Transcript of Talking Basketball, NBA, and Hoops With Ryen Russillo

Coming up, Sunday's Basketball. Rusillo, you know the drill. It's next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We have a new rewatchable that's coming for you on Monday night. We did an Oscar winner. You'll be able to watch that as a video podcast on Spotify. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. If you love the Oscars, this is going up before the Oscars, but Sean Fentacy and Amanda Dobbins will be reacting to the Oscars, I think, right after the telecast. So check out the big picture for that. We're also brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, where, I don't know if you know, but we're doing these player performance doubles with FanDuel. Two leg parlays already made for you. Take an NBA player prop, combine it with a bet on that player's team to win. Starting this week, we will have a Ringer PBT on a player performance bet placed on one of the Tuesday games, Rockets Pacers, Warriors Snicks, Bucks Hawks, Net Spurs, Clipper Suns. I'm going to tweet out my pick on Tuesday Stay tuned. Be sure to claim the Ringer PBT in the carousel on the FanDuel Sportsbook app.

Last thing to plug before we get to the podcast, Celtic City, the documentary series we did about the Boston Celtics. It's nine episodes over nine weeks. It is on Max on HBO. It premieres Monday night. Get ready for it. Once a week, it's old school. You can watch an episode, you can think about it. Then the next week, another one comes on. It's almost like how they have with White Lotus. That's Celtic City. So Please check that out. We spent a lot of time on it. Really proud of it. So Seltic City, Monday, March third. Get ready. All right, coming up. Got a lot of weird basketball topics to talk about with Rosillo. Some big picture stuff, some alpha dog stuff in the league between the teams, Cleveland had a big Friday. We're covering it all next, first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we are taping this a little after 12: 30 Pacific Time. Just watch Celtics Nuggets that we're going to talk about later. The star of Shot Caller 2 is here, Ryan Rusillo. You look great. The listeners can't hear it, can't see it, but you got like... It's like an early 2000s Red Sox setup guy, Fu Manchu look.

Is that a Van Dyke or a Fu Manchu?

Yeah, I don't know. I was looking at some old pictures of myself. Well, I usually break this out a couple of times a year, and I did it when I got my license picture taken last summer. The picture of my license is just horrifying. For whatever reason, I don't know. I used to do when I was in my 20s. I usually do do it every now and then, so we're back.

I love the board with your race moments. Not just you, but me. I have them, too, where you're just like, Fuck it. I'm going to grow a mustache.

Didn't you do it for PTI? I did.

We did Mustash Week, me and Levetard. We just both grew big, bushy, buddy cop mustaches. Yeah, it's fun. Lately, I've been shaving. That feels like a move now to be like, I'm going to shave a couple of times a week. Back with the shaving.

Honestly, if you went clean, shaving, you're just getting ahead of where this is all going in a couple of years because there's going to be a stretch, like anything that's, whether it's fashion or hairstyles. I mean, this is not insightful. It's all cyclical. But there's going to be a stretch years from now where you're like, What the hell was going on? Everyone just had a beard? Everybody just had a beard. I had a beard. I remember being so early to the beard that I showed up to the national championship game with it when it was Oregon, Auburn, and Todd McShea and Jesse Palmer on the sideline being like, You didn't shave? I'm like, I'm at a football game. I'm not even on TV. They're like, Yeah, but dude, you look terrible.

It is funny. How many years ago was that? Like early 2010s range?

Yeah, mid-2010s. Cam was still in college, so I think it's 15 years ago, that game?

I remember between the first and second years when I was on the countdown show and I showed up for something during the summer and I had a beard, and everybody was like, You're not going to have that on TV, right? They were freaking out by it. It does feel like the beard stuff has shifted by the last... Then COVID, it It just was full bloom. Covid was the apex mountain for beards. Everyone was just like, I don't care anymore.

Yeah, that cranked it up. That was the home run PED phase of beards. We were like, Luis Gonzales has how many home runs?

It's the early 2000s.

Yeah, because then it's a bit like the arm sleeve thing. The early arm sleeve tack guy, you're like, All right, I probably don't want to mess with that guy. It's like somebody who's really friendly, but they blink a lot. They just I might want to stay away from him.

Over-blinking is a fear thing for you a little bit?

Yes. Certain size, a guy that blinks a lot, want nothing to do with it. Never thought about that.

Good tip.

No, it's a good tip. Yeah, it's a good tip for everybody. Anyway, I think the sleeve thing turned into... I just felt like there should have been some prerequisite. You're going to get double sleeves. You're getting arm sleeves. Now, I don't... I think the beard was some transition off of that. I likely will never be clean-shaven. I cannot even remember the last time, just full-up lather. I don't even have shaving cream at my house.

I would have a beard way more often, but mine just gets white, and it actually used to hide some stuff, but now it's like you actually look younger when you don't have the beard. There's been some weird phases ever since I could shave. I think side burns were a really weird stretch in that '92 to '94 stage inspired by Brandon and Dylan on 90210. Then all of a sudden people were doing different side burns things for a year and a half. That was weird.

There was also the- We had the high flat top look was in for a little bit.

There's definitely been some weird stages looking back on what was going on there.

Well, the sideburns thing is, again, just the cycle of, let me see how low I can bring these down, and it was fine. Then everybody was like, All right, get rid of these. But I remember the first moment, I couldn't even shave. Who am I kidding? But the first moment, guys in junior high for travel basketball, there'd be a couple early bloomers, if you know what I'm talking about. You're just like, What the hell is this guy doing? He's got a shaving kit. You're like, Is this guy from Will O'Manic? What's going on? Then dudes who couldn't even shave, me being one of them, you just felt left out. So guys started shaving their sideburns up as high as possible. That was a weird...

I didn't like that era.

I hope that never comes back. But yeah, there was just a lot of chin shit in the early 2000s. 2000s, out of boredom.

I feel like that was baseball related because baseball really had that big comeback in the late '90s, early 2000s, steroids-driven, Yankees-driven, Yankees versus Red Sox, Bonds on the home run, Maguire. Then the relievers and the home run sluggers all started having weird facial thing, and it just took off. Remember, Duncan tried it? Duncan had a year in the early 2000s when Duncan went with the shaved head. Got a little like your look right now, but it was like, What are you doing? You're Tim Duncan. Why are you trying this? What are you trying to look like? He almost looked like Dennis Haysbert.

The white beard call is right, though, because now I'm at the point where if I let it go, it's patchy in areas where it's not colored. Then I have buddies that are dying their beards, and then all I can think about is Richard Kimball. I just think, I don't know, man. I might want to... At this point, I don't know that you're necessarily hiding your age, but there are definitely dudes that when they go full beard now, even though you've got this salt and pepper thing, you're going way more salt than pepper. You've aged yourself so much. I remember when Calhert's contract was up, I think he had red hair. I was like, What's going on?

Well, he joined FS1. He went blonde for a bit. I've never died or done anything. I just can't do it. I'm just like, If nature has taken me a certain direction, so be it. It's the way it's going to have to go.

I had a really hard time having that ball patch in my head. It was just brutal.

Yeah, the celebrity game really shook you, the high camera shot.

Yeah. I mean, if I see John Berry to this day, it might be on. Because my buddies-Oh, he mentioned it? My buddies wanted to kill John Barry.

Did he make a joke about it?

He talked about it the entire fourth quarter, apparently. I can't even go back and watch the tape. It's too dramatic.

Wow. I wonder if that's on the YouTube's.

Oh, it's all over the place. My friends, I'm talking about, and again, Massachusetts friends that aren't exactly the most supportive people. Scholars have argued. They don't even argue about it. They were like, Hey, what the fuck is up with John Barry? I went, I don't know. Is there I'm done with the game. I'm sitting here trying to ISO against hunger games, and I got the Secretary of Education telling me to calm down a little bit. Then I had to sub myself in to change- Which hunger games person? Was it a Josh or something?

Oh, that little He was smaller, right? Josh somebody?

Yeah. I pushed him pretty hard at one point because I just wasn't playing well. I'd actually had a crack in my leg and whatever. Now I'm making excuses.

Were you the guy who tried too hard? Josh Hutchinson. Were you the guy who tried too hard in the celebrity game? Because in my game, it was the actor Jesse Williams who just was going all out like he was Russell Westbrook.

I didn't play enough. I didn't play enough. I was not a celebrity. Espn was usually pretty good about trying to get somebody on They are involved in some of that stuff. I liked it. Look for that promotion. Yeah, it was just... Obviously, I'd want to do it, but I clearly wish I had gotten to play before that because then when I went back home to talk to buddies that I played with regular, they're like, You're terrible now. We talked so much shit about, they were like, Look out, he's going to go off in this thing. I was like, Yeah, I know. But then on the other side, it was a bit like when Kyrie was having his play off run last year, where even if he went 4 for 20, people would be like, His joy is back, and it's It was unbelievable. The threshold for a good Kyrie stretch was pretty low, and I think it was the same. When I got back to ESPN, people were like, Oh, you played really well. I was like, not really. Then you got called bald, I guess, for a straight hour.

That would be a good NBA award at the end of the year that we should vote on, the Joy is Back Award, where we have to vote who's Joy was the most back. Who's the Joy of Back winner this year? Next year, the odds on Fandles. I like that. Fandles posting 26 odds, and they're like, KD is a minus 300 favorite for the Joy is Back. He hasn't been traded yet.

Right, because you actually have to factor in the pre-miserable.

Yeah.

You can't just pick somebody who's happy all the time. You have to get somebody who's a really moody dude.

Yeah, that's tough. I don't know who our Joy is back guy is.

It's wherever Durant ends up. I think that's the odds. For next year. It's probably off the board.

I don't know who it is this year. Maybe it's Kyrie. Maybe Kyrie because the trade was so late last year or the The turnaround was so late last year. Maybe he's grandfathered in and he's the favorite this year.

I don't know. He would have won it last year. Could there be Kyrie Joy is back, Voter fatigue? Because he would have won it last year.

We had a back to back. Donovan Mitchell, who I don't think was completely miserable last year, but I do think has an added level of joy this year. I think he would be somebody I would at least accept the thing. Paul George probably would be last in the voting. He'd be the joy is not back if that was an award.

When MB is on another team, when they do the Joy is back, sit down feature for- No, it's Jimmy Butler. Oh, perfect.

Yeah, you can't even- Jimmy Butler is like, he had five points the other night when Steph had 56, and they interviewed him in the locker room, and he was just delighted He was saying, I'm just so pleased to be here for this.

Every Jimmy Butler quote, I feel like, did Aaron Sorkin write the perfect recovery? Every quote, it's not just one good quote. They'll be like, 12 for 12. They're all perfect. You think like, Hey, Sorkin, come up with a script of this player that basically sabotaged himself, destroyed his own market value, destroyed his own free agency. This isn't new, even if we could get into some of the debates, which I think there's some fair criticisms of some of the Miami stuff. But I mean, ultimately, it was Butler that just checked out on the whole thing. They're like, Okay, but when he goes to this new team and everybody starts making threes and they win a bunch of games, give us perfect quotes. Every quote Butler has for two weeks has nailed it.

It's one of those situations where you're like, Oh, I forgot this guy had teeth. We hadn't seen his teeth for three years because he hadn't smile since 2021. It's like, Oh, there's Jimmy Butler's teeth. They're back. Giving these perfect long monolog answers. If I was on the heat, I'd be so pissed. You'd be like, Oh, my God, really? Was that easy? You're this happy? Yeah. You're this happy. Steph is this much of a joy to be with. Apparently, he It seems that. I mean, that's another one is Steph is our joy MVP of just like, he just parcels out joy to other people. He's able to transfer it to them.

Just all you have to do is play with him and then go, when everybody, this is what happens when you cut You cut and then all the stuff is just wide open. I mean, still, even at Steph's age with this. So Butler, it was funny because we had Anthony Slater on from the athletic. He's national, but his background as the warrior And he made a really good point because I think anybody that knew about what was going on before the trade deadline and all the different conversations you hear, the Warriors are a little split. Well, ultimately, it matters if Lakeup or Dunlevy care, probably more so Lakeup, because Lakeup is the one that's going to have to, as they have them, void out the player option. You give them north of $100 million, and you're like, All right. I would never want to be an owner or a GM in that situation. The way we can take a chance here is giving Jimmy Butler $100 million plus over the next two years. But Slater was like, whatever the internal general debates were, it was, what are we disrupting now? A maybe non-playing team? So who cares?

That ends the argument, really, especially when you see these results.

Yeah, I said on the pod right after that, it wasn't a heel-mary was somewhere between a third and nine and a third and 13, and the guys covered and you throw it anyway. But the odds of Jimmy Butler just going to go and stay and being good immediately were pretty high. Then the odds of him enjoying playing with Steph, that seemed pretty high. Then just watching the weight of the world be immediately lifted off steps. This would have been a more fun segment if they hadn't gotten crushed by Philadelphia last night. Yeah, but he didn't play. The game I did not watch. King Grimes went nuts. Butler didn't play, but Can you believe Dallas traded Quentin Grimes? How about, Can you believe Philly traded for Quentin Grimes when it was clear that they were supposed to be headed toward a tank thing? I'm intentionally not. This is not an overprepared bot because I wanted I could do more back and forth stuff and not have set segments. We'll nail it so far because I didn't know we were doing any of this. There's definitely a couple big picture stuff I want to hit. But the Philly thing, which I was going to mention later, but we should talk about now because we had Embiid There was a report yesterday, Embed went to the owner.

It felt like this week was about Philly trying to subtly pin stuff on Darryl Moria, the GM. That was something I saw on a show. Well, Darryl Mori was the one pushing for the in beat extension.

Because if we're going to go down that road- Are you saying... I'm just to interject quickly. Are you going off of the rumbling of Josh Harris really was not sure that he wanted to do this? Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, we have to hit this quickly because this is absurd and I'm not going to allow it. Ultimately, one guy owns a basketball team, and when it's that amount of money and it's that big of a decision, that guy is making the call. He's not deferring referring to the GM. He's not going, I don't want to do this, and that's a lot of money, but Darryl says we should, so I'm just going to do it. It's not happening. That's not how the league works. The reason Kominga is still on the Warriors is because Joe Lakob didn't want to trade Kominga. There's no other reason. Joe Laker likes Kominga. He doesn't want to give up on him, and that's why he wasn't part of any of those trades. The owners control the show, and they're going to decide what happens. They could pass the buck. I'm not defending Darryl because I thought I I would have rather resigned than give and beat that extension. But nobody's going to do that.

There's 30 of these jobs.

No, I would have been like, listen, can we just talk buy out? Because this is the dumbest. I can't believe we're doing this. But then we're now in the bus throwing stage with this Philly situation, and they're in a weird spot because if they get the seventh pick and they don't end up with one of these top six picks in a draft that's awesome, this is a catastrophic. We haven't had a season this bad for a team in 10 years.

You would disagree with my tweet about this being the second worst thing in front office has done unless you'll allow me the leniency that I'm including ownership in that because you're right. Nobody goes as an owner. There's so much stuff that happens with ownership, making the final calls and these things. I think even sometimes I'll forget that. Not that I don't know it, but I'd like that you're reminding us of it because- It's never happening without him saying, Yes, okay, I'm in. It's three years, 190 2. 9 million. He has a player option in three years for $70 million. He's out for the season. Then when you start hearing about breaking a bone in the leg to help recovery, and I think there was a lot of stuff that was nasty about this where, I forget who it was, but basically laid out all the options for the 76ers. Then it got turned into the 76ers looking into the retirement exemption if he can't play again. It's like, look, we're not even there.

We're two years away from that.

Right. My point of the entire extension was I remember when it happened. All I could think of is, you have him. I know there was all the nick stuff, but you have somebody who has basically missed half of their career, and you haven't really done anything with him. We know what the playoff regular season is.

You made the second round twice.

Right. What's the rush?

That's what I just can't believe. Also, you watched him in the Olympics. You watched him in the Olympics not look 100%. If you don't sign him, you still have it under contract for two years. You can't do the wait and see that. What's he going to do? Hold out? It's a catastrophic decision. It was bad when it happened. We talked about it when it happened. We talked about it in our season preview. What did you think, just out of curiosity, what was a worse decision than that extension?

Well, you know Luka's on the Lakers now.

Oh, fair. I thought you were talking offseason. Yeah. Lucas You're right. Luka trades number one entrenched.

I've gone to three Lakers games.

Yeah, when are you buying a jersey?

I'm Mr. Laker right now.

Yeah, you're just going.

Just seeing him progressively get better and better, which I know is shocking to some that he had missed two months. A big guy who weighs 270 didn't look super crisp right out of the gates. Just seeing his progression mission continue and the comfort and what comes with him being comfortable. As soon as he starts yelling and getting pissed off, you're like, Okay, this is heading in the right direction. That's why I thought that first game that he played against Utah was so funny because he was so tired. He didn't have time for any of that stuff. I think a lot of basketball players, even the greatest ones, they'll try to just find a way to fit in a little bit. With Luka, it's like, No, don't try to fit in. Just go ahead and play your style, which I know we're going to do some Lakers stuff because I saw your clip this week, and I'm with you, that the biggest compliment is that now I don't even know what the ceiling is on the possibility for this team which I think a lot of us thought when this trade happened, it's like, Hey, that might ruin 25, but it makes all the sense to the world because now you get to reset your franchise.

And now I think that conversation has shifted quite a bit here.

Yeah, the thing he used to do in Dallas, and I've It's been interested in why, because I know JJ knows it. I think JJ has done a really good job this year. Luca is one of those, do I have it or not in the first quarter, guys, which I think Tatum is a little bit like this, too, where they'll use the first quarter to see- Steph does it all the time. I think the Lakers have already been like, Yeah, you figure out in the first quarter how you are. I've been so impressed by LeBron just, All right, I'll wait and see, too, and then I'll see where I fit in today. Then he always gets his stats, and he's been I'm sure you saw it in person. He's as active as he's been in a couple of years.

The defensive stuff that LeBron is doing because- It's hilarious. I think it's totally fair when they're bad defensively, a lot of it... There's stuff that I know that we'll get into, and I don't know how much rotational Laker stuff you want to talk about between now and where they were, their bad defensive team. But he's had ups and downs. But there are... I mean, this group where you went Luka, Reeves, LeBron on the perimeter, now no AD behind it. How good can they be defensively? And they've been incredible. I'm actually going to give a little credit here because Greg St. Jean, who's the son of Gary, the longtime Warriors exec, he was with the Lakers when LeBron was there before. Then he was at Dallas with Luka. Then he comes back on a JJ staff. I know him a little bit, so certainly I'm biased. I'll be like, Hey, you doing anything tonight? He'll be like, I'm installing our entry passes against the Utah Jazz. I was like, All right, he's just one of those guys. He'll be a head coach at some point.

I have this alternate pin-down defense I'm working on. Pin-down drink.

Yeah, we're working on a lot of side out of bounds stuff today. I think his relationship with the players, in the fact that these two superstars have been there, I think JJ has a lot to do with it. They're just so much more prepared as a basketball team. There was also stuff at one point when the record wasn't that much better, they were like, Oh, JJ read it. Because let's face it, most people were rooting against JJ being successful because of the background. But NBA head coaching paths are very nontraditional. I mean, this has been going on for 20... I don't even know, maybe even longer than that. You would know better than I would how many times you're like, Okay, I guess they're just going to make that guy head coach. I remember when the records were similar, there was a bit like, Oh, well, this isn't any better than Darvin Ham. You watch them now and how prepared they are, whether it was the Denver game we were talking about just a week ago. This team has figured some stuff out on defense that I just didn't think was possible.

I agree. Even when you're watching them, it still feels like they have legitimate holes. And yet, collectively, they've figured out how to cover up for a lot of them. I still feel like the right point guard can just get whatever shot they want. Then some of the bench guys that just don't trust at all, but it works. Everybody... It's like JJ said this a couple of weeks ago, that the biggest lesson he learned as coach during the season was it's all about whether you guys play hard. It's the most simple point ever. It wouldn't be an interesting mind the game episode. But I think this is the recurring theme for the best teams in the league. All of them give a shit game to game, quarter to quarter, half to half. The Lakers, to their credit, it's impressive. Then you look at Philly on the flip side of that, where how many times did you watch a Philly quarter where you're like, This is the worst thing I've ever seen. What's happening? How are How are you allowing this? Same for the Phoenix Suns, where they're just like, Yeah, just going to go in the corner.

If I'm not getting the ball, I might not run back.

The crazy thing about the Suns group is, normally you could to lack rotational consistency last year, and yet they still hadn't... You look at last year's season and you thought last year was a disappointment because you just go, imagine if they had all three guys.

They don't have this. They went 48?

They were the sixth seed, weren't they?

They were like 47 7: 48 wins.

You have this quirky clutch stat that doesn't even make any sense of how bad they were offensively. You're just like, Well, there's no way that will happen again. Then when I was looking at it for my show, you look at the three dudes, and you're getting this elite shot making this incredible output. It's almost like 80 points per game, I think, in February when I did the numbers for those guys. Then it's like, yeah, but everything else doesn't work. I know Ball Bulls had a really nice run here. But let me actually Laker Minute, rotation you. Scattering report. If he has a clean look on the catching three, he's probably going to reset himself and move. All right.

Long. I would add that. Put long for Ball Bull. Long.

Long length. Long length. Which is one of my favorite things I've ever seen. Because Be careful.

Be careful attacking them long.

In November, the Lakers were 25th on defense. They were 8 and 6 that month. They were 25th on defense, right? It felt worse. Yeah. You're looking at it going out. Probably going to be their thing. They're just not going to be very good defensively. Why would that be? Well, D'Angelo Russell for that month, 26 minutes a game. Kam Redish, 21 minutes a game. Dolan Connect is making threes, but he's playing 26 minutes per game. You look at where they're at now in their last 10, and then if I give you their number two defense in the NBA behind your Detroit Pistons, who are just their own story.

They're like fourth in the last 20, I think, too. It's getting better. Every 10-game stretch is better than the last 10-game stretch.

When you shoot it well and you play defense, you're going to win a bunch of games. The February minutes, look at the breakdown. You're replacing DeAngelo Russell, 26 minutes a game, depending on the month. Again, I'm just using November. In February, Doreen Finney-Smith, 30 minutes a game. Vando, who just hacks the shit out of everybody, but he's in there for 15 minutes, fighting his ass off. Dalton's only playing 13 minutes a game. He's also not shooting great in February. Then Jordan Goodwin comes in and wreaks havoc on everybody. Lebron's had the second or tied for second best defensive rating of any of the main regulars.

Right. You get two-way LeBron back as part of all this because he was one-way LeBron for two months.

That's the point.

Yeah. He's been really good. The Philly thing, I don't know what the answer is.

Did you look at the lottery odds?

The thing is, they're probably going to be sixth, and all it takes is one team to jump them. It's this incredible lottery thing because if they don't keep the top six, one team jumps them and they fall back to seven. Then OKC gets that pick and OKC is what? It could be like a 64-win team, probably going to be in the finals. They're going to get the seventh pick, eighth pick in this awesome draft that I've been dabbling in a little bit. I'm starting I'm going to get some draft opinions. We don't have to do that today, but this looks like if you're in the top five in this draft, you're getting somebody that is going to be legitimately exciting. If you got Edgecombe with the fifth pick, it's like that guy might be awesome. He might be an all-MBA wing in seven years. I don't know. This draft just seems stacked, especially compared to this rookie class we just had. Anyway, the Philly thing, wow. The Eagles one, and I think the Philly fans are still riding a high, but it's hard to imagine a bleaker situation unless you're the Suns, because I think that one's slightly bleaker.

There's really only the we got to trade Booker move, and it just seems like they're adamant, they're not going to trade him. I just don't think they're going to get a lot for Durant. Last year of his deal making 50 plus million. I don't know what you're getting for him. You're 19 in the league. Clearly not exactly the same as where he was seven years ago. What What are you getting for him? Not that much.

Do you want to do some reckless speculation?

Washington would be the most fun for me or San Antonio would be my reckless speculation. What do you have, something better?

I just wonder if there's a playoff exit from Houston that motivates them to go, Okay, look, we have- A one-timer? Houston has done a really good job here. I don't know who I'm picking them against in the playouts. Again, we could sit We're not going to go through all the seating stuff, but I feel like we just be changing it every couple of days. I wonder if there's a Houston exit where they went, You know what? We can't pay all these guys. We don't even have minutes for all of these guys that we've hit on. It does feel like... You talk about the two timeline thing that is just hard. It's really hard to thread that needle. You go, is the two timeline, Brooks Vanvleet with the young guys, or is the two timeline Jalen Green and Shingun with a men Thompson emerging? Is there any version where Green and Shingun are totally fine realizing that Thompson might be the best player?

Or is there a Booker trade that you just overwhelm them? I know you don't want to trade Devon Booker, but how about this? For Phoenix, it's the only get-out-of-jail free card they have, basically. Did you think the Houston has some Phoenix Picks, too. It's the other piece of that. I just don't think Gishby is going to be like, Okay, cool. Now we're going to tank. We're going to do the process for a couple of years. I think that dude is wired the opposite way, where we can get out of this. If we could just do this. My favorite story of the whole post-trade deadline was that Minnesota was trying to trade for Durant. That was my favorite. I just wanted to know how that trade is possible between Phoenix and Minnesota when they're both well over the second apron. What is the scenario where those two could have made a Kevin Durant trade? It's like, well, if Minnesota had been able to shed some apron stuff, cool. Where were they doing that? Just, hey, can you guys take Randall? Sure. We'll take them. How are they shedding apron? I can't take some of those. Some of the after the fact.

I know where it's coming. Like, Minnesota is like, they leak it to whoever. We're kicking the tires on Durant. We're really trying to, Hey, you can run with this. We're really trying to get him. How? You're not getting Kevin Durant? Who are you trading for him? You can't make a two for one in the APRUM.

I like the Luka, Milwaukee, Minnesota one. There's more reporting on the Minnesota stuff. I love that one. But a couple of times that I had heard was like, Yeah, they called but weren't offering Luca.

Yeah. Milwaukee had no idea he was available. It's great. There's some really good ones. Let's take a break, and then there's one big topic I want to hit with you. This episode is brought to you by Miclobe Ultra, McClub Ultra, a superior light beer in the ultimate trophy. Win or lose, you're bound to enjoy the ride with a good beer in hand. Mclobe Ultra, crisp, refreshing, only 95 calories. A superior light beer. No matter the game, sport or season, superior is worth playing for. Always be prepared for a win. In order, Mc globe Ultra today. Available on DoorDash, by the way. Enjoy responsibly. 2025 inizer Bush, McClub Ultra. Light beer, St. Louis, Missouri. Must be 21 plus to order alcohol. Alcohol available only in select markets. Let me tell you about one of my favorite bets that Fandil has right now. Player performance doubles. Check them out. Two leg parlays made specifically for you. They take an NBA player prop. They combine it with a bet on that player's team to win. There's a bunch of them. Pick the one you like. If it's like, I like Denver tonight. I also think Jokuj is going to have 10 rebounds.

Let me do those together. You can ride their pick or my pick because I'm tweeting mine out on Tuesday or make your own Fandil giving all customers a profit boost exclusively on Tuesdays for these bets. So head to fandil. Com/bs to get your profit boost. Make every moment more with Fandil, America's number one sportsbook. You must be 21 plus in President Select States or 18 plus in President DC. See, opt in required. Bonus issue that is not withdrawable profit boost tokens, restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook. Fandle. Com. Game problem call, 1-800 Gamble, or visit rg-help. Com. All I hate devoting an entire segment to this, but it's been bugging me, and I just feel like we have to talk about it because it became a huge topic on Friday. I always judge this stuff by anecdotally, if people in my life are asking about us, I got, Fuck, we probably have to talk about it. But LeBron started this whole thing with the face of the game and how negatively everybody's covering the league. There was a Gilbert Arena's clip on first take talking about how nice everyone was back in the day to the stars, and now they're I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because I've been here the whole time.

I think I have a really good handle historically of the league and all the ebbs and flows.

Even if I hated you, I would have to admit that you're right. Thank you.

I think this is the nicest era to be an NBA star that we've ever had. It's amazing to me when people dwell on the negativity. There's other reasons for the negativity, but if you go backwards and you look at the '70s and the '80s and '90s and 2000s and how players were treated and discussed, it is no contest compared to right now. That's the first thing, and I have some stuff I want to do, but give me your initial take on that.

I just have a follow-up. Why would you make that claim?

Why would I make that claim?

Why would you say... Because I don't know if I agree with you. I need convincing on this because my whole point is no one's ever had more access to hate, which I've talked about a a lot. I think a lot of these players just consistently think that they're hated all the time. I think anybody that does anything that is publicly consumed- But that's the point.

It's not just the NBA. Everyone has more access to the alternate side of what you want to hear in all vocations in life. It's not an NBA thing. No, I understand. It's an everything thing. To say it's just devoted to the NBA to me is ludicrous. This is just what life is like now.

Sell me on the point of those decades being more negative towards their stars.

Well, so this is the problem with this argument is that if you actually go through it, everybody has gone through the exact same stuff that the guys go through now. So I'm going to do my three-minute first take monolog.

We have time.

1970s, people hated the NBA. The games were tape delayed and people bitched about the league and we're writing crazy pieces about this league doesn't work. There's actually pieces you could read in Sports Illustrated, the league's too black. What are we going to do? It could not have been more negative, I promise you. Dr. J, beloved star, gets to Philadelphia. He's ripped for not winning a title for the first six years until Moses gets there. That's a huge narrative of the Dr. J thing. He can't come through when it matters. Magic Johnson. Westhead gets fired in '81. He's booed at home. He's devastated, destroyed, crushed. Most selfish guy, What's wrong? These are the modern athletes. He went through all that shit, and he's talked about it. He's crushed after the '84 Finals, too. Larry Bird after the '85- That's what the title in his back pocket.

Right.

He already would. Larry Bird had already won, too. In the '85 Finals, there was the bar fight thing everyone was mad at in Boston. But then in the '90s season, when he came back from the heel surgery, took a ton of shit about being selfish. Barkley was basically driven out of Philly by the media. Hakeem almost got traded in '92 because it got so bad with him in Houston. Isaiah just got the reputation as, You're an asshole. You're a backstabber. They left them off the dream team. Michael Jordan, beloved now, too selfish to win for seven years. Up until the '91 Finals, it's like he shoots too much. All he cares about is his own points. He can't win with this guy. Then after he went twice, remember in the '93 Playoffs? It was so negative about the gambling stuff. He stopped talking to everybody. He stopped talking to the media. Then he retired, and people are like, Is he retiring? Because it's too much pressure. Kevin Johnson took a ton of shit, couldn't stay healthy, '94 Finals. Pippin didn't take the shot in the '94 Playoffs. It still carries it 30 years later. David Robinson, too nice, loser.

Well, didn't he come back in?

When they come back in and then wore that for 30 years. Dreamteam, '94. I promise you, was not popular when it happened. People were not happy with it. Shaq, in the entire 1990s, people bitched about, When is he going to take basketball seriously? Why does he do all this other stuff? Why is he doing movies and music? Patrick Ewen could have win the big one. Karl Malone. Who took more shit than Carl Malone in the last two finals he was in? Iverson, which I think has come around and is this beloved figure now. He was not beloved in the '90s, in the early 2000s. He took a ton of shit. Christian Laitner, Bust, Disappointment, All those late '90s guys when we head into that lockout, remember how much people, how mad people were at the league? These guys are making so much money. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Kenny Anderson can't feed his family, all that shit.

There was so much... We've definitely progressed You go all the way back to the strike in the NFL in the early '80s and how much society... There wasn't one person going, You realize you're arguing for the owners to make more money. That's what always pisses me off. It's like, okay, you want to look at these players and look at their salaries and say that they're selfish and they're entitled and all this shit. But ultimately, what you're saying, when you hope they get paid less or lose at the collective bargaining agreement table, you're hoping these owners make more money.

It's like, I can't identify with somebody who's making that much money. That was an attitude through the '90s. I have a couple more. Jason Kidd traded twice, took a ton of shit. Chris Webber.

One of those trades.

Well, one of those trades had to happen. But the Dallas Trade, Chris Webber was an all-time hot potato guy, and we called him out all the time. His Washington career was incredibly disappointing. He got to Sacramento and was like, Watch Ceeweb. He's going to turn completely away from the basket to hear the ball to make Bibi. He wants no part of this. We made fun of him. Kobe, I would say, was the most picked apart athlete in the 2000s. I wouldn't even say football player. You might go Payton Manning, but there was a lot of Kobe stuff that then when he won the two titles at the end of the decade, then they circled around the other way. But it got right. There was the trial. There was a whole bunch of stuff with Kobe. But if you go to the '04 Finals, '05, '06, '07, him not shooting in the second half of that Suns game and how nuts we all went after the fact, not great. T-mac, can't win. Vince, quit on Toronto. He's soft. Kg, can't win. Dirk, he took more shit than Dirk from '06 to 2011? He's soft. He's a choke artist.

He's a loser. I think he took probably, other than Kobe, the most, Dwight Howard. I keep going. The point is, for whatever reason, this has been the league. I think it's because you have these personalities that drive teams. People feel really attached to them. Either they're defensive and passionate about them or they're mad at them. That's just the flow in the league. I honestly think it's better than it's ever been with this stuff. You can find hate anywhere if you go online. Doesn't mean that people hate. Lebron has 50 million Instagram followers.

Yeah. Look, I know enough about those timelines. I just remember when Jordan scored all the points against the Celtics and then lost, and you'd be playing a Little League baseball tournament, and every coach is sitting there in his bike shorts, shitting on Jordan. Now, granted, growing up in New England was the wrong place because all these guys are going home to worship their Larry Bird altar.

But maybe he should add 68.

Yeah, right. The collective... Yeah, cool scoring, bro. But the lack of respect for who Jordan was because he was losing to these older, more superior, battle-tested, well-rounded basketball teams. Jordan would have had a very... People would have destroyed him if he played now through the first seven years of his career without winning anything because it's like, if you're the best, you have that attention on you.

I feel like people destroy them back in the day. I thought that was a big narrative of his career. It's like, yeah, he's super fun, but he's Bird Magic won titles, and he didn't. My point is this has been a narrative that we've heard forever. If you don't win titles and you don't come through in the NBA, you're going to take crap. But I also feel like that goes for the NFL. It goes for baseball with somebody like Clinton Kershaw. This is what we do with sports.

If you don't win the title- We didn't even do it. But here's the thing, we don't even do it with baseball anymore. Because I was thinking about the space of the league stuff.

Yeah, I want to get to that, too.

Right. Like, LeBron, when you are as great as you are, unfortunately, part of that deal is you're held to the standard where everything is dissected. And Ant got a little taste of that because Ant was coming up, approval rating through the roof. He's so much fun. He starts talking a little shit, and then they get eliminated. They got eliminated on May 30th. I looked it up. And then he had the receipts commercial on May 31st. They had that one ready to go where you're showing how much this is impacting players. I know Silver talked about this years ago where he just said, Look, we have a league where our stars, and I'm paraphrasing here, so I hope I'm not too removed from the tone of what he was saying, but I think I have it, that it was like, you have a bunch of guys at the top that are pretty miserable. A lot of players really miss it.

When I did that interview with them at the SONG conference, that's when he started talking about the unhappiness with the players. That was 2018 range. It's been a storyline for seven years. It's like, why aren't our players happier?

Right. So Ant has had probably this shift because the Olympics didn't go the way he thought it would go. I mean, he wasn't even out on the floor for some of that stuff. He didn't look super comfortable after talking a lot of shit. Again, I don't look at it and go like, Oh, man, now I have to reevaluate what I think about you. But Ant is very predictably going to have, if he doesn't have some playoff success here in the next couple of years, it's going to turn back to everything you just said in your timeline of like, Hey, I thought this was supposed to be the guy. You hope you're one of those guys in this sport. Because I was thinking about Ant relationship. Has anybody ever talked about De'Aaron Fox? De'aaron Fox is a really good player. It makes a lot of sense for the Spurs. I think it's a bit like the Donovan Mitchell thing. We're like, Yeah, it's not perfect, but he's really good. If we keep waiting around what this magical acquisition will be, and we might be waiting forever. But De'Aaron Fox has never talked about that. There's this group outside of these, I don't know, seven to eight players we obsess about every single season.

There's this group that's not even part of that. Again, baseball, the sport, we don't even have any of those dudes anymore right now.

We have O'Tani, and nobody's like, Oh, O'Tani, face of the league. I don't know where the face of the league is.

It's more personal. Basketball is just way more personal than the other two sports are. Don't you I think it doesn't feel like the attachment? Sure, we could pick a bunch of quarterbacks that are as big as stars as any NBA players.

You got helmets on during the game. I've said this forever. Basketball is the most naked sport. Whether you're at the game or you're watching TV, you feel like you have this connection with players that's just different than the other sports. It just is, especially if you're going and you're watching them and you're watching them during timeouts, you're watching them interact in balance and during free throws. I think the social media aspect of it where they can connect to fans immediately They can see feedback immediately. Obviously, that's not awesome. But I think in some ways it's better for them, too, because in the old days, you could just... I think of back to the Peter Vesey New York Post pieces of the '80s. He was just absolutely completely eviscerated people.

He called Alonso Morning the Oregon Groner.

It's just a little different now You can mobilize people. You can mobilize all your followers against somebody. The Face of the Week thing, that's another one.

I don't think I've allowed you this space.

Well, because I think it goes- Just go for it. No, I think it goes together. I think with the Face of the Week thing, we probably see it the same way. You don't talk about it. It's not like the People magazine's sexiest man of the year issue where we just nominate somebody. Is that who it was this year? You take it. When you think about... When I was in the '80s, loving basketball, I was never like, I wonder who the face of the league is right now. We didn't talk about it. We didn't talk about it in the '90s. Bird and Magic, because Magic won a title as a rookie and Bird won the title in his second year, the league just shifted to them because they won. Then Bird had the three MVPs, two titles. Then Magic had three MVPs in four years, and he won two titles. It was just obvious those were the guys. And then Jordan beat Magic in the '91 Finals. And guess what? That made him the guy. Then Jordan went through all the '90s, and then it was Shaq and Kobe together. I guess this is their league now.

Then that fell apart. In the mid-2000s, we're like, Duncan, Spurs, sure. Wasn't like, we're like, Tim Duncan's now the face of the league. Because one of the cases you see with this face of the league stuff is like, Oh, if Tatum wins three in a row, he's now the face of the league. I don't think it works that way. It organically happens. Kobe had it the end of the 2000s. Eventually, it shifted to LeBron, and then it shifted to LeBron and Curry together. That's just what happened. We can't nominate Anthony Edwards. This would happen in tennis sometimes, especially in the '80s. It'd be like, Boris Becker, See the face of tennis now because he won Wimbleton once? It's not how it works. You ease into it. Nobody would pick Agassi, and then it eventually became, Oh, it's Agassi and Sampras.

What about a Von Lendel? Did he have the belt? He had the belt there for a little bit.

It never took. It kept falling off him. But the point with the face of the league now is like, yeah, it's still Stephen Curry, and then somebody's going to have to win a couple of titles and take it from them. But if Wemby comes in and wins two straight titles and he's the best player in the league, he's the face of the League. I just don't know what that means, Rosillo. What does the face of the league mean? Just you get the most attention?

I think we know it without defining it. You think Steph's the Face of the League over LeBron?

I think the two of them together are really in the last 10 years. I do. I think it's Why are you two of them together.

I don't know, man. You could point to one of those individuals. Why do we have to pick one? It's really a talking point. I think what happens is there's this cycle of Ant going I don't necessarily want it because then it's like, what are you supposed to do?

Are you supposed to say that- What does he want? He's not going to try to win the finals? If he wins the title and he's the best part in the league, guess what? You get whatever this amorphous made-up of the league thing is because you become the guy.

To me, it's like- Don't you also have to be the best player, though? Because even if Tatum... I mean, that's a lot of work to do, by the way, for Tatum, just, Hey, let's add two more titles to this. As great as he is, he wasn't very good today, which I know we'll get to later. But I don't know that he would ever be the face of the league because I've never thought of him as the best player in the league. At least with Steph, there were seasons where I thought he played better than LeBron. I never thought he was actually a better basketball player than LeBron. To be face of the league, you also have to be at some point Because I know you've done this in the past with your belt. It's just a really good way to look at the league. Who had the belt then? How many belt transfers are we talking about? Jokuj just had the belt for a really long stretch, which is really hard to do.

But there's a popularity piece that Jokuj just doesn't have.

He's just not going to have.

That's why To me, it's Curry and LeBron are the meal tickets to the league. They're the guys who are going to be in the Saturday 8: 30 game the most. They're the guys who are going to sell the most jerseys, have the most interest, and if they're on a good team, people are going to care the most. And it's those two.

What did you think of LeBron's quote?

Because then it turned Which one?

Basically, it was like, I didn't ask for it, and then it pivoted into everybody that covers the league just shits on it, essentially, that we're all too negative.

I mean, I would just have an opinion on his opinion. I don't think it's true, though, because I think when you hit the point where you're the guy in the league or one of the two guys, there's a lot of great stuff that comes with that. You make the most money, you make the most money off the court. You They have the best chance to win. You can convince the most people to come play with you on a buy-out contract. You can put the most pressure on your owners to do whatever you want them to do. You can make them trade everything they have for Anthony Davis. There's real benefits to it. I don't think it's this heavy burden. I think for Ant, it's more a scrutiny thing that he's probably talking about. Hey, if you hit this level, you're going to be picked apart in a way that's just a little different. But that's That could be anybody. That could be Timothée Chalamet right now. That could be whoever you think is the biggest hip hop star right now. It just comes to the territory if you're the best at anything you do. I don't know why that would be a burden.

There's good and bad to everything.

But I do wonder, though, the negativity thing. I'll have pods where I'll think, Are you harping on the same stuff? Yes. But Again, if we're doing a basketball pod and whatever the headline was that week, you're going to stay topical, you're going to play the hits, but there'll be certain players. I'm like, there's just nothing else for you to say anymore. It's established how you feel. There's nothing new.

You're not going to change your mind. The center at some cost is a topic for us. There's nothing else we could say about the Suns this year at this point.

I've liked to rant for such a long time, but this past year plus, and not to bring up the hockey tweet a third time, but you're just like, how could you possibly think that that's a good point? How could you think that it just basically telling everybody, Fuck off, when it's like, Man, you're the one. That's also part of it, too. It's like this league is so different with how powerful the players are that... Did you think you were going to get no criticism signing contracts and then asking out before an extension had either kicked in?

Right. Or how you treated All-Star Weekend, which was the first time the football season ends, the first time basketball is really in the limelight for real is All-Star Weekend, and then everybody treats it like shit. It's like we're supposed to say thanks? What's our role? I've talked to a bunch of people into a All-Star Weekend, and they were all like, it was fucking miserable. It sucked. It was awful.

The timing of it is so bad now.

No blood on your hands for all the good players, like nothing? You don't care?

Yeah. It's like, okay, the window has finally shifted. You are outside of the football shadow. So own this week. It's like, no. Not only are we not to own the week, we're going to embarrass the league. Again, and I don't care about that week. I haven't cared about it for years. I think I've watched the game once in the last 15. This is not new that the players don't necessarily care, but they're not making the most of our opportunities. I think all of us are more negative than we are positive.

I think that the better- But that's just life. I think everybody... I don't think that's a basketball situation. I think that's... What part isn't like that? I'm just saying the internet breeds that.

If you go to- Are you like that to your family?

No, I'm saying you go in the Twitter applies, you go on a Reddit. I remember I went to Goldspurter's class in Austin, and they did all these studies on different things about how to follow basketball. One of the things was about NBA Reddit, just the percentages of positive tweets versus negative tweets. Or not, post. Negative post comments versus positive about the league. If I just told you they did that, what would your response be? What would you think it would be? Probably like- The split? What would the ratio be for you? Just guessing.

I think it's going to be low. I mean, the way you're leading this, I have to pick a massive split on it. So I'll say 80% negative.

No, it wasn't that bad. I prejudiced you with my lead in. But it was like 35, 65 or 30, 70, something like that. But just people are more prone when they're on any forum like that to be negative than positive. You just have to know that going in. I would argue that people at the games are way nicer, way nicer. It's not even close. I would love for people to go in a time machine and go to the Fleet Center in 1996. Just get a feel for what those two hours were like with an angry fan base that didn't like the product and just had the freedom to just yell at everybody. Now I look now, I think it's actually a pretty nice experience. There will be stories about, Oh, there was a hecker who yelled at somebody. They kicked him out. It's like, Fuck it There was 30 of those. I remember going to a Golden State, Sacramento, game when I was visiting my buddies in San Francisco in '98. I had no idea that the Golden State fans hated Chris Webber so much. It was '99. It was that first season. They were just booing him, yelling him.

It was like a two and a half hour Chris Webber roast in the stands. Anything he did, they were going nuts. Those days are over. We don't see... Durant and OKC, that comeback game was probably the last time anything like that happened, right?

Yeah, Getting a fan removed. And then it becomes... Because the player has the power to have that happen now, it'll become a topic. Then if it's a really slow day, you'll discuss what does this mean. I think there's some players that actually look for it a little bit more than other players. You realize this thing that is definitely an improvement to the experience for the player, a massive improvement, because you're completely right about that. Going some of these crowds, going to baseball stadiums, going back to Foxborough in the day. I mean, just you wouldn't even want to bring a kid.

Well, baseball, everyone's on their phone, so that's probably the safest place you can be an athlete. People aren't even looking up unless a foul of boss coming at them, which can't happen because there's a net.

The bleachers used to be about how drunk were you going to get and how many fights were they going to be.

What could you yell at the other players and stay in the park?

Right. Then when a player has a fan removed, then it becomes this think piece of the dynamic of respect and all these different things. What can you have happen? You're like, Yeah, but no one was ever removed in the past. It actually happened at a much greater rate.

We're not defending the past. It just didn't It's just the way it was. I just think every year is a little bit different. Listen, if players feel a certain way, I'm certainly going to tell them not to feel that way. I do think a big piece of this is self-inflicted, though, by the league. The schedule is too long. If we had a 70-game season or a 60-game season, I don't have to watch these extra 20 games of the Suns. There's more urgency for the games. The load management stuff, which we've talked about ad nauseam, that made it hard for fans to connect with the league and players.

The players call way too much shit for that, though.

But I think it made it hard. It was something that got brought up. I do think it mattered to fans that they bought a ticket and the guy wasn't there.

That's a real thing. Absolutely. I'm not saying that's going to be the worst experience, especially if you don't have the budget to go to more than one game a year. Then you bring your kid and he's all fired up. He's got the jersey on and they're not playing. I think there were certain teams. I really think what the Spurs did in a very Belichick way to just be like, Hey, you know what? Tnt Thursday night. Remember the ABC game, how bad it got there for a while, where you were like, Are you guys seriously giving the league and your television partner this much of a fuck you? Just, Hey, we're just going to sit everybody. I understand what the science... And by the way, the science has proven very little because it's not like we go to the play. Every playoff story is littered with two or three major injuries. So I'm not sure. I'm not expecting that everybody was just going to be healthy all the time. But I don't know if that's had the positive impact that everybody thought it would be when they wrote about it for nonstop for years, wrote about it nonstop for years.

But that's part of it. I don't know, man. I guess sometimes I wonder, clearly with this pod, we've got a large audience. Sometimes I feel like I'm too negative. And instead of having LeBron give this quote or some of it, look, with his quotes, I don't love all of them, all right? But he's been giving us quotes for over two plus decades. So which public figure would I ever be like, You know what? Everything he said for 20 plus years, I've liked everything he said. That person doesn't exist. It's impossible to have the Chalamet approval rating after the two decade plus run for LeBron. But when I started thinking about just him saying everyone is too negative. Well, no, that's not the case. But then I'll know, of all the games that I watch, especially when it's on the national broadcast and like, Bronnie comes into a game and then the broadcasters start talking about how hard he works. They're like, dude, he's got an NBA uniform on and he's not good and he shouldn't be out there, and this whole thing is a joke. So let's evaluate it that way. But there will be no...

That won't happen. So it actually strengthens your point whenever those broadcast... That's when I feel like, am I being negative or am I being just a basketball fan that's frustrated with the way that the national broadcast is discussing a game or discussing certain players when you just go, Hey, this person, and again, maybe I shouldn't even use Bronnie, but that was just one that jumped out. It's like, You guys are going to do four minutes on the positives here?

Or Philly before the start of the season when there was pieces about, Here's their plan to win a championship. And it was It's like, Hey, part of the plan is that Embiid is not going to play back to back soon more. But here's what they're trying to do. They're trying to be healthy, but Embiid is not going to play back to back anymore. His name might be fucked up. I don't know.

It's just- Are we supposed to be positive about Embiid? Are we supposed to be positive?

For the Philly situation or all of it. I just feel for us, one of the reasons I think we connected and became friends and we liked doing the pot together is we really love basketball. Both of us will be these random games on stupid nights, and we really give a shit about it. You can't just talk about all the stuff you like. You got to have a little balance both ways. But I think we celebrate the game as much we criticize it. There's other shows and personalities that I think dine in the, this gets me attention if I do this. I don't feel like we do that. I always feel like we're having a conversation about things we like and don't like about the league. I love watching Detroit right now. I could do 10 minutes on Ron Holland right now. I fucking love Ron Holland. Ron Holland, I haven't even watched. I probably watch 15% of the Pistons games or pieces 20%. Ron Holland seems like he's ready to get into it with everybody on every team. He's like 19 years old. I really like watching them. I appreciate the Pistons. I'm excited to watch them play the Knicks in round one.

I think if you lose that side of things, it becomes harder for me to take your criticisms seriously. You still have to fundamentally like what you're watching. I don't feel like some people out there do.

I just like calling out the bullshit because I think there's a lot of it, whether it's a Another media member's quote, because then there's some guys that are just only positive. I think, are you just this much of an ass kisser? Do you think you're going to hang out with these guys? Is he going to The next time they rent a boat, they're going to invite you? What the fuck are you doing? I know I'd never be that guy, but your point about Philly or even the Durant part. I think I've... I mean, I didn't even really get on his case during the Golden State thing because I thought he wanted to get away from Westbrook and he wanted to play perfect basketball. Back to the joy topic, he wanted to experience absolute pure basketball joy. But when you have a four-year extension and you want Marks and Nash and everybody fired before it even kicks in, and then you come back and play, and then you ask out, and now you've put together a season, I would say more so this year than last year. They got killed against Minnesota. That's when the Suns died, and I was dumb enough to think that they weren't dead yet.

They were already dead, but they just had another season in this season. What does Durant expect? Did he expect that people were going to be like, Man, he's still getting you 29, 30 every single night. Because if you look at the little stuff in between that doesn't always show it, this is not a locked-in group. This is a group that seems to be really down on each other. I thought the Coach Bud stuff admitting that he had told Booker to tone it down, I just wondered. I was like, Man, I wonder if that'll be something I'm going to book it.

I thought he was going to get fired this weekend. I really did. I thought that was going to be like a Don Nelson next thing. All right, let's take a quick break because I want to keep talking about this. One last thing on whether people are too critical or not. I can't believe we spent this much time talking about, but I do think it's interesting. It seems like the rise of the X player podcast and voices has contributed to this whole when everybody's like, We spent too much time comparing the past to the present. I think the social media piece of that, too, where you see all these videos and these breakdowns of this guy against this guy. I just really hope that people realize, and I like some of the X stuff, how unreliable they are as narrators. These are people that were playing the entire time. They might have opinions based on who they're against. It's not like they spend a ton of time thinking about different eras of the league and stars and comparing. You'll just see stuff on these shows or pods or on your social feed where you're like, What are we doing?

I just feel like the discourse, big picture about basketball as it relates to eras in the past is the worst it's ever been. I don't think that's helping with some of this stuff.

You really disagreed with Arenas' point. I think that's fair to say.

That was just one example where I'm just like, Just go back. Go read some of the books. Go read Phil Jackson's book about Kobe in 2005. You can't just pretend stuff didn't happen.

It's just the rate, man. It's the rate of it. I do not understand. I couldn't believe the first time a coach told me, he's like, Yeah, a lot of players come in and check their mentions at halftime. You didn't know that? I'm thinking, What a ridiculous. But then I thought, Okay, well, every single ESPN host, as soon as you go to break, does the exact same thing.

I could never believe that. What a terrible thing to do during a break at a show. Right, because then what happens? Maybe somebody will say, I look ugly.

Hey, I'm guilty of it. I used to do it, and then I stopped because I realized you were coming back from break, talking to one person instead of...

You're arguing with Motorcycle69.

Every single guy did it. Every one of us. It made all of us worst hosts because you were distracted. You were talking to this one person. You were focusing on the one negative because nobody was going to be like, Hey, you know what? Really good job making a point and a really solid conclusion. No notes, can't pick holes. Because I mean, everybody's favorite hobby now Even if I do a monolog on something for 10, 15 minutes, usually 15 means it's too long. It's like, Oh, did you think about this? Like, Well, I could have done 30 minutes. He left out.

Yeah, he left out this thing.

That is everyone's favorite hobby right now, at least for what we do, is that, Well, here's the point that you didn't make. And then a lot of times it'll be so obvious. It's like, well, I didn't even point that out because I don't even know why anybody would even bring it up. And what we do isn't even fucking cool. So when I think about players basically doing the exact same thing, elected officials do the exact same thing. I remember I got it with Van Pelt. I was like, why are you arguing with somebody right now? You're broadcasting the fucking masters. You are broadcasting the... You're on the seventh hole. I realized no one can help themselves to different degrees. What I like about our age group is that we know what it was like before this, and we certainly are in it deep now for years and years. We've experienced both of it. Imagine being a 20-something basketball player. You're always going to be more impacted by the negativity, the access to it, the rate of it. I think it just fucks a lot of guys up. So it's hard to tell players you're wrong about the negativity when it's all they've ever experienced.

They're not going to do what you did because they weren't around when you did it. They're not going to go back and read Sports Illustrated articles from the '70s and go, You know what? I have greater perspective on this. I don't have it too bad right now. I don't think anything LeBron said was necessarily wrong.

I was talking about the X players.

Yeah. The X player thing, it depends on the generation.

Although there has been some good content lately. Did you see That's the Vernon, Maxwell on all the smoke talking about when Hakeem slapped him? That was one of the best three minutes I've spent all year.

That was so good. That clip was so good with those guys because Max respects them. Look, that was a wild card. That was amazing. And Steven Jackson, I think people would say is a real one. I'm totally with you. I mean, look, if you want to talk ex-players, I don't know if I trust anybody more than Jeff Teague right now.

Jeff Tee has been great.

Every Jeff Tee breakout is incredible.

I love Barnes and Captain Jack because I think when they talk about basketball in history and how it relates now, I actually believe in their opinions on it. I've had them on the pod and we were arguing about Kobe versus Duncan, who was the guy in the 2000s. They both had to have it on Kobe, right? No, they both were Kobe.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah.

But they made compelling cases for it. It's like, that's what's fun about basketball is arguing about different things. The first time I ever remember even thinking about who the face of the league was, was when MJ was retiring and we were like, What do we do now? And then it was like, Is it Grant Hill? It went on for years.

It went on for years.

Is it Iverson? But it was more like there was such a void. Nfl has never really had to deal with it because they always have two or three quarterbacks who are just there ready to roll. Like, braided and Manning had it forever. Then Aaron Rodgers was just right there, and then he moves in. Then all of a sudden, Mahomes showed up, and he's there, and Joe Burrow And they always have two or three dudes. Josh Allen's in there now, Lamar. Maybe a couple of other guys will pop in over the next couple of years, but they always have the 4-5. The NBA, there will be stretches. We felt it in the mid-2000s. It was like, What do we do? Kobe's on shitty teams. We thought it was going to be him. Shaq's getting old. Duncan's not clicking with people. Is it Dwyane Wade? Oh, Dwyane Wade, 06 Finals. Maybe it's Dwyane Wade. And it was just a lot of that for Basically, all the way through until we ended up with LeBron and Kobe as the guys. But I just think it's way more organic than us deciding. It can be the face of the league if he kicks everybody's ass and wins the title and is clearly the best guy in the league.

That's how it happens. There's no other scenario. Then he's selling shoes and people talk about him and people like my mom know who he is. Those are all the checkpoints you have to hit. Yeah.

It doesn't happen without the-We don't decide. No. There was that push to try to figure out who the post-Jorgan guy was, and that void did go on forever. It was the Kobe All-Star game where it just was going to be too early for Kobe to take that on after some of these other misses. I Jefferson didn't have the play of success other than the finals run, but the team just wasn't good enough for this to be like, Oh, this is phase one of this sustainable thing with the Sixers. It was just this remarkable defensive run with an offense built around one guy just Just hopefully going crazy enough to get you some playoff wins. I think the lesson in that is that that face storyline never developed. That person did not present themselves. Whatever that void was, it didn't mean the league was just going to swallow itself up and cease to exist. We can get in some of the rating stuff, the popularity, whatever.

There's one piece, though. It's different. There's a personality piece that I feel like you know it when you see it, that's probably not going to work as the lead guy. I think Grant Hill was a good example. Grant Hill was awesome. But I never felt like there was a sense of almost danger missing with him. Then Duncan was the same thing. Duncan was the best guy. I still have Duncan sixth or seventh all time. I think I have him all time. I still think he was the best guy of the 2000s. Yet there was never a moment where people were like, Duncan. They ignored a lot of the stuff that he did. They focused on the wrong things, and he just didn't care. I think Tatum is a little bit that now, where Tatum is never going to be the best guy in the league, I don't think. But he could be the most successful guy of this decade. He could be the guy when we leave the 2020s, the guy that was the best guy in the most title games, but he doesn't have that sense of that whiff of something, that same thing with Duncan and Grant Hill, where it's just you have to pull in everybody, and there's something about Tatum that seems like it doesn't click with people.

I don't know what it is.

I thought during the broadcast today that was really interesting because it then turned to another face of the lead conversation, and Doris was talking about Tatum and essentially saying, If you're that person, then you shouldn't even have to address it. I love that Breen was like, Okay, but he was asked about it. While there was also a game where there was an ad that started with Tatum in a press conference the commercial where the reporter, again, it's an actress, going, You're on top of the basketball world right now, and you're like, Okay, he's got the title, and he's the best player on a title team. And I think you're rounding up a bit on what's possible for him because I know we're going to get to Cleveland and all this other stuff. But I like that Breen was like, Okay, but of all the superstars, this guy is incredibly polite, and he also plays every single game. So, yeah, I think there's a personality thing. It plays hard. Yeah, there's a personality disconnect. Iverson was the coolest thing ever, all right? Yeah.

It was the coolest- But was really polarizing when he was playing. I think people like you and I were probably in the minority of like, I fucking love Iverson. I love a hardy place. But there was other people that were like, eh.

Yeah, but he lost me a bit there towards the end of the Philly stuff because it's just- Mid 2000s on were not awesome. Yeah. There's an approach to... If If you're setting the tone as the best player in a team, and then you're taking off and doing your own thing all the time, it just can't be bothered. I don't know how that's good for the team, and I don't know how that's good for yourself. So once we had access to a little bit more of that stuff, I think that's also something else, too, is like, Guys used to be able to hide. Guys would be able to hide. We didn't know what was going on with them. We know what's going on with these guys literally every single fucking minute. The relationship is so much more intimate, and when it is that more intimate, then you're much more likely to find things that you don't like about some of these dudes. But as far as like- But is that everything, though?

It's not just the NBA. Yeah, of course it is. I feel like that every aspect of life is like that now.

Think about how many people impressed you in the first five minutes and then ultimately let you down. If you think about your professional career, the number of people that once you had more exposure to them, I mean, I know that's the case for me, so I don't want to speak for you, but then you were like, Oh, man, I had high hopes for this person. That's why now, seriously, if somebody nails it with me in the first 5 to 10 minutes, I'm I'm more worried.

You're suspicious. Yeah.

I'm like, You were so good in the first 5 to 10 minutes. I thought, Now I'm like, What's wrong with this person?

Well, the cult concept of celebrity and how fast people can get it and then how fast they can lose it. I feel like that process has definitely been sped up. I say it with my daughter. I'm always asking her, What are you watching? Who do you care about? What's your favorite podcast? What's your favorite video podcast? It always seems to change.

What is her favorite podcast?

Every I think it was the canceled podcast, but I think now they had some shit. What's interesting is it's like the same cycle over and over again where she really likes somebody and then be like, Why don't you listen to that podcast anymore? Oh, they had a meltdown. Oh, one of the co-host got canceled. Oh, they ended up turning on each other. The internet just hypercharges all of these rises and falls with all these different social media characters. It's hard to keep up with. Basketball, you have the same rise and fall stuff, but the guys are making $50 million a year. It's like Kevin Durant is on the top of the world in 2018, and then he's down, and then he's up, and then he's down. Then he goes to Phoenix. It's going to be great. Now he's down. Oh, my God, they're trading him. Now he's going to maybe He gets traded at San Antonio in July. It's like, oh, Kevin Durant can teach Wembeñama how to win. And it's just like a fucking roller coaster. And maybe that's what LeBron was talking about, that the scrutiny and the roller coaster ride of all this is really hard.

And if you're the I'm sure it's a bigger roller coaster.

I can't imagine, though, not wanting to be the face. How could you be a pro athlete?

Well, that's where it gets. That's where it's hard to take it seriously, where it's like, so you didn't want this the whole time when you're doing Nike ads in 2003. You did a special to change teams. So you weren't excited for this?

I was not surprised by that part of the quote, but whatever. I like that he's candid, though.

He has such a big platform now now. When he talks about stuff candidly, it really does have reactions that last 2-3 days sometimes. He does make people think. I think that the mind the game pod about some of the dialog about that, about we had to do this pod to save basketball discourse. I take stuff like that probably a little bit personally because he's basically... I don't know. Going back to Grantland and the Ringer, we've tried to elevate discussion on pods and writing and all this stuff. I think a lot of people have. When somebody's saying how things elevated, you're like, Well, we're trying.

I know that I care a lot about what we talk about on this, what I've talked about on my pods and the shows in the past. I really care about putting a lot of thought into what my opinions were going to be. And yet I always knew like, Oh, you don't... Do you know what the help rules are? Do you know what all the terminology is?

Second April?

Yeah. Well, no, that stuff. I used to really... And then I realized it's like, you're spending way too much time on this. I would study the CBA pretty religiously because I wanted to have it down. I used to have it down. Now I'm like, I think I'll be okay.

Remember we did that one podcast right after they changed the CBA and both of us were so freaked out and we were doing... It was like we were trying to take a boat and cross the Pacific Ocean. But then there's this other... We were so nervous. We didn't understand it.

Yeah, because I felt like there's always the unintended consequences thing that is just hard to factor in. I was thinking about this the other day, the time out for three minutes to go where you lose the time out because it was like, Hey, here's Silver in the competition committee. I don't even know if that's what they call it. It's what the NFL us, but they decided, Yeah, there's too many timeouts at the end of games. Let's take a time out away from them. Okay, what's happening? No kidding. Everybody just calls it now. You could come out of commercial break, one possession of the other team looks up and goes, Oh, we're going to lose this time out anyway. So Well, let's make sure we take it now. We're not getting any time back because the unintended consequence was that you ended up with coaches going, I'll take it before I lose it. Now my solution would be just give them one less time out, and then you'll be fine, and back to the original plan. Anyway, the reason I use that as an example is that whenever you're on the fly trying to read a CBA and the highlights from the whole thing, we were going, this feels like a hard cap.

I was almost scared a little bit to go, is it a Is this going to be a hard cap? But yeah, back to the original thing. Look, man, I do put a lot of thought into this. I always wondered if I could get to an age where I'd be like, you think at this age, you'll just go like, Fuck it. I watch the fourth quarter. I'm good. I haven't read anything.

There's definitely ways to cheat.

Yeah, right. Then I think about the guys that played, and I think about the coaches and a lot of the people that work in our industry, whether it's not a perfect parallel to it. But there's so many players that I'll listen to and go, Okay, wait, you have a problem with me and I didn't play? Have you heard your shit? Have you heard how dumb all your arguments? There's one person in particular that I'm thinking of right now. If I really wanted to do a 10-minute monolog destroying this person's takes and how fucked they are, and I don't know what the motives are behind them, but I could. But I really don't want to get in a fight with anybody about that stuff. But it almost brings me back. It's like being a screenwriter where you get really discouraged and then you're like, Holy shit, they green-lit that. Let's open up the laptop.

I don't know if we have the answer. My point is, I think the NBA has always had more than a twinge of negativity to it. I think it has to do with the personalities and the experience of going to games and having those guys right in front of you and the fact that there's a connection that's just different. Baseball used to have it. I think the net has really hurt. I know why they have it. I get all the reasons, but the net is just tough.

You think the net has ruined baseball?

I don't say it has ruined baseball. I think it's tough. I think it's tough.

I don't even notice it.

Really? Yeah. Oh, man. I used to love the energy of this might be the pitch where a foul ball comes over here.

Oh, you like being on your toes.

Loved it. Nobody's on their toes anymore in baseball.

Middle linebacker Bill.

I had no idea. People are just crossing the highway, not worried about getting hit by a car when they go to a baseball game now. You just be on your phone for 20 minutes. You feel the energy around it. It's definitely different. Let's take one more break, and then we got to talk about the Celtics weekend. I'm going to give you biggest red flags for every contender. Just quickly, you tell me if you agree. I didn't prep you for this. Cleveland, lack of playoff experience, I would Diego, which just jumps to your head immediately.

That's the only thing. I love them. I absolutely love them.

Save that because I want to come back. Boston, hunger, health, and mileage would be my three. Just the mileage on the guys from the 100-game season last year, the fact that they won last year, a team like Cleveland is just going to be a whiff hunger, and the health of Porzingas and Drew, I think, would be the three things that worried me.

The only thing I would say, and it's not fair, and it's probably because I watch them too much, but I think they get almost too hunt-happy.

Everything's happening 40 feet from the basket. Oh, we got this.

I get it. Expose the weakness, find the bad match You have these two incredible on-ball wings. You have a third guy, Derek White, who can do some of that stuff, too. When it is clicking on offense, the offensive numbers are outrageous or terrific. So who am I to sit here and criticize any of this stuff? I criticized some of it last year. It did not matter. But they can get so hunt happy that I wonder in the way basketball is connected, that if other players are just watching somebody hunt the entire time, at least they take turns with it. Some teams will just have their main ball handler hunt the entire time. It's a minor thing that I notice, but I'm probably too critical of it because there's no offensive number that tells you, Oh, yeah. Like, Uh-oh.

I like the term hunt happy. Congratulations on that. I agree with you, by the I wish they would just run plays every once in a while to mix it up. Just every once in a while, just put Tatum at the foul line and give him a Dirk Nowitzky post-up, just so it's not the same thing over and over again where we're just hunting guys, hunting guys, hunting guys. Because I do think the defenses can get in the rhythm of knowing it's coming and figuring out tricks. Denver, and we'll talk about that game in a second, but they just have no room for error at all. If they're not making threes, it gets tough. If anyone If Gordon's out or Murray's hurt or even Brown's hurt, it gets super tough for them. If Westbrook just sucks, it's almost like they can't fight it. I think they could win three straight rounds. I think they could go four and three in three straight playoff series or four and two. But it's not going to be a team that's like, ripping through the playoff. There's just too many ways it seems like it go wrong game to game would be my red flag.

They have lineups that they run out there where, and maybe it's a regular season thing. Look, no Aaron Gordon today, who's their best defensive player and has been shooting it well from three, but he's still somebody that I think teams are going to test. It's not entirely fair because Gordon has missed a couple of games here, but they had a lineup where it was Michael Porter Jr. Surrounded by Westbrook-Brown, who was great today. But I mean, what was his shot total? If you go into a game- He took 22. He took 22 shots. If you're sitting there prepping out what you want to do against Denver, you're like, Hey, if Christian Brown takes 22 shots, it's probably a win for us today, right? It's Michael Porter Jr. Who I think is... If you dig into his advanced stuff, he's not the same guy that he was the first couple of years on the scene even though defensively, he was such a disaster then. The Malone didn't really even trust him. I wouldn't say he's a plus, but I think he's a total coin toss guy. If he had 21 or he had three, I wouldn't be surprised.

I also think he plays a little soft. But back to this lineup, So it's Porter Jr, Westbrook, Brown, DeAndre Jordan, and Strather. When you're looking at some of the three-point shooting against these guys, Westbrook is going to be open. And when he hit his first three, I thought that was a bad sign for Denver with this stuff. You can also see Westbrook decide he's not comfortable shooting. You can also see Westbrook. It's great that he's probably understood his role better here than a lot of the other places as he's trying to become a role player. I'd say, what? This is stop three as a role player because Washington, he still was clearly the guy. You'll see him be in a hurry to force it back to Jelkich, which is showing him being deferential in a way that we weren't used to with so many of the prime Westbrook years. But I think you can also mess them up a little bit. So whether it was the Lakers matchup or the Boston matchup today, again, without Gordon, isn't entirely fair. I know you weren't expecting this long, so I'm not going to go this long on the other ones.

But I've talked about it being four teams because of the respect for Jokić, and Denver was fourth in the fan dual title odds. It's those three in Denver's and a sliver tier by themselves because I just don't think they're as good as Oklahoma City, Cleveland, or Boston. I don't see how they are going to be as good as those three teams.

I have them fourth as well, but I also feel the Jokage piece when we get to a playoff where they just are playing the same team for two straight weeks. I think that's good for them.

Do you see the spacing stuff?

I know. Well, the thing that's alarming, the open threes today, how many just wide open threes they took compared to... Did they even shoot 40%?

They were two for 11 on their first 11 wide open threes.

Yeah, that's what would scare me if on them.

On the game, they got it back to 34%, but they're last in the NBA in points from the three. So their percentage of points, however many they score a game, they have the last or the lowest total of points via the three-pointer of anyone. And so then they come to a game like today. That was going to be really weird if Boston had blown this because approach-wise, Hey, here's the plan. Here's what we want to have happen. It's exactly what you would hope to do to Denver. Like, Yeah, great.

And if I'm Denver, I feel great. It was a one possession game. I didn't have Gordon, who's my third most important guy. If I'm Denver, and I know I can be in crunch time in the playoffs with Jokaj and Porter and Gordon and Murray and Brown, I still feel really good about where I'm at. If I could just get in the fourth quarters with those five guys, not get crushed on those Jokaj minutes. But even somebody like Tori Craig feels like they could have helped them. I like this, I'll think, sneaking out the Tori Craig move. Denver doesn't have enough guys I trust. Okc, red flag, just the second score, lack of experience thing. Just ultimately, if they're down four on the road in a really big playoff game and a team is just swarming Shay and double teaming them, who's stepping up? I just want to see it. I'm not I'm not down on it, but we just haven't seen it. It's very similar to the Celtics last year. Just want to see what happens with that.

It'll be interesting if Shay gets his points, Jalen Williams gets his points. Chet, as you'd expect, taking a little time. I thought he was so great in that Brooklyn game when they gave up what? 76 points to the nets of all teams with this defense, this historic differential defense based on the league averages. But it might just be does Isiah Joe, Dore, Caruso, Aaron Wiggins. I've joked him being one of my favorite players, but as far as a role guy and stepping up and then what he did in February. Every time I watch a Thunder game, I'm always like, man, there's Aaron Wiggens.

Do you want to do favorite bench guys right now? Want to do a team? Because my favorite bench guy is Ty Jerome, just hands down. Ty Jerome comes in and the score changes immediately. He does nine things. I love Ty Jerome. I genuinely think he's going to make $60 million this summer. I'm predicting that now.

I, too, am fond of Ty Jerome. We have him on the pod coming this week, by the way.

Oh, nice. I'm a huge... Joining on Thursday. Great. I'm a huge fan. I love when he comes in. It's exactly... He's like the most pure bench guy in the league. Comes in, he's going to play his 8, 9 minutes, however long it is. He's going to affect the game. He's going to make a shot. He's going to have energy. Then that Friday night, it's at the game. I was like, Fuck, I hope they don't close with Ty Jerome because Ty Jerome is a problem. By the way- Wiggins is up there for me as a favorite bench guy, too.

There was a moment when Ty Jerome was playing and trying to figure out where his basketball life was going to go. Van Gundee was on the broadcast, and this is when I knew. Again, anybody that watched him in college, he's very different in that the play is open. There are options open on his plays that are longer, if that makes sense. It's almost like a quarterback watching routes develop, and he finds a way to give the receivers the extra beat to do whatever they need to do so that you're still defending more shit than you want to defend with Jerome. And that's why he screws up so many of these defenses because you're like, there's no way this is going to work. And it's a lot of that Nash wrong foot thing, or it's the takeoff to pass where guys started, remember, almost running out of the way of Nash's drives. It actually opened up things for Nash because people were closing out and so freaked about his passing skills. Jerome has these runners where everything is wrong, and then you don't really know what's supposed to happen. Anyway, Van Gunney was on a broadcast, and it was almost like your grandfather watching Christina Hendrix on an episode of Mad Men for the first time.

Just this erotic, slightly... The way Van Gundi talked about Ty Jerome's game, it was like, he needed a breath. He needed a moment. It makes all the sense of the world. Cleveland, when they came back, what was really interesting about their game, they went to 10 guys, I think 14 minutes into the game. They were at 10 guys, The Friday night game you're talking about. Right. Depending. Maybe you take a Coral off the table, shot selection, some of that stuff. Let's say nine. Nine of the guys for Cleveland now are really good.

Yeah. Ty Jerome, Wiggins. I'm trying to think who else are my favorites. I still enjoy Quentin Grimes. I wish he was on a good team. A bunch of the Detroit guys.

They play a million dudes. They're playing 11 guys.

Detroit brings their guys in, and they're all playing really hard, and they're ready to rough people up and get in fights. Red flag.

Set the tone.

Lakers is easy, rim protection and defending the other team's point guard if it's somebody who can get to the rim, I think it's going to be a problem for them that they could figure it out. Then Golden State, turnovers and ball handling. They still have the dumbest turnovers. It doesn't matter who's on the team. They're just going to have dumb turnovers. They're going to have really bad turnovers in crunch time. I think it's aging Steve Kerr and like dog ears watching. I think it drives them nuts.

Even when they were arguably the greatest team we've ever seen, they turned the ball over.

It's the fatal flaw for Steph.

They played better defense than everybody, too, on top of being unguardable.

And then the last red flag, Memphis. I know you want to do some Memphis stuff really quick, and then we'll circle back to the Friday, Sunday Celts games if there's anything left. But the jaw not being able to make outside shots doesn't seem like it, and how everything is so dependent on him just getting to the rim. I just feel like it's going to be easy to stop in a playoff series, and it, for me, lowers their ceiling.

I've watched him a lot the last, I don't know, 10 plus days. I watched the Clippers loss. I watched the Phoenix win. I watched the Phoenix win in overtime. The Knicks lost, which could have gone either way, and they lose to San Antonio, but Ja didn't play last night, right? I don't think Ja or Bane played. That's right. Yeah, because Bane was in a sick, sick hoodie. I want to be fair about Memphis because I think that the most dismissive thing you could say is, Hey, they've never done shit, because I hear it a lot. If I talk to teams, Hey, who do you like? Who do you not like? What would you think about this matchup? Whatever. There's a lot of never done shit about a million different teams because you know what it's really hard to do? Win. It's hard to actually do shit. I don't even know how Windhorse... Again, it's not a criticism of Windhorse, but I was a little shocked at how often he was talking about how disrespected the Thunder were. Whereas once they get into the playoffs, that a lot of this stuff isn't going to work. That one I don't quite understand.

I don't think it's even fair to judge the Thunder as some finished product.

Did he say that about this season's Thunder?

He said about... I mean, do I have to bring up the quote? Because I brought it up with Slater. I was just surprised. I brought it up with Slater this week where he was basically saying, again, it's not like he's polling the entire league, but it's like a player thing. There's just players that look at the Thunder, look at their regular season success. Now, last year, you could point to it and go, Hey, look at their health and look at their available guys. They had basically played. Sacramento had one of those seasons where it's like, okay, you basically ceilinged out this entire time.

You 10 out of 10, your luck factor.

I don't understand why wouldn't Shay... Shay is just going to be as good. Maybe he has a couple of games.

This happened in Boston last year, though.

What do you mean?

There's just this weird... When you say around the league, there's a feeling like there's not a total respect. This was the Boston situation last year.

Which team has not won that people were like, Hey, that team is going to get it done? Does it ever happen?

This circles back to the Cleveland piece of it because I think Cleveland is fucking terrifying. I've said this to you.

Are you ready to Can you check them over Boston in a series?

I want to see who's healthy on the Boston side. Okay, look, let's just do the game of everybody's head. If you said go to the head right now, what do I think is going to happen? I think it's going to be really hard to win a game seven in Cleveland. I think Mitchell could not be less afraid of the Boston Celtics. He's been this way for most of the decade. He loves playing them. They have two awesome guards, one who didn't play Friday, and they have length with swings, and they can't stop him. If it gets to a situation where there's a couple of big playoff games in a series, he's going to think he can beat whoever the best Boston guy is. He did it on Friday night. He was the best guy on the floor in the second half. They have length. Mowly is better. Mowly was awesome in that fourth quarter Friday.

You see what else they did, too, is they sat Allen to close.

Yeah. But there was no Porzengus, no Drew, so it's hard to overreact one way or the other. But the Mitchell piece in their bench, which is real, Hunter, who has always done pretty well against the Celts, who has size, who can at least make guys think, and they don't have to play a Koro. I think Cleveland's really good. You know what my other reason is? They only have 10 losses. It's March second. Cleveland's good. They should be the favorite. And Boston is the favorite on Fandle. They're minus 150, Cleveland's plus 270. I think Boston could beat Cleveland.

Yeah, but think about that sentence. Did you think you would be saying that, I think Boston could beat Cleveland two months ago?

I think they could, right. No, but Boston is the prohibitive favorites, and the odds have not caught up to Cleveland yet. They're plus 270, and they're going to have home court advantage in any Boston series. That's a real thing.

I also like the way- No, it's right.

Go ahead. Well, I like the way they match up against LKC, too. There's some garland stuff with them that Boston, they really went after it in the Friday game, where they were like, We're just going to attack them. We're going to bully him. We're going to use our wings. Their reps were awful. My dad was the most upset about the reps that he's been in two years coming home. Could not believe Tatum had five free throws. Look, you can excuse that game any way you want. That was an awesome win for Cleveland. To fall down like they did to have Tatum, do they get the fuck out of here thing? And then for them to come back and them knowing Mitchell might be the best guy in the series if you're just talking about who can score in a fourth quarter on both sides. If I'm Cleveland, I'm delighted by how the season's going.

Mitchell this season in three games against Boston is averaging 36, seven, and four. On 50 and 38 %.

It feels even better. Split. He's getting all the shots he wants. He gets the threes he wants, he gets the matchups he wants, he gets the runners he wants, he can get to the rim. This will You did that Drew holiday extension, right? You did it to make him feel good about last season heading in the playoffs. But ultimately, you're trying to go back to back, and that's a lot of money for a guy who's 34 who's got now a fucked up finger. But that's going to be the series for Drew holiday. That Mitchell series, what he can do against Mitchell will be the entire contract. Because I don't think anyone else... White doesn't seem like he can get a handle on him, and they're just putting everybody else in switches, and it's going to be holiday, I think.

First of all, he's just that good. The best version of him. He also rejects the screen in that Dwyane Wade way where I think when you're really good at that, because I just don't know that there's enough guys that understand when you turn the screen down and you go the other way. He also splits it. Again, I'm not trying to compare him to Kobe because Kobe would split screens in ways you were just like, Oh, my God.

It's mid 2000s Wade with three-point range is what he reminds me of because he can get to the basket, he can get in the paint, but he also has this three-point shot that Wade never had. He's just so athletic. Who is the right guy to guard him when he's feeling it?

Well, it's probably not Hauser. As good as Hauser holds up, that was one of the things that I was looking at the last few days with Boston Where you, okay, every one of these Hauser minutes or every one of these curl handouts where you're getting Cornet trying to figure out which side of the paint he's going to try to contest a shot on, those are Porzingis and Drew minutes. Even if Drew doesn't end up on him, you're now switching into whatever version of this was. And now, pre-DeAndre Hunter, I didn't care what Mitchell did. I didn't care about what the regular season stuff. And again, it had gone Boston's way, so you could at least point to that as evidence. But there was always a bad matchup waiting for Cleveland, whether it was Finding Garland or Struce having a start on Jalen Brown or Allen is on Tatum. They clearly like bringing Allen all the way out away from the rim. And then if the Mowbley lineup is out there with Allen, trying to keep him pinned to a three-point shooter. Basically, you can't have Allen or Mowly ever freelance to the rim. I actually think in the matchups where Tatum had Allen, he did a really good job with it because if he wasn't going to be able to finish at the rim, he knew, and he had a massive game there.

But now with Hunter- That was one of the best Tatum games he's ever had. He was awesome. The matchups and spots he was picking, I thought he was incredible in that camp.

But now that they have these Hunter minutes, and they closed with Mowly, Hunter, and And then the guards because Garland played and had his moments, even though he's been hunted. Cleveland now has put together spacing options, and the hunter part of it, even though it was expensive, I love that they did this because now it's like, look, nobody's stopping Tatum necessarily, but at least you have somebody size-wise who has a defensive thing to him.

It's a chore to score against him, and he can shoot threes.

Look, the point is, even without Prisingis and Drew in there, and maybe it feels like a mistake. Cleveland's the favorite.

I agree with you. I couldn't believe the odds. I couldn't believe they were plus 270 with home court. I was stunned. The thing you mentioned- Down 25-3, and then you win. On the road. I'm glad you mentioned that Alan not playing in crunch time, because I actually thought there was a chance they were going to bench Garland in crunch time and play Ty Jerome because he was so good in that game. They have different lineups they can do. They can go a little smaller, they can go a little bigger, they can go big in their backcourt. If they feel like Garland is too much of a defensive liability and Mitchell feeling it, they can just yank them. I think Atkinson has a real feel for what the team is.

He has all these different options. I guess I just don't like the default, and I'm guilty of it, too. We have a really hard time with new. It's hard to be ahead of everybody going, You know what? But if I were to listen to somebody be like, Cleveland hasn't done it, Boston has, and that be the reason? That's not a reason. It's ignoring a lot of basketball stuff.

There's not a reason. Now, one thread I was on was convinced that Joe Maz didn't play Tori Craig in that fourth quarter and did all that Hauser stuff because he didn't care about the game because they're the two-seated anyway. He wanted Cleveland because Joe Maz is... He looks at things completely different from everybody else, but he's like, I don't really care about this game. I'm going to try this and see if it works. If it doesn't work, I just won't do it if we're actually in a playoff series. The Porzingas piece, I think, is still going to be a genuine problem for the Cavs if he's healthy. That's the matchup because the other thing He allows when Mitchell's going to the basket, now there's somebody coming over with their hand up who's just a little bit of a different person to contend with.

If they want to go double big, you still have to respect. You obviously have to respect Porzingas. You feel like Boston has the stress options. We might be both making a mistake declaring Cleveland the favorite right now. No, the whole point is- I just think they're that good, man.

If we're doing percentages and we're going 100% it, 100% percentages, Boston, Cleveland, that's it. I would say it's like You love when I do this. I would say it's like- I'm writing it down.

I got my pen.

I would say it's 55, 45, Cleveland in my mind. I think there's more outcomes when Cleveland beats Boston than vice versa. I think that game seven in Cleveland really matters, and everyone always discounts this shit. We've had some upsets. We had Minnesota go in to Denver and beat them in a game seven. I know there's games where that happens. But Mitchell, this might be like a Mitchell year. I wouldn't rule it out. It's also he's an interesting MVP guy now because it's obviously Shane, Joker as the top two, and I think Tatum's third. But if Cleveland ends up like 67 and '15 with all the stuff, you almost have to have a cab in the top. It'd be weird for them not to have someone in the top three. It's clearly Mitchell. But amazing year by him. Kudos to him. I was a little iffy on him last year with some of the decision making. This year, I'm not.

Well, they went to seven games at Orlando. Yeah. And Orlando, who, if you really want to have a bad time, watch them on offense this season. It's funny, too, because Cleveland ran the zone where they had Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill at the top of the zone. You're looking at Orlando's options I know with the zone, it can mess you up a little bit. It also screws up Orlando's offense that their top two usage guys are 30% each from three, Impalo and Fron. So that's going to put a dent in your plans. But I was watching this going, how can you guys not figure out a way to attack friend of the pod, Sam Merrill, and soon to be a friend of the pod, Tye Jerm. I know they're in zone, but teams will stop screening with zone or they'll stop cutting. They just get freaked out. I mean, Orlando's offense is terrible against everybody in every incarnation. But this is one of those deals where everything seems to be working out for them. We could say how depth is overrated in the playouts, but there's nothing to me that's overrated about options, and they have depth options.

And lineup options.

Yeah. And okay, he has those things, too.

You think about that Friday game, and again, no Drew, no KP, but Tatum had 46, 16, and in the Celtics lost at home. That's a little alarming. Tatum had, I think, the best all-around regular-season game I've ever seen him have, and especially the rebounds with him, which just every game now it feels like he's going to get to 10 plus rebounds and seven plus assists. His decision making was amazing, and the Celtics still lost. So if I'm Cleveland, I feel great about that. All right. I think we agree on that. And I would still have okay. See, I guess the last piece we didn't talk about, we probably should really quick, It's just maybe there's not a lot to talk about that the Lakers, I just think both of us are taking them seriously as a real playoff team. Just because it's two weeks, you just have to go four and three to get to the next round. Is that a team that can go four and three every two weeks? I think it is. So I'm taking them seriously. I still feel like Denver is above them. I like your idea of Denver being in the slight layer under the top three.

I would still have them fourth, whether you're going to under-tier it or whatever. Then Lakers Golden State is the next two, I just think is how I'd have it. I wouldn't have the Knicks with those two.

I just don't know how the Knicks defense is going to be enough.

It's too easy scoring them.

I know they have Mitchell back now, and the lack of depth isn't really an issue.

Right. Let's see. If Mitchell's there in round one, then I'm going to reconsider, but I just don't trust it. Do you?

That's a massive leap to be like, that team is going to get through. Unless somebody does them a favor, so they only have to face one of the two top teams to get through it.

How focused are you on Pistons' Knicks? Because I'm like a 10 out of 10.

I love watching the Knicks, though. Even with my doubts, that Knicks' Memphis game the other night- That was awesome. We He doesn't really do a very good job on the Memphis thing. Let me just end it this way. There's so much that I like about the team. I think Bane is just solid all the time. I don't know that Aldama gets enough credit. They're working a couple of other pieces in. I think the Edi thing is still not necessarily great.

I don't know if it's because Bill Gurley- He was out there in Crunch time on Friday night. I was shocked.

Bill Gurley had a tweet that was like, I'm really smart and you draft guys are fucking morons. It was the general premise of overthinking something and ultimately becoming wrong when he was taken. It's like, look, man, I think you're not really understanding the NBA part of this, where there's a lot of teams that will sit there in the war room going, Hey, the guy we're about to draft is not nearly as good as the guy we're passing on. They know this. These teams are not as stupid as people want to make them out to be. But if you're a team that doesn't have a track record of attracting free agents, so you're not a destination franchise. You never use a cap space on anybody, maybe you don't have necessarily trade assets. The reason why players like Edy would go a little bit later in a draft, which we've already covered some of this stuff before, is because you feel like they're already close to their ceiling and you're like, Hey, I know that Ahmed Thompson is this or Sir Thompson is this, but what if this raw 1% athlete who we like his personality I'm not comparing Thompson going where he went.

It's also different draft classes. But there's something you have to understand with teams that when they're selecting guys, they know the mistake they're potentially making, but they're thinking about the high ceiling part because the addition of talent is so incredibly challenging in this league. More challenging. It's tougher to be a GM in basketball than any of the other sports. So for teams that are watching- I'd go to football. What's that?

I'd go to football.

No way.

I think it's so hard to draft in football. It just seems like it's a fucking crapshoot. But can you imagine having a top four pick right now, trying to decide whether you're going to get fired if came more doesn't work out for you with the second pick?

Do you want to do this? I don't know that you're prepared to do this with me.

I just think it's harder. I'm not willing to get in our debate about it. I just think there's more players, there's more positions.

Yeah, but the cap thing is the same for everybody. Okay? There's no soft part of it. There's no massive advantage in the five destination cities in the NFL that you have in the NBA. If you're a have not in the NBA, Utah can be putting together the best plan ever. Is anyone ever signing there? The NFL doesn't have that. Carlos Buzer. You don't even have real free agency in the NFL. On top of when a guy wants a trade, Hey, or we'll just franchise you, and you can miss out on a top five salary at your position.

Belichick took the kill Harry over D. K. Metcalf and A. J. Brown.

Yeah, but he can't drive for Sievers, so that's not a good argument.

Belichick traded out of the Trent McDuffy pick and passed up on George Carlafters to take Cole Strange. I just think the draft is like it almost breaks their brains how stupid some of this shit is. Mba is more simple. It's like you're eating point. Do we want to take a guy who has a chance to be potentially an awesome guy someday, or do we just take 12 and 9 from Zack Eady for the next five years? Memphis was like, That sounds great. We'll do that.

Because then it becomes a debate, is it easier to draft in the NBA or are they better at it? When it comes down to the quarterback part of it, it's something that we can't criticize for an officer getting wrong. It's the process evaluating these guys. It's just no one's figured it out. It's too flawed of a thing. It'd be like be watching somebody run really fast in basketball and his dunks are awesome and then being like, look at all that athleticism and quick Twitch stuff. Now he'll be good at quarterback because that's the most stuff that happens there. But we both like Dibi.

We both thought he was a rotation guy.

We thought he was a rotation guy, but a closing guy for the Memphis Grizzlies. That I did not see.

That I did not see, sir.

He's also one of the best post players we've seen in college basketball in recent history. He's got good hands. Do you want to guess how many post-ups he has per right now in the league?

Doesn't seem like a lot.

1. 6. Yeah, not surprised. You're drafting him and you're asking him to post up 1. 6 times per game.

It's a weird fate with Ja because all Ja does is go to the basket. Then you have Zack Eady just wandering around. Not great. Can't really post up Zack Eady and have John Morant.

Another thing for my NFL-MBA thing, we have seven conversations going on at once here, by the way.

It's two hours into the pod. I'm groggy.

You can't bring in a new coach in the NBA with basically the same roster and then just be a completely different team. There's also the math of the games where a team, a couple of one-score possession games go their way All of a sudden, you're a four-win team, and you go to a nine-win team, and you're just like, Man, we really figured it out. It's like, No, actually, you just recover more fumbles. But there's very little that you can do. Then also look in the NBA with the way the drafting works. The second-round guys, again, the second-round thing was the most overrated thing ever, and people just love that Hinkie was stockpiling all these second-round pics, but it was so fucking stupid. There's no NBA draft part where you're like, Oh, in the fourth round, have we grabbed an all-pro middle linebacker. That doesn't happen. I don't know. Maybe we can do this on thehitshowringer. Com. Team debate.

Team debate? I don't know. The more draughts I watch, sometimes it seems easier than ever. Zack Eady clearly was going to be a rotation guy. I couldn't believe there was even a dialog about it. He's 7'5 and he has good hands. You're going to get four good years out of him.

Wait, Now, I don't even know if we're arguing the same Zack Eady point. How about we do this? Do you like Memphis in the playoffs?

No, I don't. I don't like Memphis or Houston. I just think it's too early for both of them.

But Is it too early for Memphis? Because that's something... This has been a very weird three-year stretch for this team, okay?

To say the least.

Yeah. You go back to '22. I always like Memphis. I like their rawness, their anti-establishment, the next generation of grit and grind. Then when they played, Whoop That Trick in game five against Golden State when they killed them.

You never got home of that.

Yeah. I think I did a monolog because Chris Vernon sent me just a tear emoji after the open where I went, I want Golden State to beat their fucking brains in when they play in Game 6. Because I was like, You guys are really, really feeling yourself.

You're down 3-2 in a series. Maybe don't play.

It was an elimination game, 3-1 three, two, but it was a lot. It was a lot from those guys. Then you have the Jia issues, then you have the injury issues. They had a seed not that long ago when they were hurt against the where no one gave them a chance necessarily in that series. That was the Dylan Brooks thing. Pretty band up. Everybody ended up not liking him all that much. This is year four of this group, but I don't know that it's like, Oh, they're incapable because they haven't done anything when they weren't really fully formed in all these versions except for 22.

Don't you feel like they're a regular season team that I just have less faith in the playoffs about because of... I don't know. I just think teams are going to have better options in crunch time when we get April, May. They're trading baskets in the fourth quarters. I don't think their defense is as good as I thought it was going to be. The teams put up big point numbers on them. You notice that? They're way more run and gun than I think I was expecting from them this year.

Yeah, but they're defensive numbers because I looked it up the other day. No, I know.

But they'll have these games where they're like 126 to 125, shit like that. That Knicks game was a wild game. I will say it was not a defensive game. Yeah. I have the same six that I had before. Hey, Robinson looks awesome for them. Maybe we could reevaluate that in a month. Do you want to do a quick deep dive before we go?

I do. What are you on?

You go. We can do it fast. We'll do it in three minutes.

I'm still on the pyramids, to be honest with you.

Okay. Any new news with the pyramids?

Yeah. Just because the last guy that built the pyramid after the lineage of rulers, he was like, Okay, well, my grandfather did this, and then my father did this. So how about we do this? I'll build a slightly smaller pyramid just because the other guy's like, you really had to sacriot. Because basically people were like, Hey, these pyramids take a fucking long time and a lot of resources. And maybe this isn't the sweetest deal for your constituent. Right? I like that it was almost like an ideological shift of the pharos, that it was like, if we're going to do a pyramid, how about we just go a little smaller? It felt like a real transition of like, I still got to do one. I still got to do one, but I'm going to take it easy on you guys.

Did they ever master the pyramids? Was there ever a moment with baseball where they just figured out, guy's got to get on base, and that's get on base any way you can?

Is there a pyramid timeline- Is there a pyramid version of OBP? That matches not putting the ball in play in too many relievers?

Yeah. That's my question.

They never perfect it? Right at the end of the third dynasty, maybe. I could have my tables wrong, but yeah. I'll check on that. What do you got?

Ben and I watched Shane Gillis on SNL last night and had a great time and laughed a lot. I started thinking about how I think he could have been the biggest star in the show in the last 10 years. That sent me down a long deep dive of how he didn't end up on the show and then was watching different quips.

Here we go.

Well, we'll leave that aside. But there's all these different videos and stuff. One of them was this two-minute video of Louis CK just blistering Shane Gillis, half fun, but half whatever because he was so mad that he was doing an ad, but also about to throw the podcast to a Patreon. And he was like, How much money do you need to make from this podcast? Do you really need the money that bad? And Shane Gillis was like, I actually do. But I was just down this whole Shane Gillis rabbit hole thinking about how interesting it would have been if he had just become like Will Farrell on SNL. And I don't think I was alone with that last night because I thought some of the stuff last night was great. The monolog was as awkward as it's ever It's just such a bizarre fit of performer and audience, whoever's in that crowd where they're just band behind them, which a lot of people are pointing out. The band's like, Can we laugh at that one? Can we do that? But his sketches and the couple of beers thing was fucking great. I thought they really felt like they were pushing the envelope a little bit in a way that reminded me of some of the best errors of the show.

It was just like, Man, what? This would have been so interesting if there's this alternate universe where He's just on the shit. Nothing happens. He never says the dumb shit, and it never comes back to haunt him. He's just on the show just doing that same ride that Will Farrell did and Phil Hartman, some of his other guys. What would have been the destiny of that? Anyway, I was deep diving that for an hour last night because I couldn't sleep.

I saw the couple of beers thing. I haven't watched it yet. I did watch the monolog because... I mean, he even talked about the first monolog. I think he was nervous. It was shocked because he's so good. I've seen him, I think, four times now whenever he's around. I want to make sure I can go check it out. Look, I like him. But last night, I think there's still this disconnect if people can't understand where he's at. Even though- And his cadence, too.

It's like that stop-start thing he does. If you're not used to it, you're like, What's he doing?

Yeah. There was obviously peak whatever political lines you want to argue SNL was aligned with. I think there was a peak where it was probably a lot for anybody. I remember they did a weekend news thing or whatever, and they went to some correspondence that was talking about the movie lineup, and that essentially every movie was centered around white male rage. Whoever the correspondence was that was doing the spoof was just yelling like, white male rage, white male rage. And I wasn't offended as a white male. I was offended because it was so fucking stupid. It just wasn't funny at all. I felt like because of wherever we were at in our discussions, at least as a country at the time, it was almost a cool thing to try to do. It just didn't work. It wasn't really funny. Now I've looked at different SNL clips. It's like, you can see the shift a little bit. A hundred %. Maybe some of this pandering stuff that we were doing, or maybe it was people internally that worked on the show were like, no, these are important things we're going to do. You can see there's been a very clear shift of, let's actually start making fun of both sides a little bit more than we were.

Then I don't know if that sets the tone for what Gillis is walking into. But I think some people look at Gillis and think, he talks about Trump. When he comes out and says, I'm going to miss Trump being in debates, that for some people, it's this massive red flag that goes off. You're like, Oh, this guy's a Trump guy. He's white, he's from PA. Clearly, he's a Trump guy.

Then it goes right for Biden right after.

Right. First of all, I don't think he's a conservative. Some people think he is. The way that it'll happen with certain people, they'll already be triggered to go, Oh, no. This is a pro-Trump comedian out here because he just said I'm in. Then he makes fun of Trump the whole fucking So he's just making fun of everybody there the whole time. I'd ask you this, though. Him getting bounced, I knew who he was, but not as good. Then pretty quickly, I was like, Man, this guy, he's probably my favorite going right now. I I think he's really smart on top of being like... The guys that play the goofy thing, but also are incredibly smart with the way they structure the stuff that they're doing is always going to make me want. I'm like, Okay, I'm in. This isn't just set up, set up joke or whatever. I think there's some layers to the stuff that he's doing that's really impressive to me. But do you think that changed? Because at the time, it felt like, and I'm doing a bad job with this, that was the best thing that happened to him because it put him on everybody's radar.

But you think the long term sealing for him, back to the Zacky D.

I don't think it was the best thing. I think it was bad for him.

Okay, you do.

Go. Yeah, I do. I think it set him back a couple of years. But ultimately, it became part of his story and he got over it. But I don't think it was good for him. That thing that really helped him was putting that comment special on YouTube. It was just great. The one, I think he did it in Austin, whatever. That was the one when Ben was like, Who's this guy? We would watch it over and over again, and we thought it was just so fucking funny, the Trump stuff, everything.

The ISIS thing. When I saw the ISIS thing live in Arizona, he just had everybody. His whole premise was, and again, that's a pretty good example of what we're talking about, I don't think he actually is cheering for ISIS. But his whole story and playing it out of getting you to understand why he's rooting for ISIS for all of the reasons that he's laying out, that's brilliant shit, man.

Yeah. Well, and that's also... That was It was the bones of SNL, and it was a lot of the SNL 50 stuff when they're going back through the old cast. And you think like that '70s cast, especially, part of what made that great was they just didn't give a shit. They tried everything.

And now- You think he has a sandler Is there a potential Sandler timeline that's not reachable now?

What do you mean?

Well, if he's the main guy and he's really funny, he's on SNL for 10 years, feels long today.

I think it would have been five years, and I think he probably would have done stand-up stuff, and then I don't know what the next thing is, but I think it would have been really good for him. I also think the show needed somebody like him, which was, I think, the reason Lauren, the new Lauren Buck that came out has a little piece on it. He wanted a different type of cast member than they had and somebody that did a lot of stuff Shane did. I think it would have been really good for him. I also think he would have played Trump, which would have been huge for him because he's really good at it, and you've seen him do it a bunch of times. Anyway, good deep dive. Do you think you got a plug before we go? Ty Jerm on Thursday.

Oh, Les Claypool. Primus Tuesday. Already taped it.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, congrats.

We're getting a little artsy.

Good luck with the facial hair. I will see you in a week. We'll see what's changed in the world of basketball. Good to see you. Thanks to Cerruti and Kyle Gahao as well. Don't forget, you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel, and you can watch it as a video on Spotify as well. I will see you. New rewatch was coming Monday night. We did an Oscar Ramsey and Rosillo. I'll text you about it, keeping it secret.

Who do you want to win the Oscar?

We're taping this for the Oscar. I was really hoping Mikey Madison would win best actress because I thought that was the best performance I saw this year, but it doesn't seem like, as we're taping this, it doesn't seem like she's going to win.

I thought she was great.

I thought she was awesome.

Best pick.

I think Onora is going to win, and by default was part, but I didn't the brutalist, so I'm not going to pretend I'm Wesley Morris. You didn't see it? I just still didn't see it. I will at some point, I just didn't see it. I didn't do the thing where it's like, I got to see every movie before. I just didn't get to it yet. I'll say it at some point. What do you have?

I only watch of those two movies. I saw Dune. I saw Dune. I saw Chalamet at the Lakers game.

I know.

He was sitting a couple of rows in front of me. I wanted to go up to him and be like, Hey, here's the deal. It's not about me. Will you go on with Bill? Here's his number.

Come on with both of us.

No, I want you to hunt him like Darius Garland. It's very clear Chalamet would come on with you if he knew the request was in, I feel like people don't know how big of a deal is.

I think there's a pretty big PR armada. It's going to happen. I'm not worried about it.

They're turning out everything. But any kid that waits outside MSG to meet Amari Stoudemire when he's 10 or 11, that guy wants to go. He I've already name-checked you. This is an auto. I thought, is there any way I'll get a... But as I've gotten older, I'm like, I'm never going up to anybody anymore. Yeah, it sucks because it just... Yeah, it doesn't work. You can come up to me. I'll be over Sure.

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