Transcript of NBA Panic Teams, Best QBs Ever, and Sorry Seattle With Rob Mahoney, Chris Russo, and Danny Kelly

The Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel Sportsbook. We're also brought to by the Ringer podcast Network, where I have two rewatchables this week. We put one up already on Monday night. We did just one of the guys, a 1980s HBO classic. We did with Kyle Brandt and Joanna Robinson. I had a lot of fun. It's been on the list for years. We are moving rewatchables from video from YouTube to Netflix next week. You will still be able to watch it on Spotify as well and get it as a podcast, wherever you get your podcast. But the video will be on Spotify and then starting on Monday with Netflix. We are doing one more before we do that on Wednesday night, it is going to be another 48 Hours, the Eddie Murphy, nick Nulte sequel. Controversial sequel, I have a lot of thoughts, but it's me, Van Lathen, and Chris Ryan. So that's coming Wednesday night and then coming next Monday on Netflix, because we're going to try to, at least for the first few weeks, do movies that are also on Netflix. We're going to be doing Zodiac, which is a movie we did, I think, the first year of the feed.

We didn't have all the categories. The pod was under an hour. I wasn't on it. So Zodiac will be on Monday night on the rewatchables feed, and also the video will be on Netflix. So you can watch the movie on Netflix anytime over the next five days. Speaking of rewatchables, so I mentioned how there's a Bill Simmons podcast live in Los Angeles on February 11th, and you can get... It's at the Will turn. Ringer. Com/events. There might be a couple of tickets left. I'm not positive, but I'm just warning you now. It is a Bill Simmons podcast, but a rewatchables will be breaking out during this podcast. I think I'm allowed to do that since I host both shows. But there's just heavy rumors right now about a Michael Mann movie, and maybe even a Michael Mann movie that we've already done, and that it's going to be me and Chris Ryan and Van Lathen. Just heavy rumors. I can't confirm Can't confirm them yet, but there's a lot of buzz. We'll see if Sham Srirani reports on it. But so, yeah, it's a Bill Simmons podcast live. We might even do a little NBA at the top for about 15 minutes because NBA All-Star Weekend is going to be hitting that weekend.

But there might be a rewatchables breaking out. So I'm just telling you now. Anyway, coming up on this podcast, second one of the week, we're going to talk to Rob Mahoney about what the hell do you do, NBA teams, Especially with the Warriors losing Jimmy Butler last night. So we're going to hit a few teams there. The legend, the mad dog Chris Ruso is going to come on to talk about Josh Allen, Hall of Fame, quarterbacks, and just what happens if you fall short in the playoffs over and over again? How do we think about you? And then last but not least, I made a mistake on Sunday's podcast. I'm going to hash it out with the Ringer's Danny Kelly, and we're going to talk about the Seahawks in the NFL. So big, big, big-ass podcast coming up. If you noticed, I didn't talk about college football in any of these segments because we have good college football pods. We have Todd McShea that broke everything down. We have the Ringer tailgate guys that did an awesome job last night. So if you want college football, go listen to those podcasts. I'm doing football and basketball today.

We're going to take a break. Pearl Jam, and then Rob Mahoney. The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by FanDuel. Playoff Mode is on. Fanduel has got it all. Same game parlays, quick bets for jumping in live. Offers to boost your winnings every game day. You do not want to miss out on the playoff action, the remaining playoff action we have on FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app or head to fanduel. Com/bs to get started. 21 plus in President Select States or 18 plus President DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Get in a prompt call 1-800-Gamber or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut. All right, taping this with Rob Mahoney, early afternoon Pacific Time. I was actually watching last night when Jimmy Butler clearly did something to his knee and fell to the ground and took the Warriors season with him, and it ties into a game we're going to play called, Okay, what the hell do we do now? Golden State. As a long time Curry season tickets guy, just waiting for him to be in my life for as long of an NBA season as possible every year. This feels insurmountable, Rob. I don't know what they do.

I looked at it. I'm sure you did, too. I looked at SpotTrack. I made up fake trades. I just tried to figure it out, and I just couldn't figure it out.

This season is pretty much cooked. They just didn't have 20 points to spare, much less everything else Jimmy Butler gives them. The offense does not have that much give to it right now. So all you can really do is, I think maybe take a slightly longer view, take a little bit more risk than you would otherwise. It's just this isn't a front office that takes a lot of big swings, that makes a lot of big gambles. And so I don't know how much I'm expecting them to do that, even with Jimmy Butler down.

Yeah, I mean, basically, your gamble is going to be Hey, Jonathan Kaminga, how are you doing?

Just trying to have a conversation with Jonathan Kaminga. That's a big risk at this point.

9: 30 breakfast? Want to get some eggs? Maybe some yogurt, some granola? I don't know what else they would do. The only trade I could think of, and I didn't even know why Philly would do this, is if Philly just wants to get off this year plus two more years of Paul George. And you're like, take Butler. He's back. All-star break next year as an expiring contract. We'll take the extra Paul George here. Here's a protected pick. And any interest in getting off Paul George?

That's pretty dark. If that's where we're going right off the bat.

Dark for everyone, including Paul George. Totally. It's like, this is my trade value? A guy who just tore his ACL. That's pretty rough. Paul George, I will mention the last 17 games is 16 and five and four and shooting 37% from three and playing 33 minutes a game, Rob.

When he's out there, he's played pretty well. And the same has been true for Joel and B. I know we want to talk about the Sixers, too, but they've got at least some momentum and something going. And it felt like the Warriors maybe finally did, too. They were finally stringing some games together. It felt like the rotation was maybe starting to finally make some sense. It just sucks to see it fall apart like this, especially as you mentioned. The big picture in terms of solutions, there's nothing that's going to fix them for the season. I think it's a matter for them if they want to target guys who might be buy-low candidates who could be something for them next season, who can give them something beyond what they already have. If you call New Orleans and kick around the idea of bringing in someone like Eve Meesey, for example. If you talk about... Even like Gigi Jackson, trying to find guys who are on other teams' benches who aren't delivering, who aren't being trusted, who aren't fulfilling the brief for whatever they're being asked to do and thinking, okay, if we put them around Steph and Draymond and Jimmy whenever he comes back next year, could they be something for us?

Because otherwise, they just don't that many guys who are rock solid, steady rotation players. Yeah.

The other option is just to do that with the guy you already have on your roster in Kominga. Could do that. This would be, what is this, 9. 0 of the Kominga era of talking yourself into it?

But I think they're going to get this one right. 9. 0, like the ninth try, it really is the charm. It really is.

Well, they're 25 and 19. Their net rating was up to 3. 0, which was eighth in the league. And I actually saw their last couple of games because I'd written them off and Obviously, with OKC in Denver, it's hard to imagine a Warriors run, but they still have a top 10 guy. It did feel like they were rounding into something. I think that was what was frustrating about last night because they were beating Miami and they look good. And they felt like they had figured some stuff out. I was going through the Curry bad luck in the 2020s, starting with the second Clay injury. They get that high pick, and it's the COVID draft when you don't have a March Madness to work off of, you You can't really work anyone out. You're doing stuff by Zoom. That '21 draft when they're split in the room on Kamingo versus Wagner, Moody versus Schengen and Murphy, and they just go over two with those decisions. The dream on pool disaster right after they win this Miracle '22 title. Not dealing Kamingo when they could have. I think I'm going to count. Which time? Out of the many times, but especially two plus years ago, I think could have gotten Caruso for them.

I think it was that level He was at that Josh Gidey trade value level. They just didn't pull the trigger. And then the ACL last year. You could flip it and say they had so much good luck from '09, from Minnesota passing on Curry twice, to Clay falling down in the draft where they did- The cap spike. Driman in the second round. All these things that happened. The Bucks having a choice between Monte Ellis and Curry and picking Monte Ellis in the Boga trade. That's a real thing that happened. So you could argue they used up maybe all their luck after the cap spike? I don't know.

Maybe so. I mean, it's still like so much of what goes wrong with the Warriors has nothing to do with Steph not living up to his job. He still elevates everyone around him. He still makes this team incredibly functional despite the fact that they don't have anything resembling traditional shot creation. He is the engine that makes it all make any modicum of sense. And there's just only so much. You can only do that for so long. And I think we've gotten used to having the conversation about, oh, he's doing this at this age. Isn't this remarkable? It still is. It's just everything around him has to bear some load. It has to carry some of the weight for the team. And increasingly, Draymond can only do so much. And even Jimmy Butler could only do so much. And even Dianthony Melton is unavailable every third game. And he's one of the most reliable players at this point. So he just needed a little more at basically every step. And if any one of those things you mentioned goes a little differently, if Moses Moody is 40 % better as a player, 30 % better as a player than he is, maybe Golden State's entire trajectory looks totally different.

So the Porter trade, which I think they were considering and didn't seem like they were that interested in, is one that could do with Kominga in salaries and basically try to replace Butler's production with him. I don't think that changes their destiny as a team that's not coming on the title. There's a Zion dice roll. Then at least if you and I are running the Warriors, I think we go out and get a coffee and talk about the pros and cons of Zion maybe for 45 minutes.

You have the conversation. You kick all of the odds on that dice roll. It feels a little loaded to me. That's a casino I don't know that I want to step foot in.

Yeah, that's one of those where they've changed the Black Jack to five to five even odds. Trey Murphy, Hale Mary.

Yeah. That's the last one. If he's indeed available, Which, apparently, supposedly, the Pelicans would never dream of trading Trey Murphy.

I find it hard to believe he's not available if it's a godfather offer, but I don't even know if they have enough for a godfather offer. So, sadly, this is a wrap. And I don't think Curry ever leaves. So I'm sure day three of this will be, what if they traded Curry? I'm sure that'll go, but I just don't think he wants that. I don't think they want that. I just don't think that's happening. What might happen is the My knee's bothering me.

Sure.

We could zag that way, too. They're not that far away from being able to zag the other way and getting a top 10 pick, but we'll see. It's crazy. All right, next team, the Knicks. As we continue to play, what the hell do we do now? The Knicks are two and nine in their last 11. You could spin that one in two ways. Teams they lost to were pretty good. They lost to Phoenix twice, Spurs, Atlanta, Philly's been playing pretty well, Detroit, Golden State during a nice little run for them. Dallas has been frisky lately. They lost them yesterday, and then the one bad one was Sacramento. So you could say, Well, those aren't awful losses.

But if you had it- But you're doing a lot of spinning.

You are- Well, I'm trying.

Don't make yourself dizzy here.

The problem is if you had a television, you actually watched what was going on, it was a little different. The Dallas game was a disgrace. Losing in Sacramento at this point of what Sacramento is when they're minus 11 net rating and just a disaster. The Knicks are five and 10 in their last 15, 26th in that rating, two and nine in their last 11. Towns is now the one getting the most fingers pointed. I have some other ideas that I'll give you in a second, but what do you see? What do you think is wrong?

Yeah, I mean, normally with teams like this, the Knicks are on paper still a good team. They're in a conference that has a lot of opportunity for them to go deep. Normally, I would be pretty with the team like the Knicks. I just think something is really off here. It feels awful in ways that transcend just the last three weeks. That's been a particularly bad stretch. But really, you're looking at two years now of the team's best players not fully understanding how to best play together, how to work off each other in total. Their best five on the floor this season, they're losing their minutes. That was not quite true under Tibbs, but there was something that was a little off. Clearly, they don't fully understand exactly how to play off each other in this offense. Defensively, there are just structural problems with having Jalen Brunson and Kat as core members of your team that are always going to be issues. They can find ways to work around some of that stuff. We saw it last year in the playoffs, who they can be collectively when they do tap into the best versions of all that.

I'm pretty apprehensive about just trusting this team to figure it out because they've had time now under two different coaches, and I wouldn't say they ever fully figured it out. They fired the first coach because the process behind the team felt busted. Now at this point, the same roster, more or less, with some additional supplementary players, hasn't really figured out anything different.

Yeah, to me, it's like watching a football team that spent all this money on the two cornerbacks. In this case, that would be Bridges and Ananobi. It's like, We have these awesome wing defenders. It's like, Great. Love wing defenders. Need them in this day and age. And those are the awesome shutdown cornerbacks. And then the defensive line is just awful, and everybody can run on them, and there's no pass rush. And it's like, we have these quarterbacks. The quarterback has seven seconds to throw. It makes it tough for the quarterbacks. I just think this started with... This has been Brunson's whole career as the undersize guy. But I think Indiana really tapped into something against the Knicks with the guards. Just being able to attack him with multiple people who had the ball and multiple people that he was having trouble in front of, not to mention towns, too. I really feel like the biggest thing that has happened this season is how many teams have modeled themselves after Indiana in all these different ways. Indiana, it's weird because OKC has been the North Star of the league, the team you have to get over.

But I think Indiana was the one everybody's like, Hey, we could do that, too. We could full-court press. We could use a bench. We could have multiple guards at the same time and spread the floor and have people attacking one-on-one.

Completely.

The Celtics They're doing a better version of what the Pacers did last year. They had the same fucking recipe.

The Pacers version was pretty good. It got them to the NBA finals.

During the regular season, they're net rating and stuff. The Celts are second in net rating, but they're doing the Pacers. They're just doing an imitation of it. I think it's bad for Brunson. I think they go into these games and you just have all these different guards that are just attack, attack, attack. Then on top of it, you have towns going into this funk. Those two things alone, I think, not to mention, they don't seem to trust their very much, but that's what I see. Does that add up for you?

It squares for me. I mean, Jalen Brunson is one of the best in the world at making something out of nothing in some of these situations, just like broken possessions, situations where he shouldn't be able to create an advantage. It does, obviously baiting guys into the air and drawing fouls and doing all those things. But he has to do it a lot. To your point about the pressure that other teams are applying, full-court and otherwise, that takes its toll. You want to find ways to get easier mechanisms of offense. This is a team that has to have overwhelmingly good offense to overcome everything that they're not on defense collectively. It doesn't feel overwhelming right now. It feels like they can be a decent offensive team and maybe a fundamentally flawed defensive team.

Yeah, and you can get away with Towns when he's 25 and 12. Last night, he was 18 or 11, shooting 32% from three. When it's going badly for him and he's in one of those townsfunks, you really feel it. I would say he's first-team all-MBA of, I'm really feeling it when it's not going well for you. You just feel it. You feel with his teammates. I think teams attack him. They try to fuck with him. You saw with Golden State the other night. Draymond is just messing with them to see what he can get away with, basically.

His mistakes are among the loudest in the entire league. It's not just guys like you and I watching the games. You feel that as a teammate, when he messes something up, it feels It feels like something that, oh, my God, now we have to talk about this. Now we have to call time out. Now we have to rally the troops to address this thing that Karl is doing or not doing. That's a not insignificant part of the ecosystems of these teams.

Do you think So I genuinely think Davis for Towns was going to gain traction as we got close to the deadline because I thought it was a trade that made a lot of sense for both teams. And it was just a really good basketball But if you're Dallas, yeah, we could put him with Gaffard and he could be like a stretch forward. We need more shooting when Kauai comes back. There's some good things with this. And we're getting out of the Davis business before he gets hurt again. Then he got hurt again, became a moot point. I say this tentatively. I'm not happy about it. Lebron for Towns is sitting there.

Okay, you're at least a little happy about it.

It It's so classic, just the stupid internet trade somebody would make up. And yet I'm looking at it going, not a bad trade. To solve two things, right? If you're the next just trying to get out of the town's business before that contract gets crazy. If you're the Lakers, this is a pretty interesting guy to put with Luka. I'm now going to war with Luka towns and Reeves together. I don't have to worry about getting I think for LeBron a year from now. And if I'm the Knicks, it's like, well, this will be weird with Brunson and LeBron. And all of a sudden, I don't really have a center. I'm going to have to rely on Mitchell Robinson. There's all these other variables that are opening up, which is fundamentally a pretty interesting basketball trade. My take is way more fun for the league. If you just do that right now, most fun. Sign me up from an entertainment fun standpoint of just towns for LeBron, but you seem a little more skeptical.

Lebron is 41 years old. I don't want to throw on him that he needs to now save the New York Knicks and especially needs to make sense of their defense in some way. I think obviously adding LeBron as a secondary playmaker, as somebody who's going to take, relieve some of the pressure off of Brunson, that's a hugely valuable thing. I think where you and I are different is for everything that Towns has done and not done, and as frustrating as he's been, especially over the last couple of weeks, I'm not operating from the mindset of we have to get out of the Carl Towns business. I'm open to any Towns trade. Certainly, an Anthony Davis one, I think, might be more appealing, especially if your medical staff believes that he might be back in 5 to 6 weeks, right? That it might be a non-surgical recovery for him. That's something that would be really interesting to me.

I wouldn't do it if I don't know if he's coming back this year.

I think that's where I have moved on the next is if you ask me a month ago, should they even consider trading for somebody who has a serious injury and might come back? I said, obviously not. They're so well positioned in the East. They're talented enough. I'm going to trust them to figure it out. I no longer trust this team to figure it out. I think they need to consider some pretty dramatic changes. They don't necessarily have to be towns oriented, but he's the natural guy you look at.

Yeah, and it's weird because That whole identity matched a lot of what we're watching with some of the successful teams this year, like that overachieving underdog scrappy. That's who they were two years ago. That's who it felt like they were at times last year. Now, they feel like just your classic, everybody's making a ton of money on an NBA team. I thought this was going to go better. We've seen this happen for the last 40 years with certain teams. I don't know what the answer is with having Towns and Brunson at the same time. I think back to that Celtic series, which was the best series they won in the last two years with Brunson. The Celtic just, we were saying as it was happening, it was one of the dumbest offensive game plans. The way they played them was the one way that was great for the Knicks defensively. It's like, We're just going to launch threes. It was But the Knicks were like, great. That sounds awesome. Please keep doing that. And they were able to scrap and win. But I do wonder, Brunson and Towns together, how sustainable that is. All right.

Yeah. Next one. Speaking of the Celtics, the Tatum's back Celtics. We can do this quick because I've talked about the Celts a lot. It's a weird team, but they do have Tatum coming back as the trade deadline move.

They might have Tatum coming back as the trade Well, did you see what?

Did you see yesterday?

I saw it.

The workout in front of reporters is like, that's basically... That's the friends and family launch of a restaurant. Come on in. We're going to try to make some tortolini.

Soft launching Jason Tatum's return is a very funny way for the Celtic season to go.

He's coming back.

I expect that he will come back at some point. In what form is my question? Because 60% Jason Tatum and 80% Jason Tatum, those are radically different players.

What if I offered you a small dose minutes version of a 90% Jason Tatum?

How are we accomplishing this medically? Does he need to have a cybernetic arm? What's happening?

Well, I think he's going to be all right.

You think he's just going to be fine?

I don't think he's going to be fine to be playing 39 minutes a game like he did before the injury. But the question, the text threads that I'm on, because this team has overachieved 26 and 16, they're third in net rating now. Crazy. When you look at the bigger stats with them, it's just a fucking weird team. They're first in turnovers, which is great. They're sixth in offensive rebounds, big part of the strategy of just shooting three, crash the boards, basically. Second in made threes, their seventh in three-point percentage. They're also 29th in free throw attempts. They're 29th in assists, and they're 30th in pace. If I just gave you those three, and I'd be like, What do you think the team's offensive would be with those three stats? You'd be like, I don't know, 20th?

Yeah, 24th maybe. It's not a great recipe by that standard, but they make it work. And by that, I mean, mostly Jalen Brown makes it work.

And the three guards and the fact that they always have these two guards. And White has been in a slump lately, which is one of the reasons their record has dipped. But looking at the minutes yesterday, Brown plays 38, White plays 37, Prichard, 33, Simmons, 24, Kata, 28, guards of 15, and then Hauzer, Walsh, and and Shyerman are at 57. You figure if Tatum comes back and he's just playing 20 minutes, he's grabbing 10 minutes from somebody, which I would assume is that Shyerman Walsh combo. But then on one of my threads, we were like, Are we sure? Payton Pritchard should be playing 33 minutes a game? That seems high. I don't think he should. That seems high. Yeah. So maybe he gets 10 of those. Then there was, well, what happens in the playoffs? Because I don't know if they could play Garza, who I think... I like Garza, but I wonder if he's going to get targeted. It's like, could Jason Tatum, Gasp, play some stretch five?

Why are we doing this to him? The man is on a surgically repaired leg and you're asking him to play part-time center?

Basically, going small ball With Tatum in the Garza spot. Here's why I bring this up. I don't know how this is going to play out. It's one of the weirder variables I remember, where a team that's playing really well, that's a two seed, is now just bringing this guy who was the He's the fourth best player in the league last year, and he has to fit into what's happening. I don't know how they're going to do it. I don't know what he's going to be happy with. Then if I'm Jalen Brown, who you didn't see the game last night, he's guarding Kate on one end. He's doing everything on the other end, and he's the best forward in the league right now. I don't want him to lose some of the stuff he's doing. Totally. But Tatum is going to want to prove that he's... So they have... It's just this. There's a lot of balance. And can we keep the identity of this year's team and not be last year's team? And I don't know how they're going to unlock it.

I think that balance is incredibly delicate. And you're right. You should be mindful of what it does to Jalen Brown as a player to introduce this huge variable when he has been able to dictate terms in ways that have been incredibly beneficial to him and wildly successful, given all of our expectations. I would be mindful of that. I would be mindful of Jason Tatum, as you said. Is he going to be happy with this arrangement? It's really hard to ask a competitor who is that talented and that successful to, Oh, you're just going to play 20 minutes a game. You're going to be on these hard minutes limits, even as you work your way back. Even for someone who I'm sure wants to be a part of it, talk to him after a competitive crunch time or fourth quarter where he's not allowed to play because he already hit his limit in that game. Basically, you're trusting him to be responsible in his minutes. You're trusting the Celtics coaching staff to be responsible in his minutes. You're trusting every member of that roster to be so squarely in their zone in terms of role that they will understand what Tatum coming back means and doesn't mean.

There's just a lot of ways that a really successful season could just be upset all of a sudden. I'm not saying don't do it. If you have Jason Tatum available and he's healthy enough to play, he should play. But these are huge variables for a team that, as you said, is basically strung all this together because they have overachieved, because they have tapped into something magical in the alchemy of the group. Now you're challenging the alchemy of the group.

The style that they play is different with how even how they use the two bigs to set picks, how much runs through the guards compared to how much ran through Tatum last year. It's going to be fascinating, but people really like the Celtics team, and people are also really excited that Jason Tatum might come back. It feels like if you have a great coach, or a really good coach, and I think that Missoula has been really good and a good organization that doesn't want to rush them back, that trusts. You got to come back. This team, I think, is pretty realistic, but it's definitely what are we going to do? Orlando, just quickly. They're 23 and 19. Every time I become intrigued by them or think maybe something will happen, they just suck in a game.

They got some bad losses.

The last one they had, though, getting killed by Memphis and London or wherever the hell they played that game. I guess the thing I keep coming back to, Rob, is I think we're halfway through the season. There's some really good advanced stats now. There's good sample sizes. There's good five-man lineup stuff now. There's even good last 20 games where you can look at a team like the Clippers and be like, Throw the record. Look at the last 20. Carter, Sugs, Bane, Palo, and Franz is plus 18 per 100. Even though I'm 2319, I've had some weird injuries. I'm just looking at that and going, you know what? We can make a run. We could be Dallas two years ago. Let's just trust the process. Is that fair?

Totally. Maybe that's It's a lofty ambition for them, but it is what they should at least think about embracing. I think they've been a different team when Jalen Sugs has been healthy. Certainly, they've opened my eyes just with the Anthony Black- The wild card of him. Oh, my God. He's been incredible. So as far as navigating the deadline goes, I don't think they should do anything dramatic. I want to see the healthiest version of Sugs and Palo and Franz and Bane in particular. And now adding Anthony Black to that mix in some capacity, I want to give them a shot to show and to prove something. I think they've earned that. You can still show up around the edges a little bit. I think you can maybe find another backup guard who can give you something a little more than what they've gotten from Tyus Jones, who has been muted at best and riding the bench at worst. I'm eyeing like Ayo Desumo in Chicago. Is that a guy that's priable? Someone who's an energy defender who's hitting like 45% of his threes this season? Could that be an option? The Anthony Simon stuff has always been out there.

Is They're like a mutually beneficial, Simon's goga batatsai oriented deal that gets Boston a backup big and gets Orlando some shooting. I don't even know. But that's where I'd be looking. It's like that fourth guard spot, basically. I think there's some room for Orlando to do something.

Would you like to know my Anthony, Anthony Simon's update for whether I'd want him to be traded or not? I would love to hear it. Have you got my newsletter? I have a sub stack. I don't want them to trade him.

No, you're holding on tight.

I like him. I actually think it's taking them a while to figure out what he is and isn't. I don't know. He had a game a couple of games ago when they just spread the floor with him and unleashed him, and it was awesome. He was just... I think out of all the guards, it's weird. One of the best first steps when he's really just zooms by people, and he's also one of the best I'm feeling at shooters, I think, in the league. Totally. If you look at the advanced stats of him the last two months, combined with just the way he's been shooting, I just wouldn't trade him because there's an easy Malik Munch trade sitting there. If they wanted to shed salary and get under the first apron and they could be involved in a variety of ways. I actually think Malik Munch would be really good with this team. I wouldn't trade Simons. I think the team likes them, the players like them, the coaches like them. When Anyway, when I look at Orlando, yeah, it's like, is there a Kobe Jones, Alvarado? You mentioned December. It's somewhere one of those three levels of guards that they could add to give them a little flexibility.

I'm more interested in like, what am I getting from Palo? Why aren't you better than you were last year? Why are we so beholden to you at the end of these games? And are you just going to be Sharif Abderrahim from the 2002 season. That's who you are. You're just at 21 and 8, and you're taking some 20 footers. Okay.

That's a little harsh. I don't.

I'm being harsh.

Look, he's been disappointing this season. In playoff games, he has consistently been one of the only guys who shows up, who's shot, isn't completely failing him, who's able to, I say force it, but I mean it as a compliment, force his way through tough defense and create opportunities and shots in ways that other guys can't always do. So I want to see that-And the playmaking's there, too.

There's things that... I wonder if you gave all the Magic Fans' truth serum and they woke up from a nap and you gave them the truth serum and you said, We have traded either Franz or Palo, what would be more disappointing to you? I wonder what the answer would be.

I would love to hear it. I feel like Palo's approval rating in Ireland, among the Magic fans, is still pretty high. Now, nationally, a lot of people who are skeptics, a lot of people who are wondering about whether it's the jump shooting efficiency or the defense or who he ultimately will be. I feel like Magic fans still like Paulo.

Here's the best thing for Paulo and the best case for he'll be fine. Look at what happened to Jalen Brown. What we've learned is social media can just beat out all the bad habits of a player and turn them into an awesome first two-ball NBA.

This is the thing. We're so worried about the effects that social media have on the youth, on our brains. What if it can fix us?

Jalen Brown now has a crossover dribble and doesn't lose the ball in traffic and has a devastating two-point game. It's great. Incredible. I think Orlando is fine. I was actually looking at the odds for them on FanDuel for Eastern Conference. I thought they'd be higher, but it's only 10 to 1. I could see them making a little run here, like a little post All-Star break. It's like, Orlando is 18 and 2 in their last 20. I'm not rolling them out. Philly, from a what the hell are we going to do now standpoint, I think their fans really liked what was going on with this team. And then Paul George came back and Embiid came back, and both are playing. Embiid's played 12 of the last 14. It's played 33 minutes a game.

Like, knock on every piece of wood you have in your home, but it's playing pretty well. Moving and looking like Joel Embiid again.

Three-point shot seems gone. The second jump stuff is gone.

Sure.

It looks like one of his legs doesn't really work anymore. But listen, Tim Duncan- I don't know about that. Tim Duncan's last seven years, I think he was on one That's fair. It's fine. Rebounding, not where it used to be. No. But it still feels like he can score when he wants to. So he's at least become almost like the greatest version ever of like, oh, in the late 2000s, where it's like, We could throw this guy the ball and he'll get a basket for us.

The greatest version of Zodruna's O'Gauskis. I'm sure that's what Joel Embiid has been striving for all these years.

I know that was what he was hoping for. And Paul George has been playing, too, as we discussed earlier, and yet it hasn't It really affected their record. Now when you watch them, it's like when you're on Prestige TV with a bunch of our shows. It's like the TV show where there's two shows going on at the same time. It's like...

The writer's room is struggling to pull it all together.

I like this procedural room over there. I'm not sure about the rom-com going on here. Can we do more of the procedural? I think that's how the Sixer fans feel about Maxi and Edgecom.

I think that's probably true. I personally am waiting for the bottle episode of Dominic Barlow and his exploits. I'm into that personally.

The solo episode, yeah.

This is what's hard about the Sixers is the East is open enough and they're good enough as is. I think they should consider themselves to be a pretty serious player and more buyer than seller. But what exactly do they need? Because they're not complete, but you look up and down the roster, it's like, yeah, they could use a little more forward depth. They could probably use a different creator, especially off the bench, to complement what they have. But you don't want to take the ball out of not always smacks his hands too much. You don't want to take away Joel and Bede's momentum. They have some of the stuff that should work in theory, but it's hard to know how much to hedge against Paul, George, and Joel not being available for this game or that. What exactly you need to add to this group. It's just not immediately clear to me where the obvious upgrade is.

Well, and they have this Grimes contract that's basically a one-year deal, which I think is hard to trade. At some point, they can trade it, though, right? They can't trade it. Right around now is when it's available.

And I think maybe the Grimes contract plus Kelly Oubre, plus Pace, potentially. That's starting to... Now, that's a conversation. And those are two guys who can actually help teams present tense and maybe can help the Sixers resolve some of this redundancy. Basically.

There's a trade asset they have that would be a trade asset for me if I ran another team. But I'm not sure it's actually a trade asset anymore. Is Jared McCain? Sure. To look good for a cup of coffee last year. We got super excited about him, got hurt.

Now he's a Delaware Bluecoat.

Now he's in the G League, which is just incredible. I remember before the year talking about, could they put Paul George's contract with Jared McCain as the asset attached to try to get something better than Paul George? Now it's like, I don't even know if McCain's an asset, but I still... I would trade for that guy. To me, that's a guy Minnesota should be staring at.

Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome.

But there's a couple of teams or Houston.

Or Or Golden State, teams that are just in a position to take a chance on a guy who isn't as good as he could be right this second.

And who I don't think has a path with the Sixers. They have their backcourt. He's going to be a 15 to 20 minute a game guy for them for eternity. They have their two guys.

Vj is way too good.

Yeah, he's just not going to play. I'm sure maybe that's part of the thing with him that, Oh, this sucks. My path is to be the third guard in this That guy is an LA high school guy. I watched him in high school play. I just thought he was awesome. I liked him at Duke. I think there's really something there. And that, I think, is a real asset. So what do they need? Probably some Paul George swing insurance. If you're in a playoff series, who's guarding Jalen Brown if I catch the Celtics? On that team, I don't know.

No easy answers. Currently, I think it'd probably be someone like Kelly Oubre, right? Getting the bulk of that responsibility. That's flighty at best.

Not awesome. Then the Embiid thing, I guess this has been a success when we thought two months ago that he seemed like he was not going to be in the league.

I mean, it beats the alternatives. Yeah.

I would say this is we're in the pleasant surprise stage of this. So their odds to win the East are 11 to one. So Fando has Detroit plus 330, Seltz plus 3-40, Knicks plus 3-90, Cavs five to one, Magic 10 to one, Sixers 11 to one. And then the only... Is there any other team you'd want to know the odds for? I think that's really it.

The Charlotte Hornets. What are the Hornets' odds to win the East?

125 to 1. I'm glad you asked. You know what?

Speaking of buy low, let's get it. Well, it's good.

Speaking of incredible five-man lineup, advanced metrics.

See, now we're talking.

They were second in net rating with their best five out of everyone in the league over 100 with the Knippel and Miller and the center. Those guys are good. Their West Coast trip was pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah, I went at Zack on Twitter. Zack and I have been feudinging about the Hornets ever since he laughed me out of the room. And I said they were number six as my league past team.

Oh, no. They should be higher than six as your league past team.

They're great. They've been just a reliable, entertaining team this whole time. So what do we do now as the Sixers is let's wait another week to see how healthy these guys are?

It couldn't hurt or Modest upgrades on the bench, I think would be nice. But otherwise, see if you can string together some of these contracts to make a meaningful deal.

All right, quick break, and then we'll quickly talk about the Lakers and some others. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Four teams left, two games this weekend, a trip to Super Bowl LX. I think that's 60. On the line, FanDuel is turning on playoff mode, and right now, all customers get a profit boost pack during the conference. Champions Championship Round. That means you'll find a pack loaded with multiple profit boosts waiting for you in the app. More boost means more away hits to level up your playoff bets. And on Thursday's pod, we are going to break down not only the games themselves, but a bunch of fun props related to the game. So stay tuned for that. Visit finder. Com/nfl. Grab your profit boost pack for the NFC and AFC Championship Games. You must be 21 plus President Select States or 18 plus in President DC, Kentucky. Wyoming. Opt-and-required bonus issued as non-reliable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook. Finder. Com. Game problem, call 1-800 Gamble or visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-789. 7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connect. The Lakers are my favorite What Do We Do Now team because they're 25 and 16.

And if you just freeze frame it right there and you're like, They're 25 and 16. They have basically the same as the Celtics. What's wrong? Why are you complaining? It's like, Well, you haven't watched them? Their last 20, their 29th defensive rating. There's 30 teams, so that's a big deal. Their 25th net rating minus 4. 7. I thought this was funny. Their 26th in rebounds, 28th in blocks, and 23rd in made threes. If I just gave you those three stats, you'd be like, That team's probably bad. They are second in free throw attempts, but that's just because they're the Lakers in the league is rigged for free throw attempts.

And because Luka Donchik is the best at doing that, basically, in the whole league right now.

Luka is 14 in the game. They have a bunch of expiring contracts. Rui, Vincent, Kleba, and it's basically 40 right there, 8-8. Vanderbilt's 11, 12, and 13. Then they have some smaller ones. All the Laker fans I know hate the fact that this might be the team in March and feel like they're just drying dead at the poker table with the defense. What do you do now for the Lakers?

The defense is really bad.

It's awful.

There is not one move or one series of moves, I don't even think, that fixes all that this season. To me, the framework is, can you hit a solid double? Can you find a contributing perimeter player who will be a part of this team next year who will make some of this make sense? I'd be calling every day about Tari Eison, about D'Anthony Melton, about Keion Ellis, about Maybe if the Bucks go to shit and they start fire sailing guys off, like Ryan Rollins, someone like that. Who can you get in on that can give you... Honestly, the skill is great and you want guys who can contribute offensively, but they just need somebody who is a dynamic enough athlete that when they try to get back on defense, it doesn't look like they're running a sand dune. They just don't have anyone who makes getting up and down the court look easy right now. That feels like a huge problem. Every time they bump up against any young team, any athletic team, any team that likes to run, they just work them because of that. And so they just feel like they're stuck in the mud because that's where a lot of their guys are athletically right now.

Yeah, I was saying to one of my Laker fan friends, these teams have the Lakers on the schedule. And if you're a younger team, that likes to go up and down and try to score points, you must be like, We're playing the Lakers today. This is going to be great. I'm going to try to score 40 points.

I mean, why wouldn't you? That opportunity is there for you. And again, it's like there isn't one silver bullet solution to that problem, but you need somebody who's going to make sense longer term or at least medium term with Luka and Austin Reeves, if that works, with LeBron, if you want to consider him part of the mix beyond this season. They just need somebody who fits better than what they have, and they just don't have enough actual supplementary talents who fit that.

If you catch them on the wrong night, they have successfully replicated the energy of the guys who have been playing pickup for three hours and decided to play one more game, and they realized halfway through that it was a bad idea, and they probably shouldn't have, but they still have to finish the game.

Been guilty on many such occasions. You know what?

That's like hour three. I'm very familiar with this energy. Yeah, it's like, should we go one more? I don't know. My feet hurt. Well, one more. And then you're just half-heartedly jogging after dudes 20 feet behind you. That's what they looked like. They still have Luka Donchik, who's having an awesome offensive season, and some of his effort on defense has been as reprehensible as ever. Of course. Lebron, it It's even tough to complain about him at age 41. I think it's amazing that he's still as productive as he is at this point. But if you're asking to lock down people, good luck. They have probably the top two guys in the league who don't move, who move the least when they don't have the ball.

Who do the most with the least in terms of their actual body movement.

If they have the ball, it's like, I'm out. I'm just out of the play, I guess. It's just a bad mix of guys. The bright side is their record's pretty good, but I think that 20-game sample size is pretty illuminating. I I really like Rui as a piece for somebody else, not this team. Because ultimately, I think LeBron has to be a four at this point. To play Rui, LeBron, and Aiton is just nonsensical to me. You could argue Luka could be a four sometimes. But I think Rui, they could turn into something. There's teams... We talked about the Sixers a little bit ago. That's an interesting Sixer to me. Some size, some three-point shooting. I like that. But there's some teams that I just think Honestly, he's a pretty interesting OKC guy for me.

This is one of the problems, though, is that one of the benefits of having Luka on your team is in theory, it opens up room to do a lot of interesting things positionally. You can mix and match guys. You can play different sorts of skill sets. You can move guys around the board in ways that they might not be able to on other teams. But they're so locked in between when Reeves is out there and healthy and Luka and LeBron. But really, it's a Luka and LeBron issue in terms of playing those guys together where you don't have that flexibility. And that makes Rui less It makes Jake Leravia slightly less valuable. You just feel so hamstrung by centering so much of your team around guys who don't open up the room for you to play more interesting combinations of players.

You wouldn't consider trading Reeves, right?

I mean, I'm not completely ruling it out. I think Austin Reeves is awesome, but this is maybe a team that needs an awesome player who plays a slightly different position or could at least stand to go through the thought experiment of it.

Because he's $45 billion a year next year?

It's going to be pricey.

Could it be $50? Because now, whatever you pay him, you're locked into Luca and him as your top two expensive guys.

Yes.

So you have to decide, if these are my top two, am I winning a title? Basically. Give me all the best possible people to put with these two guys.

Right. I'm fully comfortable paying him at this point. Me, too. I don't really have doubts about him as a creator. It's more like, is this the best possible use of all of that cap investment? Is it Austin Reeves and Luca together? Or again, do we need somebody who's giving you a little more defensively? Do you want someone who plays off of Luca... Austin, honestly, plays off of Luca well, but plays off of him in a different way.

Yeah. Well, to be continued with them. There's a possibility JJ might have to be hospitalized, though, if they have to keep playing defense like that. I could just see him all of a sudden be like, I think something's going on.

The aneurysm potential is high, unfortunately.

Oh, my God. Bucks. 18 and 24 somehow. They are 15 and 13 with Yannis and 3 and 11 without him. Part of the issue is they only have two tradable contracts other than Yannis and Turner. One is Kuzma, 22 this year, 20 the next year, and then Pardis, 13, and then 14. Then they have a bunch of small ones.

And those are two guys who have been around the trade block. Kyle Kuzma has been available at many different points for many different teams at this stage. There's always some interest, not overwhelming interest. Bobby Portis, wildly productive for the role you slot him into, but has so many little red flags or asterisks or trade offs to his game that make him hard for a team to really take a swing on.

Yeah. If you're looking at Simons and Portis together. I'm sorry, not Simons. I have a four-teamer with the Kings getting Kuzma, the Celtics getting Monk, the Grizzly's getting Simons and Portis, and the Bucks getting Ja Morant. If you're looking at crazy trades like that where you ultimately end up turning your two trade assets into Ja Morant and then crossing your fingers really hard.

I don't love it.

I don't need it.

I don't love the Ja Yannis' possibility in general. Me neither. Maybe the Bucks are desperate enough to do it. This is ultimately their problem. They really only have two options, and it's you either go hard at basically any decent proposal that is put in front of you to try to make this team better as soon as possible. That would be what investment in this core looks like. The standing pat middle ground option, I don't think really makes a lot of sense for this team at this stage. The other option is you make the hard call on trading Yana. So it's something you don't want to do, something that you've been loathing to even consider to this point. But if you're not really swinging at big trades and possibilities like a Ja Morant style deal, even if I don't like Ja's fit specifically, what are you doing here? What is the point of going through all this, of turning your cap sheet upside to fit Miles Turner into it if you're not willing to make then further dramatic... The calls you make are only going to have to get bigger and bigger and bolder and bolder to make any of this work.

What heat character is Yannis right now? Because I have a hard core answer on this.

I would love to hear yours. Who do you have?

Pacino's girlfriend or wife, whatever she is. She knows she needs to break up with Vincent, doesn't really have the balls to just say it. She's just putting on makeup and going out on dates and disgracing herself with Ralph because Vincent won't bring up with her.

This was my question. It's like, who's the guy she's bringing home from the club, basically? Who is that in this metaphor?

I don't know who that is yet. But Yannis, just ask for the trade. Just do it. The Bucks fans aren't going to be mad. The Bucks fans want you to basically do it at this point. Just do it. Just go and just ask.

It's just hard to imagine their way out. We're talking about John Marant, the Jeremy Grant Trade Rumors have been out there for a long time. It's like, if Jeremy Grant is your big solution, I think you might already be buried. It might just be over.

It's sad because this Turner thing that they did, which I did not like. I was on the record. Dame, I think, would have been fairly tradable with that contract to at least be a big money figure that you could have attached a couple of other things to.

Sure.

They didn't do that. They're not going to trade Turner.

I mean, it's not like he was an expiring deal, though.

No, but it was this year and next that at least you could have been in the conversation to take back a big contract back plus other stuff, and you could have patched together something. They just couldn't do it. They took that off the table. So now all you have is Pardis and Kuzma.

Extremely tough. I don't really see a way out for them right now.

The way out is to trade Giannis, and they should get to that point and do it. Hawks, I don't know. Do they know? Hawks, Bulls, they don't know. Do they know what they are? The Bulls are quietly pretty good last 20 games. All right. They've had a couple of good wins. I thought they were going to tank.

Sure. Well, they don't do that.

No. Well, they're ahead at their 11 and 9 in their last 20. They're 20 and 22 overall. Nobody can remember a single moment from any game they've had.

I mean, 20 and 22 overall is the most Chicago The Bulls record that one could possibly have. So this is what they do. This is who they are. It's the lot they have chosen for themselves.

Well, and then the Hawks, they do the Trey Young trade. We think it's later in another trade, Davis gets hurt. I guess they could mortgage everything for Giannis. I don't know what they would do. They can't play defense. Even now that Trey Young is gone, it's still a team that doesn't seem like they can defend properly. To me, it's like, let's see what we get with the Pelicans pick. Let's see what we get with our... What's the other pick they have? They have their own pick back.

I think they have two picks. Who are you missing?

The big one is New Orleans. I'm waiting a year. I'm seeing what happens this summer. There's no emergency. You're not making the finals. I just wouldn't do anything, right?

I think at this point, everything is so new post-Trey that I think they need to stabilize a little bit and figure out who they are. It's been a struggle of late. But really, it's offensively, who are they going to be? What team are they going to settle into? You're right the defense hasn't been great. They have the profile of a team that probably needs to win with defense and then have a come and go volatile offense. They just don't really show any signs of that. I think it's hard when you have... You don't have organizers who get everyone into place and you don't have volume drivers on the team, really, other than Jalen Johnson. It's hard to have a good stable offense when you don't have either of those things. Until they do, I think they're going to fall into this zone because it's like this read and react. We're just going to figure out every possession as it comes expectation. It seems pretty clear these guys are not up to that.

I think they're pretty fun to watch sometimes, and then other times you put them on and they're down 75 to 50 in the second quarter and like, What's going on? I would wait a year and figure out what I had. This would be a fun Jared McKay and team, too. They need somebody like that, like some normal guard. It's just like, I'm here to set everybody else up. I'm just here to make some smart basketball plays, guys.

So if you're the Hawks, are you totally ruling out Anthony Davis?

I think I am. I think I look at this year and it's like, Look, we did a really good job. We made an awesome trade with the Pelicans. We rolled the dice with poor Zingas, and we knew it wasn't 100%, but it was a smart trade, a smart way for us to use our money. It didn't work out. We thought Trey, with all these athletes around him, maybe this would be it. It didn't work out. No. Let's reboot it this summer. We gave it a whirl. Let's see what we got. We got to get Risa Shay We got to figure out if we can run a playoff offense through Jalen Johnson entirely. Let's look at this and see what we're missing. That's how I would look at it.

The counterpoint is if you're already thinking about, let's reboot this thing and take another crack at it next year, couldn't Anthony Davis be a part of that, taking another crack at it? Couldn't you re-imagine the team around him being a critical part of your defense, giving you a different element inside, especially?

I just don't know if he's ever going to be healthy again.

None of us do.

It feels like Blake Griffin was in this point with Detroit, where he had a lot of injuries already, and he had that one last really good healthy Detroit season. But I don't think any of us felt like this was sustainable in the 2022 range. Now, he was a little different. He was a jumper and an athlete. You only have so many things in your legs. He had some knee injuries, all kinds of stuff.

Ad is those things, too, in terms of especially his offensive game. He has a little bit of mid-range to him, but he is a jumper and an athlete, too.

But some of his injuries were like, he has this eye thing now that he has to wear goggles the rest of his career. He has this hand thing. Then he had some leg stuff, too. I really get nervous about injured big guys who are expensive, hitting the stage of his career that he's in, which is basically like, what will be, year 15 next year?

He's getting longer in tooth really fast. And some of it is just you blink in home as a season, you blink him as a half of the season. Then all of a sudden, next spring, he's going to be 34 years old. He's not a young up and coming player by any means, or even one who's comfortably in his prime anymore. I've been nervous. He's going to have to adjust his game for sure. I think for me, if the price is low enough, if it's just, can you help Dallas clear salary and offer them something for their trouble, then maybe that's enough to take a risk on. I'm not throwing Nikhil Alexander Walker into a deal or something like that. But if the price is low enough, I still think maybe there's enough reason for them to do it longer term.

So you're just saying expirings will give you a pick, but not a really good one. We will take Anthony Davis off your hands.

Yes.

Because if I'm Dallas, I'm keeping him for another year. Actually, with the team that I have, I'm probably more excited about that. Because if you catch Dallas on the right night, there's some interesting stuff going on with them.

There's always interesting stuff going on. I think for them, the extension looming scares the hell out of me. If you are not comfortable paying Anthony Davis on his next deal, then why would you keep him beyond this season? Because that is going to be dick. That's what you're playing for. That is the expectation of keeping him around, whether it's on an extension or in free agency. If you're not comfortable doing that, you should trade him now. I know it's hard to do that. I know it's hard to potentially take a return if you're the Mavs that feels like you're selling low on a really good player. I can assure you it can go lower with a guy who is injured this often, who's only going to be older by next trade deadline. If you wait, I think it's going to get worse.

I couldn't agree more. Well, the Mavs were the next team on our list, and you just made the key case I'm probably hanging around. I'm probably the maps and not doing anything either way. I could probably make the play-in team, the play-in with Kyrie back and get flag. All I care about is flag. I just want flag to be in a good situation. Gets it, be in the right games. They're not going to be bad enough to tank ever unless they started shutting guys down right now, which I don't think they're going to do. And if anything, Kyrie is coming back and AD might be back in mid-March. So I don't know. I don't think I'm doing anything. There was a moment a couple of weeks ago where they were like, they should trade P. J. Washington. They should trade Gaffer. Well, they can't. Oh, that's right. They can't trade P. J. Washington. Who is it? Gaffer. P. J.

Is going to be on the team. Yeah, Gaffer for sure.

Marshall, they could trade. Claire Thompson, if anyone wants them.

Right. Marshall is really good. I would try to hold on to him as best you can. But Gaffer, yeah, I think could make sense if they want to trade anybody. He's a player who could appeal. We talked about a lot of teams who could use a little extra center depth, who could use a little extra bounce at that position that could be useful. I don't know. I think I'm just ready for the AD era to be over, and I don't say that coming from a place of like- Over?

Like he has to leave the country?

We don't need to eject him or anything.

He's going to be an NBA Europe? Just to Moving them out of the league?

Someone needs to cut the ribbon when Paris comes around.

All right, we'll have him do it.

The idea of a Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis version of this team for the last couple of weeks of the season, potentially, does not excite me very much. The idea, especially if that now becomes you're welcoming that team and being beholden to AD's next contract. I think the Mavericks have to run from that possibility basically as fast as they can.

I just disagree. I'm looking at it like they're four back from the nine seed. Let's go.

Think of all they can do with that nine seed. Can we leave from that nine seed? Jesus Christ. What are we playing? You're telling me it's all about Cooper Flag, and now you're like, Let's chase the nine seed.

I know. I don't know what they do. Well, they're not going to tell Cooper Flag to stop playing. No. And he's an additive, really good player, right? So you can't really tank.

Cooper Flag, he's really good already. Max Christie is having a really nice season. They got stuff going on there. It's just all stuff that should be centered around.

I don't mind watching them.

I don't mind watching them. Every decision they make should be, what team are we going to be 2-3 years from now? And not, who are we going to be by April of this year?

Clippers, we don't need to discuss because it feels like they've figured it out. So that's why they weren't on the list. Last 15 games, third net rating, they're 13 and 2. It all depends. Can they just coag? Can they keep them on the court doing this for the next four months, three months, two months, however long their season is going to be? If they do that, they're going to be good. There's They're not going to trade Zubats. John Collins isn't expiring. I don't know where you're getting back if they wanted to go nuts and get Michael Porter Jr. The last team I wanted to talk about quickly is OKC. And just like, is there a move for them? But what do they need? A notoriously patient Sam Presti to his anti-detriment.

To do his Championship validation.

To his title as best GM in the league. Could they get Murphy? Could they actually do the Godfather offer?

Yeah.

Could you take D Caruso and Caeson Wallace and say, We only need two of these guys. Aj Mitchell can get more minutes, and we could add Murphy to this. Dort has a team option next year at 18. Caruso is tied down for a couple of years. And if you're the Pelicans and you could turn, let's say they get Dort back. Let's say they get four first round picks. The OKC has a million of them. They get Troy Murphy. Then they take Dore. They trade them to the Pistons for Levert, two more for... They could turn Murphy into seven picks, potentially, if they got the right OKC package back. And honestly, if I were them, I would think about it.

If you're the Thunder.

I would think about it if I was everybody. If I'm the Thunder, and I'm basically not losing anything with the defense I have because I still have two of my guys left, but now I'm adding this other piece that gives me insurance and shooting and all these things. You can potentially play in crunch time and can guard different players. If I'm the Pelicans, it's like, well, what's the point of having Troy Murphy? We're not going to be good for three, four years, and then he'll probably leave. Then if I'm the Pistons and I could get my hands on one of those dudes, that's exactly what they need. I don't know. I'm not convinced OKC is going to stand pat, is my point.

I think they have a lot of reason to talk themselves into standing pat. They're still the best team in the Western Conference. They still have everything at their disposal. I think you could make a pretty strong argument that what they need most is the best, healthiest version of Jalen Williams they can get. And he's been pretty up and down all year. Who knows if that's going to happen this year? Maybe the hand will just be in such a state where he's a little more inconsistent than they need him to be. But I think you're about the market for Trey Murphy, which if you are New Orleans, yeah, they're not going to be good in the near term future to make the most of someone like Murphy. He's also so good and so young that they don't have to trade him. And so what they should be waiting for, if you're the Pelicans, and to just set the trade machine market, it needs to be an overwhelming offer. It needs to be something that convinces the Pelicans to give up a player who could be a part of their next core if they just decide to keep him around.

And this is what it takes. It's an overwhelming amount of pics that make you stop and say, holy shit, maybe we just have to take this windfall from a team like OKC, even if it means giving the defending champions really the one knock-down shooter they don't have.

Yeah, it's a 140 cents on the dollar trade. And I think if you go back and you look at the history of these trades, and we have such sample size now with all of these type of trades. Should you trade for a superstar? What about a trade like this? The one thing that seems to work over and over again is overpay me with pics for a guy that I probably wasn't going to win the title with anyway. And even the Bane and Bridges trades, if you just go to the fan bases or the front offices of either of those teams right now and you're like, Would you do that one again? They'll be like, Yep, totally would. Or even what they got for Durant, for the Nets God initially. I don't know. I just think when you're getting too many assets for a guy, you got to think about it. And it's not like they're trading one of the 10 best guys in the league. This is a really, really good player who might make some All-Star teams. I don't think he's an NBA player. No. And if I could turn him into four first-run picks and then an asset that I could flip for more picks, I'm doing it.

I mean, he might end up in that very overqualified role player who never makes an All-Star team category. That's where he slots in right now. Yeah. There's a weird... Maybe this is just me overthinking it from OKC's perspective, but there's this thing happening where they are so conservative in their decision making. I don't see the Thunder making the swing with all of these picks to get another huge high usage star in the door, to change the makeup of their team. Like a Yannis. That feels antithetical to everything that they're about. And so if you're not going to make that move, if you're not going to package all these pics for a traditional star in the most straightforward sense, then what are you going to use it for, if not overpaying in a deal like this? Convincing someone to get the exact supporting player who you think can help your team. And maybe it's that. Maybe it's the Thunder like, but don't love Trey Murphy enough to make that godfather offer. I would understand that. Or maybe it's their so wary of the financial implications with all of these young guys coming up for new deals that they want to keep the pics to either draft new talent or flip those players into guys on cheaper contracts who are also very good.

But it feels like it has to go somewhere. You have to invest all this draft capital in one of those two places. And I think the argument for trading for someone like Trey Murphy is pretty compelling, even with the Thunder already being as good as they are.

Yeah, my thing is they have too many pics, so just start there. If it's a 15-man roster, at some point, you have to consolidate the picks or use five to move up 10 spots in a draft or whatever you want to do. At some point, it's just ridiculous.

Yeah, and that's just overpaying in a different way. You're going to end up consolidating all of this into something. And it's just a matter of picking exact right spot.

Yeah, like if I'm the Pelicans and I can get AJ Mitchell and Dorda Caruso and Picks, and I can turn Dorda into more picks, that's the trade I would be thinking of. That'd be pretty damn good. There's two teams in the league right now that can to pay for players, OKC in San Antonio. There's a player in Murphy who fits perfectly both of those teams. Those are the two teams competing with one another. I don't know. I just feel like he's a chess piece that is going to really matter over these next two weeks because I can't imagine. You can't fear the Pelicans. You can't say he's untouchable. You can't.

You can say it, but it's not true.

I'm a huge fan of his, but he's not untouchable. He's not one of the best 15 players in the league. He's not. So you can't say he's untouchable. To me, Tyrese Maxi is untouchable. If you're calling me, I'm hanging up. If you're calling me Troy Murphy, I'm at least listening to what you're thinking.

Yes. You're saying he's untouchable, but you're staying on the line.

Do you notice how I almost did the old guy Troy Murphy instead of Trey Murphy? Remember Troy Murphy?

Boy, do I? What a time and place where Troy Murphy was just an actual somewhat impactful NBA player.

You want a Mekesky Award? All right, Rob, what TV shows are we covering?

Covering Industry right now, which is on quite a heater to open the season. And The Pit. We love The Pit.

What? I don't even know sports I was how to describe the first two industry episodes from a heater standpoint. Because it's like a heater, but it's a deranged heater. The John Snow episode was deranged. I was riveted. Riveted. I thought it was so good. I don't really fully understand what happened, but I really loved it. That show is great.

It's deranged in all the best ways. It's fucking mean, too. We need a little bit of that edge in the TV landscape right now, so I'm thrilled to have it back.

Well, as you know, I'm rewatching Thrones in the Sauna. Talk about your mean shows. That shows. That's about as mean as a show we've ever had. Anyway, all right, Rob Mahoney. Good times. Great to see you. We can watch and listen to you on the Ringer NBA show as well as the Prestige TV. Talk to you soon.

Thanks, Bill.

Welcome to We Kept the Receits, presented by Tax Act, where we look back at our predictions and figure out who deserves a victory lap and who is completely off base. Tax Act helps you with actual receipts like the kind that you can use for tax deductions or credits and the ones that help you get your maximum refund every tax season. So I have two from the last year that would be fun for this. One good one, one bad one. The good one, I went on Zack Lo's podcast over the summer and we were picking our 2028 Olympic team. And my dark horse for a 12th spot was Con Knippel because I thought by the time we got to '28, the shooting, the way he without the ball, they're going to need somebody like that. I picked him to make that team, even though I hadn't played an NBA game. Yet that was great. The bad one was, I think during the college football playouts last year, I made fun of some game management from Kurt Signetti, the Indiana coach, and was talking about, Oh, Belichick can't coach college. Is this guy again? What happens? Belichick sucked as a college coach, and Signetti went 16-0, won the national title.

Tough one. We kept the receipts. That was presented by Tax Act. This tax season, make your max refund. The one prediction that actually pays off is at taxact. Com to learn more condition supply. See taxact. Com for details. All right, late morning Pacific time. The legend is here, the mad dog himself, Chris Ruso. I wanted to talk big picture, quarterback, all-time stuff. And I used to love once upon a time listening to you. You were always in the all-time context, which has framed a lot of how I think about this stuff, too. And I was talking to Sal on Sunday about Josh Allen, how this is now becoming a career unlike any quarterback career that we've had, where you could make a case he's a top 10 all-time guy, but he's never made a Super Bowl, and he's had all these terrible playoff losses. And where does he fit into context? So you're a decade older than me. You've seen, you remember the stallback Bradshaw. You even go back to the '60s a tiny bit. Where is he in the context of all the guys? Let's start there, and then I want to dive into the history thing.

Great to be on there, Bill. Yeah, you can't put him in top 10. That you can't do. Not yet. It depends on how far you want to go back. Don Schuler once said, If you're going to rank these quarterbacks, don't to get about old Otto, meaning Otto Graham, who played in 10 straight Championship games. And remember, Paul Brown never won a title in Cleveland after Graham retired. Graham retired after the '55 season, and Brown never won another one because he wasn't a coach of the Browns in '64. They fired him. Modell did and brought Blant and Collier in. And of course, their quarterback was Frank Lyon, not an all-time great. But if you go back to that level, you got to put Graham in. If you want to go back to the modern day quarterback, that usually starts with guy who calls his own plays and football is a little shaped like it is today, that usually starts with Unitas. And if you don't even want to start Unitas, that's too far. Well, then maybe you go since the merger. I've heard people say, Well, let's start since 1970. So it depends on the year that you want to begin at.

But if you look at the guys, it's certainly going to be braided. It's certainly going to be Montana. You got to probably put Unitas in there if you want to start with his era, quote, unquote. Obviously, I put Mahomes in. He's won three Super Bowl, so I'll put that. That's four right there. So before you even begin, that is four. Then you got those next six or seven slots, Manning, Starback, won two titles.

So you got Starback up there? Okay.

No, Starback's up there. He's an all-time great. Lee Corso once told me, and he was at Maryland as an assistant coach and played against United And when he was at Florida State, Unitas was at Louisville, said that Starback was the best college player we ever saw. Wow. So you got to keep that in mind, too. And obviously, Starback, one of two titles. He got floored by the concussion, so he retired a little early. But I love him. Certainly Elway, you got to consider Elway. You got to also figure out what you're going to do with the Championship's bill. Is that a prerequisite? If it is a prerequisite, well, you got to win a Super Bowl. Well, if that's the case, then you're in a tricky spot with Moreno.

We lose Moreno. I don't want to lose Moreno. He has to be in the top 10 for me.

Okay, so you're going to do that. But then the titles, that helps Alan in the long picture. But those next five or six after the big four would be Payton, would be Elway, would be Moreno, would be Bradshaw, won four championships. He's very underrated. Great quarterback.

So you haven't mentioned Rodgers yet?

And you haven't mentioned Rodgers yet, so he's only one to one. Not great in the playoff games, but him. So that group, after the Four, which to me, you can't go anywhere, you can't go. And I'm leaving Graham out because that's too far back for your purposes. So we're going to leave Grant out, or Graham It's out, a grand out. So if you look at it from a Holmes, braided, Montana, United's, those four, those next six slots, if you're just going to narrow it down to a top 10, is Dicey because you got Manning is one, Elway, two, Stalback, three, Bradshaw, four, Moreno, five, Rogers, six. You got a lot of guys here that you got to put in the equation. And sooner or later, you're going to I'm trying to think there's a couple more.

Well, there's two more. You got Fáv, you didn't mention.

Yeah, I wouldn't put Fáv in there. Too many turnovers. And who's the other one?

Too many. Fáv fell apart, really, in the 2000s. And then some people have Steve Young. I don't think he was good for long enough to put him in the combo.

And I love Fouts, but I can't put Fouts in there. They were three and four in the play-offs.

Also, his stats are hilarious because that era was like you would throw for 30 TDs and 28 picks and stuff like that.

And he played for the right coach, Coriel and everything else. But the problem with Fouts is he wasn't great in the postseason. He's got a couple of bad losses, so you can't put him in a top 10. He's a Hall of Famer, but you can't put him in a top 10. So you really have to figure out what your criteria is for the top 10. You want to see a lot of playoff wins. Would you like to see a Super Bowl or two? Would you like to see some heroic performances even if the team loses, which Allen, of course, has got a couple of those, a couple of games against Mahomes. So it It depends on how you want to grade it. After you get by the five or six guys, I think Elway is a guy that you got to put somewhere in that one to six level. He won two Super Bowl. He was in five Super Bowl. One, two. He's got the heroic drive. John Wayne, fun to watch. I think you got to put El Wayne probably in that five, six category, too.

Well, you think probably the most talented? If you're just talking about- Running and growing. Running and Being able to move around and the gun that he had combined with the late game stuff, you could argue that he might have been the best one and just was in probably the worst situation of any of the guys from the last 40 years.

Quite possibly. He had a couple of Super Bowl. I'll tell you something you're going to laugh at that you have to take seriously. What are you going to do with Bart Starr? Nine and one in the play-offs, Super Bowl MVP, and MVP in 1966 to the League. He was an MVP in the league in '66. He had a great year, threw four touch downs in the NFC Championship Game against Dallas, killed the Chiefs in a very pressure-packed game, and led the most heroic drive in the history of the NFL. And Ray Scott told me at Lambo, It's the greatest mind, the longtime packer broadcaster, it's the greatest mind over matter drive in the history of the NFL. And that was the ice ball when he went 68 yards in the last 4: 38 of the game after nine straight three and outs in 59 degrees below zero temperatures with a wind chill factor you can't believe on the ice in Lambo, and he caught all the on place.

See, this is why I wanted to have you on because I knew you'd need barely any prep and you'd be like AI. You might be AI. It's possible. I don't know if you have an AI engine in your brain.

But Star is underrated because everybody remembers it's They think about all the... It's like Bradshaw, too. Radju and Star, in a lot of ways, Bill, are very underrated historically because they played with so many Hall of Famers. Right. Starworth and Swann and Mike Webster and Franco. And then, of course, the guys on defense and Star who's got Horning and Taylor and two or three offensive linemen and Nitzke and Willie Davis. And it goes on. Obviously, Willie Wood Herb Adderly, they got a million Hall of Famers. He almost forget about the quarterback. Elway doesn't have any Hall of Famers. Randy Gratishar, he doesn't have any Hall of Famers.

Well, think about the offense. He was one of the first, We got I got this guy, some help guys in the modern talk radio era.

That's right. Elway gets looked at higher because there's not a lot of great players around him. All right, well, can we do this exercise differently?

You laid out all the cases in the resume. Let's go I-test now. I test.

I thank Mahomes myself. He's only had one bad half in the history of his postseason plan. He's been in main games. It was not his fault in the two Super Bowl losses. His offensive line was a mess. He runs tremendously. He's one to three Super Bowl and been to five already. It's a very tricky era now with the parity and everything else. I I think for my money, Mahomes is the best quarterback I've ever seen.

Most talented you've ever seen.

I know, braided. Now, Montana, four Super Bowl, 11 TD passes, not one interception. So that's pretty I'm good for an owner Super Bowl, 11 TD is not one pick. But for my money, where just... And the running ability is not a lot to do with it. He's a great runner. He's a tremendous competitor. Now, you might disagree, but he's the best quarterback I've ever seen. I would take him over anybody. And that's saying a lot with braided and with Montana and people like that. I would take Mahomes one myself.

So the problem, and we're seeing this now in basketball because we're in the steroids era with basketball stats now. Everyone's stats are 20% higher than they should be because there's more shots, more possessions, three-pointer. Three-point shooting. Just people are going up and down. Lebron is averaging the same stats that he had when he was in Miami at the peak of his career because the sport's totally different now. And there's no way he's the same player he was 12 years ago. So I look at the stuff Elway and Moreno did back when you could hit the shit out of quarterbacks, when If you scramble, there was no sliding back then. If you scramble, you were going to take a hit. If you were going to try to stay in bounds and lay one more in, they're going to knock your head off. Not to mention they could hit you after you threw the pass. They could hit your receivers over the middle. I think it's really hard to... Could Elway do what Mahomes did if you just took him in a time machine and moved him 40 years? I feel like he could.

Yeah, absolutely. And Moreno, the knock on Moreno is he had a couple of really bad Playoff games. Lost a playoff game, the Stan Humphreys with the Chargers. He lost 31-14 of the Patriots in 1985 at home game.

Home game, Squish to Fish. It's a bad one.

That's a bad loss. I mean, you're Moreno, young in your career, and you got them coming in. That's the year after they got to the Super Bowl. You got the Patriots coming in as a wild card team. You got a home game. After you beat the bears in a regular season, that was the only loss the bears in '85 had. And he played badly in the game.

How was that, that game? He played badly in the game. The '95 Chargers one, they're up 15. It's Marty Schaunheimer. Marty Schaunheimer was usually the one that was blowing the playoff games, and it actually flipped it, and they came back. And that was probably Moreno's last chance. I just know how he made me feel as a fan where you felt like if you were going against them, you're like, Oh, my God, this guy's going to kill us.

Absolutely right. You always were worried about him. He had that bad loss to Buffalo. When Buffalo that year beat Houston in a great comeback, and then they went to Miami and won the Championship game in Miami. Wasn't great in that game. Elway, I can't think of a Championship game or a playoff game where he was bad in the game. Me neither. Super Bowl's, yes. Super Bowl's, Because he got ambushed by Washington. He was terrible against San Francisco. Now, listen, they were going to beat him anyway, but he was bad in the game.

That's the thing. He probably went against a couple of the greatest teams in the history of the sport.

That's fair, too. And the Giants in '86 were a great team, too. So you got to give him a little break. See, the thing about Elway that you like, Bill, and you're on top of this. You're doing a good job here. The thing about Elway you like, when he lost the three Super Bowl, they were by far the inferior team.

Yeah.

Now, I know Doug Williams beat him, but they scored 35 points in the second quarter. That's not Elway's fault.

Well, the case for Elway is like, how about this? Just randomly name the offensive players he was with in the first 10 years of his career. Most people would probably get three of them.

It really wasn't until- Ricky Mateo, Mark Jackson, Sammie Winder. There's not a lot of guys.

But then it all circles back, and all of a sudden, he's Playing with McCaffrey, Rod Smith, Terrell Davis. So I still think pound for pound, just those two years is in the running for best running back I ever saw. Shannon Sharp, he's in there, too. It's just all of a sudden they were loaded.

Have some Hall of Famers later. Yeah. He had Shanaher, too, who was a better coach than Dan Reeves.

Yeah, and it was a different stage of his career, and I think he had taken a lot of hits. But that's why it's really hard to... I think about Elway... I'm sorry, Josh Allen. He's definitely a one-on-one with how he plays and how the physicality and the size that he has and all the different things he can do. It's almost like you have to think about him in a basketball context where he's like the basketball player who can do everything. And yet something's happening in him in these playoff games. I think this, you always try not to overreact. You're on a show, you're on first take on Wednesdays where one of the goals is to come in hot with an angle. I don't think it's possible to overreact after that last game because I thought he was the reason they lost. And this season parted for them in these playoffs, and there's just no excuse for it. So now I don't know where to place him.

Well, I disagree with you on the idea, and I'll do this tomorrow, too. To me, he left the field and they were up 27, 23. And on third and 11 with 2: 38 to go, that defense allowed freaking Nicks to throw a 26-yard completion of Sutton. It's fair. Who I could have thrown the ball. He was so wide open. If they make a stop there, Denver punts and one first down wins the game.

All right, but counter. Buffalo had the ball back. They had a chance to score, and he overthrew Knox to win the game, basically.

Yeah, but he also... If Hardiman makes a catch, which he should have made- Bad throw. He's got a bad route, I guess. So he got a catch, and he had two hands on the ball. And if Cooke comes up with the ball, which he should have, they win the game.

Well, so the Buffalo fans who are defending Allen are like, Look at the supporting cast. He's only playing with a couple Pro-Bull caliber guys. The front office let him down. I do think this is part of the sport now. If you're paying 55, 60 million a year for your quarterback, you're going to lose stuff in other spots. This is what happened to braided in the 2010s, right? At some point, and braided was even taking a little bit less than the highest part. But at some point, you have to pick and choose. You can't have... It's not like the '90s with the Cowboys, where you could just be like, We need Deanne Sanders. Let's get him. And you just get him. So you're going to be missing stuff all over the place. And for them, it's like, All right, if we give him more weapons, now I can't stop anybody on defense, or maybe now I can't block. So you're always giving up something. So I don't know if that flies for me.

Listen, I can't absorb him. The play before the half was bad. He had Shaq here there. He hit a ground ball, he threw a ground ball to him. That could have been a countdown. You mentioned the knocks play. I cannot observe him. He wasn't great in the game. It was a little herky-jerky. You are a thousand % correct. But the defense, Cooke fumbled at 7-3, a huge play in the game. After the interception, he fumbles there at the 32-yard line. That's a terrible fumble. Can Cooke make that? Can he come down with the ball? Can he come down with the ball? Can he do that, Cooke? And not going to and not get it taken away. Ken Hartman, now, I don't know enough about the actual route, but everybody seems to think that he didn't cut it left enough and he went upfield instead of going to the sideline. But even if you say that, he still should have caught the damn thing. He catches the ball there. Buffalo's got a first down at the Denver 43 in overtime. They're going to win the game. They are going to win the game. And I'm not even going to talk about the overtime defense with the two pass interference, Ken.

We'll throw those out. Third and 11 with Nicks, can they make sure they don't get a first down in that play? Is it possible that maybe you give him a five-yard catch instead of a 26-yard catch and not put him in a tough spot? Now, again, if your point is, greatness on the braided level means that you got to do everything in your power to overcome the team's weaknesses, and you have to be the guiding light when everybody else is falling back, whether it's a receiver drop in a pass, whether it's a fumble by a running back, whether it's a defense or a penalty.

Or use your legs to make a play, all that stuff.

You got to figure out a way to win a game. That's what you're getting paid. If that is Bill Simmons' argument about Josh Allen, I cannot argue. But I would also say he's up 27, 23, 2,38 to go in the game on third and 11. I dare you to think, I wasn't, you were thinking about the fumble before the end of the half at that point in the game at 27, 23 with 2: 38 to go. I was not thinking about the fumble. Guys, make a stop. Payton is going to punt. He's got three timeouts, and he's got, obviously, his two-minute warning. He's not going for it on fourth and 11. He's going to punt. Hope his defense can make a stop, get the ball back and do his thing. I don't think he's going for it on fourth and 11, and the defense couldn't make a play. But I think there's a frame to go all the way around with the loss for Buffalo.

That was an underrated of the braided Super Bowl in New England. There's a couple of ones where if they don't get a stop for him to get him the ball back, they lose the game. Atlanta, who seems like they won the game with the Julio Jones catch, the game's over at that point. This is after the Pat's defense got the ball back with Hightower, all that stuff. But then they somehow made the Falcons go 10 yards backwards, so they couldn't kick the field goal. Basically, Quincy, they got a holding penalty, but they came through for braided in a way that Buffalo's defense never did. That's a very good point. Then the Seattle one was the other one. They're down 10. Braided scores two countdown drives, but they also stop Seattle to get the ball back. And if they don't, they don't win that one either.

And that's Super Bowl. How about a couple of times in the playoffs? Braided got a break of all time, and Troy Brown caused that fumbling in the San Diego game.

When he threw the interception. And the Chiefs, D. Ford offsides was probably the biggest break. There's another one. Because he threw a pick.

Ford was offsides, which was an interception to end the game. So a lot of this sometimes is happenstance. And for whatever the reason, the bills themselves, the team, the franchise, it's almost like they're cursed. I know. Nobody has had the losses that they have had since 1990 in big spot, or even going back a year before at Cincinnati, when they beat them. They've had incredible losses. That Norwood missed field goal, the other three in the Super Bowl.

Music's any bear call?

Mahomes two or three times. I mean, they've had so many bad ones, and this is one that is in line with the Bill's history. There is a Black cloud over that franchise. Minnesota has not had as many of these chances as Buffalo's had. No. They had the Gary Anderson miss field goal against Atlanta when they were 15 and 1. But they haven't... And every time they play in the Super Bowl, they got killed. Buffalo should have beaten the Giants. It's incredible that this franchise just can't get out of its own way when the money and Everything is in the middle of the table. And Allen is not part of that because he can't win these games either.

Yeah. And you and I have both been in that position as fans because I was certainly there at the Red Sox and even wrote column after column and books about it, about what it was like to just feel like you're just cursed with your team. Do you want to pass this team down to your kids? Should you just get out? Should you just have a sports? You were in a similar spot with the Giants there. With the Giants? For a while where it's like, is this going to happen in my lifetime? And what's happening in the Bills, I think, is as dark as anything that's happened since the Red Sox. I still feel like the Red Sox for going 86 years and cold weather in New England and all the history of Coming up close and falling short. And it just was in our DNA. And it feels like it's in the DNA now for the Buffalo fans.

I think now, remember with the Red Sox, you had the Celtics who won all those championships. True. You can chronicle them. You also had the Patriots who won in '01.

With Bobby Orr, we had a couple of cups.

Yeah, I do. Buffalo doesn't have any other teams. This is it. They don't have any other teams. There's no baseball team. They're Sabers, all right, but they haven't won a Stanley Cup. They've been close, but they haven't won. And they have the NBA team now after the Braves left to San Diego. So from that standpoint, this is it. This is their franchise, at least in a place like Boston. You have some other franchises. You're the huge Celtic fan. You got all those. You got how many champions Was it 20? I don't even know how many you got.

Well, even after we lost, we have 18, I think. Eighteen. Now that we have... When we lost to the bears, the '45 to '10 game, whatever that, the '46 to '10. And then we had a cocaine scandal two days later. But we immediately moved to the '86 Celtics. And then Roger Clemenge showed up.

One of the great teams.

And we had at least other stuff to talk about. You're right. I think Buffalo is number one. It's weird because the Browns fans have to be heard from as well. They at least had the LeBron Cavs thing. But in a way, it's almost worse to have this many where you come close and you have all these horrible losses. The Browns have just been irrelevant and not mattered and just futile, which is almost easier.

I remember They're going to be in Buffalo for a while. They're going to have a few more of these opportunities, and they may get some more of them because he's still young enough. That stadium will give him a little juice next year. They made McDermott the scapegoat, but they get somebody else in there. They're going to be a competitive team. I mean, it's not like the division stinks, the Jets stink, Miami stinks. The Patriots now they're going to have to deal with. But you get the idea. The Bills are going to be a playoff team for the next five, six years. When you have a quarterback this good, Now, where you and I want to rank him is a different argument. But when you have a quarterback, he is a Hall of Famer. When you have a quarterback this good, you're going to be good every year in the NFL. There's very rare where you have a great quarterback, where you're going to be bad. Once in a while, Mahomes, team gets hurt, injuries, it doesn't click for you. You might go 6 and 11. But most of the time when your quarterback is this good, you're a playoff team year after year after year, which means that he still has a chance to redeem himself and win that championship.

We said this a lot about Manning for a long period of time in his career. Eight years. Before he finally won that one against the bears. So he lost a lot of brutal games before he beat the bears and then the other one there with Denver against Carolina.

Yeah, Manning's playoff history is pretty checkered. He had a lot of big favorites, blowing games and choke jobs at home. But then you win one Super Bowl, that stuff washes away. Who's your number one, this guy was great, but something was missing when it really mattered athlete in any sport?

In any sport?

Any sport. You can pick baseball, football, basketball, hockey. Just somebody that had everything and it couldn't get there.

I'm not a fan of his, but Harden is a perfect example. Harden is terrible in a big game. He's going to look at his games and elimination games. I mean, I know I used to talk to Van Gunde about this all the time. He thought he was better than Jerry West. No, he's not. He's better than Jerry West.

Now he's stuck with him. His punishment was to have to coach him.

And how he's got to deal with him. Harden, I would never trust Harden in the big game.

You could say it in the game seven last year. He wouldn't even look at the rim. Terrible. How about a game seven when he was with Philadelphia against the Celtics that one year in game seven, he was terrible.

There's so many examples of Harden, and he's a Hall of Famer, and everybody thinks he's an all-time great.

Because Karl Malone was a legitimate one. Karl Malone, you could see it on his face as the game got bigger and bigger. And people, now we live in this stats era where you could go back 50 years later and be like, whoa, are we sure he wasn't better than Tim Duncan. It's like, no, we're sure he wasn't. He would have much rather had Tim Duncan. Trust me, we were there.

You didn't feel that way about Stockton. You did not feel the way. You knew Stockton was his gutty, was going to figure out a way to beat you, was going to overachieve with his talent. Malone, I think at times... Now, he had to go up against Jordan, but I think at times the moment became a little too big for him. You could feel it. I think you definitely can make the case for Wilt.

You were barely there for Wilt, but you got to see some of it. It was when you're getting into sports. But I mean, everything written said Wilt was the number one guy like this, that something would happen to him in these games.

Well, he did win the two championships, and he did anchor two teams that were the two greatest, arguably, teams of all time, that '66 team, that beat the Celtics finally. And then, of course, the '71, '72 Lakers that went 33 in a row.

33 game winning history.

So you can argue that, but he couldn't make his free throws, took himself out of game seven against Russell in his last game, looked around the arena before Willis Reid, game seven at the Garden. Hey, is Willis playing tonight? Jeez, well, you're Willis Champlin. Who gives a crap if he's playing.

He's got his guy in his own one leg. He'll be fine.

Yeah. As Havelchek once told me at a Rollins College dinner when he was at and I was the MCAP, remember that game seven the following year When Philly played the Celtics and they were trying to go back to back, Philly was up three games to one that year. And in game seven in Philadelphia, Wilt did not take any shots, essentially in the second half because he was in foul trouble and he didn't want to get called for an offensive foul.

He had that dumb streak about he never wanted to foul out of a game.

He never fouled out of a game. And he never wanted to be in a situation where he fouled out of the game. So he got very passive. And Boston beat him in game seven when they were down 3-1 in that series. Remember, the Celtics have lost the Sixers. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. They lost the Sixers in '66, '67. And then in '67, '68, Fulton is up 3-1. And Wilt goes quiet at the end of game seven against Russell, doesn't want to shoot the ball. So I think that Wilt has got a little bit of that aspect to him, where in a big moment, life on the line, you get a little nervous.

I'm going to make you laugh. Aaron Judge?

Just because we both hit the Yankees. He helped himself last year. He helped himself last year in that Toronto game. I know when he was down. He helped himself. There's a little of that in George.

Yeah, there's a little of that. I got to say, I thought Clemens had it him for a while. I thought, especially on the Red Sox, I thought in the '90s. I agree. I think Clemens- Started to go sideways on him a little bit.

Clemens had some big moments later on. He won a Championship of the Yankees. He did. So a couple of Championships of the Yankees. He shed it. He shed it. Now, he was on a great Yankees team, but he '99 and 2000. So you give Clemens, but I think there's some truth to that. I tell you, the one guy that you're going to think I'm crazy that I say this all the time, and the media loves him, that is, if you look at him in the postseason, he's atrocious, and that's Clayton Kershaw.

Well, I think the Dodger fans. I was at the 18th in the game when he had to come in. This year? Oh, wow. The World Series game.

He was lucky. That 3-2 pitch, he swung at it. That was ball four.

Well, that's the thing. He came in and it was a legendary game even before it went 18. They brought him in and you could feel it in the stands. To Dodger fans. They're like, No, no, please, no, no, no. We don't need to add another one to his legacy here, please.

4-4-5 ERA in a postseason and a 2-4 ERA in a regular season. People don't like to talk about that with Kusha. But he's a little overrated in these big games. A lot of times you don't want it, and he had a lot of terrible moments. That's just reality. People don't like to say that because everybody loves Kusha, but that is fact.

That's one of the things I really miss about whatever baseball has turned into is these start... You had one with Bob Gardner, the starters that are just like, I would bet my life this guy's coming through tonight because now nobody's allowed. That was why the Yamamoto thing was so fun. The guy was like, Wait, do you need me again? I'll come back. Let me save another game for you guys. But that was so old school because that's what we grew up with. I grew up with Jack Morris just going 10 in a game seven. And these guys were like, Get on my back. I got you.

And that's why I kill Scooble all the time. Game five in Seattle, six innings, 98, 99 pitches. He took himself out of the game with a one-nothing lead. Finnegan comes in, gives up a run in the seventh evening, and then they lose the game in the 14th evening, and the Tiger season is over. I understand he's a free agent, and Boris, who knows? He tells them, Hey, your money is more important. In game five of an ALDS, and you're the best pitcher in baseball, and it's one-nothing. Tiger is in the sixth inning, seventh inning, stay in the game. 98 pitches, stay in the game. And Ajay Hinson didn't take him out. Scubal took himself out. You think Bob Gibson would have done that? How about Randy Johnson? You think Smote, Schilling. How about Randy Johnson? You think Randy Johnson, who pitch many back-to-back games in a postseason? You think he's taking himself out? How about Tom Siever? You think Tom Siever in that spot is taking him, Hey, go to Gil Hodges, put somebody else in? That really, really bothered me.

We had that with Clemens, game 686, when he got taken out. They said he had a blister. We never know who was right. And then John McNamera died. But each guy had a different version of the story. All I know is he came out of the game.

Yeah, he did. And then, of course, McNamara to his grave said, Clemens asked out, and Clemens says not true, so who knows? But yes, that's a famous one. That's a good job, Bill. That's a famous game 6.

Do you ever think about if a game had swung when you really cared about the sports the most when you were a kid? If a game had swung, would you be different as a person, as a personality? I always feel like if the Red Sox had one game 686, I just might be a fundamentally different person. I don't even know if I'd be doing this. Do you have one of those where you're like, wow, that might have been a sliding doors for me in life?

That's a very good one. I think if Star doesn't sneak and get the touch down in '67, I was a packer fan, young kid, love Lombardi. I think if they got stopped in that situation, I wouldn't have had the same love for Lombardi and Star and all those packer teams. I think that's one that went in my positive direction, not the other one.

Did the Giants have a bad one? Yeah. 93, when they went- You're an adult at that point, though.

Yeah, I'm an adult. 93 when they went 103 and 59, and the Braves went 104 and 58. The last great pennant race, remember, '94, they had no season. And '95, they came back with wild card. Yeah. '93 was the last great American pennet race. And the Giants, who blew an eight-and-a-half game lead, won 15 of their last 17 to get even. After they blew an eight-and-a-half game lead, took a three-and-a-half, fell three-and-a-half back, and got the game and tied last day of the season in game 162. And we lost 13 to one to the Dodgers at Dodgers Stadium, and the Braves beat Colorado to win the pennant. That one really pain me.

Well, that was the '78 Red Sox' blowing the 14-game lead, then rallying back and tying it, and then losing anyway.

Very similar. And the Red Sox won '99 that year, and the Yankees went 100. So it was the first to 100. And that's still based on the regular season and the fact they battled from April first, that is still the most significant game I've ever seen. Red Sox, Yankees, Fenway, '78. It was very much like the regular year. Red Sox slid first half of the year, 2-0 through 6, 10 hits the home run, fell behind by more, and then clawed and battled and scratched. And then, of course, Jazz pops up with 2-1 in the ninth off Gassage, and I lose the game 5-4. So that, to me- Panell in the Sun, stabbing at a bouncing ball, gets it. Lynn hit it down there. That game has got so much drama to it. Yam Kippur.

Oh, yeah. We didn't have That was Jamais cool that day.

That was Jamais cool. Early October of '78, five, four Yankees.

It was a Monday, no school.

And the Yankees went on a Championship that year. They beat the Royals and they beat the Dodgers. That game, those innings were for the World Series, those two or three innings. That was one of the great games I've ever seen.

You have to go to prepare to do your show soon. I had one next question for you, and then we can do this whenever. I'll come on your show whenever you want. Knicks are two and nine in their last 11. This was a conference that had the seas had parted, Halliburton's out, Tatum's out. They're built to win this year, and they're going backwards and they look miserable together. So what's going on?

Yeah, well, number one, does anybody give a clap about that stupid Champions Cup, whatever they called it, and the Knicks beat the Spurs, and the argument was, should we put a banner up? Really? We're going to do something as dumb as that for a regular season tournament that nobody cares about. And now the Knicks, since that moment, whenever it was, December, have been absolutely awful. And I was one that thought Thibodeau got a terrible deal. Dolan just woke up one day and decided he didn't want Thibodeau coaching him, coaching his team. And Leon Rose got stuck, and he didn't have a list. And that's why he went to the Jason Kids of the World, because he didn't have a list. He was not prepared for it, and he was scrambling. And so he got his sixth choice in Mike Brown. And I'm not knocking Mike Brown. But the bottom line is Thibodeau did not deserve this. And Nick's loss last night, which I did not see because I was watching a college game. But the nick loss last night to Dallas when they're down 28 at the half to a Maverick team that's got no Davis, no Kyrie Irving, or 18-year-old kid in flag.

P. J. Washington is out, and so is Gaffard, and the Knicks lose by 28 points to the Dallas Mavericks and everybody played. I mean, you got to be kidding. After they had been playing poorly, that's his battle loss. Thibodeau never had a loss like that. They gave up 75 points in the first day, 75,48. I mean, that's ridiculous. And I'm not blaming Mike Brown, but this, to me, Dolan deserves this. He's the one who wanted Thibodeau out. He couldn't stand looking at him anymore. Thibodeau got a terrible deal. They got beat by Indiana. Indiana was better than the Knicks. And how Burton made that Incredible shot to force the first game on overtime when it bounced nine million feet in the air and somehow went in and Knicks lost the game and OT changed the whole series. I mean, I really feel that was a move that was just not fair and unnecessary. And again, I'm not trying to kill my ground, but the Nicks deserve what they get. And the fact that the Celtics without Tatum have been this good, give that head coach a lot of credits, Angelen Brown. That is a tremendous job.

This is a year you could completely write off if you were a Celtic fan. You know what? We've had a good run.

I did. I did it in the first week. I was like, We got to trade Derek White. This is going to be a bad season. Let's keep the pick.

And as it turns out, what did they buy? 15 games on 5. 30 and 15, something like that?

Their second in net rating. They're 26 and 16. They're in the two seed. And Tatum, he had a very conspicuous workout yesterday. He's definitely coming back soon. So you're adding that to this. It's everything they have going. They're not going to make a trade deadline move. I think he's the deadline move.

But Detroit is really good, though.

I got to shout them out. That's an old-school tough-ass Pistons team.

I got to see Detroit make baskets last six minutes of a playoff game in a close spot.

I got What happened then yesterday?

Say, yeah, I got to see them make some baskets, though. When games on the line in the postseason, something they could not do last year against the Knicks, Brunson made the baskets and they didn't have anybody. I got to see them make baskets in that on the spot. But I agree with you. They're tough. They're physical. Cunningham is a very good player. They take their personality at Brucker Steph, and they're hungry. Detroit, it means something to Detroit to finish the best record. They're hungry. They're hungry.

Yeah, there's a physicality and an aggressiveness to them. That's going to be great in the playoffs. Actually, honestly, bad for the Knicks because... And all the Knicks fans I know are really turning on towns now. They're like, This is the guy. I was terrified. I was terrified we were going to get this version of this guy, and now we're seeing him. All right, I'll let you go.

You're going to read a lot about Giannis now because the Knicks are going to be desperate. And you're going to read the Bucks are bad. And I know Giannis said he wants to stay there, and Doc Rivers has said he's going nowhere. But you're going to hear, whether it's true or not, by the deadline, you're going to hear a lot of Giannis to the Knicks stuff, whether the Knicks could ever pull off a trade like that. You can hear a lot of that.

Well, the problem is they traded all of their first-run picks for the 53rd best guy in the league. I don't know if they would do that one over again.

And Mikhel Bridges.

I like Bridges. He's fine. But basically, that was their Yana's chance, and they traded it for Bridges.

Yeah, that was a terrible trade by Rose.

That was a terrible trade. That was a terrible trade.

All right. And Bridges is a decent player, but you can't give a five draft picks for a decent player. You got to give a five draft picks for a Hall of Famer, and he's not a Hall of Famer.

The problem is you do a trade like that. And I didn't mind the trade, but it was like, you have no outs now. This is your team. You're stuck with this. And if it doesn't work, you can't get out of it.

This is your walk-up. And the Knicks It won't be one of those teams that will be a 50-win team for the next three, four years, but always never on that top shelf. It's be a top four, top five team, which is purgatory. You got to get past the top four, top five. Getting that last jump, Phil, as you know, from pretty decent to pretty good, and then a championship level with the same group, that is very different. Portland never did it with Adleman. No. That is a very, very... And they had Duckworth and they had Terry Porter, and they never were able to pull that off.

How about the Suns in the 2000s? They had seven years there.

Just could never get over.

We see it happen.

They did lose to the He pulls that one year, so you get a little break there. But I'd be a little worried about the Knicks, his story. I'd be a little worried about the Knicks. And I tell you right now, Dolan deserves it after he did to Thibodeau. He deserves it to underachieve. He fired Thibodeau thinking he was going to get to the NBA What? You don't do that. He did not deserve that decision. And because of that, I've been down on the Knicks. I felt bad for him.

The great Chris Ruso, you can hear him on Mad Dog Radio on Sirius. Say hi to... Are you doing First take tomorrow?

Yes, I am. I will say hi to Steven for you.

And please say hi to my guy, Schregs.

Peter. Schreger. Yes, of course they will.

He's there tomorrow. I think we're like his two surrogate media fathers.

I know. He's He's a big... He loves you, too. Yeah, he's a big fan. I know. He grew up with us.

He grew up with us. All right.

Let me know- I saw you a couple of weeks ago with Kellerman. You did a great job.

I saw that. Thank you. Well, let me know if you need me on the show. I'm here for you. I will be.

I'll keep in touch.

Okay, buddy. Thank you, Chris.

You got it.

All right, last but not least, a year one Ringer guy, Danny Kelly. You can find him on the Ringer fantasy football show as well as on our website, theringer. Com as well. He's also a diehard Seahawks fan. I made a horrible error in Sunday's podcast. I just wanted to talk it out. I feel like I've been in a really good spot with the Seattle sports fan bases. Sunday night, doing a live pod on Netflix. A lot of stuff going, coming off bears, ramps, heads spinning, all these different directions. We're talking about Super Bowl matchups, and I say the Seahawks never won a Super Bowl. Now, you could say I'm old. I would go with brain fart because I would say I know the Seahawks won a Super Bowl. I I was writing for Grantland at the time. I was doing podcasts and writing about that Super Bowl year. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them kick Payton Manning's ass. If I had thought about it for a split second, I would have remembered they won. But I think I brain farted and mixed them up with the Mariners. So I'm here to ask for forgiveness.

Which is fair. Well, I appreciate it. I'm not mad. If I was mad, I would say something like the Seahawks defense, which could be counted among the best of all time, shut down. The best offense the NFL has ever seen, that literal highest scoring offense in Peyton Manning. Most of the shutdown passes in a season, and the Seahawks defense completely shut them down in the Super Bowl. That's why I would say if I was mad, but I'm not mad. I understand.

I also think I won money in that game.

I don't know. How did you forget that? Because that would have been It would have been... The Seahawks would have beaten Peyton Manning and then Tom braided in back-to-back Super Bowl. Of course, that didn't happen. But yeah, that's what the Seahawks... I got a lot of text about this.

My standard response for this stuff is, it is hard to host a pod. You're not going to bat a thousand. Unfortunately, it's not like flying an airplane where if you have a screw up, you just the plane crashes. You could just get past and save it. But yeah, I couldn't believe... I was thinking afterwards, I was like, why did I say that? What happened to my brain? But then I realized the Rams, bears, and the Bills game probably broke my brain. I think that's fair. Well, so I've been texting with you and Mina about the Seahawks really since the summer when I was like, I like the Seahawks to win the division. And we We're talking about pros and cons, and the season could not have worked out better. I think you're the one that put the electromagnetic thing next to the Niners practice field. I don't know. We got to check the security camp footage.

I love this.

You have that. If the Niners season goes the hell you have the Rams and Seahawks left. First of all, is there animosity between Rams and Seahawks fans? Is this a feud? What do we have here?

No, I think it's different. So there would be definite animosity between Seahawks and 49ers fans. No That is the biggest, longest rivalry, I think, at least for the Seahawks point of view. The Rams have always just been a really tough team for the Seahawks to play. I think there's some grudging mutual respect between the two teams.

I don't like grudging mutual respect. I know.

I know. I would say it's not as fun. I think it's the 49ers thing is just... I mean, the Seahawks fans have been in absolute heaven the last two games. They played the 49ers their last two games and absolutely violated them both games. So that's been incredible. I would say it's a different dynamic with the Rams, though. We hate the Rams, but it's not that primal deep-seated hatred. It's more just like, you want to beat them.

Got it. Well, ever since... So the season's evolving and it's like, Still nervous about Darn Then he's fine. Then it's time to get nervous again. Now it seems okay. The running game, frustrating all year. There was always like, Why isn't Kenneth Walker doing more? And then he looks awesome in the last game. The offense got really stagnant there for about six weeks in the second half of the season. That looked like it was going to be the Achilles heel. Then they finally, I don't know, that part of it was special teams and just figuring out different ways to use Shahid, which we had been texting about. Just use this guy. Figure out ways to give him the football. It feels like that's going better. And then the defense is really good. So why wouldn't they win the Super Bowl? Give us your two things you're the scared of, other than Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold. Number one, what's two and three?

I've been hard on Sam Darnold this year. He did lead the NFL in turnover, so that's the big one. Honestly, with the other ones, Charbonney got hurt. He has a torn ACL. He's out for the year. He's been a big part of their offense in terms of the really high leverage situations where they need a yard on third down or fourth down in the red zone. He's been good in pass pro, which is important. Kenneth Walker is not nearly as good at pass pro, so that could be an effect So I think that's one thing to worry about. And generally speaking, just, I think, offensively making sure there's a spark there because there's some games where the offense just doesn't really click all that well. I think I'm really confident in this defense. The defense is going to give them a chance to win. But I think it's honestly just weird stuff happening for the offense that really worries me the most.

There should be a special team's advantage.

Yeah. He's been such a big... I mean, he's been huge. He's been a huge spark on special teams. He's been a huge spark. He's like the no drama Percy Harvin for their offense, where he can create explosive plays on some of these gadget plays. He's really good in special teams, kick offs and punt returns. So he's been a huge bonus for them.

It's frustrating for me as a Pats fan because I thought he would have been a perfect dad. I think they probably felt Kyle Williams could do some of the Shahid stuff, at least with stretching the field, and they're good on special teams, at least for punt returns with Marcus Jones. So maybe that's why. But that was the trade when you made it. I was like, Fuck, that's a good trade. That's exactly what they need, and he's perfect for them.

I think there's been a little bit of consternation because they haven't incorporated him into their offense quite as much as people thought. If you look at what Clint Kubiak did with him in New Orleans last year before he got hurt, he was a huge part of that offer. He was getting deep every other play, every other game. He was creating a big countdown down the field. He hasn't really done that as much on offense, but he's been such a huge spark on special teams that I think people are totally happy. They want to keep him long term, all that stuff.

Do the Rams have the defense that could take out JSN? Or is he just going to get his eight catches for 110 yards?

No, I don't think they have the shutdown defense to do that. I think, especially with what they do on play action, if they can get their run game going a little bit, they've always been really good at getting Jason behind the second level of defense when they get play action rolling. I'm not too worried about that. I am worried. The Ceex defense is really good, but they did give up like 500 yards to Matt Stafford in the last game they played. I think the ramps, the offense is really good. I think just straight up, McVay and Stafford is one of the scariest combinations I can think of on a football field. And Pukas is really good. I just think that's the big thing in this game is like, what can the Seahawks do? And the first time they met, the Seahawks pretty much shut down the Rams offense or at least stymied them more than anybody else had to that point. And then in the second game, the Rams offense went absolutely nuclear. I don't exactly know what we're going to expect from this game, but I think that's in this Rams matchup, the big worry I have is not necessarily JSN or shutting them down.

It's just What is Stafford going to look like in this game?

Yeah, especially coming off a terrible weather game that was just funky in every single respect. You must have been watching dying for the bears to win that game, I'm guessing. Yeah, a little bit.

Again, it's the hatred with the 49ers. It's like a healthy fear of... And again, I just don't want to play Stafford. He's so good.

But a young, erratic bears team. Yeah, I would feel a lot better. He seemed like a pretty shaky defense, not at home. Probably seemed like the perfect matchup. I just don't think the Rams looked that good the last couple of weeks. I don't know how much of that was the Panthers game. Just weird. I don't think the Rams played that well, but they still pulled it out. Then the Sunday night game, how cold it was in the field has no whatever. I thought it was the weirdest Puka game I've probably watched where he just didn't feel as present as he normally does in these games. I'm guessing in Seattle, what's the weather? Do we know?

Oh, that's a good question. It's cold here right now. I don't know what it's supposed to be like on Sunday, but yeah, it's been cold and clear here. So I think, hopefully, it'll be cold again. I did think that it's going to be 44 on Sunday. That's So it's not too cold. But I think the one thing you did notice a little bit about the Ram's offense in that really cold game was it just didn't feel like they had anybody that was very explosive or fast. Puka is more of a physical, tough over the middle, run after the catch, that player, red zone threat. And Devante, obviously, he's not super explosive at this point in his career. So that's maybe one variable we can talk about here.

It's funny you mentioned that because I was thinking as I was watching the bears game, thinking the Seahawks, it feels like a game you push everyone close and basically get super physical and you're not really worried about them going over the top on you. Yeah. Which I think you can do with the Seahawks. This is the perfect type of team to do that with.

The Seahawks have an incredible secondary the way that they can match up with pretty much any personnel formation with their diamond nickel packages. They have nick and Monworry, they have Devon Witherspoon. Those guys play like linebackers but can cover like, safeties and corners nickelbacks. And so it does give them a pretty unique schematic advantage. I saw this, I think from the 49ers game the other day, the Seahawks had something like a 50 % pressure rate on a 10 % blitz rate. So they just get home.

Yeah, that's the sign of death for an offense.

Yeah. And so if they can do that against a Shanehan team, I'm feeling pretty good. I think all Seahaw fans right now probably feel really good about where the team is. I think you've been saying this. This is a great chance for the Seattle, especially with the season is gone. But the big bad in the NFL, to me, is the Rams. They are the scary team. If you look at DVOA, it's Seahawks and Rams number one and number two by a mile. So this is a big, big matchup. And obviously, there's a lot of history between these two teams. And McVeigh knows the Seahawks. I think McDonald was probably brought in to contend with McVeigh. So there's a lot of cool narratives with that. So, yeah, it's going to be an awesome game.

So we have home teams that have blown it at home in the title games. Oh, God. Ravens, 1710 in the Chiefs. That was two years ago. Chiefs at home to the Bengals, that goofy 2021 game where I think Mahomes got concussed at halftime and nobody wanted to admit it. 2020 Bucks packers in Green Bay during the Bucks run when they- That was the braided? Yeah, the braided run. Yeah. Then we really don't hit anything until 2018. Chiefs and Saints, Both lost at home to the Pats and Rams. The Rams honestly should have won. Then it was like the last one before that was 2012, Pats and Falcons both losing at home. Being at home does help. Playing a team that's played three games in a row in the road in the playoffs, I think... When the Bucks were able to just win four straight, were all four of them on the road? I can't remember.

I think we had this discussion the other day. I want to say one of them was at home.

Yeah, but I think the first... Yeah, maybe Maybe the first one was. But just in general, it feels like an achievement. I felt like the Rams really did look creaky the last couple of weeks. They were really lucky in that bears game. The bears are midfield in OT with momentum and it felt like they were just getting eight yards whenever they wanted. I still don't understand what they were doing on that play.

We had this discussion after the game. It was basically we talked about the bears for the first 20 minutes on our show. I think a lot of Rams fans were probably pissed about that. But that was the story of the game. It's like, man, how did the bears not follow through with this miracle? It just felt like it was their destiny that they were going to win that game. That countdown throw by Caleb was completely just incredible.

That lost the history.

Yeah, I know. It's one of those footnotes of whatever happens next. It's just like, oh, yeah, remember that play by Caleb Williams? That would have gone down as one of the most miraculous things I've ever seen. But yeah, the Rams are good. I think the better team won. This is what we were saying, too, is just the better team did win, but they didn't look as dominant as I think I was expecting them to. They looked more mortal. A lot of that had to do with the weather. I think they're pretty banged up. Stafford hurt his hand a little bit in that game, and I think that affected his ability to throw a little bit. He's old.

Before I let you go, because I promise you I wouldn't keep you on that long, but I did want to ask you, your Pats Bronco's take. Line is back up to five and a half directly in the Vegas zone. Jared Stittem. Started for Denver, obviously. Pats fans feeling good. The thing I was saying to you and Mina, because everyone's like, Oh, the Pats, this is going to be amazing. You're going to win the Super Bowl. You didn't play anybody. Well, first of all, the Seahawks are the six best DBOA team all time, I think since 1978. So I would consider that playing somebody if they played the Seahawks.

I mean, either.

Yeah, the Rams. The Rans. The Rans have been way up there, too. So that's one thing. You could argue if they played the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, if they were Managed to get past the Broncos, that those are the best four defenses they would have beaten all in a row. I think that matters. Chargers, Texans, Broncos, Seahawks. Is there anybody else?

I'm sure there are, but those are the big three that I could think of.

I think even Shoehorn and the Chargers in there is probably a reach, but they would probably be the number four pick. Yeah. Anything I should be scared of in this game for my team, other than the playoff history in Denver?

Yeah. Well, there's that. I think, obviously, the defense, the Bronco's defense is just really good. If weird stuff starts happening, you get turnovers on offense. That's the way that I see this going. If the pass can play clean ball and not turn the ball over, I don't see how they lose this game. But that's the variable that you can't control. That's a very tough variable on the road in Denver. Against a very strong defense, a very experienced playoff coach and Sean Payton.

They're going to be hunting for turnovers and trying to get Drake to cough the ball. A hundred %. I think he has, what, five or six fumbles now just in the last two games.

And especially with the left tackle. And they're going to be targeting Will Campbell. Oh my God. I thought it was so fascinating in that game. It felt like the Texans really had just the timing dialed of his backswing or whatever. When he was to throw, they were just able to time to get the ball out by May. They had two plays where he hit it when he was putting the ball back behind his head. So they're obviously going to try and do more of that type of stuff. They'll try and drag the Patriots down into the mud and play a defensive battle. I think Stidham is one of those backups that we haven't seen him in two years in the regular season.

I don't remember what he looks like. I remember there was one game a couple of years ago where he looked good and I was like, Stittam? Okay. That's That's all I remember.

He could be, in theory, a very poor man's version of Nix in the sense that they could use him in some of the run game stuff that they do with Nix, rolling him out.

I'm not saying he's as good as Nix. What's the comparison for him? Is it Davis, like best The case scenario is Davis Mills?

The guy who came to my mind was Drew Locke, actually. You remember Drew Locke last year had one six-touchdown game? I don't think he's good, necessarily, but I think that there's some physical talent there. In the right situation, he can make some things happen. But obviously, I think...

I think the line's too high. I really do. I don't care that Stittam's the quarterback. This is a lot to ask to go into Denver. What's the weather there? Against a really good defense. Yeah, I don't know what the... I haven't seen that. I haven't heard anything about...

36 and sunny.

Yeah.

So it shouldn't be a huge factor. But the altitude is certainly a thing.

The Pats fans were concentrated on the positives. We put together three good breakdown drives on the Texans, right? Which ain't nothing. Now, the other drives, I think they had two yards, but total. But they did put together three. The issue, especially with these road games, is the Drake may slow start, which just seems to be part of the package for him at this stage of his career, where he just is choppy for minutes and then gets going. There's going to be a time and place where that doesn't fly in a playoff game, where you don't get going, but now I'm down 13-nothing.

Who do you trust? Who do you think is going to make the big play in this game? You think it's Diggs? You think it's Ramondre? Is Ramondre good to go?

We lost Ramondre for an hour in that Texan's game. He came back, right?

Yeah, he came back. He went back into the game? Okay.

I really think Boody's good, and I love when they throw it to him. Sertan, I'm guessing, is going to try to just take him out, which would make Diggs the key person. But one of the things that we don't know yet, Matt Collins was massive for the Pats all season.

Oh, yeah. Late in the season, he was huge. He was big in fantasy.

He really was important and he was a good run blocker. I'm looking right now. We don't know for sure if he's back, but it seems like he might be. But I just felt like he had something with Drake, and Drake really trusted him. Totally. They missed him the last month, so that would be one. Then I don't know. Just winning in Denver in my head is a tough one. Before we go, can we talk Mendoza really quick? Yeah. Are you 100% in on him as the number one pick?

I think so, yes. I think he's definitely... During the season, it felt like he was getting shoehorned in as the number one just because there wasn't really anybody else. But the way that he's played during the college I thought, has been pretty illuminating. He's just got that steely drive, and he's really accurate. He throws with anticipation. He's got a little bit of athleticism. We saw that on that fourth and five where he ran the ball in on a countdown. I was like, wow. I like that.

He's tough, too. He takes a couple of big hits, and it just gets up.

Yeah, he wants to get hit. He likes that physicality. If you looked at his arms after the game, his arms were just all completely beat to hell. Yeah. He really has grown on me. I think my initial impression of him was like, this guy's a cornball personality. He's looking directly into the camera when he's interviewing after the game. But I think, honestly, now I like that. I've gone the other way. I'm like, he is infectiously genuine and optimistic, and I can see why his teammates love him. So I'm in on him. I think he's certainly not as physically talented as some of the other number one overall picks we've seen over the years. But I think He's got a lot of the other things you really look for at the quarterback position, like I said. He throws with anticipation. His back shoulder throws in this game were huge. He has an ability to elevate this entire program that came out of nowhere the last two years. So, yeah, I think it makes a ton of sense for the Raiders to take him. It just feels locked in at this point.

I like that he's super smart. And I look forward to the draft cycle of... I think people are going to start working on the tape and stuff for a couple of weeks, and they're going to be Holy shit, this guy has everything and he's smart. Then there's going to be the backlash, is he too smart? I can't wait for that. That part of the process, that's probably the second week of March. Teams now worried Mendoza is too smart. It could be like an Andrew Lux situation. Does he take coaching? Yeah. Will he be coach? Could he just walk away at age 28 because he has other career options? We'll do that all week. That'll be fun. But I think if you're Vegas, first of all, I can't believe they wouldn't try to get offensive coach. I can't even believe they're looking at... I'm just trying to match somebody with him. There's been some weird hires already, though. I mean, Salah was...

I know.

Salah was a weird one. I'm not even necessarily against it because you could argue that with the Jets, he never had a quarterback, so what are you going to do? But who knows?

I think it's a strange one for me just because it's hard to understand exactly what he brought to the Jets because they were such a disaster and that he comes over to 49ers as their defensive coordinator, and they lose their top two players. They're completely banged up all year, and their defense wasn't very good. And then the Titans decided to hire him. The timeline of how it went was a little strange to me. Obviously, I'm I got in there in the interview and see how impressive he is. I think he gets the players to play hard, which is huge.

I'm in the pro McDaniel camp. I've come all the way around on DJ Mike, spinning the song. It's like, if there's a Raiders teaming him up with Mendoza, it's like, fuck it. We're not going to win the Super Bowl the next couple of years. Maybe we should just put a fucking genius with him.

I know. I'm into that, honestly. I like him. I think he had an exact same thing what I was just saying with Sol. He had the Dolphins playing pretty hard at the end of the season. I think it was, I don't know what the word is, but it was good that he'd bench Tua and decided to go a different direction with it. I don't know. It felt like, to me, the Dolphins rallied around him and he had them playing really hard. So I think that's like, it answers a little bit of the question of how is he in a room of alpha pros and all that stuff? Because that's always the question with him. He's a quiet guy, an awkward interview, and How does the team react to this type of coach? And I think, I don't know, to me, that answered at least a little bit of it that he can get these guys going, keep them playing really hard. We know that he's really good with scheme. I would just like to see him with any other quarterback besides Tua at this point. I'd love to see what his offense would look like with a lot of the openings right now.

So it'll be interesting.

I think he partly designed that offense because he had Tua who couldn't make a decision after one second. And if he got hit, he was going to get knocked out of the game. So you designed the offense accordingly.

And honestly, seeing him with Ashton Genti would be incredible, I think, because he's gotten the proven production from the run game over the years. So I think that would be really fun to see what he could do with the Raiders' run game. We'll see if he ends up being a head coach again. At the very least, if he doesn't get a head coach job, he's going to be at the top of the list for a lot of offensive coordinator jobs.

I like the thought of him in Vegas, too. Listen, if the Pats can make the Super Bowl, all of these teams that suck but have a fourth-place schedule and some real draft capital, they have to think about it because we saw with Washington, we talk about this every year when we're doing the previews in the summer. There's always the team. That Vegas team was poorly coached last year and had some bad luck, and they're going to have another high draft pick, and they have some other stuff. They're probably going to turn Max Crosby into a couple of things. That would be my guess. And they're in a division that maybe you don't mind being in as much as you did a year ago. But we'll see. All right. Do you have your number one fantasy player for 2026 yet?

B. John Robinson? I don't know. Boring. It's going to be tough. It's the boring ones like Jamir Gibbs, B.

John, Jamar Chase, Puka. When does Hyfetz do the It's actually Ashton Genti. And here's why.

It's actually the opposite. It's Ashton Genti. Yeah. That'll be coming probably in July. I'm sure he'll workshop something.

I'm in that playoff, that fantasy that goes to the playoffs that I told you about. It's basically going to come down to, Can Drake may play two more games?

Yeah.

As if I didn't have enough at stake with all the other things going on in life. Anyway, you can watch and listen to Danny Kelly on the Ringer fantasy football show. He's with Craig and Hyfitz. Craig's on the rewatchables as well, premiering on Netflix next week with the video. So we're having fun. Good to see you. Good luck with the Seahawks. I'm almost definitely betting on them in some form.

Absolutely. And by the way, we do appreciate that you've been in the corner of the Sonics this whole time.

Listen, as long as I'm back and as long as my live rewatchables in Seattle at some point in 2026 will not be awkward for everybody. I think we're fine. I think we walked through this. All right. Good to see you, Dike. All right. You, All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Mahony and Mad Dog. Thanks to Dana Kelly. I apologize again to the city of Seattle and all the Seahawks fans. Thanks to Geha and Eduardo as well. Don't forget, new rewatchables is up. Just one of the guys. Another one coming Wednesday, another 48 hours. And again, February 11th, Wiltern Los Angeles. If you like the rewatchables of Michael Mann movies, I would strongly consider going to this. I will see you on on Thursday with some playoff pics, some football, maybe some basketball, too. Go, Pats.

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