Transcript of Russell Westbrook’s One-of-One Career With Kirk Goldsberry, Plus College Football and Coaches With Van Lathan and Chris Ryan

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We put up two rewatchables last week. We did The Italian Job, we did About Last Night, and then on Monday we have the re-Speed. We are doing Speed again. We did it. It was a really, really good episode. Uh, me, Sean Fantasy, and Chris Ryan. The OGs, uh, we did this, we did Speed very early on in the Rewatchables run. So now we, uh, did it again with way, way, way more categories. And that is coming for you on Monday. I'm not sure if I'm gonna have 2 more podcasts or 3 this week. I'm gonna have at least 1, um, possibly 2. So stay tuned. And then after this week, gonna go hard into football. I've been very careful this year. I've been trying not to, um, do too much NFL before we got close to the season. 'Cause I felt like I did too many segments last year and I basically gave you all my takes for the season before I did the preview with Sal. So Sal and I talked about it and Sal and those guys are breaking down on Ringer Wise Guys, which you can watch now on YouTube and Twitch and Spotify.

They've been breaking down division by division and Sal has been hosting it and steering it, but being very careful about giving too much away. So when we do our, Giant extravaganza on Thursday the 27th, a two-parter, AFC, NFC. I'll hopefully have some very fresh— I have some hot NFL takes this year. I'm really trying to save them for toward the end of August. So on this podcast, Russell Westbrook retired. I had to break out the old Book of Basketball pyramid breakdown format that we did for a few guys, if you remember in 2000. You can find all of those, by the way, in the Book of Basketball podcast feed. Wanted to do a deep dive on Russell Westbrook's career, the strangest career of any top 100 guy ever. And we're gonna explain all the reasons, good and bad, why I'm probably a little more of a defender than most of Russ, but he is so much fun to talk about. So Kirk and I did a bunch of that. And then I had Van and Chris when they were here the other day. We talked about coaching and a whole bunch of college football stuff.

And after we did Rewatchables, we just kind of kept the cameras on and went. So I was saving that for, The Sunday Pod. So that is gonna be the podcast. We're gonna take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Kurt Goldsberry and I on the career of Russell Westbrook. This episode is brought to you by one of my best friends in life, NFL Sunday Ticket. Man, I missed it. Kickoff's coming. Yeah, we're getting close. We're within a month. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get every game every Sunday, all in one place. And it's magnificent. And there's no other way to follow the NFL season. I'm so mad I didn't get YouTube TV until a couple years ago because, um, it's the best. New users, that might include you, can get NFL Sunday Ticket for 8 payments of just $30 a month. You heard me correctly. New users pay $240 or 8 non-cancelable payments of $30 a month. First charge at purchase Availability varies with NFL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games and YouTube TV for local and national games. YouTube TV required. Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. Commercial use excluded. No refunds. All right, Kurt Goldsberry is here.

My old Grantland teammate. There's nothing going on. It's mid-August. There's some baseball stuff that hasn't really gotten interesting yet. There's football preseason. We had a basketball event that happened and it was not the Basketball Hall of Fame. Russell Westbrook. Surprisingly retired. And I figured this would be a good time to dust off my old Book of Basketball gimmick. But before we do that, break down Westbrook's career, before we do that, is there any NBA thing that interests you right now, or is this full hibernation mode for you?

No, I have an idea for you coming off of your podcast, but I think we should save it for the end. Let's do Russ, dude.

Okay, let's dive into Russ. You're gonna save your thoughts until we get going. I'm gonna use the Book of Basketball format that I, used when I did this in, I think, 2019, 2020. Uh, I'm gonna read something at the top now. I wrote this in 2012. It was a piece of a column, but I was amazed how it has held up for Westbrook, who retired, uh, last week, who played 18 years in the NBA and who I think it's fair to say was probably the most discussed, argued about player of the entire Grantland Ringer era. Grantland formed June 2011. I think people had the most takes one way or the other. He spawned the most arguments. He bridged the advanced metrics era as it started to grow. We're gonna go all into that, but this is what I wrote after Game 4 of the 2012 Finals, which Oklahoma City lost. They fell behind Miami 3 games to 1. If you remember, Westbrook did not have a good Game 3, was awesome in Game 4, was 20 for 32, was all over the place and just was one of the more electric losing Finals performances we had the last 20 years.

This is a piece of the column I wrote. He's been the most polarizing player of the 2012 Finals. No small feat considering the second most polarizing basketball player of all time happens to play for the other team. Interesting there, Kirk, cuz I had LeBron as second most polarizing at the time. No longer in the top 20. I, I don't feel like he's polarizing at all, right? No.

People forget that LeBron James was the most hated athlete in America when he first got to Miami. I swear to God. Like, I want— they gave gave me an interview for him in 2013, in part because people hated LeBron James when he went or took his talents to Miami. For sure.

So much. Is he ever gonna— is it ever gonna happen for him? Does he have it inside him? So he was second at the time I wrote that. Wilt will always be the first most polarizing basketball player of all time. Anyway, Westbrook's detractors don't ever expect him to find the right balance between competitive and reckless. They believe he's a shooting guard masquerading as a point guard, like a better version of Steve Francis, that he takes too many shots away from the more efficient Kevin Durant, that Oklahoma City cannot win the title until they swap him out for a true point guard, parentheses, say Rajon Rondo. This was another conversation we're having in 2011. Do they need more of a pure point guard to set up KD? Westbrook's defenders accept his faults because they're a small part of the greater good. He brings so many unique things to the table, fills the stat sheet in so many different ways, competes so freaking hard every game, and remains such a good-natured teammate. They're fine with any collateral damage. The 2012 Zombie Sonics— this is when I used to call 'em the Zombie Sonics— made the finals partly because they're relentlessly young and relentlessly athletic.

That's Westbrook in a nutshell. You love those teams, right? Those 2012.

Well, I was a Spurs fan, and that Spurs team they beat was one of his crowning achievements. Remember how hot that Spurs team was?

Oh yeah.

They won 20-some games into the playoffs and were, were 2 games up in that series. And then Harden, Westbrook, and Durant, Baca put them away.

Yeah.

That was a crazy team. Yeah.

All right.

Here's the rest of what I wrote. In game 3, a semi-neutered Westbrook carefully tiptoed through the first 2 and a half quarters. Ratcheted things up after Durant's 4th foul, played poorly, and earned a conspicuous, conspicuous, quote, rest from Scott Brooks. That was a dangerous moment for Oklahoma City, not just for this series, but long-term. Something that ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy caught while announcing the game. Remember when Jeff Van Gundy used to be on basketball games? Miss those days. When Van Gundy coached in Houston, he came to regret how he handled Francis, a similarly explosive guard who struggled with his competitiveness. Rekkles calibration. Instead of embracing the electric qualities that made Francis special, he steered Francis toward being more of a pure point guard, inadvertently compromising his game. You didn't need a translator to figure out why Van Gundy brought this up during Game 3 of the 2012 Finals. Now, time for a name drop. I actually ran into Van Gundy outside a Miami hotel on Monday night, one day before the biggest game of Westbrook's young life. We used to stay at the Mandarin Oriental.

Yeah.

For ESPN things. It was great. One of the nicest hotels. I brought up his Francis comparison and threw out one of my harebrained theories at him. The 10% theory. Even the best NBA players have holes. In a best case scenario, they're tapping into about 90% of their total potential with the holes representing the other 10%. We can either dwell on the 90% or we could dwell on the 10%. And some holes are less glaring than others. Do you believe in this theory just in general for stars? Everybody has a 10%? Yeah.

Everybody has a flaw. Everybody.

Okay.

Even LeBron James.

Well, I wrote, for instance, Larry Bird's biggest hole was his inability to defend quicker forwards without help. Same for Dirk Nowitzki. You could hide that specific hole on the right team with the right coaches, the right teammates, and even the right matchups. But something like Rajon Rondo's shaky jump shot Or the Botox face that afflicted Karl Malone in crunch time. Well, there's this case of the 10% flashing like a neon sign. Again, some holes are more glaring than others, but everyone has holes. What Kurt Goldberg just said on Oklahoma City. It's tougher to see Kevin Durant's 10%. He's not strong enough yet to prevent defenders like Shane Battier from hounding him 25 feet from the basket and denying him the ball. And he's not a consistently good enough defender yet. Now he kind of fixed that, right? I feel like he got better at both those things. It's easier to see that than Wes— or harder to see that than Westbrook's 10%, his recklessness, which permeates everything he does, good and bad. You notice when Westbrook shoots 27 times, you notice when he bricks an ill-fated 3 in a huge spot, and you notice when he is bowling someone over for a charge because he thought he could dunk over 3 guys.

And still, as I mentioned to Van Gundy, Westbrook does so many positive things that those 10% plays are something of a tax for the overall Westbrook package, right? Van Gundy agreed wholeheartedly. He believed Oklahoma City needed to win or lose this series in their own terms, not some idealistic media-driven belief about how they should be playing. Westbrook will never be John Stockton. It ain't happening. We both wanted to see Westbrook be Westbrook again, one of the league's most fearless competitors, someone who brings a ton of things to the table and takes a few things off too. Now, I wrote that in June 2012.

Yeah.

And that became his career. He took some stuff off, he brought a ton of stuff on. He never totally figured it out. He never won a title. That was the only Finals game he won in Game 3. Uh, never got back. And yet I think now, now as the years passed, and especially as a bench guy, Kirk, the last few years where he was never the right fit on the right team as a bench guy, he came close a couple times, but the flaw, the 10% started to feel like a 30%. I still, I, I'm gonna give you my pyramid ranking lately. I still feel like he's one of the top 60 players ever. I also don't think there's ever been a career like it, like it. So let's start there. Is there another guy you think in the top 75, top 100? That remotely resembles this bizarre Russell Westbrook career.

I mean, I yield to you, but when you talk about the triple-doubles, two names immediately come to mind, right? Is Oscar and Magic. Magic is on a whole different level, in my opinion, as one of the greatest players of all time, the greatest point guard of all time, in my opinion. If it's not Stephen Curry, I think I'd still give it to Magic. Call me crazy. But the combination of the counting stats the triple-double for the whole season, won an MVP, 2 scoring titles, an assist title, I believe. I mean, just from a counting stats perspective, it's, it's an all-time great, great run. And the other thing is like, who would've thought when you were writing that column in 2012, Bill Simmons, that was the only time we'd see this dude in the Finals. There's, it's almost like the Spurs team we're watching in 2026. If you would've said, oh, that was the only time Dylan Harper made the Finals, or Stephon Castle or Victor Wembanyama, we had, we had that team pegged like we have the Spurs team pegged. They were gonna be around for a long time. But ultimately, statistically, he's a very unique player.

And I'm sure there's a lot we'll get into with the advanced stuff. But the stats we have that allow us to compare apples to apples back to Oscar Robertson, that's the, that's the comp I'd land at.

Yeah, he's— I tweeted this out today. There's only 3 players ever that have done 25,000 points, 7,000 rebounds, and 7,000 assists in their career. And it's him and Oscar Kareem LeBron. But then if you go backwards, they're also the only guys who have done this with 20,000 points, 7,000 rebounds, 7,000 assists. If you drop it to 6 and 6, the number goes to 8. But that's how like rare the career totals are. Yeah. And I think the counting stats, I think he is gonna be a really hard guy to figure out 50 years from now when people are just trying to study clips and basketball reference. He played 18 years. 9 All-Star. He was the 2017 MVP, as you mentioned. Top 4 MVP 3 times, second first team All-NBA twice, fifth, 5 times second All-NBA, and second, third, including that Houston season, which I forgot he made third team of All-NBA in the lockout season. He was the second best guy in a Finals runner-up in those 2012 playoffs, 23-5-6, 28% from 3. in 37 games, which will be a recurring theme for this pod. His 4-year peak was 29, 27, 9, and 10. Triple-double 3 straight years.

In the '14 and '16 playoffs, which were the other 2 times OKC came really close, he was 26, 7, and 10 assists for 37 games, 30% from 3. And after KD left, he lost 9 of his last 11 playoff series. So I'll start here. The big question after everything we laid out, would you have wanted to play on his team? Now the answer is mostly yes, but it's a really interesting question because that's one of the number one ways I was trying to measure all these dudes against each other way back when, like, this is why it's unfair to use stats with Duncan because everyone from his era loved the guy, loved being his teammate. He didn't care about counting stats. Um, he just wanted to win. He won 72% of his games. I don't think they ever had a, a season where they had below 60 winning percentage with him. And it didn't matter who was on his team. The team just won and won and won. Would you want to be on Russell Westbrook's team?

I don't think so. I know that sounds harsh. Um, you and I have talked about this for years, but the egalitarianism that sort of evolved with, with Popovich's Spurs and then Kerr's Warriors that really made the game. Beautiful and free-flowing throughout the 2010s. That was the style that captivated me. And then there's the tension with other teammates. Obviously I'm not an NBA player, but you look at some of the teammates, including LeBron James, pretty recently that were like, eh, I don't think so.

Durant definitely was, has to be at least one of the reasons Durant went to OKC, right? Two of the, yeah.

Yeah. 2 of the greatest players of my lifetime were like, mm, I can walk away from this relationship.

Also, Harden played with him too, and that was another one where he was like, I think I'm good.

What would your answer be to that question, Bill Simmons?

I think there's 2 different things. First of all, would, would I want to play on his team? I think I would've in the first 8, 9 years, even though he would've been frustrating at times.

Yeah.

But because I, here's where he gets, and House watched him for a year in Washington and is like one of the last Russ defenders. Westbrook played so fucking hard all the time.

Yeah.

That I don't know how you wouldn't have wanted to play with somebody like that day to day. Now the question is, could you win a title with that? You know, you, you, I'm sure there was at least a small piece of the Tatum-Brown thing and, and Brown leaving that Tatum after 9 years, maybe, maybe he was good with playing with Jaylen Brown. Like I'm, I'm sure the longer you play with somebody, you start getting more and more annoyed by certain things. But the competitiveness that he had and the relentlessness and the fact that he was basically, he could play 80 games, 40 minutes a game in the playoffs. He was balls to the wall. He never seemed to get tired ever. I think I could have talked myself into it. The bigger question is if you're a GM or somebody running a team, right? Would this have been one of the two guys you would've wanted to build around for 15 years? And I think it's really interesting that in the later part of his career when OKC got good again, and he's beloved in OKC, and Presti loved him and defended him the most.

There was a world where he could have brought him in in '24, '25, '26, and they didn't. So that— now that's role player Russ. It's a different version of him, but it's, it's also not nothing, right?

Yeah, that's great. That's right up there with the KD, the LeBron. There's a lot of smoke there. I will say this, 'cause Russ is ultimately a, um, hard player to pin down. You already said he's enigmatic. But I will say this, as a ticket-purchasing spectator of pro basketball, this dude is electric. One of the few guys, if you're watching a game in person or even on TV, you can just tell this guy's intensity is higher than anybody else in the game. And that was entertainment. Ultimately, pro basketball is a ridiculous form of entertainment where we have to pay $1,000 sometimes to go see these games.

Yeah.

He gave you your money's worth. And I, I think that we can't forget that. Like, he was a spectacle. It wasn't always smart, it wasn't always analytically correct, but to your point about his competitiveness, his ferocity, uh, you wrote beautifully in your 50 Shades of Westbrook column about his transition energy, like just going vertically, attacking the teeth of a defense. You got your money's worth. He was a hell of a fun guy to watch play hoops.

Yeah, I wrote, so the MVP thing season, which we'll get into a bunch, but I wrote this about a month before the end of this season. His night-to-night relentlessness was unlike anything that's ever happened in the league. Who played harder for 6 straight months than Russell Westbrook just did? Did you ever see Russ get tired? Did you see him sweat? Did you see him breathing heavily? Have you ever seen a basketball star with a bottomless stamina tank? This wasn't an MVP season. This was performance art. Russell Westbrook gave more shits than anyone in the history of shits. And I think, I think that's accurate. And that's why, like, I enjoyed the MVP season as crazy as it was. And I almost think the answer with the GM is like, if he's my number 2, I might be able to win a title, right? OKC almost did. They, and they were right there in '14. They were right there in '16. Very close. And I don't think he was the reason they didn't win. I don't, I also don't think he pushed them the other way either. But if I had to have a 49-win team where he was the only— where I could only have one good player, there's only a handful of guys who could have carried a team like that.

And, and that was kind of his superpower and why he's so tough to evaluate. 'Cause he's on that like Kobe, LeBron, the best guys who could have been like, I'm just dragging these guys to 48 wins. He could do it if he wanted to.

There's only like 2 guys who've shot 40+ times in a playoff game since 2010, and it's him both times.

Right.

He would put you, put the team on his shoulders and just go. And I love, he grew up watching Kobe, right? And that late era Kobe, you could see that in his game. Like, fuck, fuck it, I'm doing it myself. Like this defiance, which is another word that always comes up with him, is this just defiant attitude. Like, I will, I will win this game. And like I said, that's where I rest. There, there was no player in the mid-2010s pre-Curry that I was more excited to just watch play basketball. Forget the analytics for a little bit, just to be around it. It was a show. Yeah. And that's, that's really what this business is about.

Yeah. His greatest strength was also his biggest weakness, which is he really always thought he was the best guy on the court.

Yeah.

Always. And it didn't matter who was on there. And by the way, the other players kind of regarded him as like, that dude's all over the map, but that guy's pretty good, man. That athletically, there was a moment I remember writing about at the time, the lockout era, that lockout, weird lockout season, the 66-game season when this new wave of young talent was just really starting to arrive.

Right.

Rose was there. Rose, Westbrook, Chris Paul.

Durant.

Durant.

Yeah.

And Harden, you could see the seeds for Kawhi. There was something there, but this was this whole generation of athletes that had now arrived. And the guards specifically were like, we've never seen this before.

Yeah.

Like, I've never seen Westbrook and Rose. I've never seen guards this athletic who could go to the basket like this, who played this hard to the point that you feared for their safety. Rose ended up getting hurt. Westbrook never really did except for the Patrick Beverley one. That was bad.

Yeah, he had some knee injuries. Yeah, that Patrick Beverley play. Yeah, he had a bunch of knee procedures. I don't think that was, was as bad obviously as what happened to Derek, uh, in that same era. But yeah, he put a lot of force on those knees. It's amazing that he played as long as he did. What is this, Bill, an 18-year run?

It's honestly one of the great athletes. Like, I, I feel like what sport would he not have been awesome at? I mean, he reminds me of Iverson. Like, if he'd played football, would he have been like an incredible linebacker? Or a safety?

Like, what would he have been? One of my descriptions was like, this was like Bo Jackson playing basketball, right? Like, that's how crazy of an athlete he was. And like, you think about Bo on Monday Night Football doing these crazy 90-yard runs and then breaking the bat over his knee in baseball. That's what I— it felt like the Bono's version of basketball. Uh, just a complete spectacle. And again, to give him his flowers, 18 years playing that hard so regularly too, in a league that has Kawhi, Paul George, Joel Embiid. Like, this guy was reliably gonna be there, um, in his prime as, as a, as a producing player.

Even played hard in the All-Star Game. This episode is brought to you by EA Sports Madden NFL 27. I was playing Madden when you guys weren't even born yet. Take your love for the game further. This franchise is powered by the all-new Persona Engine. That sounds interesting. So it's your league to run. Hmm. Build it the way you want with a reactive league shaping every decision you'll have to make. And if you want the full experience, there's the Kickoff Bundle. Please don't tell my son. Fine, tell him. Which has both College Football 27 and Madden NFL 27 Standard Editions. From campus legend to NFL superstar, make your rise with the Kickoff Bundle. Learn more at EA.com. Rated E for Everyone with mild lyrics, users interact, and in-game purchases. Includes random items, conditions and restrictions apply. Scan QR code for more info. All right, 5 things you need to know about Westbrook. Number 1, I wrote this in 2012. I'll be interested to see if we would add it, or 2016, '17 I wrote this. In my lifetime, I have seen only 4 other basketball players turn 1-on-3 fast breaks into layups whenever they wanted. Young Barkley, young Derrick Rose, Jordan and LeBron.

Now Russ would be the fifth. Is there anybody since I wrote that in the last decade who would go in that list? I was thinking about it. I'm sure we're gonna miss somebody, but maybe like prime Giannis who would just the one-on-threes. That's good. All right.

Let's add Giannis truck and finish over somebody. But yeah, that's a, that's a pretty great list.

Yeah. Barkley was always my favorite. I mean, I'll defend Barkley to death, but that was always the best thing about seeing him in person. When you get the rebound, it'd be like, I'm just going.

Yeah.

Russ would be like, I'm fucking going. You better get outta my way or you're taking a knee in your chest. So that's one. Second thing you need to know, if you did the two-man championship belt through the course of NBA history, which I've done, I think him and KD have it in 2014. Yeah. 'Cause I think LeBron and Wade together, '11, '12, '13, they win the title. And in '14, I think those two, that combo together was the best two. 2015 Durant got hurt. 2016 it's, it's Curry and anybody basically. Curry and Klay pick anyone with Curry. But they did have the belt there and we're gonna talk about that playoffs more. Peak guards last 20 years, just talking about peaks. Curry, Kobe, Wade, SGA, Harden. There's 5 that were better than Russ. CP3, Nash, Brunson. Do you consider Luka a guard?

Oh yeah, definitely.

That's 9. Russ is probably 10th. I don't think I missed anyone. I went through, but, um, he, the peak Russ I think was one of the 10 best guards of the last 20 years, but I think he's 10th. All, I think all 5, all 9 of those guys I think could have been the best guy on a title team or close. Right? And I'm not sure Russ could have— Russ never won a playoff series after KD left as the best guy. So I think that's a fair list.

I think that's fair.

2016, 2011 in the '16 playoffs. Third thing you need to know, 76 playoff games. They won 10 series in Oklahoma City. They made the finals during that stretch. 25 points, 6 rebounds, 8 assists. 29% from 3. And the bad ones were they blew the 3-1 lead to Golden State. He, the Klay game, it wasn't great down the stretch with him, but Durant, I almost feel like Durant gets a little more blame on at least the last 2 games. 2012 Finals, Game 5, 4 for 20 field goal.

Oof.

And then, that series I felt like was after Miami won game 4, I think we knew that was probably over. And then 2014 game 6, Western Conference Finals against the Spurs, 8 for 23, 7 turnovers. So there were a couple moments where he could have changed the legacy a little bit and did not, but I'm gonna slightly hold it against him. Not too much.

One of the, the notes on the 2012 Finals game 4 you wrote about in that column.

His— he—

there's a jump ball at the end. The Thunder are down 3, there's 14 seconds left. Chalmers gets the ball, the shot clock's at 5. They just need to stop him and then they'll have a chance to tie. And in that moment, Russ brain fart, fouls Chalmers unnecessarily, but sends him to the line. That ices the game. So it's still his best, like, big playoff performance in my opinion, but it also ends in, like, sort of a quintessential frustrating Westbrook outcome where he makes like a brain fart at the end in, in crunch time in 2012 Game 4.

And that's what I built the column around, which was he was already the polarizing guy of the series.

Yeah.

'Cause how he played in Game 3, Game 4 had put together the most electric 47 minutes possible and then made the brain fart and it was the complete experience. And it's like, yeah, this guy's clearly a really important basketball player. And you kind of saw everything in the same game. Every, everywhere his career could go, it all happened. 2011, they beat Denver and Memphis in playoff series. In game 7, he had a triple-double against Memphis. They lost to Dallas. 2012, swept Dallas, beat the Lakers, beat the Spurs. 2013 was when he got hurt. And we're gonna go into that later. 2014, beat Memphis in 7. He had a 27, 10, 16 in the game 7 in the running for Best one. Beat the Clippers 4-2, and we'll talk about Game 5 in a second. Lost to the Spurs 4-2. And then in 2016, beat Dallas, beat San Antonio in 6, 25-7-11 for the series. That was where Tony Parker was officially too old.

It was Tim's last game.

Timmy got old and it was— Aldridge was there, but it was kind of between the two eras. And then they lost to Golden State. He was 7 for 21 in Game 7. So that was the run. That's the closest he's come. The fifth thing you need to know, he was the most dissected Grantland Ringer era player of the last 15 years. I remember Fantasy wrote— Fantasy wrote a— what was this piece called? Against Russ.

Yeah, dude, that was one of them think pieces.

We had— everyone had their one or two. Anyone who wrote basketball for us had at least one think piece. You started You started working for Grantland, um, second half of our Grantland run, which was only 4 years. But as the advanced metrics and the shot charts was coming, and was there a better shot chart than Russ?

No, he was one of these guys was like, wait a second, when you look at it this way, uh, this guy's not actually that good at scoring the basketball. Uh, his shot charts were, were always just eye-popping. That era shot chart, sort of the anti-all-stars were always him and Josh Smith, uh, and I had to make a lot of those charts.

Monte Ellis was another one.

Monte Ellis, yes.

What's going on with this guy? Uh, yeah, there was some shot charters, uh, a lot of the post— some of the post-up centers never fared that well. No, but yeah, that first era, the shot charts are like, wow, that guy misses everything when he takes a 3 on the left. And, you know, and then eventually the, the players I think got smarter and smarter how to look at that stuff. All right. The eternal argument. This is a new category for Book of Basketball. The 2017 MVP season, whether he deserved it or not. Zach Lowe and I have been talking about this for 10 years.

Yeah.

3 people. I wrote a huge column at the end of the year. I picked Harden. Zach picked Kawhi. Russ ended up winning.

That's right.

And won basically because of this awesome Denver game he had that everybody was on the fence, and then he played his best possible game on a Sunday, and it really kind of kicked it off. But where, where did you stand on the three? Do you remember?

I was a— you're working for the Spurs— San Antonio Spurs and a very big Kawhi Leonard advocate. Um, as an analyst though, I mean, Harden, looking back 10 years ago, like, that was just an incredible— the D'Antoni-Harden era was just an earth-shattering analytics sort of extravaganza. So I think Harden, I'd be on Team Harden in this one, as much as I love the Spurs and Kawhi.

I was really torn, and you can feel it in the stuff I wrote back then and said on pods. Like, um, I hated his— I hated what OKC was doing basketball-wise.

I hated it.

It's against— it stands against everything I like, right? It was one guy doing everything, everybody else kind of standing around hoping that they'd have a chance to shoot or have a play run for them, but for the most part, we're just supposed to You know, be these supporting actors in the Russell Westbrook one-man show. And I hated it, but I also loved how hard he played. And it was like hard not to get swept up in it. Like, I, I wasn't against the MVP vote. I wrote a couple things. I wrote, statistically, Westbrook is the biggest ball hog of all time.

Yeah.

He's taken the delicate framework of a successful basketball team, 5 players working together, sharing the ball, making each other better, and he's throwing it out the window. He's fueling a Thunder team that's the complete opposite of the '77 Blazers, '86 Celtics, '05 Suns, and '15 Warriors. He treats his teammates like stage props. And then I wrote, OKC's best night-to-night chance meant serving the NBA's version of In-N-Out's menu. You can only order Russell Westbrook. They serve Westbrook burgers with fries, sodas, and milkshakes. Get the Westbrook burger, lettuce-wrapped, animal style. Just know you're getting Westbrook. Don't ask for anything else. He took 370 more shots than anyone else that season. He missed 14 shots a game. He shattered the usage rate record, almost 42%, and then had a 57.3% assistant percentage rate, which was the highest ever. And, and then I wrote at the end, I loved watching Westbrook this season.

I loved it.

I never thought I'd see a Big O triple-double sequel again, and blah, blah, blah.

It was, yeah, I don't know if it was bizarre. 40, the 42% usage rate ever eclipsed again, Bill. And the other thing that I think is fascinating is Harden was sort of doing a version of this in Houston. And I look at these two guys as like biblical brothers, like almost this Cain and Abel. They, they grew up together in Los Angeles. I think Westbrook almost goes to Arizona State, ends up at UCLA as this unheralded freshman, and then ends up becoming a top top pick in the NBA, had the chip on his shoulder the whole time.

Yeah.

But yeah, both of them were sort of spamming over and over again the same kind of basketball. But in D'Antoni Harden world, it was efficient. So the analytics community was okay with it. And then in OKC, it was just like there were a lot of 9 of 24 nights, right? 11 of 32 from the field. And the passing wasn't always there. But it was, it was crazy to watch. And, and I don't think we'll ever see a player with a usage rate of 42 or higher. I just can't see that ever happening again.

They somehow won 47 games. They had the 15th ranked offense. Houston had the 2nd ranked offense that year. Harden was doing a lot of the same, you know, had the ball all the time stuff, but did not have close to the same assist percentage. And you could argue was making guys better. And that was the thing. As you look back, I even wrote this at the time. Why wasn't Steven Adams as devastating in OKC as the Capella, Nene, Harrell trio was for Houston? Yeah. Why wasn't Oladipo better on a much better team? Why the dumper year in Ilasova? Why such a wasted rookie year for Domantas Sabonis? Everyone acts like Russ is playing with the Washington Generals. He has 2 top 3 lottery picks and 3 other lottery picks in the playing rotation. Enes Kanter was there as well. And now as the years pass, like they make the trade for Paul George and Sabonis and Oladipo immediately took off the moment they got away from Russ. Yeah. So I don't think history has judged it that awesome, but you know, Harden just had way more success playing the same style. I think now, wouldn't you say that if, if that MVP season happened in 2026, I don't think there's any way Russ wins.

No, that's right. And that's, that's again, his, his career coincides with this analytical awakening, this perimeter style revolution that starts with Harden and Curry, just, just finding efficiency in cool new ways. So you're exactly right. I think all the stuff that Jaylen Brown was going through, that would've been times 10. People would've been like the number 2 offense in the league. The discourse has just changed. It's updated for better or for worse. Efficiency is king now.

Although you could argue it hasn't changed 'cause the Celtics had the number 2 offense and everyone used advanced analytics against Jaylen Brown. I think with, no, I think with Houston versus OKC in '17, the fact that Houston's offense was so good that year, I think would've meant more if we under— it was almost like we were the O.J. jurors not totally understanding the DNA evidence yet.

Yeah.

Now looking back, when I looked at the per-100 possession, all that stuff, and I was like, Houston's offense was just clearly better, but his supporting cast I think was fairly even to the—

Bryan Anderson, Eric Gordon.

Yeah.

I forget if it was Capella or Montrezl Harrell.

It was Capella, Nene, and Harrell.

Yeah.

Yeah. He got those, some of those big men paid.

He did.

So like you can look at the contracts downstream of the Harden experience versus downstream of the Westbrook experience and see that James actually got these dudes. Paid. But yeah, that, that Rockets team, because we played them in the playoffs that year in San Antonio, they were terrifying. Remember, that's the, yeah, the series that, uh, Harden disappeared in, in the game back in Houston. Manu blocked, um, James Harden from the back in the game in San Antonio. But that team was terrifying, uh, and I believe they beat OKC in the first round of that playoffs in 2017 too. And, and Harden outplayed Westbrook for ultimate, like, now I wish we could vote for the MVP now sort of situation.

It was a classic. Sometimes that happens. I have a defining game section. I knew what I had in my— I was interested though. I, I'm gonna work— this section's gonna be brought to you by ChatGPT, the Bill Simmons Podcast AI sponsor, and ChatGPT work helped me figure this out. I asked them, What was Russell Westbrook's defining game? What do you think the answer was?

For me, it should be Game 6 of the 2016 NBA Western Conference Finals.

The Klay game. Okay. Yeah. ChatGPT disagreed. Its response: If you mean the single game that best defines Russell Westbrook's career, I'd pick April 9th, 2017, Thunder versus Nuggets. The line, 50 points, 16 rebounds, 10 assists, and a 36-foot buzzer-beating 3 to win 106-105. Now, that was a pretty good answer because that was the game that won him the MVP. We were all on the fence. That game happened on a Sunday. I think it was on national TV. And Russ was in 50, 16, and 10, and a 36-footer to win it. I think it was home. And after that game, everyone's like, all right, I give up. And he grabbed a lot of votes with that game. It's interesting that that was a regular season game that, that they suggest.

Yeah.

Not a—

I don't know if— are we doing sliding doors later?

We're doing a whole bunch of them. Yeah. Anyway, thanks to ChatGPT Work helping you work even harder. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Try ChatGPT Work today. Available 2+ and Pro plans. Now we're going to what stage is the best. I mentioned that 26-6, like he, his career, he averaged 26 and 6, 700+ games. Only 9 guys have done that. LeBron, Jordan, Harden, Bird, Jokic, Drexler, Giannis, Westbrook, and Rick Barry. And then I mentioned that other stat too, the 20K points, 6K rebounds, 6K assists.

Yeah.

So I have that. And then the other would say he's the best. The counting stats have aged great for him. Young OKC and romanticizing that team. I know John, our friend Jonathan Abrams has a new book that he wrote that's coming out pretty soon about that OKC era. And that team, like, I just, I look back at the 2012 Finals and that '11 playoffs and just watching these guys that we all liked and not knowing what was going to be ahead of them. And, and then of course it didn't turn out the way we all thought for a variety variety of reasons, but I was going back and watching some of the clips of them in the 2012 Finals when they beat the Lakers in 2011 and just how athletic and awesome that team was. I was like, I think that's aged pretty nicely now.

Yeah.

As like the what if team of that decade.

Oh, for sure. I still have a picture in my office of the 3 of those guys together. 'Cause I can't believe it's real. Like the 3 MVPs, all babies in that league together again. Like the Spurs sort of right now feel kind of like that. But that is really rare. For me, it is— he, after he was, I think, announcing his retirement, he, he claimed he was the best rebounding guard of all time. Um, and I think he's got a claim to that, Bill, and you're the historian here, but I did a little research in the player tracking areas. Far and away has the most rebounds of anybody who plays the guard position. James Harden is up there, Josh Hart is up there, Luka Dončić if he's a guard.

Is crazy.

Oscar has to be up there.

Yeah. So I think that's gonna age really well. I think, you know, rebounds, they're not as sexy. People overlook them all the time analytically. But as a defending guard, if you can come in and grab the board and get that stop for your team, and he had that as well as anybody.

I always liked that about Kobe, who was, you know, like a 5 or 6 a game rebounder normally, but in a big game he'd go get 'em.

Right.

You know, and the Westbrook was so quick to the ball at all times. I think, you know, there, there's definitely some padded stat stuff with the MVP season and they would be, I mean, this is stuff that happened. I don't think it's a conspiracy. Like Adams would box his guy out so Russ could come in and get foul shot rebounds. And I think OKC was kind of understood if there's any foul shot rebound, it goes to Russ and little stuff like that. But just day to day, week to week, game to game, season to season. Like he was just so quick, just grabbing boards.

Yeah.

I think, I think he probably is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I would—

Incredible.

I think that's a good way to put it. That, and then the, what did we say? 6 guys ever won on 3 fast breaks by themselves. I think were his 2 things. All right. Biggest what if sliding doors moment. It's crazy cuz I have 3. We didn't talk about this. How many did you have?

I have one solid one. Spoiled it earlier. And we can frame it either as the 2016, those two games together, or the Klay game. But after, okay, so fast forward, we know Durant goes to Golden State after Cleveland beats Golden State. If OKC holds on, they're up 8 points going into the fourth quarter of Game 6. They're up 3 points with a few minutes left. Uh, in Game 6, obviously Klay does his thing. Um, if they can just win that game, Bill Simmons, they win the Western Conference though. They would've ended Tim Duncan's career in the second round. They would've beaten that Golden State team in the Western Finals. And then I would ask you, do you think they would've beaten that Cleveland team? I think they would've been favorites.

They would've had so much confidence coming out of those two wins.

And that for me is the clear sliding doors moment. We, we already said he played one finals. That would've been a second one. I think they would've at least had a puncher's chance of winning it, maybe even been the favorites. Does Durant leave even if they make the finals and beat Golden State? So for me, it, it's that.

I had 3 and that was my number 1, almost like in hockey. It was my number 1 star of the game. I went to Game 5 when they were up 3-1 in the series and they just sucked. And Durant was bad. Like those 3 Durant games were not good. And I, I think, I don't know, I still don't know what happened on those last 3, but, and the crowd got into it and they beat 'em. But I still felt like they were gonna go back to OKC and finish it because it was clear Curry wasn't 100%. And OKC had, it was very similar. In so many different ways to the Pats in '07 with the streak and the pressure week to week of that streak. I just felt like the Warriors seemed like worn out. Playoffs, finals the year before they win the title. That's a 100-game run. Then they start the next season. Steve Kerr misses the first 2 months. Then you have, um, the 25-game winning streak, which became a real thing. And then they're going for 73 wins. The whole time in that, or 70 wins they get. What was the Bulls?

The Bulls were 72 and 10. Yeah. So they need to get 73 and they're going for that when they should have been. And I just thought it took 'em out and I thought they were going back to OKC and it was done. Klay goes nuts and they still had a chance to win. And it's, we did a podcast about it on the Book of Basketball feed a while ago. It's an amazing, amazing rewatch. And I almost said you're watching history change over the course of 20 minutes.

Yeah, it's an incredible rewatch. First of all, the guys all look like babies, which is crazy. But then you look at the play-by-play and it is not kind to Russell Westbrook down the stretch.

He's not good.

2, 3 turnovers in the definitive 2-minute stretch. He's not good of the game. He blows a layup. He's forcing it. Durant, by the way, to your earlier point, took some bad shots early in the clock. And then you go to Steve Kerr's side of the court and these guys are poised. The ball is moving, it's finding open shooters. And it is, it was history defining. So for me, it's a clear number one. What are your other sliding doors moments though?

Well, with that what if thing, if they do win, I don't know what happens to Durant if they lose the Finals to Cleveland.

Right.

Because now it's like, all right, now I'm going to go to Golden State, who I just beat. That feels weird. I guess it was weird that he went there after getting beat by them. Maybe he goes there anyway. If they win the Finals, does he leave? You can't, you can't leave at that point. You're gonna win the NBA title and then go.

He probably would've been Finals MVP, I would've guessed.

Right?

How many times have we seen a Finals MVP? I mean, Kawhi and Toronto, I guess, but that was a weird situation. So how many times do we see a Finals MVP just be like, I'm outta here that summer?

It would've been a great battle. Yeah, that's the number one. My, my number two was the Harden trade, obviously. I don't. Now maybe the Harden trade plays out. We always romanticized it at Grantland and you know, it was one of the worst trades of all time. Maybe after 2 years that team falls apart anyway. Right. And maybe that, maybe Harden's just not happy being like, like, I'm not managing nobody. I should have my own team. And maybe that falls apart, but at least they could have traded him for more than they traded for him at the time. But that's, we talk about he never got back to the finals. That's one of the reasons, 'cause the Harden trade, which still never made sense, 'cause it's, was a $4 million difference.

Yeah. And you get Kevin Martin in there and it's just, they're still really good. They were still a contender for years to come. But then what happens? James Harden becomes the best offensive player in the league, arguably multiple seasons in a league that has Steph Curry in his prime.

And that was, you traded him for Kevin Martin, um, Jeremy Lamb and the Adams pick that ended up being the trade. But like, you look at '13 and '14, and that leads to my third what if with Beverley taking out his knee in the playoff game, game 2. They're playing Memphis. They had a real chance even after that trade of just winning the title that year anyway. If you go back and look at the records and the stats, both of those, KD and Russ were two of the best 6 or 7 guys in the league that year. San Antonio had that 2012, it was such like a punch in the face that they, you know, and they kind of rallied back, but they weren't, I don't think anybody thought they were the favorites to come outta the West. I think people were maybe thinking more like OKC or the Clips. The Warriors weren't ready yet. But Beverley, in one of the cheaper plays of the last 20 years.

Yeah.

Awful.

Really like just a shit play and hurts Westbrook and knocks him out. So, you know, they have that, they have 12, they have, you know, they didn't get, no, but we've, it's been swept under the rug. It was one of the last Stern era moments, but The officiating in the finals, in the 2012 finals is a disgrace. It's like, I don't think they got a 50-50 call for 5 games. 2013, Beverly hurts Westbrook.

Yeah.

2014, which we're gonna get to in a second, was probably their best chance. And then the Klay game, you know, and it just never happens.

It's hard to come outta the West. LeBron James, as he retreats back to the Eastern Conference, learned that over the last—

Oh, he doesn't retreat.

After the last 8 years in LA, I mean, you have Popovich, Duncan, Ginobili in one corner, then you have this Kerr, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson juggernaut. Obviously the D'Antoni stuff in Houston. It was, it was really hard for that Thunder team to get even to the Finals with these other juggernauts in their way.

What stage the worst? We mentioned a few of them already. I mean, one of them, he played with Durant for the first 8, they, they coincided for 8 years, including Durant's MVP season and half of Durant's prime. Basically, he played with James Harden in Houston when Harden was still one of the best offensive players in the league and had gotten very close a couple times. Played with LeBron and AD in the Lakers. He played with Paul George on the Thunder in 2018. And then, and 2019, and then he played with Joker. He's played with some really good players. Yeah, that's true. One Finals win ever is tough for somebody who's supposed to be in the top 60.

And Zach LaVine that last year, don't forget him.

And Bradley Beal. He was, Joe House rooted for him for a year, that counts.

That was actually one of the cool Westbrook seasons, right? So he, what I always say is 2010s, he's an icon. He's like an 8, 9-time All-Star in the 2010s. That year in Houston, people forget the pandemic comes and just destroys America and the whole world of basketball, obviously. And, and he had figured it out with D'Antoni. They were playing the small ball thing in early 2020. Go look at Westbrook's numbers. He was actually a very efficient small ball center, and, and D'Antoni had found out how to use him. He'd stopped taking threes and jumpers and just figured it out.

NBA, Kirk.

Yeah, that weird pandemic.

You remember what happened?

No, because it was the pandemic.

Yeah, I barely remember this either. As, as I've said over and over again, I don't remember anything from 2020, but they played the Lakers in the playoffs and guess what wasn't working? It was Russell Westbrook as the small ball center against AD and LeBron when AD was playing about as well as he's ever played. And then they had other guys to bring in and all of a sudden that strategy was not working the same way. It was a gimmick. I think they felt like they had taken the Chris Paul piece as far as it could go. I'll still never understand Darryl making that trade, but that's a great—

that's a great point.

That's a crazy one to know who made that trade. That's one of the craziest trades ever. More with Sage the Worst. So we mentioned the advanced stats. Did you have more advanced stat stuff for him?

Well, I have that for what's aged the worst for me as the shot chart guy. It's clearly the shooting behavior, the shooting numbers. A few stats here jump off the page, Bill. In the player tracking era, he has taken the 4th most shots of everybody in, in the last 13 seasons. He has the lowest scoring efficiency of the top 50. He's taken the 24th most threes in that player tracking area. Again, that's 13 seasons. He has the lowest 3-point percentage in the entire top 50 of that group. For me, the most frustrating thing for him and the thing that's aged the worst is his stubborn insistence on this jump shot that, that it should have never been a big part of his game. He was the best attack guard of his era at times.

Yeah.

And when he would rise up, as somebody who game planned against him, when he would rise up for a jumper, I can tell you everybody in the organization on the other side was like, thank you, thank you for doing that, because I don't want you to get anywhere near the paint or the cup and get fouled. Please take that jump shot.

That was something I wrote about in one of the Russ pieces I wrote about the smart teams versus the dumb teams, how they defended him. And the smart teams would basically wall him off. They'd go under on every screen.

Yeah.

They would push him toward shooting between 20 and 25 feet and they were delighted when he did it. Right. And then on fast breaks they made sure they got back.

Yeah.

So just make sure you, if they, if we miss, we have to get back or he's just going all the way down. And the dumber teams didn't think the same way and he would get a lot of easy ones. But the, the smart teams were like, please shoot. I mean, I had for a, what stage, the worst, his 3-point shooting. He played 135 career playoff games. What do you think he shot from 3 career playoffs?

It's— dude, well, I know he's a career regular shooter.

Do you think he was under 30 or over 30%?

Is this the Mendoza line for modern NBA? The modern NBA?

Under or over 30%?

I'll say under because, yeah, there's a lot of bad shooting games in those playoffs.

It's perfect. He was 29.9%.

So he's the Mendoza line.

He missed 70% of his threes. And if you were rooting for him or betting against him and he was taking a three, you never thought it was going in and you were happy that he did it.

But here's the thing, dude, one, one layer on that. If he only shot good shots in rhythm behind the arc, it would've been 33, 34. It would've been passable, but so many—

Right, it was the heat check threes, right.

Won a game. It's like, what are you doing, dude? Like, what are you doing? There's 16 on the shot clock. Like, what are you doing? Yeah. So that's it. That's for me, what aged the worst is always gonna be that, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

Balls to the wall. Russ from 2017 to 2026 won 2 playoff series, last 9, 2019 Rockets, 2025 Nuggets were his wins. And he was 19-7-6 during that stretch. It's almost like the second part of his career. 38% field goal. He played, for OKC, Houston, Washington, both LA teams, Denver, and Sacramento over a 7-year span.

He, he turned into Phil Necro there at the end.

Everyone thought— everyone got excited for him for 2 months, and then— but this was role-player Russ, was never going to be a thing that made sense.

No, the Denver year was sort of intriguing. I think that was the last stand of, can we see him off the ball and Joker making him look good? But then again, the advanced stuff just Denver was a much better team when he was nowhere near the basketball court that year, '24-'25.

And then I mentioned from a what's-his-worst, OKC just not wanting to double down on him.

That's a great point.

We're just like, sorry.

Yeah, like, yeah, like, so how many guys can you think of off the top of your head that would come back for this upcoming season? 'Cause it seemed like he did not want to retire until he didn't have a choice. There's so many of these guys that would come back for this one year in that beloved uniform and just, you know, sit at the end of the bench and, and, and help the, the younger guys. But that was not an option. I think that's a great point.

Yeah.

If you're a bench player, you're basically, you're cooking at a restaurant once a week, making a good meal, but not cooking every day. Right. And if you're an awesome chef, you could cook every day and carry a restaurant. And Russ was somewhere between an awesome chef and a diner chef. And it's like, you'd want to go to the Rust Diner, right? Every night. Like, the milkshakes are really good. I probably shouldn't have this patty melt.

Yeah, but the service— the servers might be a little rude sometimes.

You're not winning the James Beard Award with the Rust chef, though. Too early, too late, or just right is the next category. So what'd you go for here? I was surprised by my answer.

I have an obvious answer here. I think he's clearly too late. I think he would've gotten away with a lot of the stuff that, like, I'm sorry, the shot chart and the analysts and all this stuff was, it was the worst for him. Like you think of Antoine Walker or Allen Iverson or even Kobe to some extent, like they got away with some things that would not have flown just 10 years later. And that's when Russell, I think he got caught in the game, began a little smarter analytically, a little more thorough. And so for me, if he had done this in the '80s, '90s, or even the, the first part of the, the 2000s, he would've been incredible and beloved.

2008 draft for him.

Yeah.

I went 12 years too late. I think if he was in the Kobe draft and he got to play during like when the, when the scoring was really down, when we had less good players.

Yes. That's right.

When you, but like Jerry Stackhouse averaged 30 a game one year, like during that era, I think he would've been unbelievable.

Yeah.

We would've been like, oh my God, that's such a great point.

Plus you weren't expected to shoot threes, right?

No.

So he wouldn't have been able, he wouldn't have been even, the culture of the 3-point shot didn't even exist.

We were not picking apart those Iverson seasons when he had, you know, the big usage rate and was shooting 38% every playoff series. We didn't care.

No, the pre-Moneyball NBA, he would've been, he would've been a huge all-star scoring champion. This guy would've been great. He gotta go see Westbrook. It might not have won, but I think it would've escaped some of that sort of scrutiny, that nasty nerdy scrutiny that, that I think will always be part of the Westbrook experience. Sorry guys.

That leads to Nerd Corner.

Ugh.

I sent this to you already. I wrote in that 2017 piece, I, there's still time to do this. If we created a stat called the Westbrook and just added usage rate and assistant percentage together, assist percentage.

Yeah.

Just those two things, assist rate, assist percentage, usage rate together. Westbrook in the MVP season was at 99. His usage rate was 41.7 and his assist percentage was an all-time record. It was like 57.2. To put that in perspective, the next guy in the list was 2017 Harden at 84.7. 2018 Russ was 83.9. '09 Chris Paul, 82. 2016 Russ, 81.2. 2018 Harden, 81.2. And then 80 and down is a little more realistic. I love the fact that he almost got to 100. So if you made the Westbrook a stat, like, he literally peaks at the highest version of the stat with a 99.

Yeah.

The fact that that's 15% higher than anyone who's ever played basketball is fucking bonkers to me.

Yeah, and I think I texted you back, this is ball hog over replacement or something. It's just like, this is the most heliocentric— shout out Seth Partnow for, for that term. It's when, when, when, uh, when the hero ball got slightly more, uh, educated, it became heliocentric basketball. And that Westbrook season is the epitome of that. Spam this over and over and over again. And to your point, would I want to play with him? I've heard you say this before, I feel like I'm a prop. I feel like I'm standing around. Oh, but every once in a while here comes a brilliant pass to the corner and you better make the 3 'cause that's the only touch you're getting for the next 13 minutes.

And that's the problem. Like, Joker was an 80.7 this last season, but was doing too much. And by the way, that team didn't make, didn't make round 3 of the playoffs. Like, when you play this way, Trae Young was an 80.1 in 2022. When you're that reliant on one guy, there's just no success for it. If you're trying to actually win 4 straight playoff rounds. And just for context, it does not work.

The Brunson-Westbrook comparison is really interesting to me just because of contemporary sort of recency bias with, with Brunson. But like, his usage in the playoffs, Bill, was 32 or 33, I forget. And it felt like he was, he was doing everything for the Knicks down the stretch and all of the important games. For Russ to be a full 10 points above that for an entire season is diabolical work.

Yeah. If you go to— I'm on Brunson's basketball reference right now. He was in the playoffs 32.6% and his assist percentage was 27.7%.

Yeah. So it was a good basketball team and OG and, and OB won a game for them and when it mattered. Yeah. And, and you know, Towns was great and Bridges and Hart were part of it. To your point, I think it's like, it's always gonna be this beautiful sport where the guys come together and become something greater than the sum of the individual parts. And when you're playing that heliocentric style, it feels like that cohesion never really materializes.

Yeah.

Shea—

what was Shea?

Shea is probably the closest to getting away with this, but even he was 32% usage, 35.8 assists in the playoffs. And the year they won the title was 32.9 and 30.6. So I think that's, it's around there that seems like the red area. You go back and you look at Bird and Magic in the '80s and their usage rate is like 24. Right. You know, it just was inconceivable somebody would have the ball that much. And it's one of the things.

That's crazy.

We've overreacted. Like what happens in baseball with these walks and home runs and no other outcome. Was he a one-on-one is the next question.

That's—

yeah. And this is where I come back to pro Westbrook. Like, again, this is an absurd business where we watch other men play basketball. And he was my favorite player to just watch. It wasn't my favorite player analytically by any means. Favorite style, right?

Yeah.

He's just like, if you were at a game for 2 hours with your friends, like, this is one of the— 5 guys on earth that you'd want to watch do this thing. And he, like, you brought it up a few times, man. This guy was on the floor, he was in the crowd, he was attacking the stanchion before the game.

Yeah.

Ultimately, his legacy is part just entertainer, and in a league where you don't always get that with some of the other star players. So I think he's one of one, and I'll always remember that, like, just the entertaining aspect of watching Westbrook play hoops.

Yeah, though, and seeing him in person, the way he carried himself, which was like Iverson carried himself that way. KG. There's only a couple guys that just, you're like, man, the game hasn't even started yet. That guy's fucking crazy. This guy looks like he's like about to go to war and it'll be like game 52 against a 20-30 Clipper team. Some things I wrote about Westbrook. He's basically Jim Brown 50 years later with basketball shorts on. There was a column where I wrote, I just compared him to Teen Wolf and a Poison movie character who uses so much of her brain that she becomes a robot and turns invisible. That was another column I wrote. The homicidally competitive, competitive legacy baton since 1990. MJ, Iverson, Garnett, Kobe, then Westbrook. Nobody else in the NBA gives even half as much of a shit as Russ does. Like, you actually fear for his safety. I called him a tirelessly energetic freak maniac lunatic who just chugged 128 ounces of coffee. And then I wrote, only Westbrook makes you feel like you're watching a WWE star sprint into a crowded Royal Rumble ring and immediately start clearing it out.

He needs his own entrance music. This is the Russell Westbrook legacy as a fucking lunatic. And it was great.

I loved it.

I have no notes on that one. That is perfectly said.

Unintentional comedy wrinkle was the way he dealt with the media was my answer for this. Basically didn't like any media members, would look through them and past them. If you've ever been on the other end of Russell Westbrook noticing you, realizing who you were, and then just kind of looking through your forehead, it's quite an experience. And yet was like, just had no time for it. And yet all the people that played for him except for a select few were all like, this guy's the greatest guy on the planet. I fucking love Russell Westbrook. Like you could see when he retired, was just an awesome teammate, had no time for anybody else. But his media interactions I think were the funniest thing about him.

Oh, I had to interview him once for Grantland, 2014, '15, near the end. And man, he did not want to be around me. And it was tough.

No time for it.

You know, he was, and I respected him for it. Yeah. But I, there I was in Oklahoma. And it was tough. The other unintentional comedy thing I think that bears mentioning is, I'm not sure, this is not my department, maybe Wesley Morris, who probably did a think piece on this exact thing for us back in the day, some of the fashion stuff that he did—

The before a game. I feel like he was the Bill Russell of bringing it to another era. The walk into the arena.

And some of that shit looked as good as anything I've ever seen in my life. But then again, nobody cares about my taste. Bill Simmons. But some of them, I'm not sure, are going to age very well and dare I say might be funny for other people to look at.

Oh, he was always pushing the envelope and you'd be like, what the fuck? What is he wearing? But half the time it was cool. Half the time it was just— you didn't know what was going on.

But yeah, he, uh, and he could pull that shit off more than like Kyle Kuzma who tried. Like, he, he had swagger walking through those tunnels in ways that like everybody has to respect. He was one of the coolest men in America there and it's 2010s and like respect for trying, but man, that's tough to pull off some of those looks.

He had that swagger in college. I was really into that draft and Westbrook was my sleeper in that whole draft. I don't say that as like, oh, I had Russbrook, and, but he really was like, I was like, I love this guy. I don't know what he is, but he's gonna be an awesome pro. But I thought he was gonna be like the 17th pick in the draft. Like I thought it was gonna be one of those post-lottery Yes. Oh my God, you get this guy, like, he's gonna be like a cro— like Tony Allen on defense, but like a great— I never saw what was gonna happen. And then during the course of basically March Madness through the draft, he started going up and he kept going up and he got all the way to 4th. And it was— and I was like, I love this guy. I don't think he should go 4th. But part of it was the swagger and the athleticism, cuz he had it. That one year UCLA.

And again, drafted by one of the smartest draft personnel guys the league's seen in a long time, Sam Presti. But I would say Kevin Love always struck me with this story. Like, when they were both at UCLA, I think Kevin Love was a freshman and Russ was a sophomore, and Kevin was this hot shit, like All-American, and Russell was like a local. Yeah, barely made UCLA because Jordan Farmar left for the 2006 draft, so they had a slot. And when he got to the first practice, Kevin Love was like, oh my God, I'm not even the best player on this team. And that, at that time, was like this unknown kid from LA, this 3-star recruit. Yeah. And Kevin was just like, holy shit, this guy is great.

Right.

And then, yeah, a year later, he's the number 4 pick in the draft. I think Kevin Love was number 1. Was that the same draft?

Yeah, it was O.J. Mayo, Kevin Love. I think Kevin Love might've gone 5th.

Oh, did he go fifth or third?

He was— it was— yeah, it was one of— was that— wasn't Kevin Love in that draft? He was.

I don't— he just— yeah, he just looked like Dick in the Box era guy at that time. Kevin Love, the chin strap. That's all I remember.

Kevin Love was another one. Now, he was— I don't know how many more pounds than ended up being as a pro. Yeah, Kevin Love was fifth, O.J. Mayo third, Michael Beasley second. I mean, Miami passed on Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love in that draft. But that's crazy. Kevin Love always had the rebounding where you're just like, that guy's, that guy is a guaranteed awesome rebounder in the pros. I don't care what else happens. And then Westbrook had the athleticism where you're like, worst case scenario, that guy's gonna be one of the best athletes in every game he plays. All right, we're wrapping up with defining playoff moment. We mentioned the 2012 Game 4 Finals. To me in a good way, it's the 2014 Clippers-OKC Game 5, the Chris Paul collapse.

Mm-hmm.

Series tied at 2. It's in OKC. OKC's down 101-88 with 4 minutes left. I would highly encourage people to go and watch this on YouTube again. They're down 7 with 49 seconds left. Call timeout. KD hits a crazy 3 over Big Baby. Clippers come down. For some reason, Jamal Crawford's like, I got this, and misses a shot. OKC gets it, long pass down to Durant. Now it's a 2-point game. And by the way, that was Westbrook with the rebound, football pass to Durant. 2-point game. Chris Paul gets the ball, bringing in, and Westbrook goes in to do whatever. And Westbrook— Chris Paul's trying to get the foul, but like, honestly, the biggest fuck-up of his career.

Right.

And what— and Russ ends up stealing the ball, goes out of bounds, but it's OKC ball. And then Chris Paul fouls Russ on the 3. He makes all 3 free throws and then Chris Paul misses to lose the game. But really clutch free throws, clutch steal, clutch pass rebound. But if you just watch that game, you're like, all right, there's a game when— and then he flipped it and that was kind of— the Clippers never got that close again. Did not come up in Doc's Hall of Fame speech. I don't think— I think if anyone brought that game up to him, he would've turned into jelly. J.J. Redick too.

Yeah. I think that that's— it's interesting when I think of Russell, he's defined by this incredible explosive frenetic energy.

Yeah.

And when he was able to channel it, Bill, in moments like that, it was the coolest thing in the NBA for a number of years. But when he was unable to control it, even in the form of his jump shot, the power he would explode off the ground with, I think, was too much to have the touch that Kevin Durant had or Stephen Curry had. He was just too explosive. And I think that's what cost him a lot of times, was just his inability to control his own explosiveness.

Yeah.

Whether it's mental explosiveness or physical. But in that moment, I thought he put it all together as a defender and just made the play of the game.

It was like a guy who only drove one way on the highway. Yeah, that was it. He was great if you want to go 88, 88 to 100 miles an hour, um, and try to get to one place to another. But then if you actually had to do a little more driving, it got a little dicey. Overrated, underrated, properly rated?

How's he rated, Bill? You're, you're the guy here. How is he rated?

Honestly, this is the toughest one I think you could have, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast. I think he's a whiff overrated, but I also think he might be a little underrated too, because we have so many years now of the different stage of his career, Westbrook, that kind of people forget now. You know, I hate to do the hashtag people forget, but people do forget.

Yeah.

It's just like, like, like NBA TV is running Game 4 of the 2008 Finals when the Celtics came back against the Lakers.

Yeah.

And Paul Pierce is just guarding Kobe that whole game. Paul Pierce could guard LeBron and Kobe and was in big games against those dudes in big series and beat those guys, right?

Yep.

And then years later he has that quote where he is like, I was better, you know, I was right there with Dwyane Wade. And people are like, what? That's crazy. It's like, all right, it's actually, you know, I think Wade had a better career. I have him higher in the pyramid, but it's not insane to think Paul Pierce all the stuff he could do and the way he got better in big games and all the different types of guys he could guard and how malleable he was with teammates. Like, Paul Pierce was really good, but people just kind of forgot. And I wonder if that's happened with Westbrook a little bit.

I was watching that too. I mean, speak to August. There's nothing on, right? Nothing that come back. And I watched Paul, like, attack the teeth of the defense on one side and then guard Kobe on the other side and well-deserved Finals MVP in 2008 for the truth there. Look, as the analytics guy, I think the classic response here is he's overrated. But I asked you where he's rated. I know we'll get to your pyramid ranking, but yeah, you know, there are two Russell Westbrooks. There is the moment he gets traded from the Thunder, leaves the Thunder. The 9 years before that, he is a perennial All-Star. He's putting up crazy stats. They're always making deep runs in the playoffs. He won an MVP and 2 scoring championships, an assist championship. If we're talking about that portion of this man's career, you know, maybe he's underrated because of what followed in the 2020s. He becomes this journeyman, like it never works in Houston or really Washington, obviously Denver, Sacramento, Lakers, Clippers. There is that, and I think that is the, the exact right answer.

Um, but the Lakers thing really hurt him too with the not being able to fit in at all with AD and LeBron, which I think LeBron should shared some culpability in, but it was just such a bad fit.

Yes.

That it, instead of the 90-10 thing, it felt like 50-50.

And he's an LA kid.

Yeah.

And he needed that to work.

That's right.

And if it had worked, it would've been the perfect way. And that's the last thing I had on him. Jason Kidd was Russell Westbrook at one point and sort of aged gracefully into this, okay, I'm Dirk's second banana here, or even third banana in some cases. And started to be able to shoot and changed his game. And, and if I were—

title, by the way, he became— he was probably the second best guy on that Mavs team.

Yeah. So if J-Kidd were the— were the— with the Westbrook in LA, I think he would have found a way to be like, all right, let me just figure out how to contribute here and get out of— and, and there's a fair criticism of the second half of his career. He was, again, too defiant to sort of slide into that tertiary or, or later role stage. in his career.

It's a great point. I, J-Kidd's the perfect example. Also, J-Kidd was good enough to lead a team to the Finals, right?

Yeah. Right. And not quite get over.

And you'd think like, all right, who was his second best teammate? It wasn't anybody better or worse than, you know, some of Russ's best stuff. And so anyway, I have, and I have K-Dwyane, I have him ahead of Westbrook. I have Westbrook in the pyramid. I have him 58. Mm. So top 60, I have him just ahead of some, like, the Busher and Hal Greer and Cunningham and Elvin Hayes, like these guys who were really good. I couldn't put him ahead of Nate Thurmond. Now everybody's listening to this like, what the fuck's going on? Nate Thurmond? Where, what part of the podcast is this?

Hey, I'm just hoping you don't ask me any Nate Thurmond questions.

I have a lot of hot— Nate Thurmond's like the lost great center of the '60s and '70s. Just got completely boned over on in the All-NBAs 'cause he's going against Wilt and Russell and Kareem and Willis Reed.

Yeah.

It's like a disaster, but was really good. Clyde Drexler, I have slightly ahead of him. Wes Unseld, Gary Payton, Paul Pierce, and Patrick Ewing, who these are all level 2 for me. That's like, those are the last guys in level 2. And I think Russ is right in that area and probably behind the last few I mentioned, but around 58.

Some of the guards you mentioned, I could, I could have quibbles with Peyton. And who was the other guard in that list?

Drexler.

Yeah. I think, I bet there's a bunch of people in OKC like now being like, what the hell are you talking about, dude? Like, this is an MVP.

He won the scoring champion, second MVP in '92. Yeah. Top 5 MVP twice. Second best guy on a champion team.

Right.

We saw him at the—

Twice.

Yeah. Second, he goes to the Rockets, they win the title. He's second best guy. I don't know if Russ, if Russ goes to the Hakeem '95 Rockets, I don't know if And then he was the best player in two finals runners-ups where he was the best guy.

Plus Dream Team and Dream Team, like, in Houston. Like, he was an incredible college player too. And I don't know if that matters in the, in the pyramid or not.

I, for me, it's like the playoff, the playoff ceiling has to factor in with this.

Yeah.

Westbrook got to play with one of the best 20 to 25 guys ever in Durant and was only able to win one finals game with him. But he basically won the lottery with Durant. If you're picking any forward other than LeBron, to play with for the last 20 years, you're probably picking Durant. So I think, I think, you know, it's hard. We've had 80 years of players. Like, you're one of the 60 best players ever. That's a real achievement, you know?

Yeah.

And, but I do think the playoff success is where it falls apart a little. Anyway, Kurt Goldsberry, that was wonderful. Did you have anything else before we go? I know it's dead for NBA.

Well, I'm working on this new idea. I need to run it by you. I think the age of player empowerment is dead. I think we are now referencing your previous podcast, In the Age of Owner Empowerment, and I, I wanted to test this idea out with you, um, starting with players like Victor Wembenyama taking less money. That is crazy. Uh, LeBron James, I think his decision in 2010 sort of starts player empowerment for, for, for, for some cases, uh, and then going to Philly for $4 million I think the second apron itself is proof that the owners really won this latest negotiation. The media deals, expansion, NBA Europe. But this is my, my, my, my take. I'm working on this piece for The Ringer. I wanted to get you in on it. Do you think it's fair to classify 2026 as the age of, of owner empowerment in the NBA?

Are you saying owners have more power or they become more of a— wildcard?

I think I'm saying, 'cause I think owners have the same power they've had.

I think the difference is the intentions of an owner feels like it's starting to shift.

Well, I think that's part of it. I feel like the teams are financial instruments now more than ever before. I think there were these heirloom investments, these community heirlooms that dudes would, you know, you would, if you were a rich guy and you owned a basketball team 20 years ago, you would get made fun of. There's these great Mark Cuban quotes where he is like, I bought the Mavs in the late '90s $200-some million. 15 years later, nobody would buy the New Orleans team for that same price. The valuations had stayed the same. And now we're at $12.5 billion. And I think more and more of these people— I, so I, to answer your question, I think the intent of the owners has changed. The, this, I think the type of human being that's owning these teams has changed. And I think it's trickling all the way into the league. And that's sort of what I'm getting at with this concept.

Yeah, it's weird cuz it's not like owners were ever, you know, kind of the ideal.

No, you don't want them to be the ideal person for a basketball franchise.

They would be hit or miss. Yeah.

Right.

You'd have some people that were jackasses or they got left the team. There are a couple other people like that really cared or rich people that felt like Mickey Arison in Miami is a good example, right?

Yeah.

That guy's rich. But also really loves owning the Miami Heat and wants to be part of it. And Peter Holt was like this for, for the Spurs. Like there's, we've had some good ones. Dr. Buss was like that. And I don't, I don't think that era is over. Even like the guy who bought the Celtics, Chisholm, really grew up with the team, loves the team. He also, I think, made a pretty good purchase because you could argue for whatever they got that, that looks great. So there's still a couple people coming in that seem like they have good intentions. I don't— the, the part that's weird to me is if you're gonna spend this much money on teams, you're gonna wanna make money back. You're not, you know, you're gonna have to— you've spent so much, you can't then also lose money in the team, right? So the CBA is in their favor now, but ultimately they're just gonna— like, the expansion is a good example. They're all gonna vote for it because it's an extra $500 million a team. NBA Europe, WNBA expansion. Any way they can carve the cat to have more— carve the cat?

Why did I say carve the cat?

I don't know.

I'm like the obsession. I'm like the obsession lady. Any way they can carve the pie for more money. Yeah.

Grow the pie. Yeah.

Grow, whatever, however you wanna say it. Uh, it feels like they're now— everything is on the table. How do we make more money? That's all we care about. And that's, I think you're right. So I don't know if that's empowerment. It's more like, there's a, there's a word. I don't know what the word is. It's, it's, it, it, it could, it, the word I want to use is corrosive.

Yeah. It's a culture shift in sort of the identity of the league. And I think it's an allegory to what's happening in America to some extent, but we don't need to get into that. As it relates to the economics of, of the NBA, I think it's a fascinating moment. And you know, it explains a lot of the bigger trends like Brunson taking less, Karl-Anthony Towns, the second apron, like it trickles all the way down into the things that we do really care about as NBA fans. So I think it's interesting whether you're talking about the Portland Trail Blazers or the LA Lakers, it seems like we're talking about owners a lot more than I would like to. Right.

And yeah, the Portland one was concerning because he bought the team, but clearly just because he wanted to grab a team. Now we've had this in the past, but it was always because it was a good deal. Like, Para bought the Grizzlies because it was like, wow, that's all you're asking? Um, A-Rod and, and Lori bought the T-Wolves because Glen Taylor was willing to sell it to them for $1.5 billion. They were smart enough to figure out how to structure it. But now we're getting into like, what are the Bulls worth? Apparently there's this guy who bought a piece of the Bulls who has, he's the one that if they sell the Bulls, he has very similar to Mark Walter with the Lakers. If the Bulls get sold, he's got first dibs on it. But you could argue the Bulls are a $10 billion team now, and that's probably the next one people will be circling.

Yeah. Well, now when you have billions of dollars at stake, like even the, the guy, the Celtics guy's like, oh, I could, I just bought this for 6. Like I could sell this for 10 tomorrow. Like this is, that's a crazy delta.

And the part that I don't even really fully understand, because I— this is not my world, but the tax advantages you get makes all of them want to continue to park their money in teams because you can just write off all these losses and do all this chicanery with the numbers to make it, to make it worth it. And it helps out your whole portfolio. And that's how they look at it now.

I guess I'll end with this. I liked when NBA discourse was about arguing about Russell Westbrook as opposed to talking about the whims of the billionaire class.

Yeah. Well, this Lakers thing's nuts. Like, even since I did the stuff about it on my podcast the other day, we found so much more. Like, it really feels like this is now veering toward, could this be in the Madoff area? Could this be in the, you know, Ivan Boesky era? Is something like genuinely illegal happening? And was it happening this whole time? Um, and I don't really understand that world. Katie Baker wrote a great piece about it. There's been some good coverage on it, but But if it turns out that this guy, Mark Walter, was really playing a shell game, basically.

Yeah. Taking your life insurance money.

What is that gonna mean for the Dodgers?

Yeah.

Like basically stealing from people's grandparents to pay for sports teams. Anyway, kind of sobering.

All right.

Sobering way to end a really good, really good podcast segment, Kirk Goldsberry.

Thanks for having me on, Bill.

We should mention there's a big Austin extravaganza that I'm not gonna be able to go to, but we're— when is that, in October?

October 23rd.

UT Spurs Sports Summit. Yeah, a bunch of good stuff.

Spurs are playing the Rockets. KD back on campus. Then we have Ole Miss playing UT, Manning Fest. And then we have F1. So we're going to get Bryan Curtis and Van Lathan out here at least, and maybe you, but you're going to the East Coast.

Van Lathan's always available. Yeah, I can't, but we'll send some good Ringer people. Good to see you, Kirk Goldsberry. Hope you're enjoying the summer.

Thank you.

We're going to take a break and come back with Van and Chris.

All right.

We did rewatchables today and we thought we'd do 15 minutes on sports stuff cuz Van Lathan is here and Chris Ryan is here. Van, you wanna talk college football?

Let's do it.

You were one of the hosts of The Ringer Tailgate.

Yeah. The best show on The Ringer.

One of the best shows ever. Um, ever.

Yeah.

I'm locked in on UCLA. I have the over on 6.5 wins and 7.5 wins.

Okay.

I'm all in. My guy Chesney is there. What are the big storylines though? Give us the top 3. Oh, casual college football fans. What should we care about?

Casual college football fans, you know, there are not a lot of huge storylines really going into the season. Obviously.

Can I guess? Yeah.

Guess some of the top storylines.

You wanna guess?

Well, is the number one storyline all the macro changes happening to the administration of the sport? NIL, who's in trouble for what, whether they'll break off and start Super League.

That sounds depressing. Well, but that's the number one storyline.

I mean, to me, you have, if inside of college football, Some storylines are Lincoln Riley at USC. This be a prove-it year for him, whether or not you think that it is or not. Obviously Lane Kiffin at LSU.

I would say USC versus UCLA potentially being revived.

That's a somewhat—

That sounds like a localized storyline for you.

Yeah. Not, no one really cares. That's one of, to me, one of the most—

Nationally, nobody cares.

Nationally, nobody cares. But most of the storylines in college football have had to do with like the Brendan Swordsby situation, the conversation about gambling in college football. The, uh, the, the congressional involvement in college football, State College Sports Act, while Nick Saban and some of the things that he's been saying about the actual future of how the sport is organized.

Man, we've been talking about that for years. College football is always going to be a complete fucking mess. Who are the best quarterbacks?

The best quarterbacks are Arch Manning, maybe.

So I would say Arch Manning being really good and potentially winning a national championship would be the number one story. Right.

Jadad Chambliss. Yeah. Sayin' at Ohio State.

Dontay in Oregon.

Dontay Moore at Oregon.

These are— It was nice. These guys all stuck around. Yeah. Instead of going to the NFL.

It's 'cause they don't get as much pay there. Yeah.

Right.

Who gone to the NFL and gotten their shit kicked outta there?

I mean, to be real with you, the NIL has completely changed, like, the need for a player to leave before they're ready to go. Right now you can stay until maybe you're overcooked a little bit and get as much money outta the NIL, then go try it in the NFL.

So that would happen to Dontay Moore, right? In the old days, he just— would've come out, he wouldn't have been ready.

He would've been on the Jets.

Yeah. And he just would've gotten the shit kicked out of him.

Mm-hmm. Do you think that, uh, Indiana is like perfectly designed to be the closest thing you can have to a dynasty in this era? Or do you think like we're in a parody period and it's gonna be a different champ every year?

I think we'll see this year. They have Hoover coming in from TCU.

Yeah.

Who's an excellent quarterback. And so if they can make another run, I think people will begin to believe in the sustainability of the Indiana model. Now, I should say that even the year before they went crazy and legitimately were one of the most dominant teams in college football, they were a great team that went very, very far. But people still kind of didn't believe until they saw them like python Alabama and just legitimately squeeze the life outta some of these other teams. But after they've lost a little bit of something and everybody now is gonna be giving them their best shot, But I think this year is kind of the year where we'll see the long-lasting dominance if it exists with Indiana.

You know who else said last?

Who?

Jesus.

What are you talking about?

I'm just looking over Indiana.

Mendoza.

Oh, it is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mendoza.

I think they're gonna be a really good team. But I'll tell you what, any national media person that still doesn't believe and talk shit on them and what they're doing, you do it at your own peril. 'Cause they just been kicking blue bloods ass spilling blue blood all over college football for about 2 years now.

Good coach, excellent program, good chemistry and camaraderie. Yeah, the Purdue athletic director, he stepped into a bear trap trying to talk shit. I'm a fan. Ohio State is the favorite, but Notre Dame is the number 2 favorite, and then CR's Ducks are 3rd.

CR's Ducks got some, some Oregon merch while I was up in Oregon this week. Yeah. Yeah, I like, I like Dan Lanning. I feel like he and I could hang out. You know, I could trade zins. Yeah, I just really like, I like everything about Oregon. Like the merch, the, the colors, the pageantry, the way they play.

I think the thing about Dan Lanning is this guy win the big one. Everybody knows he's a good coach. Yeah, but do people know yet that he is a great coach and he's like, had that team in position. And really actually even changed the mental makeup. Like they, you had Chip Kelly out there and he was playing a style of ball at Oregon that was quick and nasty and you couldn't really prepare for it. Lanning has instituted something different there.

Mm-hmm.

With an edge and they play super physical and all of that stuff. But he's still gotta win some big games.

And he lost, lost his OC and his DC.

Right. So he's, he's gotta win some big games.

I always wonder what happens with coaches when they have it for a second and then they, they just lose it. Like, Chip Kelly had it for like 3, 4 years, right?

No, he had it for a long time.

No, but I'm saying like when he, he was the hottest commodity for an NFL team to hire, and it was like, oh, this guy, he's gonna be like offensive Belichick.

The beginning of that.

Now he's like, he just got fired as the Raiders offensive coordinator 10 games into the season. Right. Like, how do you just lose the edge with that?

Well, I mean, the, the question is, does that scheme work in the NFL?

Or is that what it is? It was all scheme and once once defense has figured it out. And that happened a little bit with Buddy Ryan, right? This Buddy Ryan had this groundbreaking defense, and then at some point in the mid-'90s it shifted, and then he wasn't groundbreaking anymore. It's almost like a director. He had one move, a couple. Yeah, it's like a director. You can have 3 good movies and then can't sustain.

I hate it, but it's what Belichick was good at, was like reinventing, adapting and reinventing.

Yeah.

And it's like to watch the Randy Moss Patriots versus the Patriots that first won the Super Bowl, you're like, this This is a completely different team. This is a completely different, like, philosophy that they're executing out there.

That was my favorite Belichick quality, was that he was amorphous to whatever his talent was. He's like, oh, we're good at this, I'll do it this way this year. Which I don't think a lot of coaches are like, here's my scheme, I gotta fit my guys into my— this is how we do stuff. And those are the guys that always get in trouble.

Yeah, I mean, well, there's some college, there's different aspects of the game, right? This disparity in talent that exists, not just from conference to conference, but like even within a team.

Yeah.

You can have a team with an incredible blue chip ratio, but still you gotta fill some of those places with guys that weren't like exactly 4 or 5, especially now. Right. And so for him to go as fast as he was going to take advantages of some of the stuff that he was doing schematically, that's just probably easier to do in the Pac-12 than it is in the NFC East.

Well, how many coaches would you say like, oh, that guy's good? We're just like blind. Everybody would agree whether they like the school or not. We're like, you said Dan Lanning. I think most people would be like, okay, that guy's good.

Yeah, Kirby's good.

Kirby's good.

Indiana coach. Oh, that guy's good. Lane Kiffin's at that point now, right?

Kiffin is definitely a guy who right away— think about somebody in a different thing that like he legitimately raises the floor of whatever it is that you have. A floor raiser, a true floor raiser. Lane Kiffin's gonna do that. If you— Lane Kiffin runs the type of offense and the type of program to where if you start off and you're a 5-win team, you're gonna every year be now a 9-win team. The question with Lane Kiffin still is, can you be a 14 or 15-win team? Because like, as, as as deep of a run as Ole Miss made last year, I don't know. The question with Lane is the same as Dan Lanning. Like Lane Kiffin still has yet to take a team and get them over the hump to a national championship. And if he wants to be mentioned in the same vein as the rest of these guys, he's gotta find a place to do that. And if he doesn't do it at LSU, I think his national reputation will diminish a lot.

He's gonna be OC at like Miami Dolphins.

It's gonna be tough.

Yeah.

That's like we have NBA players like that, right? Can take you to round 2. Yeah, maybe even you can sniff round 3.

You want to say something after that?

No.

Okay, I thought we were— I thought that was—

we're not throwing daggers here, it's August.

You have, you have guys that can get you to the finals as the number 1 guy. They can get you to the finals as the number 1 guy.

And not that many guys, I mean, they can get to the conference finals, but I think like there's Donovan Mitchell can get you to round 2 or round 3. Yeah, but has been unable to get people to round 4. Harden unable.

But just think about it like this. Like Jimmy Butler.

Jimmy Butler.

Jimmy Butler can get you to the NBA Finals.

That's why he's so tough to rank.

That's why it's difficult. Jimmy Butler can get you to the NBA Finals.

I have him 100th.

Do you?

My pyramid, my revised pyramid that I've spent the whole summer working on for really no reason at all, because my kids are old. They don't want to hang out with me.

All time.

I have him 100th because of the two finals. I really value those.

That he got to, he got to do.

He's the best guy on two teams that made the finals.

Made it to the finals.

Right. It's the hardest thing to do.

And they were those teams when they got there, they actually kind of made you believe like, can they pull this off? There was no—

Yeah. And he also dragon slayered some teams.

Yeah. He beat some teams.

He took down Giannis when Giannis was good. And you know, he took down a really good Celtics team that won the title the next year.

Yeah. Right. So there are coaches that are like that. Yeah, that, that perennially can get you there. So is it less than 10 of like elite coaches in college football right now?

Yeah, that everybody agrees that guy's good.

Well, is it 8?

There's a lot of guys.

Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame.

There's another one.

There's Steve Sarkisian at Texas.

Ohio State guy's another one.

Ryan Day.

There's Ryan Day at Ohio. All of— everybody knows that these guys are badasses, but they have— even amongst those guys, there's still people that are waiting There's some people that have had better days, like a Dabo Swinney, who at one point was at the top of the elite coaches, like a Nick Saban slayer.

Yeah.

Right. And there's some guys that are past that. Some guys like Freeman who are still marching towards having that type of reputation, but you know that they're great coaches. And then some guys like Kirby who are like retooling. But of all the—

I think, but of all of them what?

Of all of them, there are about 5 dudes that if you have them year in, year out, you're competing for a national championship?

I think the NFL is 6.

Let's hear it.

I think McDonald is in there now for what Seattle did. Seattle literally could have won every game last year. And I think whatever he was doing, he seemed that, that he, he has to be in the discussion.

John McVay.

McVay.

Mm-hmm.

I think Sean Payton. I think Shanahan. Ben Johnson, I think is there now.

Would you say Sirianni?

I wouldn't. I would have, I would have Vrabel as the—

so interesting.

I would have Vrabel as the 6th one because he's had success on 2 teams with pretty flawed teams.

2 families.

He's a very versatile coach. He can succeed in his own house, on the road.

Yes.

And at home.

Somebody say he's better on the road.

If there's an NFL meeting, Maybe he'll know a good B&B 2 hours away.

Are there like a— it's like a hot springs around here you guys happen to know?

Yeah, you're thinking about going up with some friends, like a high hedge though. You know what's, what's interesting about that list? I don't know if Jim Harbaugh— I— neither Harbaugh is on the, on my list for the top 6. Jim Harbaugh, I think we want to be in the list. He hasn't had the results. I think Andy's off. I think he's too old now. I thought that situation That Chiefs season last year was such a mess. I don't know how he got—

That's a question just about Sirianni. We've talked about this before. So I, I'm fascinated with why he's so poorly regarded with the amount of success that the Eagles have had.

Because I think they have so much talent. I think that it's almost like people think they win despite him.

And the GM has the mystique that is usually reserved for the coach. Mm-hmm. So like everybody is sort of like, Howie season, trust Howie, Howie knows what he's doing. Like, watch what Howie did here. And it just, all of the credit winds up going to him. It goes to Fangio and it's all dependent on like, who's the OC? If it's Kellen Moore, then we're great. If it's Kevin Petula, we're bad. Everybody's losing their mind about Sean Mannion right now, but it's not unlike the way people look at Jalen Hurts where it's like, well, this guy has won a Super Bowl, been to a Super Bowl. Outside of that, they're always, with the exception of that real detonation season, consistently very good, but gets no, like, kind of, like, hot talk show respect, kind of.

Not only wouldn't you say— wouldn't you say the key thing is if you wouldn't be shocked if the guy got fired after the season, I don't think you can be in the top 6, right?

But, like, you've got Ben Johnson in there, and it's like, Ben Johnson hasn't done anything compared to Mike Sheridan.

I just think he's going to be there for a while. I feel the best about him.

What is the Green Bay coach again? I forget his name for some reason.

LaFleur.

LaFleur. I think he's a better coach than Ben Johnson. I think he's, I think he's— I don't know.

I thought LaFleur was gonna get fired after the playoffs last year.

I understand that. But like having Ben Johnson on the list, other than a coach that's won a Super Bowl and played for another one. And by the way, say something about the Jalen Hurts thing is that Jalen Hurts not only got there but played phenomenally in those Super Bowl games. He really played good. And I think that the fact that that team has been able to maximize, not all the time, not all the time. He's not slinging it around all the time, like making no-look throws and all of that stuff. But they've been able to maximize their personnel. And play in a way that's distinct and unique to who they have shows that they're really well coached.

I just thought what Ben Johnson did last year was outrageous. I mean, that team, his quarterback, he had to almost teach him on the fly how to be a consistent kind of guy who could actually take somebody—

Give him some structure.

Yeah.

He had a bunch of young players. He had to take over a whole new organization. When you can take over a franchise that's just been run like shit, and in 9— that's what Vrabel did too. And in 9 months, just fix it. I think that's like the hardest thing to do. Sirianni was inheriting a really good infrastructure, a great front office, and a ton of talent.

Well, I mean, he, he was inheriting a Super Bowl winning team that had decayed, came in and revitalized it. And I think because he was like a little bit more of a younger, fresher voice that was about like more being a CEO, whereas Doug Pederson, I think, had a little bit more control, although Nick's system. This has been always the issue is Nick has an offensive system that I think he likes to implement and OCs that come in either fully adopt it or like add their wrinkles to it. And this has been the time, I think, I think conditional on Nick keeping his job, they were like, you have to basically give Mannion the keys.

Well, you're an Eagles fan. Do you think he's a good coach? Like, I would fight for Vrabel for the death unless we were talking about husband and beer.

I would not fight Nick for Nick Sirianni to the death.

Yeah. No. And we had this conversation at core week one time. Core week. We love to hang out and have conversations and I'm—

I just—

Core week.

I love core week.

Thane loves core week.

I love core week.

Thane loves when multiple ringer people are just together.

I just love a room full of ringer people. Can I run calls but in real life to talk, like to talk to stuff about? I just, I don't understand the Sirianni thing. I understand like being frustrated with the way the team and particularly Jalen Hurts has played at times. Especially in this era of like, you know, so much being on the quarterback and all of that stuff. But he's been so successful and they've been perennially in contention. I just kind of don't get it. Even the Jim Harbaugh thing that you could, that you could bring up. So if you look at Jim Harbaugh, the success that he's had as a coach in the last 20 years.

San Francisco, Michigan, Chargers.

Yeah. You could argue that like there are very few peers there. He's won a national championship. At Michigan. He's had— forget about what he did at Stanford as well, to have Stanford as an elite upper echelon team. Then he goes to the 49ers, has them in the Super Bowl. They do not win, but he continues to have success right away. Not only are you a good team with Jim Harbaugh, you have the chance to be a great team.

You have 10-win credibility, basically.

Absolutely.

I like this exercise. Can I put you on the spot and ask you who the NBA coaches would be?

Yeah, I'd have to, let me get my, my, my standings.

Because I think in a lot of these sports, I'll vamp while you look.

Okay. I'm ready.

You're seeing like a rise of the technocratic coach who's like, I'm very good at one specific thing.

Mm-hmm.

Or I'm very good as like a vibes guy. But they're the, the idea of a coach being bigger than the team, I think is going away in a lot of different sports.

I agree. It will be hard for it to go away in college football.

College football.

Yeah.

But even in college football, it's like the guys that get jobs now are like, I know, I know Chesney and these dudes, but like, it seems like it's like Eric Morris and Will Stein. And it's like, do you have a playbook? And if you do, we'll pay the premium and give you the head coaching job just so that we don't have to get a new OC every year.

But I'll say this though, I agree with that. But at some point in college football, uh, you just, the personality of your program just has to be your head coach. This is the reason why they've been making fun of me on Tailgate. 'Cause of the twinkle, the twinkle that I saw in Chesney's eye. I did not want to agree with Bill about this. I hate agreeing with Bill.

But you were like at the practice.

I was there and I watched the way people responded to him in the building.

It's a leader of men.

I watched the way they talked about UCLA football legitimately while we were there. They were tearing up the practice field, doing new stuff. And I just, it would be difficult not to believe it. You know who Harbaugh reminds me of?

Jim Harbaugh.

He's like a football coach. He's like the Larry Brown of like football coaches. Like the Larry Brown of it. Now he didn't even, he hasn't gotten over the top in professional football yet. But like if you have Larry Brown like coaching your team, automatically your team is going to pull it together.

Until they fucking hate him.

Until they, see, that's the same shit though.

With, with, with our ball.

That's the same thing.

This is why basketball is so different. 'Cause like Mike Brown just won with the, with the Knicks. Mm-hmm. Mike Brown failed on like 4 other teams, right? So I, I think there's this cluster of coaches that if you gave them the right team, they could make the Final Four and maybe even win the title.

Spo?

I think it's a bunch of 'em. No, I think Spo's on a different level because no matter what his team is, the team's successful. And they've overachieved in these crazy ways.

E-culture.

I also think coaching LeBron and Wade and Bosh those first couple years was like the single hardest thing any coach did the last 15 years. Where it's like, if this doesn't work out, I'm getting fired. And I, I don't have buy-in from these guys 'cause they've decided everything on this team. I have to win these guys over. Like, you remember there was a lot of battling in that first season and even the second season. I just thought the way he navigated that was pretty special. I think Dagnall's really good.

Yes. But to, in my mind, I think Chris Finch is good. Dagnall is like that kind of like technocrat coach that I'm thinking of where it's like emerges out of a system. Presti is the man, the wizard. Everything is kind of like top to bottom. You're, you're here. And I think he's very, very good. I'm just saying like, he's good.

He had a really hard roster to keep everyone happy and he was able to do it, which I think in the NBA is the hardest thing to do. But Mazzulla, I think, has been an amazing regular season coach, and they've blown 3 playoff series in the last 4 years where they were huge favorites.

You're up and down on him sometimes, it seems like. Like sometimes you're completely behind on him.

I thought the Philly series last year was one of the worst losses any of us had. This past season? Yeah. I mean, you know that, like, Embiid didn't even play there. Embiid didn't even— it was ridiculous. How did they lose to Philly? When you look back at that series, you're like, how the fuck did we in a million years win that?

I think that you guys looked and they were just like, we need Paul George. The Celtics were just like, we gotta get PG out.

He's probably the best forward in the series.

Who are the other coaches? So Mazzulla.

I mean, that's really it. 'Cause then everybody else is, I think Steve Kerr's still really good.

Yeah.

I think it's just, but like Ty, Ty Lue and Steve Kerr. I would say Charles Lee is probably my favorite younger one.

Okay.

I thought the stuff they did last year with the team they had and how weird the team was. Okay. Catch some of them up. Maybe Nurse.

Really?

I thought him, I thought he completely outcoached Mazzulla. He's won a title, right? He's made conference finals and, you know, he might be a little better, but I don't know. There's probably like 3 or 4 and then there's like another 5 or 6. But how many, how many guys could have won with the Knicks last year? Right.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, you need to be a defensive kind of, kind of presence guy. You also need to have the ability to stand up to Towns.

You have to ride the storm. That team hated each other for like part of last season.

And, you know, so he navigated that. So he gets credit for that. But I wouldn't have thought he could have done that a year ago.

At the same time, it felt— it also feels like he allowed in a very unique way for that team to take on its own personality. And he injected a belief system into the team. Yeah.

Finch does that with the Timberwolves too.

Like he injected a belief system.

Finch is a good one. 'Cause that's a really hard team to coach. You have like real flaws.

This is something else about Brown to me is it also seemed like to me that the success of the Knicks had as much to do with his journey as a basketball coach to where he got to that point in his career. Where he had had some high-profile failures, been through some stuff, and he understood just how to hold on enough and let go enough and believe and, and still believe.

Would a comp, would Doc and the Celtics be kind of a comp for Mike Brown?

Yeah. But even the Doc thing was rocky 'cause he was playing, he just didn't wanna play young guys.

Yeah.

Right. Mike Brown was way more willing to embrace the bench. Doc eventually, the, the corner turned when he started playing the younger guys and Trusting Rondo. Hey, it's interesting talking to different people around the league who they respect as great coaches. Like when Atkinson got fired by Brooklyn and, you know, the people around the league were like, that's fucking crazy. This guy's a good coach. And the kind of the litmus test of like, does everybody else think the guy's a good coach and did the owner fuck that up? But then there's other cases where like Budenholzer was a good coach until he wasn't.

Yep. Mm-hmm.

You know, and I think that happens sometimes in college football and pro football too. Sometimes the guys have it for 5, 6 years and then it's just gone.

I'm gonna ask a real casual question. Let's say you're sitting down with somebody that doesn't follow NBA basketball at all. What makes a good coach? 'Cause in college football, I absolutely know what makes a good coach, right? In college football, I absolutely know you can tell when a guy, like both on the field, what it is that you're doing, but also when a guy has, the presence and the institutional integrity to define a program. That's like, to me, the top thing that makes a college football coach.

Right.

But for NBA, for the NBA, a game that is so analytics are so important to it sometimes. Like, I don't even know if—

I think it's different. Like, regular season coaching and playoff coaching is definitely different. Just like regular season basketball and playoff basketball.

And what your team's objectives are, how you manage, like, Like, maybe my star player only wants to play 55 to 60 games. How do I manage that? I think NFL coaches by far are still the most important. Like, if you get one of the 6 or 7 real guys, that's your 10 to 12 win team a year if you have talent, right? Like, when we had Belichick, it really didn't matter who was on the team. With Belichick and Brady, we're probably gonna win like 12 to 14 games. But then as he got older, you could kind of see the team decaying. Special teams started going. Right. He started missing drafts. There were these things that, these kind of red flags. And then he's just like, in basketball, you just get fired if it doesn't work out for one year. Right. You have, you have like Anthony Edwards as your superstar and you lose in round one. You're just getting fired. Right. They're always going to pick—

or you can be hot as hell. You could be like Taylor Jenkins, red hot. Memphis is the future.

Taylor Jenkins, great example.

And then fired and gone. Yeah.

He may, if Houston's a mess this year, he'll get fired.

Yeah.

Um, but the, the lifespan of the NBA coaches are nuts. It's like 4 years is a long time. Who did they say was the third? Isn't Mazzulla like the third longest coach?

It's something crazy like that.

Will Hardy's a good coach, right? My, Will Hardy's good. My question is, how do you motivate these dudes when we get to like, these guys are making $70 million a year?

Well, what's the difference between that and making $30 million a year? Like, I mean, like, do you think they're— You're still making I understand generational wealth, but like, I just mean like, are you saying it's not like they were underpaid?

I'm saying when you have a team, you have a team that has a star, they can't trade the star who's making a shitload of money and he's not going anywhere. And if he doesn't get along with his coach, the coach is losing that every time.

So I, so this is my thing. I think the league is so star dependent that a lot of this is just this coach. The coaches are tethered to these guys. And if these guys have bad dispositions, you're just not gonna win a lot. You're not gonna win at the highest level. It's just, it's just going to be tough. If you get a Giannis or a Jokic who for whatever reason has all of this talent, but also is addicted to competition and want to be the best, you just end up going further than if you have some of these other guys, some of these other guys that can be weird, mercurial, destroy a team. A lot of that's just based in how these superstars look at themselves. And you can, you can build around it, you can coach, but you can't— some of it you're handcuffed to it.

Also, I don't know, man. I mean, we're starting to see now once a year a top 15 NBA player get traded in an inexplicable way sometimes. So if you could trade Luka and you can trade Jalen and these guys are all like, I don't want to go in the second apron and I don't want 50% or 60% of my salary cap wrapped up in two guys, choose one. But I mean, I don't know, maybe the coach will take on a greater precedence.

You know, I look, I'm a Laker fan. I love Luka, right?

Love Luka.

Love watching Luka play and all of that stuff. But if you're coaching Luka, if you're coaching Luka, that must be an interesting spot to be in because your team is always going to be just relevant enough for you to get blamed for the fact that he doesn't always play in a way that, I mean, Luka is, is a phenomenal player. But he, he's gonna keep you just relevant enough to be incredibly criticized. But having Luka does not necessarily mean that you are going to win a championship.

Yeah. And you also have to build your team around all of his strengths and weaknesses.

In order to have the type of success, he has to have a team that he can't just play with anybody just tailored for him.

Yeah.

So it's an interesting spot to be in. And as, as we talk about like superstar players in the league, There are very few guys in the league that if you have this guy that you can put scraps around him and you're going to the Finals.

Well, that's what I think. Halliburton's like that. I think you can build any type of team around him, right? I think Tatum is like that too. These guys who they can kind of be whatever, they can fill these different spots. Why, why'd you look at each other? Tatum's made 2 Finals and we'll see it.

Let's see it happen now.

He's really good.

I, I think I'm not saying he's, I was actually reacting to Halliburton.

Halliburton. My point is there's guys that are easier to build around than other guys.

I think Halliburton is more that guy than Tatum. I think how— I think the way Hallie plays and all of this stuff, I think if you have him—

I think Maxie's like that. I mean, I, I really think like he is so well respected around the league as just an awesome guy. Yeah. And coaches like Doc is like his biggest evangelist. Doc hasn't coached him for 3 years, but everybody loves Maxie. When you have that, that, and he's easy to play with, needs the ball, doesn't need the ball, you know, that those are the best guys I think to build around. Sure. Luka's like, okay, we need a, we need a rim runner who can protect him on defense. You need a rim runner, a creator. I don't need a point guard because my point guard can't have the ball a lot. I need like Quinton Brynes type guys.

But when I hurt my hamstring and I'm gone for 3 to 5 weeks, I'm going to need a point guard.

Then I need Austin Reeves. Yeah. Yes. Right. Now I will say that when firing on, like, Luka has taken a team to the finals and like, he did like, and a lot of his issues were kind of like, 'cause Luka's great.

That's, that's the problem with other, he's a phenomenal basketball player.

Yeah. Yeah. Like at times you go, this is not only the best guy in the league, like this guy doesn't seem like he has any offensive weaknesses whatsoever.

It feels like something with him. And then he fouls out of the biggest game of the year with 5 minutes left. And then you watch this and then you, you watch him.

What the fuck?

I just want, man, if like, I just want Luka to have 5 straight possessions of just missing the shot and just getting back. Just trying to make it a habit. Just miss the shot and get back.

I think by the time you hit 30, you already are.

If you haven't learned that by now, he's like, guess what? That doesn't matter.

It's like Embiid's not gonna suddenly be in awesome shape this year. He's just, he is who he is.

We're monitoring it.

You working on it?

His weight's looking pretty good actually.

Have you done the, you think you're better than me with LeBron helicoptering in every time?

I'm totally fine with that.

You don't wanna live in Philly, LeBron?

I'm totally fine with it. I thought Jalen, genius move, going right to the hood, doing his press conference. Yeah, he rocks that out.

What you mean?

He's like, I'm gonna be a man of the people. He went— that's where he did his press conference.

He cares about people legitimately. Yeah, but like, he legitimately—

he's like, I'm going to buy into the city of Philly and I'm going to go—

did not go to like a Wells Fargo branded friggin like—

because that's who he actually is. I I watch, they gonna be good.

They're gonna be good.

They're gonna be good. There's no scenario where they're not good.

They're gonna be good. I think they, I think everyone knows they're gonna be good. I think they're gonna be better than people even think that they're gonna be. Yeah.

It's, it's injury and age dependent.

We'll see.

So over-under for them is 50, which seems fair.

A couple injuries might actually help 'em.

I think they're a 55, 'cause I think they can win games when they don't have Embiid or LeBron.

Yes.

They could just have the, the other 3 guys.

Maxi, BJ, and Jalen.

Yeah.

I think they can win games with the, you could play like, like, I don't know, somebody shitty, Washington. You beat Washington with those 3 guys just doing everything and then save the big guns for bigger games. Should be a fun season.

Yeah.

Thanks, guys.

It annoys you.

What?

I just— before we get the Philly thing, like, I like— just be honest, it annoys you. You're annoyed.

I really like Jaylen. I don't like that he's going to be on Philly. Philly's our rival. He also— we hate the most.

They asked him about whether he was going to have a chip on his shoulder. I'm like, "You ever thought about Boston?" And he was like, "We'll see." That means yes. Yeah.

Boy, I tell you what, let me tell you what. 'Cause the one thing I give him more credit, and you've said this before, is you can get like kind of scatterbrained performances for him, but you never get one when he feels challenged. When there's a guy on the other side that he feels like, "I wanna prove that I'm better than this guy," he goes crazy. Man, oh man, oh man. Is he going to have prove-it games against Jason Tatum and the Celtics?

I did this on the mailbag with House. Philly has these 5 teams where every game against the 5 teams is gonna be awesome. Yeah. Cleveland, Miami, Boston, LA, the Knicks.

No.

And then the one other team in the East, Toronto.

Yeah.

All teams that have real history with LeBron or Jalen, or, you know, there's some sort of rivalry, but, um, I, the fact that Tatum and Brown have not talked since the trade to me was like dumbfounding.

Yeah.

Like, I don't expect these guys to be buddies, but they didn't, they didn't do like a 5-minute call.

But that might be your answer as to why they're not playing together anymore.

Oh, it's definitely the answer, CR. That's how bad it got. Like, if you, we worked together 15 years.

Oh, Bill, don't do this, because I will be forced to start You don't want me to actually pop. You don't want me to— don't— you understand it.

You, you haven't put speed up yet, right?

Did you put Spotify— had trade CR, and CR does the press conference with like Amazon.

Yeah.

And they're like, CR, have you talked to Billy? And he's like, no.

And Jeff Bezos in Southwest Philly at a rec center.

You talked to Bill yet? No, haven't talked to him. Yeah, it's like, that's fucking weird. These guys won a title together 2 years ago. They haven't talked.

Yeah, yeah.

What's our title?

I'm still waiting for the— now they tell us, and I don't know if we're ever getting it, but The Town Podcast. The Town Podcast, that's the title. Thanks, guys. Thank you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk, thanks to Van and CR, thanks to Eduardo and Gajal as well. I will see you at least one more time during the week on Speed, um, and then rewatchables is going to be Monday with Speed. So, uh, enjoy the rest of the day. I'll see you midweek. Must be 21+ and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-888-8255 Hope NY, or text Hope NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.