He got the contract, $40 for $200. Centers making more than him this year will be Anthony Davis, if you count him as a center, Embiid, Towns, Bam, Sabonis, Triple J, if you count him as a center, Chet, and Wemby.

So he's being paid as a top-tier dude. I voted for him for a Second Team All-NBA. He was absolutely abysmal and horrible in the playoffs. And if you're gonna be favorable, you say, well, he had a lot of— he was putting a lot of pressure on himself 'cause this contract was coming.

Yeah.

The glass half empty would be the league kind of figured out what to do with the rolls and be physical with him before that lob's even thrown. And there wasn't really a plan B for them. And he got in his own head and didn't do as well. This is, this is a bigger version of the Watson contract. If they're wrong on this, it's kind of a, it's kind of a half a decade sinker for them. 'Cause this is, you can't have 3 expensive guys. So now they've locked in him and I don't know, we'll see how it goes. 'Cause if it doesn't go well right away, the Piston fans, I don't think are gonna be that friendly about it.

Yeah, it's, it's a twofold thing where, you know, it's partly the guys that are around them. You need somebody, some, some, some of the people that they invested in, like, you know, they hoped that Kevin Huerter could come in I'm not trying to just randomly blame Kevin Huerter, but it's the people who are surrounding this, you know, central method of scoring that the Pistons really bludgeoned people with in a year when the East was down. It does, does need to be, you know, mentioned that in this vacancy they came in and just kind of occupied the space with the Cade, Durant. I heard you and Kirk talking about it, and I absolutely think it's true. Um, they just, they killed people with that because it was so tough to prepare for.

Yeah.

But if you're playing the percentages, you're looking at it and you're saying, I don't think Jalen has a whole lot outside of catching the ball in the, you know, in the block off the roll and, and, you know, taking one dribble and dunking it. Like not a super great, you know, connective passer from that spot in the short roll. Doesn't really have much of a, a pop game. It's just, he was very, very limited. And you watched against the, the, the Magic and they just said, all right, man, we're just gonna kind of set up shop whenever you're, whenever you catch that ball and you're ready. And we don't think you have anything. after that. And, and it was like, so when you combine that with, you know, Jenkins kind of turning into a pumpkin in the playoffs, and then, you know, those guys that you imported to kind of take pressure off of that not doing anything, um, well, and you lose Tobias.

You lost Tobias. It was the only other guy he could run a play for and, and know he'd get a decent shot. He's gone.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there, there are pressure on those 2 things. I mean, we'll see. We mentioned Isaiah Joe is another one of the, the OKC guys who sort of, you know, were pruned off of that experiment and they got him for so cheap. We'll see if he can add something. You know, him playing with John Collins, I guess, can play at the 4 or some in that Tobias spot.

Yeah.

I don't like it.

But it is, it is tough, man. I mean, he's still young. I just, I don't know.

I was wrong about them last year and they won what, 60, something like that. Their over-under this year is 48.5 and there's like heavy juice on the under. Them going 49 in the much improved East where there's no tanking anymore, that seems like a tall task. But yeah, that— this will be— if he starts out badly, this will be tough. Now he could come out and be fucking awesome and be like, this is why I deserve the contract. But that's why I'm watching him. This is, this is another like, here's the ceiling, here's the floor. If he looks like the guy from the playoffs, it's not gonna be great. They also don't have the Beep Stew anymore. you know, it's like a little security blanket for him. Now you're actually counting on Paul Reed in a real way, which, um, Paul Reed's fun, you know, he's— he comes in, does the, the big man Dion Waiters every once in a while, but now, now you need 82 games of it. Indiana, who'd you think I had for this one?

I had Oubre. I didn't know if you were, uh—

Oubre, good, good defender last year in the, uh, at least in the Celtics series, Oubre. So you think Oubre is going to play for him?

Uh, I, I think that he just makes sense. Like, I think that he's going to line up with Halliburton's sensibility pretty well. Like, I think that just the speed of the way that they're going to play— um, I was looking at it, it's, it's a version of the way that he played with Charlotte, I guess, but a more sane version. Um, yeah, I, I just think he's going to fit with their style of play, and he's matured over the past few years and the types of— it's been interesting 'cause I think that he as a 3-and-D guy had a like, ugh, I don't know Kelly Oubre too. You kind of heard it over people's voices change over the past couple years. We were like, Kelly Oubre's actually a pretty serviceable dude. Who'd you have though?

Well, with him, when he went to Golden State and it was just such a bad fit, it made me think like, oh, this is a guy who can only fit in certain situations, right? So now he found a better situation in Philly. Now he is in a team with Indiana that plays a little more like Golden State does with a lot of movement and things moving around.

Yeah.

And we already saw him fail in that. I had Zubac because what they gave up for him, but also like just looking at their, in their playoff run in '25, which was a lot of games they made to game 7 in the finals. Myles Turner, 14 points a game, 5 rebounds. 2 blocks a game, 4 3-point attempts a game, 29 minutes. Zubac in the '25 playoffs, even though it was one series, but it was against Jokic, the best player in the world, 17 and 10, got a block, 36 minutes a game. So you think, all right, he's not gonna be able to space the floor like Myles Turner did 'cause he doesn't really shoot 3s. He doesn't shoot 3s at all.

Yeah.

But Myles Turner wasn't like an amazing 3-point shooter. He was okay. But OKC, by the time we got midway through that series, was like, knock yourself out, dude. We're giving that, to you every single time. And Zubac being around the, the basket, playing off Haliburton, I just feel like is such a better fit for these guys. And I also got to watch him in person, you know, a bunch of times, and I— he was way better in '25. '26, I think he was a little hurt even before they traded him. But I just really like him, and, and, uh, and I'm excited to see them with a real center. And I, I, I continue to be really bullish on Indiana. I don't know why people don't consider them a contender in the East.

Yeah. Zubac is so different than, than Miles in the fact that he, he aims small and misses small in terms of like positionally. He doesn't really gamble the way that Miles does. Like the highs might not be as high in terms of like when Miles is flying around, he's long, he's athletic, he's blocking shots and things like that. It's like Zubac is much more conservative, but he's very smart in the way that he's conservative as a defender. Like he, He's positionally really smart. So you may not get like the block totals, but I think that he, he processes the defensive side of the floor really well. And it's like, even though he doesn't space the floor the way Miles does, that hypotheticalness of, of Miles spacing the floor killed Indiana in some really critical moments.

Right.

Where if you just think about what was, was it that, was it game 6 or game 5 that he missed a couple just backbreaker 3s. Whereas, you know, Zubac—

Game 4 too. That was another one. Yeah, it was midway through the series. OKC just was like, we're fine with this now. Please knock yourself out.

I think it might've been game 4 where he missed a couple and OKC took that game on the road. It's all blurred together for me now. But it's like, even though the width of what Zubac does is not necessarily as wide, he's very realized in who he is and what he does. So it's like, you're gonna get a little bit more post-up game. He's a pretty good connect to pass, or that word keeps coming up. But I think that he's gonna accelerate the way the, the Pacers play in a good way.

I agree. Plus fun to, fun to cheer for. You go, Zoo! Whole crowd goes, Zoo! We're not saying boo.

You know that, that old one?

When I was at those Pacers game, I was surprised by how annoyed all their fans were by Myles Turner. 'Cause he, you can't really tell until you're in the arena who the guy is on each team that the fans are like, ah. This guy drives me crazy. He was there. This guy drives me crazy guy. And Zoo is, Zoo is as reliable as it gets. You know exactly who he is. He's in all the right spots at all the right times. No center is gonna torch him. And they're, they're playing now against some, you know, there's some good centers in the East now, but he'll be able to go toe-to-toe with all those guys. I continue to be mystified by the Pacers. Like their over-under is 44.5.

Yeah.

Like to me that's a 50-win team if Haliburton's healthy. I just think they're gonna be really good. I guess the other question would be, what are we getting from TJ, and is he moving toward a different bench point in his career? But I, I continue to like them. All right, Miami. I'm really fighting off the urge to wonder if, if I might have been wrong on, uh, being too glass half empty on Miami. So I watched some of their preseason game. It's— granted, it's preseason. Giannis looks great.

I said the 14 minutes swung you, swung you.

Giannis looks great. I have no idea how him and, uh, Bam are gonna gonna play. But obviously their swing guy is Wiggins because, um, you could even, you know, you can see it from when you read this stuff and just in general, like Giannis is just, he's, he creates open space for guys. They, you still have to put the wall up if he has the head of steam. And I just think Wiggins is in a nice spot. He's at a weird point in his career. Wiggins is over 15,000 points. He has 834 games he's played. In the 2020s, he's averaged 2 made 3s a game and 38% from 3. And he's never somebody you want as one of your best 2 guys, right? Golden State didn't even want him as one of their best 3 guys. They, they seem pretty delighted to finally move off him. But this is the perfect situation for him 'cause Giannis is gonna get all the attention.

He culture.

Spoelstra. And you know, they, they doubled down. He did this extension that was a pretty fair price. Like he's making, he signed an extension for half of what Peyton Watson got, 2 for 34. And at least with Wiggins, like we saw him, he was the 2nd best guy on a title team. I think he slipped a little over the last couple years from that level. But, but this is a nice spot for him. Somebody who's done it before, which I think you have to respect.

Yeah, in Miami's kind of pursuit to answer the spatial questions of having Bam and Giannis on the floor together, your natural, you know, it's just like a— I'm not a chef, but we got a dish that's too sweet or salty, whatever. You're sprinkling in shooting to sort of balance out the, the, the problem, the thing, the question that you're gonna have to answer with Giannis and Bam. And naturally you're gonna add guys that are going to just be implied challenge defenders like the Tim Hardaway Juniors, the Klay at this point in his career. And I think that that opens up a world where we, we know that Davion Mitchell can guard point guards. He's a bulldog in that sense. But there's a big in-between where even though Bam can switch up and down the chain, it's like, who's gonna guard these big perimeter scorer type guys? And that's gonna be an opportunity for Wiggins to, to really cash in defensively. There's the catch and shoot opportunities that he's gonna have, obviously. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be, you were mentioning just the cumulative quality of his career. I brought up a stat about guys under 25 who had scored, I forget the point total, but it was only like 12 dudes and it was a lot of stars.

And Wiggins.

And Andrew Wiggins. He's in this interesting purgatory of, we're just like, eh, don't love Wiggins. He's almost like the wing version of the way we talk about Myles Turner. It's just Myles Turner never got his opportunity. If he'd made some shots, maybe he would've entered this, this, this elevated spot. But it's like he's not quite what you want him to be, but he's still not an outright failure. Wiggins is a fascinating player.

Shock— he'll be a shocking 20,000-point guy.

He'll be one of the other ones.

Well, Jameson— didn't Jameson get there?

He might have. Uh, I'm trying to think, like, like those Jim Jackson type guys who just— you're like, bam, that's a pretty good total at the end of it when you zoom out.

But That always reminds me of when I was doing my basketball book, there was this old NBA writer who was like a guy in the '50s, '60s, George, I think, Casita was his name. And he said, Walt Bellamy is going to be the skeleton of the 20,000-point club. Because Walt Bellamy was like just getting to— nobody liked Walt Bellamy in the '60s. Walt Bellamy, I think, ended up with 20,000 points, but nobody ever thought he was a winning player the entire time it happened. Wiggins has at least been a winning player, but The Knicks traded Bellamy for— DeBusschere. Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

He bounced around.

He, he had a couple, couple homes. But the thing with, the thing that's so tough to figure out Miami is if Giannis plays 70 games, it probably is a team that's gonna be in the high 40s 'cause so much is gonna run through him. If Giannis misses like a month or 5 weeks, I don't know what they're gonna do offensively. What happens at that point? 'Cause they, they have a lot of role players and guys that are specifically built around this, the, the force of somebody like him. And if you don't have that, they don't, how are they gonna create shots at the end of games?

Yeah. Giannis dictates a certain type of roster build, but I think in all the concern, which I think is fair, all the concern about like how he's gonna age with his playstyle, it can be forgotten that He is an elite floor-raising player still. And I, I think just having him on court, you can roll him out with like a replacement or even a little bit below replacement players. And he's just a pain in the ass 'cause, you know, there's just so few people in the world that can guard him.

He has at least 2 really elite years left if he can stay healthy. And then we'll see after that. He's the, the stats and the history are against it. But, but I think it's a nice spot for Wiggins. We could skip over Milwaukee really quick. I had Tyler Herro for them just 'cause he's in a contract year. He's never been in a situation where it's like, just let me cook. I think he's a sneaky 27, 28 points a game scorer potentially.

Yeah, you could see that. That feels like it's coming for sure.

I think he's first team All-NBA trade machine. He's averaged 20 points a game for 5 straight years, and this is the first time he's been in a situation where they're like, just go ahead.

Cook.

Yeah.

You know, especially the roster that they have. And we'll see how it affects Burries, who's the guy I really care about on that team.

New York. Mm-hmm.

I have Karl-Anthony Towns for this.

Okay.

For a couple different reasons. Extension's not happening. He sacrificed last year for the title, you know, and really I think goes down in Knicks history and all that, did everything you'd want. You might've faded in the last couple games, but it's fine. They won. Usually the history of the NBA is when you sacrifice to win a title, the year after, probably less prone to sacrifice. And there's different versions of the disease of me, disease of more, which I've written about and talked about forever. But this is, a staple of this where it's like, all right, I sacrificed last year. Now what about me? So you have, this has been Brunson's team. Brunson was the one that got to host SNL. Towns was in the stands. Brunson is a god in New York City. Everybody loves Towns as well. I wouldn't have given him the extension here. He's under contract for the next couple years anyway. I don't know how he's gonna age when he hits his 30s. And I'll wonder if the, this team in general, but specifically him, do you sacrifice as much when you've already won? And it's been the question of the NBA for 75 years.

How do you act after the year you won? And I just, I don't know with him. We'll see.

Yeah, it's interesting how it's like no one is immune to that. When, you know, there might be little situational moments where people are, you know, people are just praising a team for their guys doing what you're talking about, where there's like, oh yeah. But it's, the rubber hits the, meets the road at some point with every person, you know? So Towns, you know, they, they've got a lot more to mine. We went like, again, I'll plug the group chat episode again for it with the Knicks, which it'll be later this week when we get to them. 'Cause they're at the top of the NBA 'cause we're going bottom to top. But he really hit on something where him as the high post passer guy, I think that's the part of his game where if he continues to lean into that and the Knicks continue to play through him, there's a lot more for him to show. So maybe that's a way for him to just kind of you know, squeeze the rag as the season goes on and just show like, hey, you know, without me— that seems like the quintessential argument if you're Karl-Anthony Towns.

It's like, I'm not just out here spacing the floor for Brunson. That team hit a turning point when they started playing through him like that.

Yeah.

And that would be, that would be my argument, 'cause there's nobody else on here. It's like, do you expect Mikal Bridges to tap into Brooklyn Mikal where he was like running pick and roller? I don't see any other primary offense outlets for them. So you would think that would be the way that he's going about arguing for his value.

My guess is it's gonna go fine, but I'm always watching this stuff. They also, he doesn't have the Mitch Robinson security blanket this year. So when he gets 3 fouls in the first 7 minutes of, you know, a Sunday ABC game against Miami or something, then it's not Mitch Robinson coming in to save the day.

We didn't even mention that with Boston. Mitchell Robinson.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm excited for him.

It's on your mind, right?

I want the, the center situation's gonna be pretty good with Boston. Um, Orlando. So I have Suggs here.

Okay.

Who's missed 72 games the last 2 years, who was 40% from 3 in '24 and fell off a cliff. And in the playoffs last year, 30% field goal, 24% from 3. He shot almost 8 3s a game and made 13 in the playoffs. He was 13 for 54, and his shot just went out the window. And if he can't shoot but has the confidence that he should shoot, that single-handedly will sink a team. It's interesting, he's only 25 years old, but he did miss 72 games the last 2 years. I don't, I don't, this is not exactly Cal Ripken Jr. They can figure out the Franz, Paolo ultimately. Like if they decide those 2 don't make sense together, they'll just trade Franz, right?

Yeah.

The Suggs piece is a little harder because they're kind of stuck with that contract. And if he's offensively the guy he was last year, that guy's just on your team, but with the confidence that he should be taking big shots in big games. And I think there's more there. I really like Suggs. I just didn't like how he played last year, and I feel like this is a fork in the road season for him. So what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, he's like if Evel Knievel were like about— he just can't— he has no regard for his, yeah, his own safety, just throwing himself around all the time, and that can be good and bad. I think it's the thing that with the Magic is it's almost like the, the on-court version of the knucklehead theory where they're like, you know, you can have one knucklehead, but it's like you can only, you can have one really hyper-confident shooter that's self-sabotaging at moments. It's like Anthony Black. That's who I had down as my guy for the Magic who I really love. Or, you know, you have Paolo who can be inefficient with his shot selection and his credibility's been up and down. Interesting, you, you automatically went to Franz as the guy they, they would get rid of, and Paolo kind of was the implied person for the past. Did you want to say something about that?

I think it's easier from a money standpoint. Yeah, because Franz's deal is less. Um, and I, I think teams are always just more scared to trade the guy who they've already anointed as their franchise guy. It's a little bit of a Tatum and Jalen's situation.

Yeah.

But if I were them, I wouldn't do anything 'cause I'm not gonna win the title. I wanna take that as far as I can go with those 2 guys and see if it can work. And Franz has had some injuries. And I also think there's a lot more there with Paolo. I just wouldn't give up. Their big move this year was our coach was bad. What is this gonna look like with a better coach who can kind of unlock some of this? I wanna see a year with Sweeney with the same pieces trying to figure out something that made more sense offensively than whatever the fuck we watched last year.

Yeah.

So I, I, this team, I don't think this is a big deal this year team, but in the offseason, that's where you make the Paulo Franz to say, if this goes badly again, that's where you probably make the move. They don't have any picks left.

Yeah. It's, I mean, this roster, suits Sean Sweeney's sensibility as a coach, like as a defensive-minded coach. So I think he's going to be able to, you know, that palate cleanse of just getting somebody new, a new voice in the locker room. We'll see if they can, you know, get back into some of the intensity and the physicality that we like so much of them when they were kind of a hipstery team a few years ago. But we're kind of far into this experiment, and I'm looking at this team and I'm, I'm thinking we don't really have many more years to just kind of fritter away and be like, ah, you know, we'll move on. It's like— Especially with the money.

Yeah, they're, they're like way up there salary-wise too. So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is not, uh— so you had Black, huh? You'd think there's more there with Black.

Oh yeah, by the way, Anthony Black's younger brother, I would recommend you go check him out, Beckham Black. He's a badass.

I know about him.

Yeah, yeah. Um, I— yeah, I love Anthony Black. He had a month, I think it was in January, where he was shooting like 40% from 3, like just really, really good. It kind of makes me wonder if there's an opening with the— if you were gonna pick one lever for them to pull for a guy that does have some value but doesn't totally fit what they're to accomplish long-term. He's somebody that I could see somebody with like really coveting eyes come after him.

Oh, like a smart team.

Yeah. Well, you know, I, I, it'd be mutual because I think the Magic know what they have. He's so good. You'd have to be blind basketball-wise not to see that. But I think, I don't know if you're just kind of looking around thinking like, where, what is the move? Because I, it does feel like something needs to be tweaked. It's just unclear what it's gonna be.

I think there's a real chance it was the coach, and that's why this whole team, the Suggs piece and the coach seemed to be the 2 things that held them back the most. I just felt like he took, I thought Suggs in that playoff series took the most, I can't believe you think you should have taken that shots out of anyone in the entire playoffs. Next team, Philadelphia. I, we don't need to dive into this, but Jalen's obviously the guy for this. And Making this as concise as possible, there's gonna be nights where they need him to be last year's Jaylen Brown, and there's gonna be other nights where they're gonna ask him to basically be Lou Dort on the Thunder last year, you know, and just, can you stand over there and just stay outta the way? And how he handles that will be one of the many fascinating things about their season.

Yeah.

'Cause there's gonna be nights where we're like, hey, can you just set some picks and guard somebody?

Yeah.

And maybe take 10 shots. And I don't know if he's gonna handle that well. Would be my guess.

Yeah, the, the, the Maxey-Brown dynamic will be interesting to watch. But in terms of like satiating him over the course of the season, this is a unique situation with him beating LeBron, who, oh shocker, he's 41. From those reports that kind of went around yesterday, it's like, yeah, his feet and his back hurt. Big shock. Um, they're going to be enough openings over the course of this season, I think, to, you know, make Jalen happy. Also, hey, I wanted to say, um, There's some little birdies chirping that LeBaron Phylon is, uh, kicking some ass. Did I, I just say it's, you know, I know we share an affection for him. I heard that he's been kind of taking it to the starters. That's, uh, I heard that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I really wish Charlotte had taken him. I'm still upset about that. That was sitting right there for them. Well, we have plenty of time to talk about Philadelphia. 2 teams left. I'm gonna go backwards alphabetical. Washington, it's Anthony Davis who just, they're basically like, we're not giving him an extension. So he becomes a February trade deadline guy. Rich Paul, who continues to work his magic, as we saw recently with the Peyton Watson deal, is, seems bound and determined to get him an extension. He's 33 years old. He's played 277 games since they won the 2020 title, the Lakers, which is 45 a year. And he can also opt in next year at 62, which is just kind of lurking over all of this and was the reason like his trade value wasn't nearly as high as you thought it would be. He's got, always has weird quotes about, oh, I put on too much weight. They asked me to be center. It's like, I don't know what position he thinks he is. 'Cause he's, You know, especially as you get older, I think he's a center, but he is fundamentally on paper a nice fit with Sar, right?

Now Sar, we'll see how healthy he is this year. And Sar, Davis, DiBanza together makes sense to me.

Yeah, yeah.

But at 33 years old, I'm not positive what's left here. And all we've seen is him in street clothes. So what do you think? What's left for Anthony Davis here?

Oh, I would say—

What would you bet if you had to bet his stats for 2026-27 season? Games, points, rebounds. What would your, what would your guess be?

If he plays, I would say—

Can't do plays. Games have to be part of it. You have to pick games, points per game, and rebounds per game.

Oh, I mean, games will go, I mean, I think the safe bet is to keep it in the low 40s. I mean, based on what we see.

I had 40, I wrote down 48.

I'll, I'll go 40, 44.

Okay.

I think when he, when he plays, I mean, he's gonna, I mean, the, the Trae Young-Anthony Davis combination is, is just kind of like match in NBA Jam heaven. I mean, they, they do fit together. How, how they figure out the spacing around that with Sar and with DeBonta, who isn't known as a great catch-and-shoot player. So that could be interesting. I'd say 18 points a game. Is that too low?

That might be too low. Like 18 and 9?

Yeah. Yeah. This is such a weird roster. It's such an odd—

I was at 19 and 9, so we're right around the same.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah. I could see that.

There's a, there's a lot of people to serve on this team.

Mm-hmm.

There's a lot of shots to be passed around. I'll be interested to see how they do that. You know, even like some of their swings and you have Trey Johnson coming in and he is like, I'm only playing 5 minutes. I'm shooting.

You know, Bub Carrington was being held back as we—

Yeah, we— poor Bub Carrington in the shackles. But, uh, yeah, I just don't— I don't know what to expect from Davis either way. And he'll be, I think, first 3 weeks an eye test guy where I think you'll know it on the TV. It's like, oh, Davis looks great. Hmm, he's, he's either playing for a trade or extension, or it'll be like, Davis isn't playing tonight, we're kind of on the up and down roller coaster, and And I don't think that'll be good for anybody. I still don't know why Dallas traded him though. Okay, last guy, Toronto. I have Murray-Boyles for this.

I wondered, I figured.

Playoff stats, 27 minutes a game, 14 and 6. They're talking about him playing a little small ball center. and just being Swiss Army knife, different positions. There's a lineup that we're gonna see with him and Kawhi and Graves, who looked like a maniac in Summer League, Barnes and Barrett, where they just go length and scariness. And, uh, and Murray-Boyles would be the key to that. But I was really, really, really impressed by them. And in general, I, I, I'm really kind of warming up to the Toronto over and just I don't know what they're gonna get outta Kawhi, but it might, they might not even need more than 55 games from him to win 50 games. This team is just gonna be one of those, you see 'em on the schedule and you're like, fuck, playing Toronto tonight. Jesus, I hate going against these guys. I think that's where their destiny is. But I know you love Murray Boyle, so go.

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like he, he, his ability to, to guard up, up the, up the positional chain is gonna be a huge tool for them. You know, scoring is still gonna continue because he's basically a below-the-rim kind of a, a 5 interior. He likes to score around the basket. So you'll have to— it's, it's very Draymondian in that you're gonna have some questions to answer, but he's a really good passer. He spaces well, like even if he's not shooting the ball, he has a high basketball IQ. I think something that's interesting about Scottie, who Scottie over the course— B-Ball Index used to have this, uh, matchup versatility rating that would just kind of measure you know, the who you could guard. And Scottie has year in and year out been really, really at the top of that. So I, I think Murray, Boyles, and Scottie together are gonna take off some of the traditional assignment kind of difficulty that Kawhi has had in the past where it's just like, we're gonna have Kawhi guard this tough guy. It was just kind of implied. It's gonna settle him into a role I think that suits his age a little bit better.

Yeah.

So you're right. I, I just think that like defensively that 3-4-5 in a small ball lineup, a lot of people have talked about it. It's gonna be a nightmare. I like, I, I'm gonna be really, I really wanna watch Miami play Toronto in particular. Like I think that's gonna be just a bloodbath. But Kawhi, I think will help them offensively too in a lot of different ways. 'Cause he's just an improvement in every possible way over Brandon Ingram.

Well, they turned Brandon Ingram who had apparently a partially torn Achilles and a couple of picks down the road into a guy who was really good last year who, you know, left wreckage behind. But you figure Murray-Boyles, Kawhi, and Barnes, just the 3 of them together, pretty nice foundation. And then Graves is the wild card. If Graves can just come in and be a maniac for 18, 20 minutes, now it's like there's no letup with anything that's happening. Is there anybody— is there one guy we didn't mention that you feel like we have to discuss? Because I asked you to come up with 3 to 4 of your own. Did you have somebody that you feel like is paramount we discuss before we go?

Uh, we mentioned Anthony Black. Let's see, um, Jaylen Tyson I think is gonna matter for the Cavs also. Um, yeah, I, I thought for sure you were gonna— I went a little more obscure with my picks. I thought you were gonna go digging in the bin a little bit.

I had—

that's why I had Ron Harper.

Um, I like Ron Harper. Oh gosh, by the way, Mike Conley, we mentioned Mike Conley went out of his way to praise Harper. He's like, I didn't realize Rhett Harper was this good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not surprised. Okay. Pelle Larsson is another guy that I think he's a little bit— fans are gonna kind of learn who he is for the, for the Cavs. He got a new deal recently. Oh, for the Heat.

Yeah.

I just think, yeah, I think there's just gonna be a lot of in-between wearing a lot of hats type of stuff that Larsson is gonna have a chance to come in and, and do for them. So. A little more of a hipstery answer, but I think he's gonna play.

I liked him last year too. I did not like the contract. I think those contracts are— that's like the Jović contract a year ago. Those contracts are death when you're doing the $15 to $16 million for somebody who's not one of your 4 best guys. Those are the ones that seems like the teams regret the most. All right, Kyle, man, did we cover everything? I think we did.

Check out— I think so.

Check out group chat. Big-ass preview going backwards division by division. And you can hear me on there talking about my love for Memphis. And also we had a very long, what the fuck is going on in New Orleans conversation that was enjoyable. Good to see you. Thank you.

You too.

All right, let's kick off a new segment called Agents of Change. It is presented by Workday. The NFL is a game of split-second decisions. The people who actually change the course of a season usually aren't the ones making the wildest moves. They're the ones who understand the situation, know the system, execute when the pressure is on. So let's look at some of the league's true agents of change, players, coaches, front office minds, whatever you want. The ones that are impacting the team's trajectory this season. So you look at, at Chicago where they lose their quarterback in the first 2 games of the season. They figure out how to win with Case Keenum. They figure out how to win with Tyson Bagent.

Yeah.

Last week against the Jets, they have the ball. I think they ran 89 plays, just, just figured out how to audible and adjust. And it's all 'cause of Ben Johnson, who's making a case for being one of the 3 or 4 best coaches in the league. San Francisco's the other one. San Francisco, it seems like they lose a guy, you know, they lose 2 guys a week, 1 guy a week, whatever. Every week somebody else goes down. It never seems to matter. They're always chugging along. The game management, the end of the game stuff is always great for them. So Kyle Shanahan would be the other one I would think for the agents of change. I think the best thing about an NFL coach when they're successful is no matter what's going on with their team, they can adjust and try to win with it. And I think those 2 guys specifically have been the linchpins of that. In football, real change doesn't come from moving fast just for the sake of it. It comes from having the right systems in place to act when it matters, like what we just talked about. The same goes for business.

That's why Workday helps enterprises put agentic systems to work with the context, permission, and guardrails to move fast, safely, and not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new workday. All right, we're recording this. It is a Monday afternoon. We just did Rewatchables. Chris Ryan is still here. Van Lathan is still here. There was a couple extra sports culture topics I wanted to hit. One of the things I wanted to throw at you, CR, and I'm so glad Van's here for this. Dominic West, who's in War, the new HBO movie, HBO TV show, where it's like the most high-profile, nastiest divorce ever. Is he a Cable Hall of Famer? Because I feel like he is now.

Oh, shit.

And then who's in the Cable Hall of Fame? Because I feel like you have to be in at least 2 or 3 signature things.

I think Dane's. Is up there.

Danes is definitely in there. I think Matthew Rhys.

Matthew Rhys is a first ballot one. He might be the number one guy.

I think my guy Hamm's on there.

Hamm. Yeah. I mean, I'm not as big into your friends and neighbors.

Mad Men, your friends and neighbors.

Fargo.

Fargo popped in on Morning Show. Okay. But he was Don Draper. I mean, that's one of the 6, 7 best shows of all time. But I think he has a case. But Dominic West is a good one because he's McNulty, but he's not quite the star on The Wire because basically in season 4, he's barely in it, which is the best season of the show, but he's still important. But then The Affair, which was kind of the end of a Showtime era and was, I felt like, a show that had some mojo. And now he's in War. But he was also in Industry.

Dominic West? Wasn't he?

No, I don't think he was.

Was it in industry? Who am I thinking of then? All right, so there's 3.

So I have 3 for him.

I'm thinking of Kit Harington. I'm mixing him up with English people.

Yeah, it's tough.

Is Kit Harington in the Hall of Fame?

Well, he's got 2 big ones.

He's got 2 big ones.

So I guess the—

so how many do you need to be in the Cable Hall of Fame?

Well, if you nail a Tony Soprano, you're in, right?

If it's an iconic role, you're in.

Here's the problem. Is that now we're, we've gotten to this point now where like Reese Witherspoon essentially makes TV shows. Laura Dern essentially makes TV shows. Um, Woody Harrelson makes a lot of TV shows. Like, you're getting all these movie stars who kind of dilute the value of the trophy I think you're trying to give out.

Yeah.

Which is people who are like, I have been here from when it was like FX, Cinemax, HBO, and Showtime. And now I'm here when it's Apple, Netflix.

And I'm bridging the gaps.

I've just lasted, and I can lead a show. I can be second in a show.

So, like, Emilia Clarke is Khaleesi, but it doesn't have the second one. I don't know if Khaleesi has enough.

Ponies was the big effort that she had. Not effort. I mean, it was a good show.

But then the fun thing about this idea is then you'd have the people who'd be like, it's time for Sharon Horgan.

Then you have other people.

We don't appreciate Sharon Morgan enough.

Obviously, like, look at her stats. Yeah. Like Edie Falco's in, right?

Yes. Oz plus Sopranos. Carmelo is—

Carmelo, she's in. But Nurse Jackie as well.

Yeah.

So that's—

But then Oz, like, kind of important for Oz for 2 and a half years.

Yeah. Oz is an important jumping off point.

Elisabeth Moss is probably in there 'cause she goes from West Wing to Mad Men to—

Handmaid's Tale.

And has done a couple of other shows too.

But I think it's diminishing returns for movie stars that are dipping into television. They have to do a little bit more.

So maybe that's like a different wing in the Hall of Fame, right?

Carrie Coon. So put in there White Lotus, Gilded Age, Leftovers.

So like Nicole Kidman.

What's her name?

Rhea Seehorn.

Rhea Seehorn. Plural Bliss plus Better Call Saul.

Yeah, but like Nicole Kidman can't be in. I think if you're an established movie actress, you're kind of not slumming on TV, but you're Or Kate Winslet.

Dominic West is the guy who this is made for. That actor is the guy that this is made for. Like the guy who— he's not the main character of The Wire, but he is The Wire's orienting character.

I'd put Goggins in this. Goggins has done Justified, The Shield.

And then his latest thing, Get Some Man.

And then his latest thing, Get Some Man. Gemstones and, yeah, Lotus.

There's a great one for this that would get like— and people would be all excited. Littlefinger, who was also Mayor Garcetti. Yeah, that guy, whatever that guy's name is. He's 100%.

Yeah, he—

what's his name?

I can't remember. He starts off as Garcetti. That would be the—

that would be the Hall of Fame category. It's like, what's his name? And that would be every year you elect one.

Pedro Pascal's done Game of Thrones, Last of Us.

Oh, Pascal's a good one, 'cause— but he was only in Thrones for, like, 8 episodes.

Yeah, but they were pretty fucking memorable.

Yeah, like, he has one of the most iconic scenes of all time. If you're gonna be in Game of Thrones, that ensemble is so expansive, you have to either have another show to buoy you, or you have to be one of the main drivers of plot in Game of Thrones.

Emmy Rossum.

Khaleesi is one of them. them.

Emmy Rossum's there.

Now it's 2 good ones. Shameless and Furious. I like Claire Danes is good for this. That's like the perfect one where it's like, oh, she's first ballot.

She's gonna win. It feels like every 5 or 6 years it's like, oh, she's gonna win an Emmy probably, you know?

Like, yeah. All right, so you, you're down with this. So you think Dominic West, definitely?

Sure.

Yeah. And then you have Idris Elba needs one more.

Well, he's done Luther, Hijack, and The Wire.

Oh, that's true.

He does have Hijack. He's in— I forgot about Hijack.

First season of Hijack is awesome.

He's the— I think he's in. I think he's definitely in. And like, once again, in The Wire, what, Stringer lasts till season 3?

He's 3 full seasons.

Yeah.

So Stringer lasts till season 3, and he is such an important component to grounding the entire world. He's not like an also-ran character in The Wire. He's really, really important. Burnt Thawne.

Punisher, uh, Walking Dead, Bear.

We Own This City.

We Own This City. Yeah.

American Gigolo, a show only Mallory and I watched.

Never saw it.

Never even heard of it. We were the last 2. What about the guy from The Bear?

Jeremy Allen White.

Yeah, because he was also at Shameless. He's where Amy Rossum was.

Obviously Bryan Cranston.

Oh, Cranston.

Yeah.

And then it's like, when is Aaron Paul's time going to come?

Well, he's done—

he helped Carrie break a bid.

He's done Breaking Bad.

He's probably in—

Is there a third one that I'm forgetting?

Westworld, Breaking Bad. He's probably in.

Oh, Big Love.

Big Love.

Big Love. A forgotten, forgotten show.

Yeah.

That for the time that it was awesome, was really awesome.

Yep. Adibisi might just make it just for the 3 seasons of Us.

Euphoria, Us, and Lost.

Adibisi. Or I'm forgetting about—

But do you count network TV though?

That's what I'm saying. You're gonna network.

I don't count the network TV.

Okay.

the Cable Streaming Hall of Fame.

Okay, who are we missing? Some glaring ones here.

I know, I'm just— I did this off top of my head, but I was— I think this would be— it made me think how with culture we do have the awards season, right? We have the Emmys and the Oscars, a couple others, but we don't have any sort of big thing that we could argue about besides Hacks and, uh, Watchmen. I would argue Jean Smart's probably in just because of Hacks. I mean, she won the Emmy 5 straight years.

5 straight years is fucking crazy. Yeah, that puts you in.

And honestly, Louis C.K.'s in because Louie was the most important show for 4 years. He's fucking in. There'll be controversy, whatever, but he's in.

No, I just like it because it's like the topic is kind of losing air and it's like, oh, it's going down, it's going down. And then Bill brings it right back up.

Louis C.K., he's in.

You guys listening to any R.

Kelly lately? That show was the most important show for Which version of Louie? The FX one.

Okay. So because there was an FX one, there was an HBO one too.

There's one.

That was Lucky Louie.

And then he made the one about the—

We were doing Grantland and Louie was on par with all the other shows that we talked about for years.

It still is pretty high up in the New York Times top 100 list, given, given like his legacy.

He owns all of the shows that you can get on his website, but you can't get them. You can't rent them. They're not on any streamers.

And I was— what's happening right now? Now, Louie, you're going on a whole—

no, I'm just saying, I wonder what would happen if it was on Netflix. I wonder if it would have a resurgence or not. Oh, okay. Interesting. Chris, you want to— it's pretty rare to make Van uncomfortable. This is exciting. Just saying, it was a good show.

Both of us are having, like, this meta experience of, like, this went from one topic we weren't prepared to discuss to, like, reckoning with Louie's legacy. And I'm like, I thought I was talking about Manchester City. That's coming up.

Wait, before you do Manchester City, Van Saad Digger, the biggest bust of the last 2 years. And the final— yeah, the final, uh, nail in the Tom Cruise coffin. Unless he's playing a Mission Impossible.

I'm not pronouncing that dude dead yet.

Okay, he could play Mission Impossible or Top Gun: Maverick. He's going for Days of— or Cocktail 2. Days of Thunder 2. Okay, sequels only at this point.

So I'm gonna say this, and I understand how this is gonna sound to the audience because of my reputation as a zagger. As a zagger.

Okay. Professional zagger.

I would rather them call me a zagger than something else that sounds the same. Okay. So, so I saw Digger. Yeah. I went to see the movie. I saw it by myself.

Did you see it because you thought it was going to be fun to see how bad it was?

So I saw the movie just because of the divisiveness of the reactions to the movie. Okay. Now, a lot of people that I know have said that this is like like the one of the most terrible movies over on The Big Picture. They seem to be a little split. Sean liked it more than Amanda. So I was like, I have to see this movie for myself. You guys, I thought Digger was brilliant.

Brilliant.

Are you an Iñárritu fan otherwise? Like Birdman?

Birdman I liked. The, The Revenant, I was like, I'll never see that again. Those are the only ones that I've seen besides this. I thought Digger was—

I like The Revenant.

I thought Digger was brilliant. Like, I thought Digger was brilliant in execution. I thought what I heard Amanda say about it is very true. There are times where the movie is incredibly grating and, like, just, like, hard to watch. And you can tell that at this point, like, AGI doesn't have anybody to, like, pull him back or edit him from scenes that go on a little bit too long, that are a little too off-putting. But beyond that, which is, you know, a flaw of a director that has a lot to say, I don't want to ruin the movie for Sierra and I who haven't seen it. Yeah, I thought it reconciled itself really well. It takes on a really important topic and it is entertaining. Like, I legitimately loved the movie.

Did you read a lot about it or listen to The Big Picture or any of those others? Like, did you, did you go into it with any expectations other than like, I want to see what the big fuss is about?

So I didn't read enough about it to have the movie ruined. I watched clips of what they had to say about it just because I was kind of interested. And then I went into it without having any of sort of the meta commentary in the movie spoiled for me and expecting excess.

Yeah.

Because it is excess. I'll say something. That role for Tom Cruise at this point in his career is, to me, the perfect role for him to take. And for me say why, I would have to spoil the movie, which I don't want to do.

Okay.

Uh, I mean, the bitch only made $8 million in the first, so it doesn't seem like— but to me, there's a juxtaposition of how we view Tom Cruise and how he probably wants to be viewed that is illustrated through his performance in the movie.

Okay.

So I really enjoyed it. And at the end, I sat back and looked at the film and taken it in its totality, and I thought, There's probably a little bit of this that I can't— I couldn't put my finger on it why this one is overhated when there's so much space made for these big gigantic swings by these directors and the $175 million art movie that people are saying is this kind of like, it's almost heresy. And this is what's happening now. Like we're giving tons of movies to—

Seems like it got the people fired at WB too. That's the final nail in the coffin for them.

But they're having a putrid terrible year as well. Like just beyond this, Supergirl and a couple of other films. I don't wanna be typically hyper verbose about it, but I really enjoyed it. I really liked it. And it seemed like my theater did too.

I have a couple Tom Cruise thoughts.

Okay.

I don't think he should have promoted the movie at all. I don't think he should have done anything. And I don't think it helps when he does interviews and those things. I just think he's gotten too weird. This did lead to my favorite social media video of 2026, which was Tom Cruise On the red carpet, realizing the lady was missing one of her legs, and then realizing he didn't appropriately have the interaction go reflecting that he knew that. So he kept coming back.

Yes.

And circling back for 2 extra handshakes with her. And it was the weirdest fucking thing I ever watched. And I watched it 20 times, and I just couldn't believe how strange it was. And just his general energy. I don't know what's going on with this dude.

I think one thing that's really been a hallmark for him since, I think, Knight and Day, even if not before that, I think he's always had incredible marketing pushes and has done these wild stunts. But I remember back when that movie came out and it was like he was going to go to a premiere on 7 different continents in 24 hours.

Yeah.

And I wonder whether or not it serves the movies anymore when it becomes the spectacle of Tom Cruise. in interviews or, or doing social media stuff becomes like a bigger deal than what the movie is. Because obviously people hear like, like this movie was marketed. Like you couldn't be like, I didn't know Digger was coming out.

Yeah, people chose not to go.

So people are like, pass. Now, once people understand what the movie is about, I'm sure there's a bigger debate to be like, should they have shown more of it, you know, to people in the trailer or whatever? But I do think it's a fascinating commentary on like our modern media moment that people can kind of feel like they know what it is and have seen it just by watching all of the accumulated clips that they see.

So based upon what actually happens in the movie, the movie was completely and totally mismarketed. When I say completely and totally mismarketed, the movie seemed like it was marketed as almost a farcical morality tale. And that's like not what the movie is at all. The movie is part like absurdist.

Yeah.

But another part of it is devastatingly grounded in real-world stakes and consequence in a way that that interplay just keeps you, or at least kept me enthralled all the way to the end. To your point, Tom Cruise does not know how to exist outside of spectacle right now. And our belief in Tom Cruise as a spectacle is running out because we've been with Tom Cruise. I told somebody this, I was talking to Jack Sanders about this, and I was like, you know, I played the Top Gun video game on the first Nintendo.

Yeah.

The first Nintendo, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Mid-'80s.

That means I'm in elementary school.

Yeah.

And I'm playing the video game that is based on a movie that Tom Cruise has starred in. That's a long fucking time ago. All right? That's a long time ago. So at a point, you can't spectacle yourself through your career in your 60s. People have to feel like some type of actual connection to you beyond, uh, things going fast. And he just doesn't know how to be anything other than a star. He's been a star. He's shown that he can do that. It remains to be seen whether or not he's going to be able to show that he's a human being. And I think when you look at these interviews and stuff like that and you see him talking, we're like, Tom, why can't you just talk to us? Like, why can't you just—

Well, 'cause the last time he tried to do that, it couldn't have gone worse.

But he wasn't even doing it then.

The 2005, that Matt Lauer interview, which was—

Oh, now he was doing it then.

That was the last time it was like—

The psychiatry one?

Yeah, and about postpartum depression and medication and how mad he was at Matt Lauer that he didn't understand. I felt like ever since that happened, he just scaled back and he's like, you're just going to see me as, man, I love Higher Learning. It's so good. God, it's such a great— you got to be so proud of that, man. Handshake. It's just this unrealistic energy at all times. And I don't know what's going on.

But if there was a person to sell this movie, a movie that's like, really, You have to make people kind of fall into the narrative of the film. I just think it would have went better. I think a lot of this stuff—

So who would have been the right actor for it?

Oh, that's a good question.

Do you think another actor should have played it?

Because people thought it was almost like Tropic Thunder Tom Cruise as Digger.

Yeah.

Was what I had in my head. I intentionally— I try not to find out too much about the movie.

I'm trying to think an actor that would have been big enough to—

Like, could Christian Bale have played this?

Nah, because you need a bigger star. He could have, but you need a star that— because there's something that's happening in the movie that's a commentary basically on the lead. Okay, so you need a bigger star. There's just not many actors. Could it have been Leo? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Like, almost definitely.

It was set up with Leo at Netflix, I think, was the original version.

Almost definitely, yes. And also it would have made sense because of some of the stuff, some of the passions that Leo actually had.

You know what's the worst thing that happened to Tom Cruise for this aging thing you're talking about? How good Top Gun: Maverick was. And when it hit, we all love that movie. He's great in it. They nail it. There's just legitimately great scenes in it. And I think it made him feel a little like LeBron winning that Houston series last spring where he's like, I can still do this for 10 more years.

I think he's also somebody who looks really good for 65 or 64, whatever he is. Yeah. And is mostly interested in archival legacy performances of his own rather than like creating new characters, which is what it— I guess this is really going to send the wrong message because like he really put his ass on the line for this one and now he's going to go do Days of Thunder.

This was like his Paul Newman in The Verdict, basically.

And I'm sure they'll put Top Gun 3 in, in— yeah.

I'm just so surprised that he hasn't learned the Collateral lesson. Collateral lesson is—

Evil Tom Cruise.

Evil Tom Cruise, but also lowercase t tomcruise, right? I remember even when Tom Cruise went on—

So good in that.

He went on 106& Park. And he goes on 106& Park, which was a big deal. The motherfucker is still Tom Cruise. Everybody was like, oh, shit. But he goes on there to do the, uh, to do the— sell that movie with Jamie Foxx. And I'll never forget that he's talking up Jamie Foxx as Ray. And that was interesting to watch him. He's like, Jamie is Ray. And it's like, fucking A. Like, Jamie has fucking arrived. But it also felt like Tom Cruise in that moment was just being a good guy, like a good pal. He was still in promotion mode.

Mm-hmm.

But that movie and that performance was grounded in a way that I don't feel like he's tried it again. Like, I don't feel like he's had— I don't know. It's like, at this point, everything else has been established for him. The only thing that hasn't been established for him is the smaller, muted role where he gets into it and it feels like he's really connected to it.

I just wonder if he has too much baggage to play parts that we don't already know what the part is. And I mean baggage with, like, we know so much about the last, like, 50 years of Tom Cruise, basically, or 45 years.

Yeah, I mean, I think he's just a celebrity in a way that it's kind of an alien, you know what I mean?

That's what I mean. He had all these celebrity relationships, and then they come and go. He doesn't talk to them anymore. He doesn't have relationships with his kids. And I don't really know anything about him. And it seems intentional. The Scientology thing has been explored forever. But out of all the celebrities we have, I think that's the one that I have no idea who the real person is. If you went to dinner with him for 2 hours, What would it be like?

Well, I think it would probably be like everybody who's like directly interacted with him in a dinner or working with him on— they all come out of these movies like, that dude is the fucking—

yeah, so much energy.

Like, he made sure this happened. Yeah, he's like never— he's tireless. He has so much attention to detail. He's always just trying to make the best movie. And it sounds like he did the same thing with this. Everybody who came out of Digger is like, I can't believe what I witnessed on that set with Tom Cruise and his level of preparation and his dedication to the movie. It just didn't work.

So that's what carries it for him.

But Van saying that makes me want to see it even worse. I just didn't get a chance to see it this weekend.

So there's a monologue that he delivers in the movie, and it's a long one, and it's heavy-handed, and it's this sort of commentary on what's happening in the movie you're watching and the movie that you're not watching. at the same time and all of that stuff like that. I think he's going fucking crazy. I think he's on top of it. I think he's on his shit. But that film needed a human being to sell it because it is about the very nature of— I can't spoil it, but it's about the very nature of performance.

Mm.

It's about the nature of what it means to be performing, not only in the story that you're watching, but in a different story. It's about like how those things connect and take our eyes off the ball of what's actually going on. And it is, to me, it worked very, very well. Now look, it's a lot of movie. It's a lot of movie. And it's, there's some masturbation in there. There's some jerking off. Like just when the artist is masturbating, like—

Oh, thank God.

Okay.

I thought you were doing like Meg Sanson lamps.

Anyway.

Yeah.

But anyway, I just think that Tom's going to come back. He's going to make Days of Thunder. Who knows? You think anybody would care about that?

Were you intrigued to go see it, or were you like, this is a renter?

It's a renter for me. Okay, I feel you. I worked out on Friday. I came home and I turned the TV on to see if there was baseball on, forgetting that there was no baseball on a Friday. But the last cable channel was a movie channel. Cocktail was on. And it's cocktail. They're in Jamaica. He's behind the bar when Flanagan shows up and Elizabeth Shue's at the bar and she's like giving him the flashing the eyes at him. And then Flanagan shows up and he's like, I'll bet you $500 there's a— I'm not going to do his Australian accent, but he has a success manual in his thing. And Cruise and him are vibing. And I was like, man, Cruise fucking— there was just nobody like this in his prime. This is a ridiculously stupid movie. He's a bartender in Jamaica, and it's, like, riveting. And he's great in it. He's so charismatic. And I don't think he ever figured out how to audible from the charismatic thing as he hit his 50s and 60s. When you have that kind of power that you can bring anything to life like that, what do you do when you're 65?

You're not going to be able to do it in the same way. So what movies do you make?

But this is the kind of place where Like, he made Color of Money when he was a kid and Paul Newman was an older man. And Paul Newman is bringing along a younger actor, is playing a guy who's grappling with the loss of his own masculine virility and all this stuff. And Cruise, I haven't seen Digger, doesn't typically engage with that. In Top Gun: Maverick, the whole point is that he still is the better pilot than all these fucking kids.

Right. He's teaching them.

Yeah.

Like, he couldn't have played the Newman part in Color of Money, I don't think.

I mean, he should.

But I don't think he would.

But like, to me, that type of shit is right there. They all did that. Another film is, I think, the perfect— this being perfectly deployed is Redford in Indecent Proposal. So in Indecent Proposal, obviously Redford is a millionaire billionaire guy who wants to sleep with Demi Moore at her all-time finest, right? Pay the money, whatever. Redford is both, I am being supplanted here because it's gotta work out for these younger kids. But at the same time, there's still this magnetism of power and experience that makes that character desirable.

Yeah.

Tom won't even do that. He's holding on too tight. He's still gotta win the race at the end of it. Brad, quiet as it's kept, Same thing in F1.

They're the same age, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah. F1's a good example of that.

Like Brad kind of—

We talked about that when we did the F1 rewatchables.

Right. He's not quite ready.

The other guy should have won.

He's not ready to lose the race yet.

Gotta be ready to lose the race.

Everybody loses the race.

Including Man City.

Good segue.

Oh, look at that.

All right, so Sierra's gonna explain the Man City thing to us, which is 100 times worse than the Clippers.

Yeah, 114 times. So they've gotten found guilty by the Premier League's independent commission that was looking into their financial malfeasance or their trespasses over the last— when they came in, Sheik Mansour bought the team through the Abu Dhabi Investment Group in 2008. And you probably were like, somewhat aware that this team came in, they spent a ton of money.

Well, they were the also-ran for a while. It was the Clippers.

Totally the Clippers.

So Manchester United is historically one of the biggest, if not the biggest in the world. They're the youngest. And then a lot of money from the Gulf came into Manchester City. Where that money came from is what's up for debate. And they immediately hired Roberto Mancini to be their manager and then started buying all these great players. And they finally win the title 3 years later. Won, I think, 6 Premier League titles, have won the Champions League, won tons of trophies.

And I knew that things would change for them when they hired Roberto Mancini. That's when I—

Did you really?

Yeah, I knew. I was like, as soon as I saw Roberto Mancini get hired, I was like, they're fucking insane. They hired Bobby? They hired— oh, Bobby M.

They got— they, they immediately just started they basically like changed the calculus of transfer spending in world football.

Well, this was when I was friends with Mark Stein, when I was— when I picked Tottenham. And this is before this all happened with Man City. And Man City was one of the finalists. And the reason— one of the reasons I didn't pick them was it was like, they can't ever win. They're the lovable losers. And then the money came in and it changed.

So, uh, over the years, many raised eyebrows. How the hell are they, uh, spending this kind of money. There are rules put in place a couple of years into their ownership cycle where it's basically league-wide called financial fair play, which means basically you can really only spend in a relationship to what you make. Now, you can make the argument that that helps bigger clubs.

So this is like NBA's second apron a little bit?

Yes. So if you bring in $500 million, that's what you're like, working with in terms of your transfer budget. But if you bring in $50 million and you spend $300 million, you're negative $250 million. And if you go over negative $100 million over the course of 3 years, if you don't balance your books, basically.

So you can't just be the rich guy who's like, you can't just go out and give money, no object, right? I'll spend $1 billion on this.

And this is made all the more complicated by 2 things. One is that the— this has been something that people have been speculating about for more than 10 years. And when this is starting to happen—

So speculating that they weren't making as much money as they claimed they were making.

Yes. Because Manchester City's books would essentially— their claim would be that they're as big of a club as Real Madrid. And Real Madrid is one of the biggest brands in sports and have built that up over decades. Manchester City coming along, and I mean, just ask yourself how many Manchester City fans you know. Probably not as many as Arsenal or Liverpool or Real Madrid or Barcelona fans.

So this sounds like if somebody was pretending they had more podcast downloads than they actually did.

Several years ago, exactly. The Premier League—

Started putting like 5 episodes up a day to try to juice your Apple rankings.

Several years ago, the Premier League levels these charges against Manchester City because one of the problems is so many of the ways in which Manchester City is showing revenue comes from companies, sponsorships through companies that are also connected to either the, um, UAE royal family, companies in Abu Dhabi, the national airline.

This sounds like the Mark Walter.

Yeah, we got a lot, but like, the money—

Money going back and forth.

The money is there. Yeah, but where they're claiming it comes from is what's up for debate. And For years, these charges have been sort of looming and hanging over the league and hanging over Manchester City. And the kind of cynical view was like, I think they just have better lawyers and they're just going to delay and delay and delay and delay until this is just like— it's not unlike the fears I think people had that Balmer had more financial might than the NBA itself.

Yeah.

I think that there is a concern that Manchester City would be similar to the Premier League. At the start of what has been an eternal 3-week break in the Premier League because they're off playing for their national teams, On the Friday that that started, the Premier League is like, guilty, 114 out of 115 charges. Manchester City has until October 2nd to appeal this. Then we're going to wrap this up by December. But like, we are going to, we are going to like—

What's the penalty?

They don't know. We don't know yet. They have not articulated what the penalty is. So that has led to this crazy speculation of everything from they are expelled from English football to—

Expelled? Like no team? Like done? Like SMU death penalty?

So there's the pyramid system in England where it's like these lower leagues that, and it all goes up to the Premier League. They're run by different governing bodies, but the lower leagues have said, we don't, we stand with the Premier League. Like if they kick them out, like we're not going to take them in.

This is SMU death penalty, but for soccer.

Some of this is like, I'm reading this from a bunch of different places, but ultimately like Like, it's really bad for Manchester City.

But how— I mean, you can't do anything other than that as the penalty, right? You could vacate titles. Who cares?

Sure. I mean, you could, you could deduct them 114 points and they would just go down and come back up next year. Yeah. If you— or the following year.

But if you ban them from Premier League for 12 years, but do they go just go join La Liga or Bundesliga?

No, they can't do that.

They can't do that. They can't. Why can't they?

Because those are national leagues. Like, they're the national leagues.

A team from outside of the country can't join those.

You do bring up a good point that this would perhaps spur on a revival of the conversation about having a Super League, about just like 12 breakaway teams in Europe. But the bigger issue that's come up over the last couple of days is last week, finally—

Why am I so into this? Somebody— because it hasn't been reported in a way that there's also— you and I would understand.

It's a global story, but England is a small place. Let me tell you what I mean. They ask the new Prime Minister of England, Andy Burnham, who is coming into Downing Street. He's become Prime Minister after being the mayor of Manchester for a very long time. Manchester, Manchester City. And his reaction when the entire tide of public opinion is clearly, get these fucking guys out of the paint. We always knew this was cheating. They ruined this, that. Think about all the teams that came up short against them, teams that had their rosters raided by them.

Mm-hmm.

Like, this is big fish.

Well, they have Haaland now, the guy from the World Cup.

And I'll tell you about that.

My guy. Yeah. So they're the— they're the— oh, okay. So they have him. So they're the light blue team.

He is an example of the reported bullshittery that they were taking part in, which is they bought him for— I think it was announced as like £51 million or euros. I can't remember. He's obviously worth 3 times that.

Yeah.

But they apparently paid more for him and just made the public announcement in agreement with this club. Now, a lot of this is just rumors and allegations and stuff like that. Anyway, the point I was trying to make with the Prime Minister, somebody asks him, they're like, what do you think of this Manchester City thing? And he goes, well, I would really hate for these guys to really face a lot of trouble for this. They've been incredible partners with us in Manchester. So now he steps into the bear trap where they change prime ministers in England pretty frequently.

Yeah.

He had had like an amazing first couple of weeks of making these pronouncements, and he had like a real, almost like Mamdani kind of energy about like, we're going to fix this and fix that. And one of his big things was like, I'm going to make— take a lot of the lessons we learned in Manchester and bring them to the rest of the country. And now people are starting to dig into whether or not there's a lot of, like, land deals in Manchester. There's a lot of investment.

Tough.

And it's like, it's— I mean, I really—

Beaks were getting wet in the beach.

I really like this guy, the politician. I'm like, I'm like impressed with him. But it, it's just like this, this thing just got like global political rather than just like, oh, what are they gonna do with Manchester City? It's like, well, If Manchester City, their chairman has diplomatic immunity, apparently they've invested in all this land.

Diplomatic immunity? Are they— what do you mean? Like, the government's going to get involved and put people in jail?

No, but I don't think he could have any tax charges filed against him. Yeah. And on top of that, I think it's just this idea that if you have enough money, you can buy your way out of whatever trouble you're in.

Well, America is not like that. No, I mean, this is— do that here at all. Fair and square, brother.

Uh, so it's just become like this very, very, very interesting sports story. And I think, well, then to people who care about football, this is like Lance Armstrong times 50. This is— we've been watching these guys dominate this league more or less for the last, oh, 15 years. Everybody was always like, damn, dude, you guys just bought another $300 million in defenders.

Yeah, because Barry Bonds never won a World Series.

Right. It was all for him.

Yeah. And there are multiple clubs, like, there was a year when Arsenal at one point had lost like 6 players to Manchester City, you know, like had just failed all—

Nobody was asking anything then. It's like—

No, they, they, this was the thing.

This was also when they first came in. This is when the debate about, and I think this is happening in the NBA too. where the debate about, do you allow sovereign wealth funds or, you know, in, in the NBA's case, I think private equity, but like, do you allow these huge financial powerhouses to get involved to the point where they're bigger than the league? Yeah, obviously. This is not like, oh, the car dealer in Pittsburgh has the hockey team.

It's about a trillion dollars.

The fucking government of Saudi Arabia. Or like, yeah. It's like, so they have diplomatic relationships with this country. They have economic investment relationships with this country. They have, um, 200,000 people from the UK live in, in Abu Dhabi. Like, it's, it's all interconnected. So how do you punish this team? And what happens if they're like, all right, cool, bet, I'm liquidating this team and have fun, City of Manchester?

Well, didn't they build the new stadium too?

Yeah, the Etihad is the stadium there.

Yeah. So then, okay, so—

So big winner, Manchester United.

No, I mean, they still stink.

No, I'm just saying, like, getting Man City out of this completely.

But at a certain point, because I'm trying to think, college football being one thing prior to NIL, there were all kinds of things that, like, if you shut down the death penalty at SMU, you didn't destroy the school. There's still a lot of stuff that's there at the school.

Like SMU actually just has to stop being a college.

Has to stop being a college.

Right. It's just gone.

In this situation, think about the economic damage it would do in any league that we follow to just nuke a franchise.

Like the Dallas Cowboys are just gone for 10 years.

But we're going beyond just like the 5,000 people who work at Cowboy Stadium are out of jobs. We're talking about like a massive economic footprint in a country and in a region.

Right. And that, that would, the same thing would exist here, right? You nuke that, you nuke the Cowboys.

This would be like if Ballmer was like, I, it would have to be like almost like Ballmer and Cronky together pulling out of Inglewood or something like that.

Oh, wow.

I was going to say it would be the equivalent of if a city lost all its sports teams at the same time. Like if Boston lost the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins all at once. That's because in Manchester, this is the team. It's not like there's a baseball team and a football team and a basketball team.

The reason why I ask is, in your opinion, doesn't that mean that there will be some self-preservation involved in whatever the penalty here would be?

But what if the Saudis are like, well, fuck it, fine?

It's the—

No, I'm talking about the league itself.

Abu Dhabi is the ones who own Manchester City. Saudi Arabia. Newcastle.

Yeah.

So then like, I mean, they don't give a fuck, right? That's another thing is like, if money can buy everything no matter what, well, there is a region where the finances of the people who we're talking about, if it's MBS, if it's anywhere else, is directly connected to the price of oil. And they can essentially buy whatever the fuck they wanna buy. Right? So like whatever they wanna buy, they can buy.

Yeah.

They decide they wanna pay a guy $600 million in a contract. If it was a year to play soccer, it's nothing, no skin off, it doesn't matter.

Right? I mean, that happened basically.

Basically it did, right? So there was always going to be some, if not malfeasance, there was going to be some improperness there. I don't know, improprietary. I don't know what I'm trying to say. There's going to be something there that was improper if they get involved and that much money comes into it.

On the other side— It's just like, I think that they started spending and perhaps there was no rules to prevent something like this because nobody had ever thought that a petrostate would buy a football team. and start funding it as a way of using it for soft power across the world. You know what I mean?

Soft washing.

Yeah.

But like, what I'm saying is, in this situation right here, can the league swing the machete as much as they want to?

Well, so—

You like that whole region, the team is gone, the jobs are gone, everything gone, the economic, like what's the worst they could do?

I mean, they took But they took Chelsea away from Roman Abramovich. He had to sell.

Okay, so that the multiple outcomes are you have to sell the team.

I don't think that they're gonna—

But that's the— well, if we're going through everything, that's the best case scenario if you're a Manchester City fan. It's like, well, they just have to sell the team.

Yes. And, you know, uh, a consortium that includes Jeff Bezos just bought Liverpool, or bought a big chunk of Liverpool. It's not like sports franchises are going down in value. I don't know.

I would say they would have some takers. So that's, that's number one. Number 2 is you're out of the league for 10 years or 5 years or 15 years, whatever they say. And then number 3 is you're out. You're never coming back. Yes.

You're, you're leaving as a franchise.

I guess, is there any other possible outcome?

It would be a, here for the next 4 years, you start your season at -25 points. So like a kind of rolling penalty.

Huh.

And—

But then why would anyone wanna play for them?

Right.

So you just destroy the franchise on the pitch.

Basically. You, you keep it to— you keep the semblance of the franchise together, but you make it basically like now you have to go to the bottom of English football and fight your way back up. And—

Essentially what the death penalty was, it wasn't like we're contracting your sports—

You don't have scholarships.

You don't have nothing to do, necessary roughness type shit.

How about vacating the titles? Do people even care about that?

Well, that's a huge debate. And it's an interesting conversation because I think obviously, like, we've had—

You can't do that in American sports.

Scandals in American sports, like whether it's been steroid baseball or Lance Armstrong and Tour de France, or even somebody would say, like, you know, NBA, NBA stuff, right? There have been discussions about whether or not they should have to vacate those championships. Should the championships then go to the people who are teams that were in second place?

Ooh, congratulations. You can't do that. You're now the 2018 champ, bro.

But I think to me, the more—

Here's a handshake.

To me, the kind of—

Do you have a parade?

Yeah.

If you get, if the shit is vacated, right? If it like—

A retroactive 2018 parade.

Right, like if Alabama, Alabama played LSU, one of the most just debilitating experiences of my life, 2011. We get the championship, they make us champions. Do you have a parade? Do we like Baton Rouge?

It's like a fake title, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think anyone says that.

So here's a question. Like, in terms of the, we all knew all the, the whole time, I am not saying that Alabama was cheating, but there was like a feeling when NIL came in.

I come, you know what's up.

That it was like, now everybody is doing what the teams in the SEC were doing.

We don't need to talk about it. You know what's up.

But is that like, does that negate or take away from what Saban accomplished?

Nope. Because the reason why it doesn't is because on one side was all of the fucking dogs that they had, and on the other side is fucking Honey Badger and all of these other guys too. So the competitive balance that happens there is for other teams. Like, that's actually more a Mississippi State problem or even like a Tennessee problem or a problem of those athletes not being able to go to those schools. By the time you got to the national championship game, it was good on good. So that's less of a fucking issue. It's first round talent everywhere.

And there have been several Premier Leagues that were decided by 2, 3, 5 points. That was about like a guy slips and doesn't— you know what I mean? The margins are very fine.

You're a Liverpool fan. Does this make you mad?

Yeah. Yes.

Do you feel cheated?

I feel cheated in that I really liked our previous manager of who was mostly the manager during this era, Jurgen Klopp. Yeah. And I think he's one of the most dynamic coaches.

Dan's a big Klopp guy.

I've ever seen. And I think—

Kloppster.

I think he knew he was playing with one hand tied behind his back or against uneven— an uneven playing field, and they went about their business. But I don't— I just don't know what the right answer is here. I don't— like, it's that thing where you're like, you can't liquidate the franchise.

That's crazy.

No, I don't even know if they have like the legal means to do that.

You know, you could ban them from the league for—

well, especially the, the rest of the teams in the league could vote to, to expel them, you know, and just be like, play football elsewhere, you know, start your own league.

But, but you just said there's nowhere to play.

If that happens, like, I don't see, I don't see the Abu Dhabi group being like, yeah, we're just gonna stick around. We like love England, so we're just gonna hang out, you know?

Oh, so maybe a way to send them— well, okay, another question I'll ask real quick. My last question.

I'm gonna say hang out, like continue to invest in England.

So Is the Premier League prepared to force teams or compel them to sever their relationships with Gulf money? Is there going to be— no.

I don't. That would be—

Nobody would do that.

I think what they would say is that the money is the money. It's the way in which the money was accounted for and they tried to hide, which is the crime, or not the crime, but the That's the problem.

None of these leagues have ever said, yeah, we can't let that person in.

Nobody's gonna do that.

If the check clears, they're letting them in. Nobody's gonna do that. It doesn't matter what the league is.

Adam Silver was delighted about the Vegas valuation.

But he let him broker out.

But the problem is this though. But the problem is this though. When it's that much money, what people are not gonna want to do is leave $300 or $400 million, a billion dollars on the table. They're gonna want to figure out a way how to utilize as much of the limitless spending that those countries are willing to do. So in that lies like a festering opportunity to do shit that's behind the— like there's a salary cap, sure. There's all this stuff, sure. But sure. But yo, man, there's an extra $400 million out there. Like, how do we get it? Like, is there a world where—

There's also a reality where England left Europe several years ago when they did Brexit and economically are not in the same position that they were when they were part of a common market in terms of like trading with the EU. So like, they're like, I don't know if we can really like afford to, to give this up. I, I don't, I don't know. I'm not a—

Right. So even if, even if you find them for, or you get rid of them for 5 years, it's half a decade. That's a long time. Other players will leave. They'd have to start over from scratch. they lose a ton of revenue. Maybe that's how it plays out. The whole point of that— people like Mark Stein, who's rooted for Man City his whole life. Yes, you do. And he's like, so he just doesn't have a team anymore? He's— they're dead? Uh, I don't know.

I mean, SMU had— SMU fans probably felt that way.

Long-ass time until they became a relevant college football team again. It's like, they, they are a relevant college football team right now. They got their program back like before then, but like now with NIL There's so many fucking rich guys that are in and around that program. They're always going to be a problem. Texas Tech, places like that are gonna be a problem. I guess what I'm saying is, you know, I'm trying to think—

Me with UCLA.

I'm just, I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think.

You're not, you're not a booster yet?

I'm not a booster.

Okay.

You're a booster. Not a booster.

He's an emotional booster.

He's a, you know what I am, man?

He's a cultural booster.

You know what I am? I'm a connector. There you go.

I don't know. It's just a, it's very fascinating. Like, 'cause how do, 'cause how do you do it?

I think they'll wrap it up by Christmas. I mean, the appeals process being what it is.

But they're playing this season right now.

No, they, well, they've been off for 3 weeks.

No, but I mean, they're, we're still in the middle of the season.

And the first game back next weekend for Manchester City is at Liverpool.

And what happens to Haaland?

Yeah. What, what, what does he do?

That's all I really care about.

Well, I, I'm sure a lot of these guys have clauses in their contracts about what, what it takes to break it, what it takes to escape it and get out. I think this would be a force majeure kind of thing that, It's been, I've never seen something like this happen in sports. I personally, like, there were scandals in Italian soccer, Italian football, Calciopoli. Uh, there have been cheating scandals, whatever happened.

Calciopoli.

Yeah, I remember.

Yeah. Do you remember the Italians? Yeah. Yeah. Calciopoli. The difference is the Italians would've just killed people. Got to this point.

People would've spent time.

This is a situation where I think those guys would probably be like, The thing I think keep coming back to is the reason why I think Abu Dhabi got involved with the team in the first place was to use it as a platform to express a different version of their, like, vision for the world and their vision of themselves to the world, sportswatching. If, if, uh, if they've been disgraced here and people have written about this, like, what's in— what's the incentive to be involved?

Well, no, this— what, what, I mean, what they, what they essentially do is they It's really interesting if you take boxing or golf or soccer.

Mm-hmm.

They just go all in, let the chips fall where they may. And if it goes bad, they're out. No fucking big deal. A lot of these countries know that, you know, they're based around fossil fuels. Like, that's what the economy is based around. That's not infinite. And so at some point there needs to be penetration into other areas of like, travel. Travel. Come here. There was this gigantic, um, this gigantic development that was supposed to be happening in Saudi Arabia. They were essentially building a city.

Yes.

You know, you've heard of this, and it was gonna be this gigantic huge thing, like $4 trillion or whatever they were gonna do it. And that was a way to like have people come there and vacation.

Become a tourist destination.

Become a tourist destination to kind of get out of needing to, you know, have your economy dictated by the rises and falls of All I'm saying is that like, they're not gonna give a fuck. There's something else for them to buy. Like, there's a different way for them to incept themselves into Western culture. And I don't mean to come off sounding like in any way xenophobic.

No, I agree with Van. They just move on to the next thing.

They just move on to the next thing.

The question is, what is the franchise and this stadium worth? So that's like a state-of-the-art stadium.

Right.

It's a big franchise in a good spot with a big fan base. And Liverpool just went for whatever.

But it's a, it's a, it does the—

and are you buying it a scraped team that can't compete for 5 years?

Carryover?

Like if, if, uh, they'd have to carry over for 5 years.

Billionaire X comes in, is like, I got it, I'll buy it, I'll buy it for $6 billion, let's get out of here. I'll buy it for $10 billion, let's get out of here.

No, there's got to be ramifications.

Does the— does Haaland and, and, uh, Ryan Cherki, like all these guys stay on the team? Like that seems like a pretty cool—

I think they're out for If I was SportsR, which, you know, a job I've been applying for for 20 years—

SportsR then would have the global— SportsR brings me in.

Yeah. I would just be like, look, you're out for 5 years and you got to sell the team. And that's where we are. Team's out for 5 years.

They sell the building.

The team cannot compete in the Premier League until 2031. Okay. And that's what I've decided.

And what I say to you is, hey, we have this fucking stadium, right? It's a big, huge deal. Yeah. You have all of these jobs that are on the table. What about the economic— there's, we can't come back in 5 years. The economic distress might kill—

This is where you get into too big to fail stuff.

Right. The economic distress might destroy what it is that we have going on and permanently alter the league.

Doesn't mean they can't play somewhere else. Just don't know where that would be.

They join the Saudi Arabia league?

No. I mean, it's not— it's not gonna happen.

MLS?

Yeah. MLS. Yeah.

There you go.

Jump up right next to the Philadelphia Union. This is my— this has been my book report. There you go.

It's a— it's the rare sports story that there's no solution that is a solution that's obvious.

There's the fair solution. You know, the fair solution is they broke the rules and there should be a punishment. Other teams have gotten these punishments. Nottingham Forest, Everton.

Well, they're definitely getting punished.

Yeah, but is it going to— what— this is the problem with 3 weeks of nothing but people trying to outdo themselves by how outraged they are about it is like, now we're getting to the point where it's like, like, all right, man, you guys want Elliot Ness to come out and put these guys in handcuffs? Like, what are we gonna do? Like, yeah, what's an appropriate punishment for what these guys did? And it's been 3 weeks of like, I haven't had any football I watched, so I'm just thinking about this. I'm listening to sports radio all day and podcasts about this.

So what's the mood in like your average Manchester pub at like 7:30 on a Saturday night? It's got to be grim.

It'll be really interesting to see Liverpool versus Man City next weekend because it's at Liverpool and a lot of people think that it's going to be like a real hornet's nest. But it'll be also interesting if, to see if it's just like another game. I, I don't know. I, I can't, I can't really call it.

Truly last question. If in fact—

Van loves this. He didn't know anything about it.

I think it's, I think it's, it's really fascinating because there are a lot of other problems that exist in the world that are, that this is kind of a microcosm Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So if, if in fact the road less traveled happens here and there's really not a big penalty and everybody decides that we're gonna do something that's more for show and do our best at sweeping this under the rug, how will the worldwide or English soccer fandom respond to that?

Would there be outrage? Wait, so say, rephrase that again.

So if they're soft on the penalty, if they're soft on the punishment, but the thing is they can't be softer than existing penalties.

I think it will confirm the way a lot of people feel, which is like, you can buy your way out of trouble.

But what's the worst penalty that the Premier League has ever given out?

Um, I, I think there are—

Like, have people been banned for a couple years?

To an individual or to a team?

To a team.

You get points deductions and then you get banned from, uh, like you can get a transfer ban, but they have not been significant. And the teams that have had to take them on, for the most part, have either figured out ways around them.

But what they did was 100 times worse than anything anybody else probably did.

So like, there's no punishment that could even They invented a new infraction. Yeah.

So there's, so there's no logic there that can even be— Yeah. Dozens, a dozen fan bases at least who are like, these guys directly impacted my, like, my enjoyment of my life. Like, we had this team, we were this close to Champions League qualification and they fucking bought it. We had this team, we were in the FA Cup final against them. They kicked our ass. We had this guy who was supposed to be the backbone of our team for the next 5 years. And they bought him. And they got blood in their mouths. People are pissed off about this.

This is what would happen if the Clippers had won 3 titles with Kawhi and then all this stuff came out. People would have been so much madder about that story. Yeah, but they were— they fell short of it.

And also, you think about the things where it's like, if the Clippers had also just continued then to be like, we'll take Tyrese Halliburton, we will take this guy, you know what I mean? And every year you were like, damn, we got a good little player. We got something for the future.

And the Clippers are like, we'll have that. Yeah, we'll take Nick Batum.

This is why there is a second apron, though. If you would let 3 years ago Mark Walter have full— like, I can outspend everybody.

Baseball fans would say that's the way to go. This is kind of what happened with the Dodgers, and it's a relatively similar situation.

And the Dodgers and then the Yankees before them.

Even though he did everything within the rules, how he had the money to do this stuff seems like it was not in the rules.

But there are And it's also like, I think the idea of rather than caring about like competition between athletes, you're caring about like bookkeeping and the fact that the Dodgers figured out this way to amortize these contracts over the—

To pay themselves with their own money.

And then have more money to spend. But also to be like, we're gonna backload your deal. Yeah. Or we're gonna make it an 8-year deal that pays out like this. You know, it's like if you guys had thought of this, you should have done it, but I think there, it feels unfair. It feels unfair when Schuble goes to the Dodgers.

I mean, I think Sierra's pissed off.

I think he is too.

I think he's a smoldering volcano.

There, there is, there is.

These motherfuckers cost Liverpool.

Liverpool's had a nice run. It's fine.

Like, I'm thinking daylight between, hey, you know what? How about a league? Me and Max went back and forth about this. Like, like, how about a league where there is some type of care put in the competitive balance where you just can't use the rest of the league as a farm team for like— I understand that. This is something that's like actually much more breathtaking in that it's hidden—

Hey, you're fucking with people's lives.

Money that is not supposed to be there. This is like a complete subversion of the spirit of the competition in the league.

Yeah.

And rules.

Now there's— I'm sure there's a Manchester City fan out there who's listening to me and they're like, this is what Manchester United used to do.

Oh.

People would have a good player, Manchester United would come pluck him up. Like, it's not like this is the first time anyone's ever splashed the pot in English football. But I think that the scale of it, the fact that year after year you would get to sort of like the spring and the team you were cheering for was playing with a kid from the academy and some dude, like, converted winger was playing fullback because they were like, everybody's fucking hurt. And then Manchester City just brings another $100 million guy off the bench and you're like, goddamn, dude. I forgot you guys have Jack Grealish. Like, how do you guys have all these people?

This reminds me of the rewatchables category. How would Van Laithen get out of this one? I'm wondering, like, if you're Manchester City, the people that own it with the fans, how do you get out of it? It's like, hey, you guys want to win? Yeah, we did. Yeah, I didn't hear you guys complaining when we were lifting up trophies. You weren't asking how the meat was getting slaughtered every year they won the Governor's Cup.

Yeah. Like the, the, the King's Chalet.

The zag would be to do Leo in Wolf of Wall Street and be like, I'm not fucking leaving. And like, give us our penalty, but we're committed.

The I'm not fucking leaving Jordan Belfort defense.

And we're hanging out and we're gonna build this back up from the studs. We love Manchester. We love, uh, being here.

So in the short term, you save a ton of money 'cause all the players are out of there. They have like a little post-sale.

Yeah. Well, the long, the short term, you're also gonna have to pay a huge fine, I think.

What would, what, what, like, just at the end, at the risk of this going on another 30, 45 minutes, like, what, what, what, what's that number look like? Like, what would that be?

Oh, I—

Like $500 million?

I, I mean, yeah. I, I, I, I, like, the, the level of, like, accounting, alleged accounting fraud would suggest it would be in the hundreds of millions.

If you were going to be like, you have to pay that back, If this happened with the Knicks, I'm trying to imagine what it's like to be fans of other teams.

Oh, that's the other thing. They are going to get sued by these other clubs, right? Individually.

If this happened to the Knicks, I'd be like, get 'em, get 'em.

So this could be potentially a billion-dollar mistake.

Sure. CR's book report.

Love it.

New feature. Love that. This was great. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, man. No problem. All right, that's it for the podcast.

Thanks to Kyle and Van and CR.

Thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Gahal as well. I'm going to be back on Thursday with the Big Ass Football podcast. Don't forget about Rewatchables. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is up, and I'll see you on Thursday. I don't have a few years with him. Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in D.C. or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline.org or call 800-327-5050. 50 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY, or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.