Transcript of The Knicks (and a Crowded East) With Zach Lowe, Plus Anthony Jeselnik on Book Clubs, Roasts, and Stand-Up Comedy in 2026

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new episode of the Rewatchables on Monday night. We did Law Abiding Citizen, a movie that I never expected would be on the Rewatchables, and yet I kept getting sucked into it, and so did Van Lathan, and we decided to podcast about it. So that went up on Monday night. Really fun one, actually. Uh, Craig Kornbeck joined us. As well. Coming up on this podcast, Zach Lowe was in town. We had lunch. We said, fuck it, let's turn on the mics. Let's turn on the cameras. Let's go. So we talked about basketball for an hour. And then Anthony Jeselnik, who has a new podcast coming with us at the end of the month, Jeselnik Book Club, which has been a YouTube series for him that we are now bringing to The Ringer and Spotify as well. And that's launching at the end of the month. And if you wanted to see him, by the way, Uh, he's doing stand-up all over the place. Go to, uh, anthonyjeselnik.com and see where the tour dates are.

He's even gonna be in Port Chester and Philly, uh, this week. So yeah, if there's not a nor'easter. Uh, all right, so we're gonna take a break. I'm gonna bring in Pearl Jam and then, uh, my friend Zach Lowe. The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever. on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to fanduel.com/BS to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Zach Lowe's in town. We're taping this on a Monday afternoon. You were just here. We had lunch. I was like, we have— we're near the studio. We should just tape something. And then we were like, what should we record? What do we do? So we have an idea, but I, I did— dawn on me as we were eating lunch, I have known you now for 15 years, dating back to the kind of heading into the 2011 season when we tried to hire you for Grantland for year one.

And I didn't remember what happened, but you ended up staying at SI. I chickened out is what happened. Something got screwed up. No, I thought we screwed up.

I chickened out. No, I just chickened out.

You chickened out? Yeah, I just chickened out. I thought we screwed it up.

I was like, this is this new thing. It's, is it gonna work? Sports Illustrated is this like hallowed brand. It was like just a very backwards way of looking at it. It's not spotting the trends. I didn't spot the trends very well.

Interesting. 'Cause for this whole time I felt like we effed it up. And then a year passed and I was like, that's it. That was our one chance.

It's not your fault.

They're gonna figure out how good he is.

It's not your fault, Bill.

We stayed in contact and then the next, the next summer, that was it. And we worked together for the last 3 years there. But I'm trying to remember what were the things I told you? I'm trying to remember the advice I gave you other than don't make yourself crazy. Because the big thing was you were writing like 2, 3 times a day.

Oh, at SI?

Yeah.

I, I think your advice was like, so you're talking advice to like—

No, I was like, all right, here's what I think can happen.

Yeah, I think you, you were big on just, you're writing too much. You're trapped in this blog cycle. Like when blogs were a thing, that was what I was doing.

I called it the hamster wheel.

Yeah. And you need to get out and meet people and like spend more time doing that and less time just churning out every bit of content possible. 'Cause that's the only way you're going to write things that are truly meaningful or, you know, then your other advice after that was start a podcast. And I said, no, I don't want to start a podcast. And it turned out to be—

You didn't listen to me on that for like a year.

I don't think it was a year. I think Jacoby intervened and was like, he's not going to drop this.

He's very persuasive.

You just need to do the podcast.

I think once we came up with the name, you got more excited.

Yeah.

The Low Post.

It's a great name.

Now, I remember the hamster wheel thing because I remember reading you back then. and you had all these great ideas, and then you would have to move on to the next thing 2 hours later. And I'd been in a little bit of a similar situation when I was on my own. Yeah. So I was like, all right, what if he's just concentrating on 3 of these ideas a week? But then the other thing was like, go, go meet everybody you can. Like, we sent you to that one all-star weekend where not to write, and you were like, I don't have to write anything. I was like, don't write anything.

I vividly— it was in Houston, Texas. Yeah, 2013. Not only did I go, I filled in for you because you were supposed to do the BS Pod with a bunch of players that they were going to bring in one by one. LaMarcus Aldridge is the one I remember.

Oh, yeah. Something happened.

You got delayed. And much like today, you just sprung on me at the last minute like, hey, you're doing this in my stead. And I was like, wait, what's happening? LaMarcus Aldridge is coming on? And it was—

I forgot about that. Yeah, you had a bunch of players.

And we were all— me, you. I wish I could remember the full cast. Jacoby was definitely there. We were all at a bar. in Houston at one of the fancy hotels where everybody was.

Yeah.

And that— and like, there were rumors that Jordan had been there earlier.

No, that was the Four Seasons.

It was okay. I didn't want to— you know, Jordan and Oakley had been in the bar at some point, and that's the first time I laid eyes on Worldwide West. He came into the bar, said hello to people, and left. And it was like this ghost had come in and just like vanished through the wall. And I was like, wait, that was Worldwide West? Yeah, it was a fun All-Star.

Worldwide Wes, now a world champion. He's World Champion Wide Wes.

It's crazy. Crazy.

I wonder what happens with that because I wonder how long those guys stay there now.

I think it's a fair question and one many in the league are wondering.

Wes and Leon. They kind of did what they said they were going to do. They took over in 2020. They've been there 6 years.

Gerson left. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened there.

Wes is, I'm going to say, 63, 64 range.

Looks great. If he's that old, he looks great.

Nobody has any idea how old he is, but I think he's around there. And I think Leon's probably around the same age. And they did what they set out to do. And that's— what's the shelf life for that team? 2 years as a contender?

Why is it just 2? They're not old.

You know why I would say 2? Because I've been thinking a lot about this because I was doing a lot of historical— I was working on— I don't know what I'm going to do with a second book of basketball or what the hell I'm going to do. Ooh.

Whoa.

What fingers will work or do it as a pod. It's been my summer project, been working on stuff. And I became really fascinated by that Warriors 5-year run and how much it took out of them and all the stuff that they've said about it since. And how, you know, they basically played 6 seasons in 5, and they played 100 games a year, and they barely made it through the 5th season and literally broke down as the playoffs were going in the 5th season. And then you think about what happened with the Celtics recently.

Yeah.

where that was probably a 4-year run. But even if you go back to 2020 in the bubble where they made the Conference Finals, they suck in '21, Finals in '22, Conference Finals '23, Finals '24, and then they run outta gas. And I just wonder if the NBA is like, if it's a 4-year run now.

Could be. And they gotta pay everybody, right? You've said—

Well, then you have the salary cap too.

Yeah. What's left for Leon to do? One thing is like pay Jalen Brunson, what Jalen Brunson has expected and earned. KAT's up for an extension now. I do have a feeling all of those guys, like Anunoby's up for an extension pretty soon. Hart's up for an extension now. I think they have realized, like, there is some value, there is some enormous value in being a hero in New York City, and this team works. And I bet, I bet they'll all take, other than Brunson, who has already done his part taking less, I could see them all being like, you know what? That's fair. We'll accept that.

Yeah.

You know, whatever it takes to stay together.

Towns is making like $58 million a year.

Yeah. He has a $61 million player option for next year, I think. So that could break them apart. But I do, I was actually talking about this with somebody last night over dinner. Like, does it matter at all that they just cruised through like playoff year number 1 as that, it wasn't their first playoff year together, but that long playoff run number 1 almost after the conference finals year. that it was not like a 24-game slog of overtimes and crunch times to win the title. Like the, the middle 2 rounds of the playoffs were like just in and out blowouts, all that stuff. I don't know how much that matters, but there's a little less tread than some of those runs.

I, I think about as one of the many things I defend Duncan with as he's about to get dismissed historically as a top 10 guy, and I have him 7th.

No, there's no, Who is going to get this missing?

It's already happened.

Well, who's going over him? Who's vaulting over him?

Because there's a bunch of people now in their 20s and 30s who didn't see him play, who weren't there, and who are just looking at Basketball Reference and being like, he was only 20 and 11. So how was he better than Kobe?

So who's retiring that's going to jump into the top 10? LeBron, obviously, but leave that aside. But like, Durant is not better than Tim Duncan career-wise.

No, but I think some of the people that are already there are passing Tim Duncan. Like, I think Kobe now, the consensus is Kobe's better than Tim Duncan. I know we can't do this, but Jerry West, like, whatever. But going back to the miles point—

No, just no.

But think about the miles Duncan had where '02, '03, and this, but, you know, he's back-to-back MVP. '03, I think they played, was it '03 or '05 where they played the most playoff games possible? They played like 27 or something.

I should know this 'cause I just went back and researched all these championships. But that '03 season, played over 4,000 minutes.

He was like 3,100 regular season minutes and I think 1,100-something playoff minutes. And then they also, he did the '04 Olympics. So he went from—

Didn't go great.

In '04, they lost, I think in the Western Finals with, on the Derek Fisher thing. '05, they make the finals, they do it. '06, they lose to Dirk. '07, they go all the way. And then they kind of started, you know, they cratered there for a couple years. But you go back and you look at that 5-year window and all the miles it put on him. Like, he was never the same after that.

No.

And he was basically on one leg from that point since.

But also still really good all the way toward the end.

Yeah.

Basically. Yeah. I look, if you and I are just gonna have to do one Tim Duncan was amazing episode every year, if that's the price that everyone must pay for him to remain a top 10 player, like, it's just indisputable that he's a top 10 player.

Durability, consistency, and unselfishness about his stats. So don't make us, don't make us do it, America.

'Cause we will do it. We'll do it.

But he didn't, like, they'd win. All he cared is that they won. He didn't care if he had like 18 and 9 ever. He didn't care if he had shots. And he's the, he was the backbone of that whole era. But anyway, like I was thinking about that. So when you go back to the Knicks, like they have, this is 3 straight, basically pretty long runs.

Conference Finals, championship.

Conference Finals, Conference Finals, right? Weren't they Conference Finals 2 years in a row? No, 'cause they made it to—

Okay, second round Conference Finals. Before they shitcanned them, helped break the streak.

Right.

So if there's 2 years left, that's a 4-year run. By the time that's over, the guys are in their early 30s. And I think it becomes less realistic according to NBA history. So 2 years here.

I'll tell you, as a Connecticut resident, New York— I like to say New York City adjacent. I mean, just to prove the significance of what happened, I feel like I've spent my entire summer talking about the Knicks. Every single person in my life in Connecticut still wants to know about the Knicks. Were you really at Game 4? What was it like at Game 4?

What was the tip like?

What was the city like? Where were you? What was the vantage point for OG Anunoby's tip? It's just nonstop.

I had a Jets fan friend of mine, Mark Cimino, who who's also like a lifelong Knicks fan, and he was texting me after the Jets game 'cause the Jets had their typical terrible collapse with bad clock management and the whole thing. And he's like, before the events of June 13th, 2026, I would've been really upset today, but now I don't really care. And I, so now, now it's a date. It's June 20th. The Red Sox date was October 27th, 2004. And June 13th is now the Knicks date.

That's the year they, that's the day they win the World Series.

That's the day they won the World Series. The Roberts deal was, I think, the 19th. Um, I think we won on the 27th. Yeah, I'm old now. I can't remember dates, but yeah, June 13th is gonna be the day. So we look at the Knicks. One of the things we thought about is—

Oh, we're working now? We're gonna work now?

No, it's a, it's a little work. Just like, I still think the Knicks, to me, I wouldn't say prohibitive favorites, but they are my, you hate when I bet my life. They're easily my bet my life team in the East. I think unless they have injuries, I would expect them to be back. I don't know why they wouldn't be.

Injuries, wear and tear, backup center situation, not quite what it was. I think that, you know, they snuck in those last week, like all the guys that they signed for like non-guaranteed training camp deals that were good players like Bruce Brown. They'll, they'll add another guy who helps them get through the season, but they'll miss Mitchell Robinson. But I agree with you, like I'll pick the, I'm gonna, as of now, I'm picking the Knicks. to make the Finals.

What you said before about what it meant to the city and all that stuff, like Brunson's hosting Saturday Night Live this week.

Crazy. Crazy.

What were the odds of that?

What?

6 years ago, what were the odds of the Knicks winning a title versus Jalen Brunson hosting Saturday Night Live? I think that had to have been higher.

How many teammates, over-under 3.5 Knicks teammates appear on the show?

I mean, if Towns—

You think it's everybody?

If Towns isn't involved in the show, he might actually crash the show and have to be removed by security.

The one no-brainer is Hart is coming on within 90 seconds. Josh Hart will be on within 90 seconds. I think—

I think Hart and Bridges together, right? Because that's like the Villanova.

I think as a New Yorker, like a true blue New Yorker, you have to have Alvarado on the show. He's got to be— he's got to appear. And so now we're already up to like 5 guys. I can't wait. It's a lot of pressure on Jalen Brunson. This is— he's out of his comfort zone. There's been athletes who've gone on and kind of bombed, and there's been athletes who've gone on like Peyton Manning, kind of changed his whole post-playing career by like, oh, he's kind of funny.

There was something interesting that happened at the US Open when Shelton won to make, I think, the finals. I think it was the semifinals when—

He beat Tiafoe.

He beat Big Fo. And they're just doing the interview after and he's like, yeah, man, I was looking around the stands and like, Jalen Brunson's here. And he talked about it. It was like Jalen Brunson is now like Frank Sinatra or Leo DiCaprio. But he is. I think that's what happened. I think out of, like, beyond winning the title and now being, in my opinion, one of the 50 greatest players we've ever had because of what he did and the burden that he had, like, I think he's on that level.

15?

50.

Oh, I was gonna say—

No, not 50.

So you're a good person for this. I just said this on my pod last week. I don't know if any player's fame level has increased more in one 2-minute span than OGN and Obi's ever in the history of sports. OG Anunoby went from like, like well-known NBA, like everyone thought he was a good 3-and-D guy. NBA nerds all knew him. He's like world famous now. He's on shows. He's—

Yeah. I was gonna say football where you have like the random David Tyree has the helmet catch, 'cause it's easier to have like a famous Malcolm Butler.

Yeah.

But it, it's almost like the spinoff of that question is somebody that was already doing really well but wasn't a famous celebrity, but then became a famous celebrity because of a sports moment.

Yeah. I think he's probably more famous than he wants to be now.

It's also crazy. I mean, there are so many crazy things about the Knicks thing, but the hypothetical OG Anunoby, and we have all these NBA players and we always talk about upside, downside, and ceiling, basement. And Anunoby was always like, well, if he's healthy and he can carry big minutes, like there's no better way. And it was always the if, yeah, but. And then not only does he, he's probably their best player for the first part of the playoffs.

He was incredible start to finish.

Had one, and then made the, probably the second greatest play in the history of the league on the tip.

What's number one?

I still think the Ray Allen shot's the greatest. If you actually, and we've discussed this before, but if you go back and look at the, I think he's the only one in the history of the league that makes that shot. He's backpedaling. He knows what the moment is instantly, and he's practiced it for whatever reason, 'cause he's an OCD maniac his entire life of like, If I'm ever in this situation where my team gets a rebound and I have to get a shot off, I will backpedal these 7 steps and be able to release, and I won't step on the line. I don't think anyone else could have done it.

This is a good pod one day when we're prepared as the greatest, greatest, or I mean, people have done the, like, the biggest momentum swinging plays in terms of championship odds. Anunoby would be right. I think I did this on my pod actually. I think Anunoby was—

You did some version of this.

Was second in terms of like single play that swung the odds of an NBA Finals.

Not game— Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not Game 7.

We did this.

We did this. And it was the only one that was bigger was O'Reilly's shot in 2005 Spurs-Pistons Game 5, where 'Sheed inexplicably abandons him after he's the inbounds passer and he makes a game-winning 3.

Wasn't just that. Didn't he have like, I think he had like 21 of their last 35 points or some crazy—

He like lost his mind. Big Shot Bob, Hall of Famer. You put him in the Hall of Fame?

Well, you know, not only did I put, not only would I put him in the Hall of Fame, He— when I did my pyramid in '09, I had him like 83rd because I think he's unquestionably the greatest role player of all time when you look at all the different things he did. Even if you go back and look at— for some reason, some Kings fans sent me a long email because they were upset that I had the Clippers as the most incompetent franchise in the history of the NBA.

Oh, they wanted their team to be vilified.

It was like, what else do we have to do to get that? Like, it's like, just go back and look at the box score from Game 6 and Game 7 in '02. How do we not have this title? And for some reason I went back and Basketball Reference, they have all this stuff now that they didn't have when I did my book. Could break it down by the quarter.

Yeah.

By the half. So you can go and you can watch. So I went and I looked at the second half of Game 6 of how many fouls the Kings had. I think they had like 24 fouls and the Lakers shot, like 34 free throws just in the second half.

I think it was— there's a— the number in the 4th quarter of free throws is astonishing. I mean, I go back and I read Jonathan Abrams' Malice in the Palace piece from Grantland like once every 2 years. Or not Malice in the Palace. He wrote the Kings Lakers oral history. The Kings. He did a couple great ones. I just did the Malice in the Palace one last week. And I rewatch the 4th quarter now and then. I love those Kings teams so much. And that was—

You know what the reality was? It's, it's to me, I feel the same way about them as I did with the '94 Knicks. Like ultimately, like your biggest moment of the season and it's just not incapable enough fans. Like, like the Knicks, that '94 Knicks team really came down to John Starks had to make a shot and none of the Knicks fans really 100% trusted him.

Well, the Kings—

Same with those Kings. It was like Doug Christie, it was Turkoglu who wasn't totally ready yet. It was Chris Webber who wanted no part of the situation.

Peja infamously has an airball in overtime.

They just— they weren't— they didn't have the one guy who's like— Mike Bibby was kind of their only, I got this guy, but they needed the second one.

And he also got elbowed by Kobe in the face.

Got elbowed by Kobe.

Allegedly fouled Kobe.

Right.

Kobe took him out. Kobe guarded him down the stretch of one of those games too. But, um—

Man, you go back and watch Shaq and Kobe in 2001 in particular, but any of those 3-peat years, and they have games where it's like, how did anyone ever beat this team? Like, they were just— particularly in '01 when basically nobody beat them ever when they tried.

It's so weird even to watch the spacing from back then.

Oh, yeah.

And I don't even know how you compare eras anymore. I almost feel like— I feel like basketball kind of has to end with the 2010 Finals, and then there's like this new version of it that comes the year after. And it's like this— it's almost like movies where movies have these different eras where it's like silent films and then black and white, and then like in the early '70s, the modern movies come in and just feel different. You watch the stuff from, I don't know, pick any Finals.

It does look different. 2 bigs who can't shoot on the court almost all the time.

The '86 Celtics in Game 4, for some reason, this was on one of the socials, and I was like, okay, I'll watch the last 3 minutes of this. And they had Walton and McHale and Bird, and I think they had a 4th forward out there with the guard, and they're just all crammed in, and McHale is getting double-teamed. Nobody is spacing it, but Bird actually spaces it and hits a 3. And he has so much space, like nobody's within 5 feet of him. And it's just like, how did they not realize that that's what you should do? And that would've gotten Kevin McHale more whatever. But we didn't really realize it till like 2013.

Darryl Morey, unemployed, unemployed GM Darryl Morey was like, you know what's, you know what's a big deal? 3 is 50% more than 2. I think we should do that.

You know what else is good? Spacing.

Yeah.

I wonder who, who gets credit for the spacing. I wonder who figured that out the best.

I mean, you gotta give D'Antoni a lot of credit.

Maybe the '09 Magic.

You're going team-wise? Yeah. Stan Van Gundy was the captain of the Magic.

I'm just trying to think of different teams that probably figured out, 'cause they really spaced it out around Dwight and then they would shoot more 3s, but then they would also have the mismatch of Dwight against whoever trying to get the rebound.

I think the most tactically underrated coach in NBA history is Rick Adelman. Like in terms of spacing, inverting the floor, using his bigs as passers from the elbows. Like he was, I'm glad he got his due and he got in the Hall of Fame. I had been advocating for him to be in the Hall of Fame for like 10 years before he got in. I think he also deserves a lot of credit. I don't know why we're talking about this.

This is what we just thought we'd turn the mics on and go. Well, we were talking about the Knicks.

I could do movie reviews if you want. I just watched a bunch of scary movies.

Well, you said, why are you on a scary movie run?

My wife was out of town. Like, I gotta watch all these movies before she comes back. She can't tolerate them. Obsession. I'll just do one-word reviews. Obsession.

Fine.

It Follows. Liked It Follows.

It Follows is good.

Scared me a little bit.

Good gimmick, too, for just to talk about in life.

The Invitation. Have you seen The Invitation?

Who's in that?

No one that I know. It's the dinner party. Yes, it's a dinner party. It's a dinner party. I don't think I've ever been so uncomfortable for 2 straight hours of my entire life as I was watching The Invitation. I mean that in a very good way.

Did you see The Invite?

That's new, right?

Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Ed Norton.

No, I have not seen it.

Penélope Cruz.

I should do that one.

I don't know if your wife would like it. She's got very plain—

very—

no, she's got no plane movie or too good to watch on a plane. It's like a dialogue. Oh, that's a good plane movie.

Yeah.

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. I want to talk about Thursday nights because Thursday Night Football got even better. With FanDuel. Well, how did that happen? With Early Win, a fast start could be all you need to win big. For Falcons versus Packers, just bet the money line. If your team jumps out to a 7-point lead at any point in the game, you'll win instantly. I would do this with the Packers. Whether your team scores in the opening drive, builds an early touchdown lead, whatever you want, whoever you picked, you could be celebrating before the game's even over. 7-nothing, you're done. Uh, check out FanDuel's early win for Falcons versus Packers. Do the Packers in the FanDuel app. Just another reason why this is your most rewarding season ever on FanDuel. 21+ select states or 18+ DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Look, it's right here. It's football season. You can now get BOGO deals every single week on game day favorites like wings, pizza, fries, snacks. I like all those things.

Uh, my Sunday routine, because I know I have the podcast, uh, at night, I go a little healthier on the Sundays. You know, hey, it's not something I would normally do, but when I know I have this, I want my brain to be working right. Usually, usually try to find the best possible salad place, maybe a deli that has some, some soup and like a wrap. Yeah, I know I'm old. I can't, I can't do it like I used to, but that's what works for me. Whatever works for you, do it on Uber Eats. Basically whatever game day calls for, you can get almost, almost anything on Uber Eats with deals every week. Uber Eats, official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL. And you can order now. For alcohol, you must be of legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. All right, wanna do Eastern Conference quick? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you're into this. So Nick's at the top.

So we should mention, you, me, and House are gonna do over-unders.

Yes.

House is coming out to LA. You can't come, but you're gonna be in the TV. We're gonna make it work.

We're gonna make it work. I appreciate your flexibility.

So we're gonna tease our— These aren't futures. Like, we're saving all the future talk.

Yes. The ques—

I had 2 questions for you.

Okay.

The first one is, it feels like we have 11 playoff teams in the East, but there's only 8 playoff spots. And I'm giving Knicks, 76ers, Celtics, Raptors, Pistons. This is in order of the odds to win the conference. Cavs, Miami, Orlando, and then Indiana, Atlanta, Charlotte. Okay. 3 of those teams will not make the playoffs.

Okay.

So if you had to lean—

Who's not making it?

If you had to lean right now, and neither of us are nearly done with our prep and the season doesn't start for a month, but we're— so this is more like a, like a leans. Okay. Where would you lean for your 3 that you don't think are making it?

I'm X-ing Charlotte out right away, and the odds suggest that we should. They're way below. There's a big gap between them And then Atlanta and Indiana above them.

I was surprised by the over-under for them, but maybe I shouldn't have been. I think it's 39.

For sure. You thought it would be higher?

I mean, that team was last year was what, what they finished the last 2/3 of the season, they were like 37 and 19 or something. Something crazy.

Top 5 both ends of the floor somehow.

Pretty dramatic drop-off, but I guess it would be LaMelo based.

And you know, I, LaMelo. They got a lot of youth, they got a lot of depth. I think they're gonna be a good team. Like, don't get me wrong, I just put them number 1. We ranked the, of the 7 playoff, 7 teams who have not won a playoff series in the 2020s. I ranked them number 1 as like the team I'd most like to be the GM of. That's a good gimmick. Yeah. But I don't, I think in this field, I'm a little lower on Atlanta, I think, than the over-unders and the lines are. I, I just think they have a lot of questions to answer about Was their defense that was a top 5 defense for the last like 40 games of the season, was that a real thing or was that a product of like a little bit of luck and a lot of scheduling? Is that real? And if it wasn't real, do they have to play a bunch of their shaky to non-shooters more together because they're their best defensive players? What does that do to their offense? They have like very little size. I'm a little, I'm a little worried about Atlanta.

So I'll take, I'll take Atlanta.

And they, they also, they took the lottery pick who we have no idea if he's gonna help them out at all this year.

Which is fine. They're playing the long game. Atlanta's sitting there like just watching them. I don't think they care if they're good this year. Yeah, I think I completely agree. They're playing the long game. They're like, we got a ton of assets. Well, maybe some of these other teams will make panic trades to try to get into the playoffs.

Well, they never got involved in Giannis, right?

Yeah.

And we'll be the last man standing whenever the next big thing that actually fits us comes through.

They had some improbable stuff happen last year, like Alexander Walker just turning into a 20-point scorer. I don't know if that was real or not, but we'll find out once and for all.

I mean, I, I love Nikhil. He was making like crazy threes. No, he was like making like A-list scoring shots, like off the dribble corner threes with hands in his faces, like hands in his face.

Probably was real. I just kind of wanted to say it again.

He's real.

I think he's real. Like, say it a second time. Um, so, yeah, so we have the same first 2. I had the most questions about those 2, and so does FanDuel, and so does, uh, the betting public, because they are not in the top 9. So who's your 3rd then? Go ahead, just say it. I know, I know who you're worried about.

This is, it, it's hard. I'm gonna say, oh boy. Oh boy.

So it's, is it, can it, is it fair to say it's down between Miami, Orlando, and Indiana?

I would, I would put more teams in the list.

You put more? Would you put Detroit in there?

I think, I think someone, no, I think Detroit, well, we gotta see what happens with Duran. Like the fact that they did a Saar Thompson. before Duran and on a timetable where— I don't know if Duran was even close last year when he was in Asar's boat of going into your 4th year versus now he's done with his 4th year. That's an interesting one. I still expect that deal to get done.

I just thought it was interesting, the Thompsons, one got $50 million more than the other.

Well, Amen has been better. I mean, Amen averaged 18 points a game last year.

But I wonder what that's like with the brothers. Obviously, they're twin brothers. They're on each other's team.

I would hope I would hope that it would be like, we just got almost $400 million guaranteed to us. Like, we're good. Should we buy a house together? Well, you only have one kid.

I have two. I was trying to figure out how I'd manage the egos of that with, those were my two kids. And it's like, Aman got $205, Asar got $155.

Maybe they can do like, didn't the Morris twins just have one big, they just had like one bank account or like one, they, they like considered it like we, we collectively made whatever amount of money.

I just believe you guys made $360 million guaranteed.

Share it.

Yeah, you guys are good.

But this is what, anyway, I will say, I, I do think one of these teams toward the top 7 is going to underperform 'cause of injuries or randomness. The safe pick is Orlando. I will say Orlando for now. I just have enough questions about their offense and just the sort of gen— it makes me nervous when teams are going into a season knowing like, if this doesn't work, someone is getting traded. Like, just the financial reality is someone's getting traded. And so I, I, I'm a little nervous about that, but I also think Orlando—

New coach.

I, I think he's a good coach. I think Sean Sweeney's a good coach. I also think Orlando, I've said this before, is like being slept on as a top 6 candidate. So I guess I'm speaking outta both sides of my mouth.

I don't know.

But if you're forcing me to pick, I pick, I'm picking Orlando. I think Detroit has too much like built-in infrastructure to fall that far.

I don't understand the Durant thing at all. It, it like, it feels like a real stalemate on what each side thinks the person is worth. But I think if you ask the general consensus of people who are smart, who follow the league like us, I would say it's a huge mistake to pay any center $40 million and up a year unless it's Jokic or somebody like on that level.

So what would you do?

I don't know. The Sacramento thing. Sacramento loves me.

That's become one of my favorite—

They're winking at me again.

These reports, it's like, why do I have to take what these agents are telling me hook, line, and sinker? Just for the scoop? Just to say he's got max offers already out there? Okay, maybe he does. I don't know.

Fine.

Who cares?

Also, this is like the classic Daryl Morey move of where in this case he did have the max offer with Harden, where the teams, it's like, oh, you know Harden's agent. It's like, yeah. Okay. So he's stuck at 4 for 50. And it's like, if he was with us, that's 5 for 80. No question. We'd max him out. And now you plant that in the agent's ear and he is like, I mean, Houston would pay us that. And now you're— so I feel like teams are seeding that.

Let's game it out. Let's go back 2 months to pretend like there's a little, or a month and a half to pretend that there's a little more flexibility among the other 29 teams who now have their rosters mostly filled, et cetera. You could pay Jalen to earn $40 million a year, which it seems like is going to happen. Because even the reports of them being apart are like, they're now just like, $10 million a part over 5 years.

It's like they're at $190 and he's at $40 a year.

So yeah, you're basically—

they'll figure that out.

Uh, B, um, dare him to take the qualifying offer. I think the deadline for that is October 1st where he has to take it or not.

You know why I'm rooting against that?

Why?

Because I want Cooper Flagg to be the first person ever to do that.

Okay. You know, you're really, you're open about this because he's from New England. That's it. And he's a Celtics fan. You're just that soft, soft-hearted.

He's from New England?

Yeah.

That's how you're going to phrase it?

From Maine.

First of all, his family is the first family of Maine. Screw the Bushes and Kennebunkport. It's the Flags now.

Okay.

I didn't know you were this passionate about Maine. These were '86 Celtic fans on my level playing on the way to practice DVDs of the '86 Celtic games. This is the Celtics family.

You just got legitimately upset at me.

I think I just like, this is, this would be like if my son was, was Cooper Flagg. It'd be like, yeah, we'll see what happens with that Dallas qualifying offer.

If your son were—

the moment I could get him to the Celtics.

No, if your son were Cooper Flagg, you'd already be investigated by, by Wachtell, Lincoln, Rosen& Katz.

You'd be, you know, it's like the deal. I'd be Father Bill.

There'd be a paper trail of like you emailing just unsolicited emails to Brad Stevens being like, just telling you, Brad, like, I know you're not gonna reply to this email.

But Pablo's texting me, hey, it's Pablo Torre. Can we talk?

We'll come for the minimum.

Listen, man, it's— don't count us out. Don't count us out with Cooper.

Would you sign and trade, Duran? Would that be your move?

I would. I would. I don't— I think when, when you're paying your center in this, whatever this salary cap system is, over $40 million a year on top of Thompson and Cade, I don't— you're not winning the title with that.

So Thompson taking—

those are your moves. That's your team.

So Thompson taking a deal. I don't have— you sprung this on me, so I don't have my laptop, but it's a percentage of the salary cap where it's viable for the 3 of them to get paid if they get Durant at 40 or 38 or 37. Yeah, no, it all makes sense financially, but flexibility.

But what's your team at that point?

Okay, so here's the counter, and I get what you're saying, and I think it's actually maybe the smartest course to take. I don't know, but you do need a center. Like you need some center long-term to pair with Cade.

And, and he, he pairs with him about as well as you're gonna get.

But the playoffs were not good.

Not for $42 million a year.

He's either 22 or barely 23.

He's almost 23. And Cade, and, and he's gotten better.

And Cade loves him.

Like, Cade loves him. And also he's gotten better. He's worked on stuff. He's improved every year.

So I just think like, Again, it might be the right move, right? Because you trade him, flashback 2 months ago, you trade him, you get, let's just make it up, a decent player, 3 first-round picks and a swap, something like that. Then you have to then parlay. It's like the Celtics with the Jaylen Brown, Paul George trade. Like the, it's the next move that is gonna define whether the controversial move is the right move or not. And so you have to actually make the next move and it's, I think, harder. I think a lot of GMs would be risk averse and say like, I don't know if I can make that next move and get me something that fits at least as well as this, which, yeah, the playoffs are ugly. We won 60 games last year.

I don't know if anyone's winning a title paying a non-impact center. He's an impact center, but you know what I mean? Like a superstar.

In the playoffs he wasn't. I mean, let's be honest, he wasn't.

The other thing is Sengun is like 30.

A year?

Yeah. Something like that.

It's a little more than that. I think it's low 30s. No, it is about that. Yeah.

30, low 30s. I just think that's the price for the non-yokage centers for me.

Would you, who would you rather have for the next 5 years, Sengun or Duran?

If I were them and I could flip Duran for Sengun, I would think about it because I'd, I'd just rather, I feel like they're at the same level and I'm just saving money. I, I would. If I ran a team, I would be so obsessed with this cap and how to do this correctly. 'Cause one mistake, you're set back for 3 years.

'Cause Sengun is like, they're not really similar players, but just in terms of like— Not at all. The percentage of the cap that has now been devoted to them by young up-and-coming teams, although Houston is like half young, half not, is somewhat similar. And they both have these sort of like, Sengun is not really a 3-point shooter, although he's dabbled. Duran is not at all.

Well, and Sengun's a rough defender.

Sengun is not a rim protector. Duran, that's the, that's the wild card is Duran's defense. Can he become a top 5 defensive center, top 6 defensive center in the NBA? Sengun will never be.

Aren't there complicated, uh, advanced stats on that with Duran?

Yeah, he's, his numbers are all over the place. Like some of his rim protection numbers trend well, some don't. I think he's just okay right now in totality, but The body type and just the athleticism is so enticing in a way that Sengun will never have. But Sengun also, like, as a passer, as a post-up threat, is on a completely different level than—

And it's also, I mean, Sengun didn't play with a point guard last year. I'm pretty sure point guards matter still. That's one of my working theories in 2026.

They do. It's one of your great, it's one of your great theories. But so, so this is what we were talking about, the East and who's falling out, right?

Well, wait a second. One last thing on Sengun. Trying to think of him and Cade together. See, one thing with Duran, I thought, I really felt like he gave them a lot of their fuck you last year in a good way. Thought he, you know, he really was just a badass game to game, really, really competitive. And I do think that was a big part of why they won 60 games.

He's super physical.

I just don't understand what happened to him in the playoffs, and I almost wish he could It, like, even if he gave a press conference and he is like, I put so much pressure on myself with this new contract coming that I cratered in the playoffs, and that was what happened, I'd be like, okay, it's an acceptable explanation.

He's so young that I'm willing to just be like, the pressure of the moment, team scheming for him a little bit more. Like in that first round series against Orlando, Orlando's just entire game plan was, we're taking him outta the series. We're taking the Cade-Durant pick and roll outta the series. We're switching everything. We don't care who that leaves on Cade if it's an unfavorable matchup. were just not letting him roll to the basket unimpeded. And I think that just fucked with him.

Who was the team that was kind of undercutting him on the alley-oops?

Probably Orlando. I mean, because they were going under screens on Cade and trying to switch underneath Duran to prevent him from rolling to the basket.

They were basically trying to make him— yeah, it was Orlando. They were trying to make him just think about it as he was going up in the air. And it did seem like it fucked with him a little bit.

And they still made it to game 7 of the second round against an underdog.

The reality is they're gonna pay him. It'll, they'll, he'll, they'll get, he'll be one between $195 and $200. They'll probably settle in the middle.

I've been like 98% certain that like every podcast to do, I'm like, look, he's gonna sign with the Pistons. The closer this gets, the more I'm like, maybe something funky is actually gonna happen. I don't know. I still expect them to pay him. I think you're right.

If they could get Sabonis and like a future Kings pick. No, I'm just trying to think of But then that just sets you back for where you are now. And then Cade's like, I love playing with that guy. Why'd you trade him?

Sabonis is good. Sabonis is good. I just don't, I don't think—

As you know, I would've traded for him already.

Sabonis?

Yeah. Not for Detroit, but just Sabonis has been out there in the front of the store with the 50% off sign for 7 months. And it's like Sabonis rebounds, you can run offense through him. He's played in big games. He has some deficiencies and he is a little overpaid, but there's only, I think, 2 years left on the deal.

Yeah.

Like I thought the Clippers should have gotten him.

Clippers, it, it was gonna be interesting to see once this all settles down and particularly like once the season starts and teams, teams start going different directions than they anticipated, who's worse than who's better.

And they have other expirings ready to roll.

And they've got these expirings. They're like, fuck it, we'll take Anthony Davis, we'll take whoever. Like, I'm just, we'll take Sabonis, we'll take whatever, whatever. We'll take, and we'll, and we'll extend him. 'Cause what else are we gonna do? You didn't report that.

this.

No.

Um, Anthony Davis and the Wizards have delayed their extension talks. That was reported a couple days ago.

Was it really? I missed it.

Yeah, yeah, I read that on the ticker.

Can you delay the things that are already delayed? Is it like a delay on top of a delay?

What we found out is something can be delayed that had no chance of happening, was my interpretation of that.

It's like when your flight is delayed 2 hours, but I've— I'm gonna say I'm not above going up to the counter and if I'm in at the gate and being like, just level 3.

Just be honest.

Yeah.

Just level 3.

Just be that guy.

Is this like a fake 2 hours or is this like a, yeah.

Like, like should I go get a beer and a burger?

Yeah.

Like what are we talking?

Should I prepare to get a car ride home? Like what's happening here? What's really happening?

Did we ever figure out why Dallas traded Anthony Davis? Why'd they trade him? He, it seems like he immediately had more value than for what they traded him for from the moment they traded him. Why would they keep him and wait for the summer?

Well, they got 2 crappy picks, right? What'd they get? 2 crappy picks.

They got, they had nothing. They got fucking beyond the poo-poo platter. It was like yesterday's poo-poo platter that was in the freezer.

I think they did get a couple assets, like some tradable goodies, whatever. Then they got—

It's a terrible trade.

They got off a guy who doesn't play and wants $55 million to whatever million dollars a year.

Yeah, but they didn't have to pay. It's not like they were forced to pay him that.

Look, I agree.

I would've kept him for the summer and waited for somebody like Golden State to be like, shit, we might be able to get LeBron if we also get Davis.

It's a, it's a good point. It's a good point. I think it was a, we've just gotta turn the page. All together.

Last couple years, they're almost making me wonder if Dallas doesn't know what they're doing.

Well, they have a, they have a new regime now, so.

All right, so you have Orlando as your 3rd playoff team.

3rd miss, miss the playoffs if I, if I had to pick, but I'm not, I don't feel confident about that. I feel confident in Charlotte and I feel pretty confident in Atlanta. I don't feel confident in Orlando. That's the line for me.

I think I would take Miami as the 3rd team. I don't really love the stuff they did this summer. And right as I was like, I don't really love what you did this summer other than getting Giannis, then they did the Peli Larsson extension and I was like, man, you did the Jović one last year. That was awful. I don't know who they thought they were bidding against for that contract. That was, I still haven't seen him play 3 games in a row that I liked. But then the Larson, who I, I liked Larson last year.

He's dope.

I just don't know in this market where things have gone, who's getting these contracts. These are contracts we were handing out 10 years ago. Why are you paying people $15, $16, $17 million with this new market where every summer now there's gonna be guys available like Anfernee Simons for $6? Why are you paying $16 and why are you locking yourself in a, you're not winning the title. I just don't get shit like that.

Is this like a reverse, reverse jinx where you're so scared of Miami and the zombie Heat that you're trying to bury them early?

I'm not, I'm not scared. Not scared of Miami at all.

Okay.

I'm really not. I don't, I don't, nobody's been able to explain to me how Bam Adebayo and Giannis are gonna successfully play offense together. Still waiting to see somebody break that down.

On Pelle Larsson, I think he was gonna start before they got Klay.

Yeah.

I, they love him in a way that I don't think they ever have loved Jović. Like, they really believe in him. And yet I was still surprised at the deal. Like, would that, I, I just thought if they could get him for $11, $12 million a year, maybe, but like at basically the mid-level, I was a little surprised. I think he'll—

It would've been a good game show if like we just did a Zoom and you called me and you're like, Pelle Larsson extension's in. Any guesses? And I would've been like, 3 for 25, higher. 3 for 29, higher. We just would've been going for like an hour. It'd be like 3 for 50, higher.

Like what? 4 for 60. Yeah. I mean, look, the Heat, Giannis and Bam, they do overlap a lot. It's the number one question on their team. How is this gonna work? The number 2 question is they have acquired a lot of shooting, but none of it is pull-up shooting really. I think they're gonna struggle in that sense. I just trust—

who's playing defense on this team?

Giannis, Bam, Davion Mitchell, Andrew Wiggins.

Who's guarding Jayson Tatum?

Andrew Wiggins.

Andrew Wiggins.

Okay. And a little bit of Bam, I think, because Bam and Giannis allow you to do so much defensively. Like, they'll play some zone.

Andrew Wiggins did guard Jayson Tatum really well 4 years ago.

I mean—

So Giannis, Bam, Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell, and Peli Larson. That's my crunch-time 5 with maybe Klay Thompson in there.

Could be, could be Klay. They, they have a lot of guys.

That's— welcome to the play-in.

Well, look, they have been— they, they generally thrive in the play-in. So if you're asking me, like, if you're just asking me who's making the playoffs, they can get in through the play-in too.

Now, if you told me I was getting 75 Giannis games, you have my attention.

65.

What would you put, like, 60? You refuse to bet your life, but 60.

60 would be like—

So if I gave you over-under 59.5, You'd go over? I would go over. So it's gonna be around 60.

Pina and I had the over-under. I don't know if you saw this, of how many, they clipped it on Instagram, of how many, the over-under at how many games Philly's projected starting 5 plays in the regular season. Oh, at 25? And I think I set the over-under at 22.5. Yeah. You would go over?

So Embiid's 39 games.

It's right there. Like it might be under.

Yeah, it's under. It is that the, the Philly thing will be fun because there's like 4 different Philly teams all happening at the same time. We'll have your, like, we don't have Embiid tonight team, the we don't have LeBron tonight team. We don't have Embiid or LeBron. We might not have Jaylen Brown tonight. It will just, it'll just, every night they'll keep us on our toes. I'm gonna enjoy it.

I think Boston, Philly, and maybe Cleveland have a little bit more this could go wrong volatility to them than is being talked about. I think they're all poten—

Boston, it's already been factored in.

The most likely outcome is that they're all about good and meet expectations. I just feel, I mean, the downside for Philly is obvious, right? Just like injuries, chemistry, whatever. I just, I'm fascinated by the Cavs. And like Peyton Watson, how that's gonna work offensively. Do they have enough depth? Is this, is this Harden, Mitchell, Allen, Mobley, is that really a big 4 that's taking you where you want to be? And yeah, I know they made the conference finals. It was a pretty unconvincing run to the conference finals and they got shellacked once they got there. Listen, it's really hard to make the Final 4.

Like we down them on it 'cause it was so bad. I mean, when they got there, but it's still— there's a 30-team league.

Okay. Wow.

I didn't expect this.

No, I'm just like, a final— it's like your 2019 Blazers that you love.

I did like that team.

But like, you make the Final Four. That's not nothing. You win 3 playoff series.

It's not nothing.

And they should have won Game 1, and they completely fell apart. And then the Atkinson quote happened, and all of a sudden their season was over.

I did feel bad making fun of the Atkinson quote again on Twitter last week when I said, At that point, the Mets had a better run differential than every team in the American League West. So analytically, they were a playoff team. I felt a little bit bad. It is that bad of a quote though.

It's gonna outlive him. It's gonna be in our lives for the next 50 years, and I'll probably be dead when it's still going.

Most shocking. So you reminded me of Cleveland Game 1, Knicks comeback against Cleveland in Game 1. Most shock—

But that wasn't shocking 'cause none of us stopped watching.

I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make you rank the shock or surprise factor of the 3 landmark Knicks 4th quarter comebacks.

Well, I was gonna say the NeSmith game was more shocking than all of them. That's the one, right?

That's the— so I argue with my Knicks friends.

'Cause that game was like legitimately over.

They all are obsessed with the Anunoby game. Like, it was one of the greatest games I've ever been at. Incredible comeback. I just don't—

You never gave up on it.

It's the most shocking. The Halliburton-NeSmith game is still more shocking to me than We probably have to decide what that game's called.

I think it's probably the Neesmith Game. He really, 'cause Haliburton's had a bunch of different games, right? Neesmith, Haliburton.

That was the greatest run of clutch shot making maybe in the history of the NBA in one playoff run.

I'm so excited to have him back. I am too. And I like that it's, you know, the Tatum thing was, was weird last year where he came back and they put all these big minutes on him. And I think they made a huge mistake and said that at the time. So Haliburton's got a good 18 months here.

We haven't talked about them, but they're down in this, in this group with Orlando.

Yeah, they have the 10th best odds. To me, they're a playoff team. I'd be shocked if— I think Zubac is such a game changer for them. And I, I, he wasn't as good last year as he was 2 years ago, but they've never had anybody like that.

So when I talk to people around the league about like, all right, so what is the— why are the numbers low on Indiana? Like, give me, give me the Indiana can't get it back argument.

It's Halliburton.

It's Halliburton. We don't know what he's gonna look like. It's, it'll take Zubac and Siakam some time to figure out to fit together with like, without a spacing 5 like Miles Turner.

See, I don't agree with that because I feel like Siakam plays, there's some Kawhi similarities who Zubac's played with, right? He's played with 6'8 scoring forwards who have the ball at the top and, you know, I don't know. I feel like he's gonna, he's a smart player.

And so is Pascal. And the one I hear more than any of that is people are really worried about their depth. Like TJ McConnell lost a little bit of a step or half step last year. And then it's like Oubre, Toppin, Jay Huff, maybe Jairus Walker, maybe Ben Sheppard.

Why maybe Jairus Walker?

Well, just like who's in the rotation.

I like Jairus Walker.

If you gotta go 9 deep, who's, who—

I like Ben Sheppard. I like all those guys.

Well, the Kelly Oubre signing was a shot across the bow at Ben Sheppard and Jairus Walker. Like, hey, if you can't play, like this guy at least comes in and does what Kelly Oubre does.

Was really good in the Celtics series. Like, yeah. Guarded both wings.

I'm higher on their depth than most, than the skeptics are. Like, I think Oubre's solid. I think Obi Toppin fits them like a glove. They'll play him at the 5 some if the Huff thing doesn't work out. McConnell, not like McConnell was so essential to their Finals run. Yeah. As just like a come off the bench and fuck the game up guy that him losing a little bit of juice last year is worrisome.

Or he's listening to this podcast right now in the weight room going, I'll show these fucking guys. I'm gonna have the best season I've ever had. Toronto seems to have, for them, the 4th best odds was the other thing that jumped out to me for the East. They're +850. And I just think it's putting a lot of stock in Kawhi, who's at 35 and who has pretty checkered 2020s from a playoff standpoint, from a durability standpoint, availability standpoint.

But this is— so, oh yeah, you're talking about win the East.

Yeah, I'm just like, this is what I can't get— just looking at the That, at all of them, that one jumped out at me too. It was like, they're the 4th best odds.

I'm very high on the Raptors as a regular season team. I just don't know why anyone would expect Kawhi to be able to get through. You're talking 3, 3 playoff series after a functional regular season when, again, I will repeat it until the proverbial cows come home. He has not finished a 2nd round playoff series since 2020. He's not completed one. The Clippers competed in several of them. He was either injured for them or got injured in them, got injured in the first round.

He won 2 playoff series in 7 years.

3. Well, he won. You're right. He won 2. Yeah.

He wasn't there for the Utah, the San Antonio, the Utah series.

Yeah. So I just like, I would love the idea of the Raptors making the finals. I just don't think Kawhi will play 3 playoff rounds without getting injured, or I would bet against it.

Celtics tidbit.

Yeah.

Hugo and Shireman, phenomenal shape. Entire organization has been stunned by the work they put in over the summer.

I like, I like—

Take from my mouth to God's ears.

So now I'm picturing like Celtics HQ at the practice facility where all the offices are.

You know who doesn't have baby fat anymore? Hugo.

I, this is what I, I'm picturing them just walking around. Like Mike Zarin runs into Brad Stevens like, Brad, you see Hugo today with his shirt off? Looks great. Looking great. This is all they're talking about.

No, I think this happened.

Oh, but did you see Baylor? Like, he's benching a little bit more. Like, I was watching him in the weight room. He was grunting. Like, just forget Derrick White and Jayson Tatum and Mitchell Robinson. Like, just, we're obsessed with our 6th and 7th or 7th and 8th guys.

Also, Paul George, Mike Conley. Vets. Good locker room guys. Mitchell Robinson, vet. Some adults. Nice mix.

I, look, I think they're, they're gonna win a lot of regular season games.

It is funny now, more and more stuff's coming out where, why they did that trade. At least we know why they did the trade.

Well, what, what, what more came out?

It's just they thought they ran their course with those 2 guys then, and that was that. and they hit the wall and, and they did want to do this now instead of a year from now, and that it wasn't sustainable.

I, I mean, you will never forget the trade. You were getting a colonoscopy.

Um, well, I found out from my wife.

Delightful experience, by the way. People haven't got their colonoscopies, get your— get— I, I loved every minute of it. I walked out and the doctor was like, you need to come back in 7 to 10 years or whatever it is, 5 to 7 years.

Yeah, I'll come back next year.

I was like, I'll come back in 3.

Yeah, tell me when.

If you think it's safer, I'll come back in 3. Great rest. I got a cookie and some juice afterwards. I didn't even find the prep that bad. I kind of enjoyed the prep as like a mental challenge.

I liked the prep and I would do it again.

And he was like, settle down. You don't need to come back in 3 years. All right, but if you change your mind, you know where to reach me.

So out of the two of us, whose fingers are more likely to work this year?

I mean, I think it's your fingers are—

I'm like a +500, you're like -350.

Yeah, you need to— it's been so long. You're like one of those guys who's been in a frozen sleep in space for 12 years. You wake up out of the pod and you're like, what's happening?

I was— what was the movie I watched where they— oh, the Aliens. We did, we did rewatchables. Aliens. She woke up and it's 55 years later. That would be me writing. Might be. So what happens? I turn the document on and then—

might be the most scared I've ever been watching a movie. Sleepover, middle school, Aliens. I was like, last hour. I was legitimately terrified. I think the first 2 Aliens, each of them are masterpiece movies. And I like being scared. I like the sensation of being scared. That was one where I went over to the other side of like, I like being scared. I like being scared. I like being scared. I'm ready for this movie to be over because I'm too scared.

You know, at the UCLA game on Saturday, I met the future of UCLA basketball, who is the best 17-year-old in the world. This kid they got, the Serbian.

Okay. Oh, the guy who's making like $6 million or something?

2-year NIL deal. I don't know if you've watched this. I'm just— I'm going to be the first person to tell you this. This is going to be your favorite player 5 years from now.

Great.

6'9, just going, going, going, but passer. But like little Luka, but like honestly like a little Magic Johnson-y with the way he goes. But it's like, and I asked him, I was, 'cause I asked if he had played with Jokic before and he is like, no, I haven't gotten a chance to play with him yet. But I was like, oh, you met him?

Met him?

I met him, met him. Like I talked to him and I, and he was like, he hadn't played with him yet, but he really wants to. He's been in America for like 5 years. 5 weeks, but I was like, I watch your YouTube clips. It's clear Jokic has tripled down to your generation in Serbia. He's like, oh yeah. So there we might have all of these, the second generation Jokic from Serbia, all of these kids who are gonna be playing like the '86 Celtics.

Well, someone has to shoot at some point.

Right. But yeah, this will be your favorite player.

You didn't answer your own question, did you?

For what?

Like what 3 teams are you not, are, are out of the playoffs?

Well, I have 2 of 'em. I have Charlotte and Miami.

Oh, Miami. You answered Miami. You're, wow. So many.

I would lean more toward Miami. It's Miami Orlando.

It's one of the Florida teams, and I would lean toward Miami 'cause I don't trust Giannis to play 70 games. And that team was a .500 team last year who lost, you know, some key people in what turned out to be a really terrible trade for Milwaukee. I saw a video of Jaime Jaquez couldn't bring his dog into a restaurant in Milwaukee. You're really different. Different times. He was, he was living his life in Miami. Now he's in Wisconsin.

Speaking of dogs, here's something that happened to me in Los Angeles at my hotel.

Okay.

Never seen this before. Guy staying at the hotel. I was in the gym, went to gym workout this morning. Crowded gym in LA. It was like there's 8 people in a hotel gym. That's pretty crowded. Yeah. Guy brings his dog. Never seen that before. Dogs just— and it's like a big dog. It was not like a little puppy.

As you know, I love dogs, but LA is out of control with dogs.

So he's, he's just in the gym walking around. The dog's just meandering around the gym while the guy's on the treadmill. And so I I go to the elliptical machine because this is my old man workout day. I'm going to do the elliptical. The dog is sleeping underneath one of the pedals of the elliptical machine so that if I press down, I'm going to smush the dog. And I'm like, I'm not sure what my social— what I'm supposed to do here. Do I get the guy and be like— Yeah, you get the guy.

It's a bad job by the guy.

So what I did was I just got on the machine hoping the dog would wake up. up and he'll jump out. And he did. Yeah, he just woke up. But I've never, I've never had to— I'm almost 50 years old and it was a social situation that I had never been in before.

People bring their dogs into grocery stores here.

I mean, you see that in New York sometimes.

I'm— I love dogs. I'm against that. Yeah, dogs shouldn't be where food and drinks are.

And dog in the gym was a new one for me.

Dog in the gym's interesting. Yeah.

Um, why do we talk— oh, so Miami.

Yeah.

I just trust, I guess I just trust Giannis plus Bam plus Spo plus they're pretty deep plus, plus Nadir Opet rally. Yeah. I, but like, so that, all right. So we have enough faith in the Knicks, obviously. Celtics, pretty proven track record of Mazzulla winning a lot of games. Philly, Detroit. I'm just, I'm gonna skip Philly for a second. Detroit, me personally, like they won enough games last year by being tough and nasty and It would be one of the most dramatic fall-offs, non-injury, in the history of the league. I think their over-under is like 48.5 or something. We're not gonna spoil it, but like, I just think by giving a shit about every game to the degree that they do, it's hard for me to see them falling outta the top 6. Cleveland has enough raw talent that despite what concerns I might have fit-wise, I feel like that's enough of a regular season floor. Toronto, we talked about.

Cleveland not winning 45 games would be shocking. Now the question is, if this was— what was that year when Phoenix didn't make it, when they were like 48 and 34?

That year they tried to tank and won 48 games.

'14 or '15 with Dragic and Isaiah.

Yeah, all the point guards.

Maybe 2014.

Philly, I just, I can't wait to see it because what if Embiid plays 30 games and LeBron plays 45 games and suffers a hamstring injury and is old? Like, there's some downside potential with Philly. Like now Jalen is a, is a good, Jalen and Maxey is, is a pretty stable floor. I guess that's what the numbers are betting on.

And, and second year Vijay.

Yeah.

Yeah. During the Pats-Steelers game yesterday, they were TJ, JJ Watt was talking about Rodgers.

Okay.

And he was saying how Rodgers wasn't 100% last year 'cause he hurt his back doing squats. And he was like, yeah, the whole year his back just wasn't right. But you know, he is old and And I was thinking like, that's— LeBron's gonna be what, 41 this year?

He's already 41.

Yeah. So he'll be 42.

Yeah. New Year's Eve.

Isn't his birthday New Year's Eve? Yeah. 42.

Or Christmas.

That's the problem when you get old is you have little injuries like that. And even if you're Superman like he is, you know, they don't— you just, it's like, oh, my hamstring hurts. And then it just hurts for like a month and a half. So we'll see. I— Embiid to me, This is the— I mean, out of all the make or breaks, this is it. Like, if you can't get a full season out of him this year, then it's never going to happen again.

But you got to redefine full season though. Full season's got to be like—

I'm saying like, if he can't play— he's played, I looked it up, he's played over 2,000 minutes twice.

I mean, I just expect— I would be wildly happy as a basketball fan if he played 55 regular season games.

Why not just play him once a week?

Fine, whatever. I don't know, whatever it takes.

The problem is when he gets in a groove, he wants to keep playing and they can't kind of stop, they can't kind of stop him from himself. You know? And that's always been the issue with it. Like, it, they should be like, it should always be like, come from a position of strength. Just sit out. We had wait till the Friday game and that's how you're gonna have to handle him. I don't think they will. And then LeBron, I think, is gonna have a huge FU on his shoulder this year. 'Cause there were certain— the Lakers didn't want him since February. Like, I, I, anyone who thinks there's any other answer other than that, you're fooling yourselves. And just look at some of the stuff he's done.

I thought he left the Lakers on his own volition.

Anyone who believes that. But it was also interesting that like San Antonio, I don't know.

I never got the San Antonio one. You have to sell me on that one. If I'm San Antonio, I'm like, we just made the Finals already. I just, I like—

Would you rather have LeBron James or Tobias Harris for one year? So you're telling me you'd rather have Tobias Harris?

There, I just, there's a lot that comes with LeBron. I gotta really change the way my whole team plays if I get LeBron.

Do you?

Yeah. I mean, not all the time like it was in his prime.

Did you watch their last 4 minutes of all their playoff games last year? Like, I kind of felt like they needed somebody like LeBron.

Oh yeah. And he had some nice last 4 minutes against Houston in particular when everyone else was injured or Reeves was just coming back.

Yeah, I don't know. I just, I thought I really liked that the most for everybody. I get why Wemby, I'm sure, wants to make his own way in his own career and probably wants no part of the circus that comes with LeBron.

And see, I would've ranked—

maybe LeBron wouldn't have wanted it either.

I would've ranked them behind, among good teams, behind Minnesota and Denver as like the most fun, sensible LeBron fits.

LeBron living in Minnesota.

Was he living in San Antonio? He just respects the franchise that much. Maybe he does. I mean, Rich Paul angled De'Aaron Fox there.

Well, the one thing we learned from— I can't believe we're talking about LeBron. The one thing we learned from— the one thing we learned from this Philly thing is it was the decision he thought he could make to try to win the title.

Yeah.

I don't think there's any other reason he went there. It's not like, oh, I've always wanted to play for the Sixers. But that's something— listen, he was going to Cleveland. I don't know what happened. I can't wait for the story. And it's in Philly. Something happened.

Unlike, to your point about Minnesota and Denver, he gets to live in New York City playing for the Sixers. So there's like, it's not even—

Maybe he'll like Philly.

And House has talked a lot about the golf quality in Philly, but he's not even going to live there. He's going to live, I mean, he's just going to live everywhere, I'm sure. But yeah.

This is all leading to House playing golf with LeBron somehow.

Who knows?

Can't rule him out. Can't ever rule out House with golf. All right. You have a podcast. People are going to hear this on Tuesday. You'll be Doing a podcast that is also going up on Tuesday.

All Western Conference with Rob Mahoney.

And then you'll be back. We're gonna do over-unders, both conferences. I think October 12th, 13th range.

Yeah.

Is what we're looking at.

I'm the defending champ.

I'm trying to do it a week before this season. I felt the season's starting on the 20th this year and I felt like, forget when we did it last year, but too early.

We did it too early.

We did it too early.

I think this is, a couple things happened.

Yeah. I think this is gonna be better for us. All right, Zach Lowe, good to see you.

Always fun.

Hey, FanDuel is making this your most rewarding season ever. And what does that mean? Well, boosts, promos, teasers, a new rewards club, uh, teaser recommendations from the Ringer 107 crew. We got a bunch of stuff and we're gonna have some fun. We're gonna compare different betting scenarios and pick which is more rewarding within each scenario. Here's what they laid out for me. 2-team 6-point teaser or hitting an underdog parlay. I mean, I hitting the underdog parlay, especially like if you had the Raiders last week or the Saints, that's the best because you're taking a flyer on it, but it's also, you put some brains and some thought into it. Winning a bet on a last-play defensive TD or a Hail Mary. Hail Mary is obviously the winner. There's nothing more fun than winning on a Hail Mary other than maybe a last-second Half-court shot. Uh, win your favorite over-under futures or correctly predict the exact order of the NFC South? Well, the NFC South is impossible to predict. Nobody's ever done it. So I would say winning your favorite over-under futures, 'cause it's actually realistic. Um, using rewards club, profit boost tokens, or game intelligence?

Trick question. FanDuel provides all of them, so you don't have to choose. You get all those things. So every week, check the FanDuel app to see what's waiting for you and make it. I'm telling you, it's gonna be your most rewarding season ever. Anthony Jeselnik is here. It's been a while for us.

It has been a few years.

Yeah. I'm always available for you when you want to podcast, but you're a busy guy going around.

I appreciate that.

Now you have a new, new thing that's coming to The Ringer that you've been doing for a while.

I do. I'm, we, I'm excited that we can finally announce it.

Yeah. It's been negotiated for the last 3 and a half years.

Yes, it took a while. I mean, I just started Jeselnik Book Club in January. And I thought maybe I'll do it for a year and then see if I want to take it somewhere. And then you guys came knocking fast.

That's tight.

You guys knew we had to get in there early. And now, September 30th, it'll be on The Ringer.

Coming on.

And weekly.

Weekly.

Yeah.

That was— we really had to twist your arm a couple of times for that one.

I didn't know. I mean, I've been doing it in my living room, trying to get people to read books and was prepared for failure, trying to get guys to read books. And my audience is 85% men. I'm like, I'm prepared for failure. Like, no one watches. And then it took off and just kept getting bigger.

What was the first one you did?

The first one I did was Jim Thompson's The Getaway.

Right. And people loved it.

People loved it because it has a crazy ending.

Yeah.

They liked hearing me talk about it. And when I was talking about it, I was like, oh, I enjoy this. I'm good at this. And then I interviewed an author. I got my friend of mine, Isaac Fitzgerald, at Skylight Books. to promote his book. And it was so easy and fun and funny that I thought, oh, I can do this every week. And then I committed. So not only am I going to be doing the book club, getting guys to read a book a month, we'll be talking about new releases, getting in guests. We've already got some. We managed to find and get Greg Rosenthal for the first episode.

How'd you get him?

You fly him in from Burbank? We had to go through a bunch of people, but eventually his wife relented and let him come on the pod.

That's one of my favorite things. That's like your lifelong friend.

Yeah, absolutely.

He's just this random other NFL— who for some reason has never worked for The Ringer, even though we all know each other.

He'll be here one day.

One day. We're waiting.

We have a seat ready for him. He's the last employee left at NFL Network, like the dead last guy. Everyone else is either at ESPN or gone.

Right.

But one day we'll get him here. Now that I'm here, I can bring him in. Our powers combined.

You're the gateway drug to Greg Rosen's world.

Exactly. Exactly. We've got a bunch of celebrity guests, fun guests. I think it's just going to be a fun hang, whether you've read the book or not. That's the thing that surprised me about the book club is people would be like, I haven't read this book yet, but listening to Anthony talk about it made me want to read it.

So do you think people listen to it but haven't read the book yet?

It's like when you would watch Siskel and Ebert back in the day. You haven't seen the movies yet. They're not even out yet. But based on how they talk about it, makes you want to see it, even though I described the whole book. I'm spoiling things, but I think that's okay if the book is great.

Yeah, because we had that with Rewatchables where people will tell me they'll listen to the episode and then they'll decide if they want to watch the movie if they hadn't seen it. I'm like, we're deep diving this movie. You're just listening to the episode, raw-dogging it basically without knowing what's happening in the movie.

Yeah, but some people do that. If they see people passionate, they just want to hang out and listen to people talk about things. And with social media now, with podcasting, everything, I think people just want to feel smart. It used to be about influencers and people wanted to hear you talk about money and talk about the inside baseball stuff. And now they just want to feel smart. So they want to feel like they watched the movie.

Or pretend they're smart.

Pretend they're smart, sure. But I think people want to watch a book club. I think now is something that couldn't have happened a few years ago here at The Ringer. But now you've seen what happens with movies today, TV today. I think it's all about books now. I think books are the new franchise.

Well, I noticed— what was that one? And this isn't one you would do in the book club, but that one that came out, the book, like, 9 months ago, the lady in the Hamptons who was getting divorced out of nowhere.

The Stranger.

And it became like, with my wife and her friends, it was all they talked about for 3 weeks was this book. And everybody had read it or had an opinion of it. And one person knew a friend of hers was friends of hers in high school. And I was just like, Jesus, books. We're still doing this. Yeah, it's happening.

When something hits the zeitgeist now, now that I'm weekly, I would do The Stranger now. And we came up with a bit, the Ringer Versus, whatever we'll end up calling it, where somebody on your staff— and I didn't know the staff. Like, I've never seen a podcast in my life. So I was coming in here fresh. You're a rookie.

You're fresh.

This is the most attractive staff I've ever been a part of.

We're trying.

We got in a Zoom with, like, 20 people. And I was the ugly one. I could not believe it. But I said to staff, put out a challenge. Challenge me. I'm reading fucking Dungeon Crawler Carl right now, which I never thought I would read. But I'm going to talk about with one of your staff members, I think Mallory, I want to say.

Oh, my God.

Maybe I'm wrong, but—

That'll be the longest podcast you've ever done.

We'll see. I can cut someone off if I need to.

She's 3 hours ready to roll every time. Yeah, we love her. I've been working with her for 14 years.

She was down to read that book, and I'm halfway through it now. It's something I would never read, but I just want to talk about what people are reading, getting guys to read nonfiction.

But you're talking fiction, primarily.

Primarily, yes. Unless something really hits. Like, I was thinking of you the other day. I was reading about Darryl Dawkins' autobiography.

Oh, autobiography. Even I don't have that.

Autobiography. I think— believe it's an autobiography. and it's insane. And I was like, oh, that's— maybe that's how I get Bill on the show, is you read Darryl Dawkins' autobiography and we talk about it.

So you would have to recommend it to me or vice versa?

I think we just have to agree in advance, whereas other people, I'm like, challenge me. I forget one of the guys' names gave me like a list of 5 books and says, if you want to read one of these, I'll come on and talk about that. Because your staff is great. I want to mix it up with The Ringer staff.

Well, you have the 250-page limit, though.

For my book club, the year one is 250 pages. I think this month's book we'll be doing, our first episode at The Ringer, is The Glass Hotel. It's like 300, but it's a quick read. There's a 250-page book that takes you a month because it's so dense and the language is different that I'm trying to pick good writers.

So you're not doing David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest?

No, I would never. I read that book.

What is that? That was like 810, something like that?

And then there's a fucking— then there's like an index you have to go to to read the book, which is impossible. But you know how if you're ever in a car and someone is like, hey, take your phone and put some music on, and you're terrified that you're going to be judged by what you put on, right? I feel that when I'm recommending books for the book club, that this has to be something that I love and I think people are going to respond to.

And what are the genres that feel like they suck you in the most?

I mean, it's about the writing more than anything else, because I've had books that I've had a crime thriller. I've had a book about a memoir of divorce, like a fictional memoir. But it's just the writing is great and I fly through it. I keep talking about the sense of accomplishment you feel when you finish a book versus binging a TV show or finishing a video game. I mean, these are all great art forms.

Yeah.

But you don't walk out of The Odyssey feeling like you've accomplished something. But if you finish a book, you feel like, oh, I did something with my time. Then I'm kind of competing with doom scrolling more than TV and movies and sports. Right.

Like, one of the things I thought was interesting about you is you said your favorite writer that you'd read was Joan Didion. And I was like, oh, he's really in this.

Yeah. I mean, she's the best.

That's like a deep cut.

Well, one of my favorites when I was growing up was Bret Easton Ellis, and his favorite was Joan Didion. So once you get into it, And reading 12 books a year is the goal for Jessalynik Book Club. But I'm hoping that by reading 12 books, it makes you want to read more. And the more you read, the more you enjoy reading. It's like working out. It's hard at first, your muscles are sore, but once you get into it, you get those endorphins going that you want to read different kinds of books. You don't love every book you watch like you don't love every movie you watch, but you enjoy seeing movies and you get this education as you go. It's like a Tarantino-esque— I see the reference there. I see what they're talking about now because I have this education of film.

Well, one of my ideas for you, because as we were trying to figure out how to do weekly, you have to have some easy ones, some layups.

Sure.

And I definitely wanted you to do at least one '90s comedy autobiography.

I mean—

Or '80s, or just something where— I didn't even know what it would be.

I think all of the— and you'd said they wrote these back before the internet. Yeah, but it was also a book where like the book tour would be talking about the crazy things that were in there. Yeah, yeah.

But we didn't have the screenshot era because I think there's like a distinct before and after with the biographies and the autobiographies from like basically pre-2010 post. You can see it in the magazine features too. Yeah, people would say crazy shit.

Oh yeah.

And it would be like, you might see it and you might tell like your, your wife or whoever, like, whoa, did you see what this guy said in GQ? And then they would go away.

But they wouldn't even do that on the— I mean, yeah, there's like the John Wayne Playboy interview.

The Playboy interviews are nuts. I was telling you how I've been reading all these Playboy interviews, and these directors are just torpedoing actors. They're torpedoing other directors. And you're like, oh my God.

Yeah.

Anyone did this now, we have Tom Cruise saying nothing for an hour.

I know. I mean, I miss the days of of Sean Connery admitting to beating every woman he's ever dated on a TV interview. Yeah. And being totally cool with it.

Yeah.

He's like, look, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Autobiographies aren't as much fun for me as the unauthorized biography after they die, when you can just go to town.

Who was the one who did that? Kitty Kelly?

Kitty Kelly?

I think that was her name. She would do, like, somebody would die and she would have the unauthorized right after.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

And it was always like, you're getting all your sources from the valet and somebody who was her maid for 2 years. And I wouldn't say it was the best collection of people.

You want warts and all. I just want the warts, to be quite honest. But now everyone makes their own documentary. They produce their own. And it's like, at the end, it's like, now I have an animal shelter. And you're like, I don't care about this. You want to make yourself look good. There's always one thing they want to correct in the record. that I hate those documentaries. I want to see something that's brutal. But even better, it now is the fictionalized version. There's this book, it came out a couple of weeks ago called Life of M by Rachel Cusk. And Rachel Cusk is up there with Joan Didion for me as one of the greatest writers of all time. And she wrote this book that's about Natalie Portman. She doesn't say Natalie Portman.

I read about this.

It is Natalie Portman. And that is like under 200 pages. And it is a character assassination in, like, a—

But didn't Natalie Portman know she was doing it or, like, participated a little bit in the beginning and then backed out?

In the novel, it's like they become friends. They both live in Paris, and it's like, I would love to do your biography. And she's like, great, that would be great. And then sees the project at the end and is like, I hate this. And that's the end of the book. You don't know what's fiction and what's not. She never says, I'm actually friends with her. This is based on her. But it is her. And it's wonderful to read. I know critics haven't been as kind to it, but I loved it.

I'm going to read it this weekend now. You got me excited about it.

You will fly through it. What I'm really looking for is that book that you just start and you can't believe how fast you tore through it. Are you a Kindle guy? Are you a—

So this is a sad story because I don't think I read— I mean, my whole library is just all books, like books I actually read. And I think it's the biggest reason I've ever been successful is I just read. I was an only child. I read everything. And, uh, I have to read everything on the iPad now. The reality is I need to— I have bad eyesight. I need to get my eyes fixed.

Put the phone away.

But as I've gotten older, the books, the print, unless I have like perfect light. So I read on the iPad and I don't— and I— what ends up happening is you end up reading faster or zooming through or like, I don't think it's the same experience. So the reality, what really has to happen is I gotta get my eyes fixed.

I love the Kindle. I feel like I'm a reading machine. You can highlight things and go back to them if you want.

Totally.

And I'll buy the physical copy to have on the shelf. I like physical. I get a lot of advanced physical copies.

So you do Kindle? I do Apple Books, whatever that on the iPad.

I think the iPad's worse because you get the blue light. The Kindle's got that white light, right? It's warm and it doesn't hurt your eyes because my eyes are going too.

I changed the light on it, made it a little better.

Okay.

The Apple Books though, they'll do like, uh, they'll have sales. They'll have books that'll just be like $1.99, $2.99, but they'll be like real books. I'm like, all right, I, I'm fine. And, uh, and I saw my own book on there once for $2.99. No, I was— I— the book came out 17 years ago.

Okay.

I was like, I'm kind of excited it's on there. I hope this will make somebody buy it.

See, I have real money. I'm a touring comedian, so I can afford a full-price book. I buy books 2 or 3 times.

I'm just saying, like, books, like, I don't want to spend $20 on that. I don't know if I'm going to read it, but it's like $1.99. All right, I'll check it out.

I have a lot of books I've bought on the Kindle and that I never touch because I read about it. The copywriter does a lot of the heavy lifting for me because there's so few books for guys now. Yeah, everything is the woman on the fucking train or the woman who found out her husband's having an affair. That when I see a book that's written for men, whether it's by a woman or not, I buy that book, and then sometimes I just don't get to it. Something else excites me. I get excited by new books because there's a hype there. I would compare it to watching Saturday Night Live as it airs, as opposed to watching it a couple of days later. You lose something when you're not watching it live. Reading it the week of is fun for me.

I used to get— I mean, I buy so many books on Amazon. I've had Amazon since, like, 1998. And one of the reasons I love buying the books was I knew when they'd come, I'd read them because I ended up buying it versus in a bookstore, you can talk yourself out of it. But when you're buying them online, I'd be like, I'll get that one too. But now I have it. All right, I got to read it.

That was how I knew the book club was taking off, was not just the video count, but Amazon was selling out. I would announce the book and Amazon was like, book influencer. It'll be like, in 4 weeks you'll get it. But I partnered with a place called bookshop.org. It's like the anti-Amazon. And they were like, we guarantee we'll get them to reprint these books that you're picking. So I'm picking books that are 3 or 4 years old. Yeah. Like, we'll make sure we have hundreds of copies so that we don't sell out. Because Amazon was like, we can't keep up.

Because the other one, Paid Books, is the other one.

That's—

they have the older books.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, there's good— but there's like 5 or 6 of these sites. I think the Barnes& Noble one does good with, uh, they have a bunch of, uh, Bunch of inventory.

They're cool. I don't go on the site, but I do enjoy going to a Barnes& Noble now.

We have a great one in the Grove.

It is great.

It is great. It's like 4 floors.

My first job in LA was working at a Borders Books on La Cienega. I worked there for like 3 months before they fired me with cause. I was a terrible employee, but I loved working in that bookstore.

What were you doing, insulting their customers?

My job was to be the security guy, so I had to help customers, but it was also like stop people from stealing, and everyone stole. They allowed homeless people to come in and read books. So it was mostly wrangling them. But my job was just so boring that if you see someone stealing something, let them. Don't stop them. I'm like, I don't have anything to stop them with.

Right.

But I got so bored that it became clear this guy doesn't want to be here anymore. And they got me out of there.

We had a great bookstore in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, which is right next to Boston. Brookline Booksman.

Is it still there?

Still there. Wow. So many of these ones are gone. Like, there's a couple in LA that— there was one on Sunset that actually just got hit by the water flood.

Not Book Soup?

Yeah.

Book Soup got hit?

It got hit. And I don't even— I'm not positive it's reopened yet, but there's not a ton of them in LA.

No, there's a few, and they're good ones. Skylight Books is great. Last Bookstore. Both locations are really cool. But Book Soup was my jam.

Yeah.

But in the past, since the pandemic, the pandemic almost helped books. You would think it would shut bookstores down.

Yeah.

But this book— this place, bookshop.org, I've partnered with, said that since they've started, because they give part of their proceeds to help local bookstores, more bookstores have opened than have closed every year since the pandemic. And that used to not be the case. They were getting shut down by Amazon. And Barnes& Noble is kind of putting more money into it. I like when you walk in and see what the employees have written on cards, like what they think is good. Then that gets me to—

We don't have that anymore. It's really like Because video stores are gone.

Yeah.

So book recommendations. I don't even know what else would you find where it would be like, Johnny really loves this William Goldman book.

I tell you what you do is you subscribe to Cheslin Book Club on The Ringer, and I'm going to give you— I'm going to tell you exactly what's up every week. If you want new books, if you want old books, if you're like, hey, I love this, what else is like this? That's the big thing with the book is you find something you love and you're like, well, does the author have anything else? Or what is in the same vein? That's been good.

You're going to do some mailbag stuff, potentially.

I love mailbags. At the end of every book club, people will ask about the actual book, and then there are questions like, how do you read on a Kindle? Do you like the percentage on the corner? How do you juggle multiple books? Are audiobooks okay? People get insecure about their reading because they don't know what's okay. Like people who forget the book they just read. I read 50 to 100 books a year. I can't remember most of them by the end of the year. That's okay. Just the actual art of reading or the act of reading, letting words come into your head, is the point. It's okay to forget everything. People who review books for the New York Times say they forget everything, and that's just natural. That doesn't mean you're not reading well.

Well, your brain's like a nightclub. You have a capacity. You got to kick some stuff out.

So if a book stays with you, that means it really hits you in the heart and the head because it's affecting you.

I had a lot of weird things with books, like, because I would read— I read everything, like, through college. And then I stopped reading fiction as much when I was really trying to get my sports column going because I was trying to, like, figure out my style. And my brain's a little spongy, so if I'm reading, like, a certain writer, it'll, like, mess with the writing.

Yeah.

And so I stopped reading— I basically stopped reading fiction, like, in the mid-'90s, and I really gravitated toward nonfiction stuff.

All sports stuff?

Collections, sports. And I really love sports and TV movies and, uh, and some like real life stuff. Like, yeah, I would go in phases. Like, I, like, I had a Watergate phase in 1992 and I read every Watergate book that was possible to get, or like JFK assassination, stuff like that. But for the most part, like, any sports book, anything about movies, anything with essays. I always liked like the different collections of essays, but yeah. So I'm complete opposite of you. I was always nonfiction, and you were more the fiction side.

Getting sucked into a story and liking the character, and it's like the empathy you get. You walk a mile in someone's shoes.

Yeah.

Someone who's completely different from me, you feel like you were them. If you watch John Wick, you're sitting in the theater and you kind of feel like John Wick. Read a book starring John Wick like you are John Wick. And that, to me, is more valuable than nonfiction. I'm not trying to knock nonfiction.

But I think everybody, whatever works for people, as long as you're reading.

A lot of guys just think fiction is not serious or it's a waste of time. And I think it could not be less of the case of it being a waste of time. I think you're gaining empathy and you're getting information. Most of the things I've learned have been from reading novels. But nonfiction, I forget these facts. I forget. And a lot of it's in Celsius, which I can't handle. So I like fiction over nonfiction, but I think I'm sure we'll have some nonfiction in there. I've got Andy Richter coming on. He wrote a book about the making of the movie Elf, and so we're going to have him on and just see what happens.

Yeah.

I mean, you've seen Elf, right?

Yeah, I liked Elf.

I have not seen Elf.

Really?

I swear to God.

It's kind of in the Christmas rotation, though.

It is. But I'm not like— you're not going to believe this. I'm not the biggest Christmas guy. My birthday is 3 days before Christmas, so I've always been kind of mad at Jesus. And so I've avoided most Christmas movies.

There was a story recently that Jesus was only 5'1. That was a story that was going around this week.

I mean, I definitely heard he sucked at basketball.

5'1 seems short.

And people, Christians seem really into finding out more facts about Jesus. They want to know what color he was, what was his height.

Now we know he's allegedly 5'1. Mm-hmm.

Um, I didn't— where did you hear that?

It was passed around on one of my text threads.

Jesus was the short king of Nazareth.

He was 5'1, 110. But this is, you know, a gajillion years ago.

110? They weighed him?

Apparently they had scales back then.

Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, that must have been good news for the carpenter who made the crucifix. You know, like, don't worry, he's only 5'1.

This will go fast. Um, I used to read a lot of collections and stuff.

Like short story collections?

Yeah, short story collections and also like magazines. But my favorite was— I had a whole short story phase, but my single favorite writer is Raymond Carver.

Raymond Carver is amazing. A master. Everything by him is fantastic.

So when Short Cuts, the movie, came out, that was like a collision of different worlds for me.

I was psyched, and then I was let down by it. I thought it didn't really capture him. You know what I love? Did you ever do this? When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to see rated R movies. for a while when I was like a little kid. I was a big reader early on, but I could get the novelization. I loved the novel. Like, I read the novelization of Jaws: The Revenge. And the novelization is good. It's amazing. The shark kills fucking everybody. And in the movie, he kills like 3 people, and they bring one of them back to life in the director's cut because the Jamaicans got mad. But the novelizations of Predator was awesome. And they would do it. I don't know if they still do them. Tarantino did one after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He's got a new one coming out about, like, a Cliff Booth that I can't wait to read.

But I love those. It's coming out in December.

Yeah, the movie is. But then he's writing a novelization, I think, just a continued story. I don't know if he even wrote the script for Cliff Booth.

No, I think he wrote a fictionalized book about Cliff Booth that I think he's timing toward when the movie comes out.

Cool. Yeah, I'll definitely read that.

One of the things I was doing, it was just a boredom thing during COVID and then I kind of kept going with it, but I was You know, we've done, at this point, we've done like 450 Rewatchables movies, but a lot of them were movies that came out of a book. So I was like, oh, this would be fun to get the books for different Rewatchable movies. And now I have like 100 of these books and you forget like how much movie IP came from. I mean, the easy ones to remember are like Jaws, Godfather, Shining, but—

Sure.

There's a shitload of other movies that just started as either a short story or a book.

But a lot of times, I don't think the book is always better. Like The Godfather. The book isn't the same. It's got that subplot about the woman with the vagina. Yeah. If they put that in the movie, it would have been amazing. The closest I can think to the book is as good as the movie, and they're both masterpieces, is No Country for Old Men. I remember seeing that movie in New York the day it came out, being obsessed with it. I can't wait. I'm going to see it right away. Buying the book to fly to LA and reading it on the flight because it's a short book. and then seeing the movie again when I landed. And the combination of the two in your head, like, there were lines of dialogue I thought were in the movie that were just in the book, that it's the perfect— If you read Fight Club—

It's very— Fight Club's another one.

It almost fills in the blanks of the movie that it can really help to read the book afterwards. And I think they're both equally valid and important.

Godfather's funny because there is that whole— There's all this extra stuff that when they were making the movie, they must have been like, ugh. Yeah.

Stay late. The book Jaws has a lot of local politics. A lot where you're like, this is not—

A lot of the mayor.

Yeah, a lot of the mayor trying to figure shit out.

Amityville Horror was a good book.

I haven't read that one.

There's some good '70s, '80s ones. Shining was obviously amazing, but Shawshank Redemption was— what do they call those half books?

A short story?

It was more than a short story. Yeah, it was like a novella.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stephen King, I mean, doesn't miss. I'm still fascinated by the fact that he hates The Shining. He hates the movie and won't give it up.

There was some sort of contractual thing where he wasn't allowed to criticize it anymore.

Really?

Yeah. I think he was so critical of it. I think something happened where they were like—

I mean, they missed the boat. I mean, it's over. But you read the book, and I can see, having read the book, Kubrick just did his own thing with it.

He pushed back. They made a different version of the kind of a Stephen King blessed—

The one with the guy from Wings as Jack Nicholson. Yeah.

Stephen Weber.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it was like many series. Maybe not the same chops as Nicholson.

Yeah. No. And comparing the two was rough. Did not enjoy that. But the book is great. The book is great.

So are authors starting to try to butter you up now?

I think it's about to. Once this gets released, I think it's going to— come in, but we've had no problem getting guests.

But no, but this is like, we think you're going to love this book. Oh, I've gotten a lot of feelings hurting.

I've gotten a lot of that. I've gotten a lot of, like, I self-published this. It sounds like it would be good for you.

Yeah.

Because guys are having a hard time getting published with books for guys. I'm hoping I can change that. But if people reach out to me, it's dead in the water. If you reach out to my manager, you kind of know what you're doing, and I'll usually take that book. But the hard part about— Is that a good problem?

You like finding your own.

I like finding my own, sure. But I'm now— I'm deep enough that I know an author. Like, I've got a guy coming on who wrote a book called The Art of Fielding. Have you ever read that?

Oh, yeah.

Amazing book. He's got a new one coming out.

Chad—

I read that book.

It's with an H.

Chad Harbach, something like that?

Chad Harbach.

Yeah.

He's coming on this. He's already going to be a guest.

That was one of the last fiction books I read.

It's an incredible— it was an easy recommendation to people. It's 600 pages, but it's great.

Yeah.

He's got a new one called The Brightness, and he's going to come on and talk about that. So if I know the author, it's an easy, like, yes, give this to me. And they have a thing, one of your staff told me about it, called NetGalley, where I just wrote, like, I'm the book reviewer for The Ringer, and I request books in advance, and I get it right to my Kindle. And so that has changed the game.

Oh, it's like screeners for TV. Where I can read in advance. Yeah.

I don't ever want to be trashing books on this show. You know, I want to read things that I love. It's a celebration. And tell people to love them too. And just get people reading. But Chad Harbach, I'm really excited about. The hard thing is that we're in LA and most writers are in New York. So it's like, hey, I'd love to come on. I'd love to do a Zoom. And in the beginning, we want to keep it in the studio. I think there's a tension to being in the same room as me versus being on a Zoom that I—

I used to interview everybody in the pre-COVID and post-COVID. It's just—

Post-COVID is way different.

I just don't like the Zoom interviews. I don't think it's the same and it's harder to control. It's harder to connect with people.

It's easy to sit there and smile. When you're really face to face, you have to think about things. There's a pressure there. So especially in the beginning, we're going to keep it in the studio and have people come to us. But I've been surprised at people who are willing to come out here to talk to us. We've got this woman named Paula Bomer, wrote one of my favorite books of last year called— oh, fuck. What was it called?

Paula Bomer.

Paula Bomer wrote this amazing book, and it's basically like a different take on American Psycho. American Psycho as a loser. And the guy's just a total piece of shit that you hate him the entire book and cannot wait for him to get his comeuppance. And I loved it. It's like a furious book. It was in my top 10 and no one else's top 10. And she's like, I'll fly to you to come and we'll talk about— we'll talk about—

I mean, they probably— the book company should probably send these people here because it's going to probably help them.

I think that's what's going to end up happening. Because I'm the only guy doing this. There's a lot of women doing it. Reese Witherspoon's making a ton of money because she buys the rights to the book before she has it in her book club.

Yeah, I don't like that.

Or they hold up the book and that's it. Or they do the thing, if you see it on TikTok, where they hold the books backwards and like, these 5 books changed my life. And they talk to you for 20 minutes and then they show you what the books are. I hate that. You're going to know upfront what we're talking about, and I'm going to make you excited to read the book. as excited as I am to have read the book.

My 21-year-old daughter reads a lot of, uh, the kind of books you would expect her to read that get made into Amazon, like 8-episode shows and movies and those kind of things.

Like young adult or like—

Yeah, like those YA, like somebody's vacationing in Martha's Vineyard with her uncle and there's a murder and, you know, those kind of things. And she reads all of those and she always knows from the book when it's going to, oh, this will end up being a movie. And I do think they look at that. There is a market for that. But what's interesting is when it's like trying to turn Zodiac into a book is like a whole— yeah, into a movie, I mean, is a whole different thing.

I'm waiting for— I grew up, I read a lot of Hardy Boys Case Files. It was like a modern-day take on the Hardy Boys. I loved those things. I'm sure you read Matt Christopher when you were a kid.

I had every Hardy Boys book.

I had the original Hardy Boys.

Blue hardcovers.

Yes, I had a bunch of those, but those were kind of like corny even by the time we were kids. Hardy Boys Case Files was like they were like at a Comic-Con solving a murder. And the blue books, they'd be like, who stole the candle? Like that kind of shit. But this was like someone got killed.

There'd be like a scary monkey on the front. Matt Christopher was— I always felt like he— the best sports younger person writer was Alfred Sloot, who did, uh, he did a couple great ones including Jake. We ended up doing— we did a 30 for 30 short about him.

Okay.

Um, and then Matt Christopher was kind of like the volume version of Alfred Sloot.

Okay.

And those guys both nailed that genre. I read all of those.

Nailed it.

Because there was— I'm a kid from the '70s, like there were, there were no books. There were, there were no books geared toward me.

Yeah.

So any book that was, you would eat them up.

Yeah.

Now I think they have a million of A million of them. Yeah.

Yeah.

But some of the old ones kind of hold up.

I think so. I remember a Matt Christopher one where it was like a kid gets kidnapped and forced to play on a junior hockey team and being like, what the fuck is going on? I thought this was going to be— I remember The Kid Who Only Hit Home Runs, but the getting kidnapped and going to a hockey team, or Christopher Pike was a big one for me as a kid. There were horror books that were in between What was the spooky one that, like, R.L. Stine had? Like, literally horror for kids.

Yeah.

And this was like horror for teenagers where it was still like moralistic but terrifying that I loved stuff like that.

I really want people to read more. I think it's getting tougher and tougher because of all the different ways to do something other than reading, combined with it's harder to find stuff with websites since Google changed their algorithm. Yes.

The internet's weird.

It's harder to sustain some of these bigger pieces. Like, when we launched Grantland, that was kind of like the last real wave of really people getting behind, like, big, high-platform journalism, big pieces, big essays, big feature pieces. And it was free.

You could just go on and look at it. I think people want to take control. I think people just don't know what books to read. You walk into a bookstore, you're overwhelmed.

I'm just going to try to be like, here, You're overwhelmed unless it's like, Bobby really likes dot, dot, dot. And they have those little, like, the blue color things with the recs.

Yeah.

But you're better than all those guys. Fuck those guys.

Yeah. And I've had some weird picks. I've had some picks people are like, I can't believe you recommended this insane book. But I like insane books. Right. Have you seen the movie The Coffee Table?

Who's in it?

It's a Spanish horror film that came out a couple of years ago. It's about— I'll spoil it for you. It's about a guy brings the baby home. They just have a baby, brings the baby home. He accidentally drops the baby on this coffee table. Baby dies. And the rest of the movie is him trying to hide this from his wife and family as they come home. And they're like, where's the baby? It's a horror comedy because everyone's laughing and just— they're excited about this. And it's the most terrifying, horrifying movie I've ever seen. And I watched it with the biggest grin, just like, how did this get made? How did they get money in Spain to make this film? With books, you don't need a budget. You can do anything with your imagination. I think film, especially with AI and the studios consolidating, that film has gotten worse. You've got to play to the masses, whereas books can play to the individual. And I'm just trying to find— if you're an individual who likes me, who likes The Ringer, I can find the books that will flip your switch.

One thing that's definitely happened over the last 15 years is I think there's a sameness to a lot of the internet writing. That from a stylistic standpoint, um, if you go back, I used to do this test, especially when we were trying to figure out Grantland. Like, if you hide somebody's byline, could you tell who the writer is?

Mm-hmm.

Right? And back 15, 16 years ago, uh, if you did that, you'd be like, oh, I know who that is. Oh, I know that's— and I think it's a lot harder now, whereas in books, I think people have a lot more time, space, and kind of the freedom to just be like, here's my style, or here's the way I'm going to write it.

Yeah. The algorithm rewards imitation. Whatever the dead internet theory is, it's just like you just do the same thing. You look at Instagram, you can start doom scrolling. It's the same joke told by different people with no shame. That with books, you have to at least have some original idea. And book critics aren't always right. I think they're compromised in a lot of cases that it's like, this is just what I like, and you have to trust me.

Yeah.

And I think people do. I've been setting this up for years. Like, I didn't just decide I'm going to just start a book club because I knew it could come off as corny, trying too hard. Like, oh, he's trying to jump on a trend. Like, for a year before I started the book club, I picked a new book every Tuesday.

Yeah.

Like the one book for guys from the copywriters I read and read it in a week and reviewed it just so that my top 10 list at the end of the year would be thorough. And that took off. And then I said, okay, let's do the book club now. Now that I have bona fides, anyone can hold up a book and say, this is what we're reading this month, and you never hear about it again. But we're going in depth. We're for real.

I think you should brand it differently than a top 10 list. It should be like a top 13 list or top 11 list.

It's my top— it's my top 10 books of the year. Not like the top 10 books of the year. It's mine. And mine is very specific compared to what the New York Times would say. It's just like, what, what at the end of the year when I look through all the books I've read, it'll be like 50, 60 books. What do I remember? What has stayed with me? What's haunted me?

But this is— I see, I like this because I think most of the time when people do lists like this, they're very conscious of what people will say about the list.

Yeah, I, I got a lot of, you only have 3 women, you only have like— yeah. And it's like, I'm just picking every book. When you open it up, looks exactly the same.

Yeah.

Doesn't matter who wrote it, what their gender is, what their race is. Every book looks the same. And that's what I'm going by, that I don't pay any attention to that. But I think people would be annoyed if I did.

I don't either. I did at the end of last year, I did this list of the first 25 years of the century. There were all these lists about different movies. So I did a list of my 50 movies I watched the most times in the 21st century. So I was like, I'm not proud of this list. This is just the list we're going down. And the number 16 was Limitless. And I was doing it with the, with the Chris and Sean, and I was going down the list and I got to Limitless and it's like, look, I, I can't control the list. This is just, this is what the heart wanted. Yeah. I've just watched Limitless a bunch of times.

I'm sorry. The book was better. The book, I saw, read the book right when it came out. Yes. Yeah. We can't, that was based on a book. Limitless is where he takes the pills to make himself a genius.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. The book is incredible. The movie sells out at the end.

I need the book for my collection.

At the end of the movie, he's like, I weaned myself off magically and now I'm still genius.

Yeah.

Now I have superpowers. The book is not like that. The book ends badly, but the book is great.

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It's almost 25 years now. Yeah.

When did you feel like you were good at it?

I would say, I mean, good. versus great. I thought I was good maybe 6 or 7. I knew I was different enough that people were paying attention. Like 6, 7 years in. I came from the alternative comedy scene. So to get attention there and to do well consistently and then starting going on the road. And it was after the Trump roast when I was selling out clubs and people were coming to see me. I was like, oh, I've got my own thing and I'm delivering on the promise. And then nowadays you have to put out a special every couple of years. So I would just tour everything. And then when I ran out of places to tour, I'd do the special. And then by probably the 3rd or 4th special, I was like, oh, I can keep doing this. I knew that I was great.

Yeah.

And then you start to see people are like, when are you going to do something different? And it's like, I'm not. I like what I do so much. I want to go joke, joke, joke and try to make you think I'm going one way, go the other. That's what I get off on in stand-up.

Right.

But the idea of going up there and being like, Let me tell you about my life now. It sucks to me. If I went and saw Steven Wright and he was like, I'm going to tell you the story of my childhood, I'd be furious. I'd be furious. I want Steven Wright to tell jokes.

Yeah.

So I think there's a shelf life on— I think for certain comics, certain comics age better than others. I think Nate Bargatze is going to age incredibly well. Sebastian Maniscalco has aged very well, but there's some that have not. And I don't know how well my thing ages. And you say a lot of athletes retire because of the preseason, because of training camp, not because of the games. That I think maybe I'll finish an hour and be like, I don't want to write another hour. Maybe I want to write a book next time. And if that's as satisfying to me as writing these jokes, then I'll keep doing that.

That's what all the athletes say. They could still do it. I forget who told me that. Somebody put it the best. Wasn't Peyton Manning? I can't remember. But somebody was just explaining, like, I could still do it. Yeah, but it's the offseason and getting up in fucking mid-August.

Yeah.

And knowing that I have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to get my body ready for 4 hours for a game that is 3— I just didn't want to do that anymore.

And I hate to be a bad comedian who's just trading off the reputation. I'm on tour. I just started a theater tour last weekend. With my newest hour. I did clubs for 6 months, out in theaters, and I love this hour.

Yeah.

I think it's a return to form. I call my last hour my pandemic hour. It was like, let me throw this together. It was like, I want to go out for 20 years, and I'm going to figure it out and get it done. And this time, I really took my time and put out the best hour I possibly could. And I love this hour. I've got some of my best jokes I've ever written. But after this, maybe that's it. And I might do a Tosh where Daniel Tosh hasn't put out a special in 15 years. He just has the hour, and whenever he feels like touring, he just goes out and tours for a little while. That sounds nice to me. Like, Leno never put out a special. He just had the hour. Seinfeld hasn't done one in years.

Yeah.

Just to have an hour that if somebody wants me to come out and do a casino or a festival, I have it. But we'll see what the special market looks like in a couple of years. But I'm doing every other weekend, one show a night. Because I'm getting old. And those 2-show nights, 3 cities a weekend, were starting to fuck me up, that I think I can give my best to the audience if I'm doing 1 show a night.

What's the process of getting the show ready? Like, when you're starting from scratch, how many months are we talking?

I mean, I came up pretty quickly with this one just because I felt like there was a fire under me. I was happy with the last special, but not as happy as I was with the one before it. And I was just like, let me kind of get back to basics and just write. I've got 70 jokes in my act right now. I wrote 1,400 jokes to get those 70 and then was just hitting the improv.

Trial and error.

Trying them out. Yeah. Putting them together. And the hour came together pretty quickly. And then I went into comedy clubs and felt like I don't really need to do a year of clubs. 6 months will be enough. and then go to theaters and just kind of save myself.

Yeah, because I stopped writing, I don't know, 8 years ago, but it was really the process that I didn't feel like I could commit to the process in the way that I could stay at the level that I wanted to stay at.

Was it like staring at a blank Word document and hitting those first— like, you felt like you were repeating yourself kind of thing?

It wasn't even repeating myself. It was almost like what we were talking about with athletes. sitting down and the process of it, unless I was doing it day after day after day, I almost like— I always compare it to like golf, where people can— you can go out and play golf once a week and you'll be okay, but to actually be good at golf, you got to play every day. And I always looked at like the best stretches I ever had as a writer were always when I was writing all the time, and it was— I was consumed by it. It was all I was doing. And the busier I got and the more stuff I was doing, it I don't feel like it's something you can do as one of the 4 or 5 things you're doing. I didn't want to get in that position.

I get that. That's one of the reasons I think I was as good a stand-up as I became was because I never got into acting. I never wrote a screenplay. I was just like, this is going to be my thing and I've got to commit to it because I have nothing else. If you have something else, stand-up is so hard that it's easy to gravitate towards the easy stuff.

But you're on a set for 3 months. And then somebody wants you to write a book and you're doing that, and then it's like, oh, shit, I got to do my— and that's when it falls apart.

Yeah. But doing this, I mean, I'll be 48 in December. I think the 50s might be my book writing time if it works out that way. But if I think of one joke after this hour is done, then I've got to write an hour just to do that joke.

It felt like we hit a run with comedy where The kind of stuff that makes you and I laugh, probably. There was a meanness factor that had to be toned down for a little bit, and then it came back post-COVID, and now I feel like it's back, but it can only be in different formats. So I'm sure you're navigating that constantly when you're in these clubs.

Oh, definitely. I have to kind of answer. I always compare myself to— you watch Deadwood, right?

Yeah, in the past.

Like, Deadwood, in the beginning, Al Swearengen is the villain for the first 3 episodes. He's the guy who runs the town, and then just worse people keep showing up, and he's the good guy by the end of it just because of everyone around him. And that's how I feel in comedy.

Yeah.

That I started out as this villain, like this character on stage, and then real kind of awful people started showing up, and I was like, oh, I hate this. That I think post-COVID, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of— comedy used to be a lot of like, I'm a piece of shit and here's why. And now it's like that times 100. And it's not as clever. It's not a character. It's like what they really believe, and they're kind of playing into that audience. I felt like I had to constantly kind of prune my audience. I didn't want the toxic part of it. I wanted to get rid of those people and respect the people that I'm entertaining, the people who buy tickets for my show. And sometimes you have to tell people to fuck off, and that's not the easiest thing to do. But when you have a big audience, I don't mind losing some people just so I don't have the assholes.

The ro— we had that whole roast era in the 2000s and the beginning of 2010s, which was one of the best ways to even discover a new comic.

Oh, I mean, it's definitely how I got discovered. It's how Whitney Cummings got discovered. You know, Jeff Ross built a career off of it. Uh, Geraldo, that was like his whole thing. Lampoonelli.

I'm not gonna do roasts anymore. Jeff Ross. Yeah, 2006. See, see, I gotta, I gotta pivot.

See you in 6 months, Jeff. Like, that's, that's great.

We still make fun of him about that.

I mean, he's still the greatest.

He went the other— he's still— yeah, I think pound for pound, he's been probably— he's killed the most times at a roast.

He found the right way to do it in order to keep doing it, whereas I could only do 3. Whitney did 3. Most people did 3 and got out and moved on. Droda was miserable at the end doing those things.

Oh, yeah.

Hated them.

I think Lampanelli did a couple of them.

She did like 3 or 4 and then really wanted to get away from it. It's not that fun. fun after the first couple, but Jeff found a way to make it fun for him and for everybody else.

Well, now it feels like they can't happen without him.

No, I think he signed some contract that they can't do it without him.

He's just— even if we try to have one right now, I think he would just barge through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

Like, it would just be like, I heard you doing a roast.

I heard.

Yeah. But the Netflix ones, I feel like, have killed it even more because they don't edit them. Those things need to be edited. Comedy Central did everyone a service by editing those down and changing things around.

Yeah, I went to the— Jimmy did— when I was working for Kimmel, he did, I want to say Pamela Anderson or Courtney Love, one of them. Pamela Anderson, maybe.

Yeah, Courtney Love was there.

And it's a long day, and it drags. People bomb. And you didn't feel it as much in the Brady one, but I thought the Kevin Hart one, you really felt like, this is what happens when you don't edit these things.

I don't know. I mean, they must have asked so many people before they got to Kevin Hart, because Kevin Hart's been being roasted his whole career. It's his thing. What are you going to say? And then getting people to— and people don't want to do it when it's live. It's hard to get the celebrity that you could get on Comedy Central because they knew they'd be protected in some way.

I thought they were dead after the Chevy Chase one because that one was actually depressing. And I'm sure it was more depressing, the unedited version. You weren't involved in that one, were you?

No. No, but when I did Trump, I was like, I want to watch these all. And they were like, good luck finding Chevy Chase. We've burned that copy. And I found it on YouTube. But it was incredible because it was like a killer lineup of comics who were just unknown. Like Todd Barry roasting, and no one knew Chevy Chase. So that's what made it tough.

But he had like no friends there.

No, nobody wanted to. And that's the hard thing. Even when they get someone where they think they're going to get your friends, like, they got Rob Lowe and he's like, I'm going to get you Amy Poehler. I'm going to get you Chris Pratt. And they can't because they're like, we're not doing this. We don't want to sit up here and have people take shots at us. I think with the live, you really need hungry comics who want to prove themselves and they really want the celebrities. And the celebrities are like, why am I going to sit here and let some comics try to make their bones?

That's how I met Kimmel, because he did— remember Shaq had those roasts in the early 2000s?

I remember a couple Shaq ones. I mean, there was some brutal ones on that thing, that Jamie Foxx just—

So that was the one I wrote a piece about that. And I think Jimmy was on that one or one of the other ones, and I was writing about how funny Jimmy was, and he just reached out to me, and that's how I got to know him.

Really?

But yeah, the Jeff Ross. Jeff Ross, that was, I think, the highlight of his career at the Emmett Smith roast, which was the same one as the Jamie Foxx roast.

He's told me so many stories about that Emmett Smith roast that are incredible.

A legendary roast. I would highly encourage people to go watch it.

Kimmel did, like, the roast of Carson Daly when MTV tried to do a roast and the audience just didn't understand what a roast was. And they would boo every joke. They would boo everything that every comic could make. It's a roast. Why are you so upset?

What do you think is the best stand-up special of all time? Anything you did excluded after year 5.

For me, it's got to be Bring the Pain, Chris Rock. I've seen some great ones. Like, Stephen Wright's HBO special is probably the one I've watched the most. But Bring the Pain has everything. There was a great documentary about Bring the Pain. W. Kamau Bell did this for AMC. You have to buy it on iTunes, but it's worth it.

Really?

And it literally— he's talking to Ava DuVernay. He talks to Chris. And it's about building that. Like, Chris Rock, HBO at one point was like, we need to get— we want some Black comedians on HBO.

Yeah.

And they paid 3 guys, I think it was Chris Rock, Greer Barnes, and someone else, like $100,000 to do a special, do a half hour. And Chris took the $100 grand. The other guys were like, great, showed up, did their set. Chris bought a backdrop that was like CR, bought the rights to In Living Colors, Cult of Personality.

He was from the Eddie Murphy generation, though. He knew how to do it. He was basically doing his Delirious.

He won a CableACE Award for that. And then HBO offered him an hour. He goes to DC, opens with Marion Barry jokes. He really went at it. It'll give you a new appreciation for that special if you watch that documentary.

I watched all the Chris Rock ones like a year ago because they're just all on HBO Max and you can find all of these. And it was like a dead sports time. I always like to have stuff on when I'm working, so I just put them on and bring them That one was so fucking good. Even 30 years later, it was like, oh, my God.

As a kid, we would watch it over and over again. Just put it on. I think there was a Kevin Hart special that became the new one for that next generation. And I was at the Comedy Cellar. People were like, my kids just play video games with Kevin Hart's special playing on the side, and they just listen to that over and over again. But Bring the Pain to me was— and I've seen all the Carlin's. The Carlin's were great. So when HBO would only do Carlin's specials—

The Carlin's have aged nicely.

They have. Yeah.

I always felt like he was like the generation before the generation of guys I cared about. Like, Delirious was the most important one for me as a kid just because watching somebody, watching Eddie do all— he was already on SNL, watching him do all these different voices, and I just never seen anything like it.

I was a Raw guy. I saw Raw a million times before I ever saw Delirious, and I thought it was a letdown, but probably because I saw Raw first.

Yeah.

Raw was the more polished version of it.

Really adjusted to that.

Yeah.

But yeah, I don't know what beats Bring the Pain. And Killing Them Softly, Dave Chappelle, like young Dave Chappelle, was pretty amazing. But nothing has the fury and just nails it. Everything just hits perfectly to bring it back.

And the Shane thing that he did in Austin, that's basically YouTube only.

YouTube. I haven't seen either one. I saw the Netflix one.

This was like 4 years ago or something. I think it was the one that kind of helped bring him back. He's doing a lot of Trump stuff and different stuff, but that one was pretty fun from just popping up on YouTube.

Oh, he does Trump jokes?

He did some Trump jokes.

I didn't know that. Does he do an impression?

He did some impressions too.

Yeah. I think Shane's the most interesting comic right now to see where he goes, what he does. I know he's doing a lot of movies now. I wish he didn't live in Austin, but I think he's a very interesting—

What's wrong with Austin? I thought it was the comedy center.

The comedy mecca.

Comedy method.

I just think everyone's kind of the same. He's more interesting in New York to me, or LA. In LA, everyone's trying to be different. New York people are trying to separate themselves. When I lived in New York, everyone wanted to be Dave Chappelle and just work on their jokes every day and then go out at night and try them out. And now everybody wants to be Joe Rogan. I think that's a miss.

I remember when I moved out here, And Jimmy was dating Sarah at that point, and she was in all those circles. And I was shocked by how much everybody revered Attell as one of the guys.

When you got to see him work every night in New York, I didn't understand it when I lived in LA and heard about him, but when I moved to New York, I was like, oh, I get it now. But in that LA— I started in that LA scene with—

Do you like his weird show?

Insomniac?

Yeah.

I liked it a lot better than the porno one he did where he watched blurred porno.

I watched a couple of those porno ones and I'm like, what's happening? Can somebody talk to him?

Yeah.

Why are we doing that? And he would bring stars from the movie and it just felt like somebody's vice actually spilling into their—

That was rough.

Yeah.

But he's—

I mean, Sarah's like, basically that's your comedy class, right?

Oh, I mean, she was above me. I looked up to her. I probably wouldn't— I'm not a comic if Sarah's not around.

Yeah.

Because Sarah made stand-up comedy cool. Before that, you had to either be angry at the world or like a nerd, like, oh, look at my haircut. And I wasn't going to do that. But Sarah was like sexy and cool. And so I came around and it was like Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, Louis C.K., Paul F. Tompkins. And they were all murderers, but all completely different. Like, if you tried to be like any of them, you got called out on it.

Yeah.

And Sarah was definitely one of the best of those.

I was always struck by the community of everybody too. Like, she, you know, she— like, Jimmy would have football on Sundays, and like 6 of those people would come over. And she was always popping around. She would leave and go do a set and come back. And it was like, oh, I just did a set. It was like, yeah, you were just— you were just here 20 minutes ago. She's like, yeah, just almost like going to get like a cup of coffee or something.

Yeah, she's almost like pathological. She— I mean, she's a comic, like, in her bones.

Yeah. So what's the generation now? Like, it feels like Shane has his own generation, right? Which I guess is like the Rogan—

Yeah, Shane's the generation below, but it's a lot of like the generation almost got ruined by one, the pandemic kind of wiped out the alternative stand-up scene, right? Where like the really different people were just gone. Well, you asked me 2 years where you couldn't even do them. Yeah. And so that just— any venue that did them was gone. A lot of them went into podcasting.

Yeah.

People are like, I like you better on your podcast than I do on stage. So people have been prioritizing that in a way I think has been bad for stand-up. Good for them for making money, but bad for the art form. And a lot of them have gone into this, like, trying to find the algorithm, trying to be like the Matt Rife who blows up with crowd work. And they're just chasing trends, whereas I think the comics that I always looked up to were, like, making the trends. For a long time, for like 10 years, people at open mics were trying to be me, and they all failed. But now it's like everyone's trying to kind of just get their clip to go viral instead of caring about the audience in front of you. I don't know what happens to this next generation. I'm a little concerned. I think the second comedy boom, kind of, you would hope there would be innovation, but it was more about cashing in.

It's interesting because I've watched a bunch of those Kill Tonys because me and my son both kind of enjoy it. It's like a train wreck. I'm not sure ultimately how it's going to set the tone, especially when it's on Netflix and it's a pretty huge platform.

Sure.

But doing it in 1 minute—

it's basically The Gong Show.

Yes, very much so.

For comedians.

But having your goal be to do 1 minute of comedy isn't going to help you. I think there's guys that—

But one of the guys ended up on SNL.

Sure. But that guy, Cam Patterson, probably would have anyway.

Exactly.

Exactly. He would have gotten there one way or another. But there's guys like Chris Fleming who was very different and has a rabid fan base. John Marco Cerezi, very different, has a fan base. Roy Scovel's new special is amazing. The specials, people just started pumping them out where you could tell who got a 2-special deal because they would say, I've got a special ready. They'd be like, great, here's a 2-special deal. You need the next one in a year. And you can tell. that they had a year to put it together. It's like that sophomore slump in albums where it's like, oh, you just went up there to talk. You're like, what else can I do to fill this hour? And it gets bad.

So it's like when the bands in the '70s and '80s, they would try to be getting out of their deal and they would just release an album just to get to the second one.

Yeah. Crank out mixtapes.

Got to get one more album to get out of my deal.

Yeah. So I'm hoping that someone comes along and refreshes everything. And I don't pay attention to a lot of it. I've tried to stay out of the comedy drama because I started a lot of it a few years ago. You should have started. I had a joke about Rogan in my last special that in the beginning of the tour, I have this— the joke didn't change in 3 years that I was touring it. And in the beginning, we're like laughing backstage, like, Joe's going to love this joke. And then by the time 3 years went by, things had changed and the joke was exactly the same word for word. But it was now— it had carried this weight that it was just a different thing that I think the pandemic really fucked up a lot of people.

Isn't that the point of stand-up comedy, for people to get snippy with each other?

I think so.

I thought that was—

we have such a weird history of this. Now when you just go on rotating podcasts, that I was like, I'm sick of these podcasts. I'm sick of being asked how I write my jokes. I'm tired of this kind of carousel of podcasting. Aren't things been different?

This has been a unique, refreshing take on a podcast interview.

That's why I'm here. That's why I got a fucking book club, man. I was like, this will be different. And I'm excited to hang out with authors and not comedians because it was fun for a while. The beginning of the comedy podcast era was like, how open can you be? How vulnerable can you be? Can you talk about your addiction and your upbringing?

And I think—

And then it took Jeff Ross's cherry.

You did?

I— his first podcast ever was at my house in like 2010.

Really?

And we, we went for like— I was getting a lot of people. I was like basically a lot of people's first podcast when I was at ESPN in '09, 2000. And a lot of them didn't know what the format was 'cause there weren't a lot of podcasts. Jeff came on, talked, did his whole thing. It was right after he got bounced by Dancing with the Stars.

Okay.

When Sal told him he was safe and then he wasn't.

Was that the one? 'Cause I remember when you— I mean, that story is, is It's an all-time story. All-timer. Brutal for Jeff. But I remember there was a podcast. I don't know if it was that one or another one where you told him to his face, looked him right in the eyes and said, the best roaster of all time is Anthony Jeselnik. And I remember listening to the clip being like, oh my God, that's such a harsh thing to say. And Jeff Ross goes, can't argue. And I was like, damn.

That definitely happened.

Yeah.

I mean, you did have the championship belt there for a couple of years.

I had a run. I had the the 3-run and then got out.

I also was a big supporter of your show.

The Jesselink Offensive?

Yeah, I liked it.

I think we did something different. It was hell to make. Right. It was hell to make. And then I had a show called Good Talk that was so fun to make, and the pandemic killed it. We were a week away from filming season 2 where I just sat across from a comic and we were goofy and silly. Yeah, a little bit of information, but mostly just messing around. And I love doing that. That hopefully this podcast will be more like. Like, good talk. But Just on the Defensive was just— you had to rely on what was happening that week. And if they didn't have a good story—

I also liked Jeff's show. I thought there was this little funny era of these Comedy Central— right as Comedy Central was basically dying, but they were still trying to do a couple of things with comedians. And I thought some of those ideas were good.

The Burn was great. The Burn almost ruined me because I premiered right after his show. It was like, if we'd combined those 2 into one show, we would've had something great. But we were kind of competing with each other. That was tough because we're friends. And he'd be like, hey, once his show ended, the season 2, they never aired another episode, but they kept him under contract for a year while my show was airing. And Jeff would see me and be like, don't make it too much like mine because they'll cancel me. And I'm like, I would love to take some of what you were doing and use it, but you really couldn't. They just had too much at once that it became tough.

Yeah.

Like, Tosh would— would be like, hey, that bit was something I did 8 years ago. And I'm like, motherfucker, I'm not watching your show. I don't watch Tosh.0. I'm just trying to get through the week here. But when you had Oscar Pistorius to talk about, it was the most fun show in the world to make. But if you just had Obama's new tax plan, it was like, what the fuck are we going to talk about?

Yeah.

How are we going to get time out of this? I gave Jeff a joke a couple of weeks ago. You did? Yeah. Well, you know how he does the rest in peace variations?

Mm-hmm.

After Dolly Parton died, I texted, rest in peace. And he's like, could I have that?

I like that he asks now instead of just taking it.

Yeah. Of course you could have that, Jeff.

That's great.

I think he, I think he took it. So wait, one last thing on the podcast thing, because I think this is an interesting topic.

Sure.

Not your podcast, but you were talking about it's easier to do a comedy podcast than it is to go on the road and just, you're staying at some weird hotel. and you're bouncing around, and you might have a shitty crowd versus you could just be in your apartment or your house and just doing a pod. So you think that's going to hurt comedy?

I think it hurts stand-up as an art form. I think it's good for comedians because they're just pumped directly into the listeners' ears where they watch every week and they become committed. They're like, I watch this every week. I love this guy, and I will defend him to the death. Just because they're committed with their time and sometimes their money if they're like Patreon fans, that they'll never turn on anybody. No matter how bad the joke is. And they'll pay money, good money, to see you in a theater where you haven't been working it out. You just show up at the theater and it's like, well, I've been listening to this guy for free. I'm going to pay $60, $100. And then they walk out being like, I prefer him on the podcast.

Right.

I think people would just transition full time and maybe eventually give up that theater money as these— it's getting harder to go on the road because of the economy and ticket prices going up. competition for these theaters. But I think podcasting is the future.

Yeah, the podcasts are— the actual live podcasts are hurting the competition for the theaters.

Or just the regular podcast. Because you can—

by the way, there's no theaters.

No.

These theaters are all made for, you know, bands in 1974.

Yeah, but they're still fun. I mean, they're still—

Like, we have the Wiltern here and a couple of the other ones. So, yeah, seeing it basically between like— you can get down to 200, 300, you could go all the way up to like 1,600. Yeah, but I wouldn't say there's a lot of state-of-the-art ones these days.

No, I like the Wilton a lot. That's where I played last year. I've done the Wilshire Ebell, which doesn't have fucking air conditioning. It's so old. But I like the Wilton more. Largo is still fun. It's like a small little theater. But I think just comedy got greedy and that they didn't want to do a small, intimate show. Podcasting became a way to go do comedy clubs without having to do morning radio, and then it became a way to avoid comedy clubs entirely.

Yeah.

And there was something to grinding it out in a comedy club before you got to a theater that made sure that hour was great. I think people don't need a great hour anymore. They just need a reputation from their podcast. So all the podcast fans show up just to see that guy, just to see the celebrity. And the hour doesn't have to be that good. And not until they do a special when people see it and they're like, what the fuck is this?

Yeah.

Because when you're out on stage, everyone's going nuts because they love you from the podcast.

It's like the equivalent of watching I don't know, Steph Curry just do a shootaround versus playing in a game.

Yeah, very much so.

I got to watch Steph Curry shoot some 3s.

Yeah.

But not actually play in a basketball game.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's an interesting time. I don't know where it goes because in general, especially like, uh, I think people seem, especially post-COVID, there's— you're a little more self-conscious, right?

Definitely.

Stuff can be on social media, you can get instant feedback that especially if you're like a growing writer, comedian, whatever, like, you get this feedback early on, you end up doing this. You're not used to it.

Well, with podcasting, the clip people have come out. I don't know if they've ruined you at all. I know it's important to put out—

No, it's the tax for doing it. You know, you're going to get nailed by it 10 to 15 times a year.

But you say one thing out of context and all of a sudden it becomes this clip and then, like, Jesselnik versus— and you're like, What is happening? Why did this become a thing? And they get more views than even your podcast.

They have to use big verbs, too. It'd be like, Jesselnik eviscerates Joe Rogan. Destroys.

Ruins. Podcasting used to be like, no one's listening to this. Let's just talk. And then that kind of changed. And now that you have to bring the cameras into it, I think it's almost like going from silent film to talkies, that the ugly people are going to get fucking bounced out of this thing. We're lucky, but some of these people are in trouble. And I think a lot of guys who blew up during the COVID era of podcasting who really were making money are so sick of it, like, would love to quit but can't. And I think you're going to see some people break down.

I sadly can't comment on this. There's a couple of people I would love to jump in on that point and be like, blank. But I'm not going to.

I've been on a couple of those things.

You know who they are?

Yes. Where it's like you're running out the string. You've already sold the advertising. And you want to be doing anything else, but you are—

You're on autopilot with vacant eyes.

Yeah. It's like someone who was stuck on, like, a TV deal and they want to do movies, but they got to keep showing up for this episodic thing.

It's like Jason Segel in year 9 of How I Met My Mother just being like, just get me out of this.

So it'll be interesting to see. I mean, technology is changing so much that podcasting has become so much more high tech. My last podcast, when I walked into these studios and you showed me around, in the beginning of the negotiation, I couldn't fucking believe it. It felt like going from basic cable to NBC. It was really just like, oh my God, you have good lighting.

You look at the stuff we did in 2020, and I always joke about this, but it honestly looks like we're in a fucking bunker in Iraq.

That was the look.

The camera's pointing up, but it's just pointing up at my chin through your nose, and you can't—

it's fuzzy.

And I think what eventually people realized is, hey, it's not that hard. The equipment's also better now, but so much better. It's not that hard to actually make this stuff nice. I think with you, with the LA piece of this, even though I know a lot of the book people aren't here, I do think if we can build this pod up to a certain level, they're going to fly out the same way they would fly out to do Kimmel's show. Like, the book companies will send them out to be on the show.

Absolutely. I think once we get going, I think— I mean, the fact that if I announce a book for the book club, it sells out everywhere. I think it's a good sign. And when I start doing newer books, people are going to be like, guys just don't buy books. And if I can get guys to buy books, they will do anything. It's like when Passion of the Christ came out and became this huge movie, because people who didn't go to the movies went to go see that movie.

Right.

And if I can get people who do not buy books and do not read to buy books and read, then I think it'll really change the industry.

So 250-page limit.

For the most part. For now. Next year, probably I'll go 3, 3:50, because people are getting better at it. But I'm picking books that are easy reads. I'm not getting anything that's too tough. I'm going to have some more time. And again, people don't have to finish the book or read it. It's on YouTube or wherever, Spotify. So you can finish the book later and jump in. But then the weekly show, we'll be talking to authors about everything, all kinds of different stuff, pop culture. I mean, this story, I know it's too late, but I knew this was going to be happening. And that story about the guy from The Price Is Right on the airplane looking at a child porn message board.

I was so fascinated by that story.

I'm so mad I'm not on the air right now to discuss this because that is a you should have brought a book on the plane situation for sure. That I think stories like that—

How flagrant did it have to be that multiple passengers noticed it? He was wearing— He was the opposite of discreet. It was like he was holding the laptop up.

And he was wearing a The Price Is Right jacket, which is incredible. Incredible to me that I'm like, I was so mad I couldn't discuss that story, that those things— now I'm noticing those things.

So now you have this little extra little piece for the pod when you need it.

I can't wait to get some pretentious author on the show and ask them about the guy from The Price Is Right looking at child porn on the airplane. It's going to be fun. And I know—

What was that conversation with the stewardess like, too? Like, hey, 3A.

I'm sure it's like—

Seat 3B.

I'm sure it's like kicking someone out of a comedy club where they're like, we were just laughing. I'm just looking at child porn. I'm not bothering anybody.

He was like, I'm doing research. That's always a good one.

I love when they say that. The guy from The Who—

What are you researching?

The guy from The Who who got off, was it Pete Townshend?

Pete Townshend.

He was like, I'm researching a book, and everyone's like, that book never came out.

Yeah.

You think you gotta write that book then. You're committed to finishing that book.

You gotta—

that he never, he never did. He got off, he got off scot-free.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, there's weird shit that's gonna happen every week. I'm trying to imagine you with some fiction author, be like, yo, what about that Price Is Right?

Yeah, that might be a segment we just do every time. We'll get it sponsored. We'll get it sponsored by The Price Is Right and, uh, and then do it every week.

Uh, well, I'm looking forward to this. I can't wait to come on. I'm gonna really try to figure out—

We'll find out the right book for you, and I would love to have you on.

The one I was thinking was this Wilt Chamberlain autobiography that he wrote in the mid-'70s.

The one where he claims 100,000 women or whatever?

No, it's not that one. It's the earlier one. It's about his life on the road and how he's misunderstood, and it's got weird tidbits about him getting blown by stewardesses in first class. And it's kind of amazing. And he's mad at everybody. It's like your classic, I'm misunderstood, I'm better than you thought I was. But it's pretty revealing.

I'm into it.

About '70s celebrities. But that was one I thought you might like. It might be too long.

I don't know. One of the best sports books I've ever read was About 3 Bricks Shy of a Load.

Yeah. Roy Brown Jr.

Yeah. Was like an amazing— had all this behind the scenes. stuff on the— that I love books like that. So you find the right book and you—

All right, so that's helpful. I have a couple of good ideas for this because we could do The Last Shot by Darcy Frye.

I haven't read that. Yeah, I'd love to.

There's like 30 great sports books, so I'll figure out a good one for us.

I want to be challenged and I want to try to get the ball rolling on people reading again, on guys reading again, and whatever I have to do to do that. I'm much more willing to talk about books than I am about comedy these days. So it's going to be a fun time.

All right, so we're launching what day?

September 30th. That's a Wednesday. The book club will be the end of every month, and then every Wednesday will be the normal book club. But we're booked through December. People are excited to be on this, and we're going to have some fun guests, starting with Rosenthal. And I'm looking forward to that one already.

I can't believe you booked him during the NFL season.

I mean, he's doing me a favor coming in.

He's coming in early. He's busy banging out film on the COVID He's got a hard out on me. Yeah.

10:30 to noon, hard out. Like, okay, okay, big timer. But he's doing like 8 episodes a week over there.

When did you become friends with him?

The end of my freshman year at Tulane. And then we became best friends sophomore year.

Football related or other stuff?

No, we were in the same fraternity. We were just in different dorms, same year, and we were just the 2 funny guys. And then he started taking life seriously, and I stayed funny. But I think because we were both successful in what we wanted to do, we were roommates when he decided to leave LA and go try sports writing. And I was fully supportive when no one else was. Everyone else was like, stay in LA. When you try to leave LA, everybody tries to keep you here because they don't want to think that they should leave LA. And I was like, do what's best for you.

It is true. It ends up like it's a funhouse mirror. It's like, if he's leaving, Does that mean I should leave?

Yeah. And I was like, no, this is a great idea. Go. Fully supported him.

Did you ever have your I almost left LA moment?

No, because the only thing more embarrassing than telling people I was a comedian when you're a nobody was saying I used to do stand-up comedy. So I was like, I'm going to ride this into the brick wall if I have to. I will never say, performer. And then things just happened that weren't like an overnight success, but I would have a good show at Largo in front of that hip crowd opening for Sarah Silverman and think, I can't quit. I was dumb enough to think it was right around the corner for 10 years, but I never thought about quitting stand-up.

But you never got sucked into the movie side, though?

No. I mean, I had auditions, but I was terrible at them. Stand-up ruins you as an actor because as an actor, you have to listen, and I'm not listening to shit. I'm just waiting to say my lines. I've done some acting here and there. Somebody wrote a part for me, I'd be happy to do it. But the heartbreaker for me was Danny McBride wrote a role. He was like, I'm writing a role for you on Eastbound and Down. And Eastbound and Down, I was like, this is the greatest TV show I've ever seen in my life. And he was like, season 3, we're going to have a Russian pitcher who's like my rival. Can you do a Russian accent?

Oh, no.

And I was like, what do I do? And one of my actor friends was like, you always say yes. If they ask if you can ride a horse, yes. And then you figure it out. And so I was like, yes, I can do a Russian accent. And the audition comes, and it became clear that I could not do a Russian accent. And they got Ike Barinholtz to do it, who was amazing, better than I ever would have been. But that was like, oh, I would have loved to have been on this show. And then I couldn't watch it after that. I couldn't watch the show anymore. And then I've had auditions where they've said, that was great, can you do it faster? And I say no.

See, you would have been great in This Is the End.

I could have shown up in This Is the End.

You could have absolutely shown up and done a scene, cut Michael Cera's head off, whatever it took.

I always wanted to play the villain, like Craig Kilborn in Old School. Yes, I wanted to do that. And they always wanted me to play the cute guy.

Yeah.

But I think maybe if they ever make comedy movies again, they bring me in as the villain. And I would love to do that.

Well, when you were getting all these chances, it was right after Dane Cook tried to be an actor, and that didn't go well. And that was probably a cautionary tale for— probably scared a whole generation of comics off because he was in a few rom-coms.

Oh, yeah. He rom-commed it up, and then he got to become an action star.

Yeah.

And that was terrifying for everyone.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I never thought I'd be an action star, but I thought I could—

There's a documentary about him now.

Coming out the end of the month. I can't fucking wait.

How he lost his— he got built by his brother.

His brother took all his money. His brother took all—

Never knew that story.

Brutal. Like $20, $30 million. Yeah. And then he tried to go get it all back with a big arena tour, charging double his ticket prices and didn't have the material and then lost all his fans, like, lost everything because of that. And it's his documentary. I'm sure they do not cover it, but it's the first thing I've ever been excited to watch of Dane Cook's, I'll tell you that. Put that in the clip.

I did—

what was that show he had on HBO when he traveled in the van with the other comics?

Tourgasm.

Yeah, I kind of hate-watched that in the mid-2000s.

Everyone hate-watched it. In his defense, it was supposed to be a DVD extra. And when he signed the deal with HBO, they're like, we'll make it a TV show. But there's a part in there where he reads a letter to himself that he wrote when he was 8 years old and weeps tears, actual tears, reading the letter. And I had a meeting with HBO as I'm, like, blowing up. I'd done Aspen Comedy Festival.

Yeah.

And I meet with this woman at HBO, and she's like, you're my favorite comedian. I love you, and I'll tell you why. She's like, I saw you do a Dane Cook impression online where you made fun of him. And she's like, I hate Dane Cook. We signed this deal with him. I argued against it, and I had to be the one to edit To Orgasm. And it was the worst, like, 6 months of my life. And I put one scene in there that HBO fought me on, but I was like, it has to be in there. I hate him so much, I have to put this in. And I go, can I guess? Was it the letter to himself? And she's like, yes, it was the letter to him that I will always have fans at HBO for that.

One of my passions is the guy who did Entourage being furious about the Jeremy Pittman, Adrian Grenier commercial, but pretending he wasn't mad about it. And now he's really mad about it. And now HBO had to do a cease and desist. I don't know if you've been following this.

It did?

No, I just saw it. I haven't seen the commercial. And I believe that they would do that. I mean, Jeremy Piven's doing stand-up now.

I'm aware. I follow him on Instagram.

Why do you follow him on Instagram?

I don't know. I don't know why. To find out that he's doing stand-up. Has any actor ever made the transition to stand-up?

Not on purpose. I mean, you do it because you have nothing else. Like, Chris Kattan went into stand-up. Yeah. I lived in the same building as him, and I was just terrified he would recognize me. but he never did. And then Jeremy Piven. But most of them— and Piven would say he did it for a charity event and caught the bug. It's like, it's not a fucking bug, man.

Yeah, this is like—

I'm sure people want to see you, right? But that's a meet and greet. That's people who want to meet Ari from Entourage.

Well, I mean, anytime they've tried to have actors play comedians in a movie, it's never 100%. Where Seth Rogen probably came the closest when in Funny People. I really like Funny People, but I thought he was okay on stage.

He was believable. He was good in Funny People. I think the best one, from having watched them all and done the reading, there's nothing worse than the movie Lenny, where Dustin Hoffman plays Lenny Bruce. Is brutal.

It's really bad.

But I think Tom Hanks in Punchline was really good.

You think he was the best? But unfortunately, Sally Field was bad.

Sally Field was rough in that. That was the '80s stand-up, though, at the time. But I've seen arguments that Tom Hanks should have won his first Oscar for Punchline.

I'm going deep dive, but there was a comedian in the movie Fame.

Fame was shot in Pittsburgh. I've seen Fame. I only remember the dance. And I remember Lou—

Irene Cara.

I remember the chef from Mr. Rogers was in the movie.

Yeah, but the guy who was the stand-up in Fame was really bad. good stand-up. I think he's probably the bottom of the barrel for them trying to do stand-up in a movie. But it's so hard to do. People try to avoid it for the most part.

Oh, yeah.

Because you can't just have that rhythm. But Hanks did a good job with it.

You know what someone told me is that you see the TV show Barry, the HBO Bill Hader?

Yeah.

Great show. It was originally supposed to be him trying to get into stand-up comedy, but they were like, there's too many with Louie and all these. There's too much stand-up comedy now. now, but I would have loved to have seen that version of it. I think the version they came up with was great, but him trying to do stand-up comedy instead of being an actor would have been wonderful.

Do you notice how Seinfeld's still doing stuff?

He's in shape. He's like 70-something and he's in shape and really cares about—

and I was asking one of his friends about how is Seinfeld has Why is he doing anything? And he's like, he just loves writing jokes. It's like he's never going to not love doing that.

Yeah. He likes being backstage. He likes being told he got 10 minutes.

I really liked his documentary. I thought the comedian documentary I thought was excellent.

That movie changed my life. When I say like 25 years, it's 25 years from October 16th, 2002, when I saw that movie in theaters.

Yeah.

I know the day it was playing near me and I went and saw it at noon and told me how to do it. Just go to open mics and fail. If Jerry Seinfeld can fail over and over again to build the hour, what's your problem? And I tell people all the time, and too bad, with Harvey Weinstein, that movie's gone unless you own the DVD.

It's gone?

It's gone. Netflix had it for a little bit when they had a deal with Seinfeld, and then it went away. And now that Weinstein's in jail, it'll never stream again. You can't buy it on Apple Movies. Maybe it's on Roku or some shit, but you have to own the Blu-ray or the DVD. But that movie is— that tells you everything you need to know, I think, about stand-up.

Great one. And then Leno is still at the Hermosa Magic Club, whatever the hell that's called.

I think he does that. I see him at the Improv now and again. I see him at Watch events. We both end up at the same Watch things. And Leno is still in the mix. Like, Leno knows. He watches YouTube videos. I walked up to him. I'm like, I was on your show 10 years ago. He's like, I saw your clip yesterday. You're doing great. He's really— he's still with it and in there. He says he just goes to these small towns where they have one theater that fits the whole town, and he just goes there. Everyone comes out. He has a great show.

He's like a hero to the town, and then he's out.

Yeah, but he just loves performing. He just wants to do that. Yeah.

Interesting. Everybody, it's hard for them to walk away. Even Letterman still— I had him on my podcast a few months ago, but he's still doing that interview show for Netflix. He could go away. He doesn't want to.

No, he regrets ever leaving The Late Show. I mean, there's something to being important. And when you are the show, you are important. People treat you differently. People care when you get there. They send a car for you. I think when that goes away, that's tough for some people. Some people just want to be left alone. But those are usually drug and alcohol people. But the sober people want that to feel important.

And one other person. Now, this is like one of my weird deep dive internet fascinations I did recently. Johnny Carson quit. He ends the show, ends The Tonight Show. He only has one other IMDb credit after it, and it was going on Letterman's show to pretend to do a top 10 list, like, a couple of years later. He's gone. He doesn't do anything. Nobody sees him again. He's just, like, in Malibu playing tennis and smoking cigarettes. He wanted no part of anything.

And they'd announced that deal when he left that he's going to do specials once a year and all this stuff.

He's one of the only ones. And he was healthy for a while after. I know he probably had lung cancer eventually.

I read that book his lawyer wrote about him.

I read it too.

And it's the saddest fucking thing. Every marriage he had was— his mom sounded brutal. I think he had some demons, but I think he was enjoying his drinks.

He's been a big winner from the social media clip era of they'll have old Carson stuff with him and Ed from the '70s where Ed's just blitzed. And they're just openly talking about it. It's like, how is this on TV?

I know.

And just like, Ed, long lunch today? It's like, ah, yes.

Yeah.

The other one that's the— I mean, the biggest winner has been Norm.

Yes.

I feel like Norm has actually— and there's a documentary coming out about him soon that I heard was great. But, um, I think these little short clips have helped Norm. I think, I think he's more relevant now than, than he's ever been.

For sure. And I think a lot of it is like those clips on Conan. He didn't do a lot of specials. He did a few towards the end, and he would badmouth. He'd be like, that was the worst. The special would come out and he would be like, that's the worst special. That was the worst show of the whole tour. But he would sit on a couch with Conan, with Letterman, and just be brilliant.

He was always like one of those people, like, the better whoever was in the room, if they were better, he'd be better. Because he had his own podcast for a while. The clips will come out of them, be great. But if you actually watched it, it was pretty long and all over the place, pretty sprawling. But then there would be a couple of good nuggets in there. But when he would go on Conan, he would kill. Yeah.

You gave him 5 minutes and he was the master, but you give him an hour and he's going to fuck around for 55 minutes.

Yeah. Were you at the roast? The famous roast he did when he didn't tell jokes?

No, I was pre-roast, but I knew people who were there. And they were like, he bombed. Yeah, the comics were laughing, but the audience was furious.

The audience didn't know what was going on.

Furious. And then they sweetened it. It's amazing. But the comics were legitimately laughing. But some of those most famous roast sets are people bombing, and then they sweetened it up. Comedy Central really did people a service by fixing up some rough sets that were genius but just weren't appreciated by the audience. And that audience is drunk as fuck. fuck. I don't know how they do it on the Netflix one, but in the Comedy Central one, everyone's just got bottles of wine already on the table.

And it's a 4.5-hour night just throwing down the Chardonnay or whatever the fuck they put on there.

I got heckled by this woman. I forget her name. She used to be married to Clint Eastwood.

Sondra Locke?

I don't know. I have to see a picture. She had kind of red short hair. She was in Unforgiven.

Frances Farmer.

It may have been Frances Farmer. And she heckles the shit out of me for a John Ritter joke. And I can't see her. I don't know what's happening, but she's bombed and just screaming at me for the rest of my set, screaming, and no one does anything. And afterwards I'm like, what happened? And people are like, oh, it was her right back there. She would like, I'm friends with John Ritter. How dare you? And it wasn't even mean to John Ritter. Yeah, it was just like mentioning his name.

Like his name was brought up.

Yeah. And screamed for 10 minutes while I finished my set. Even Roseanne is like, what's this bitch doing? I guess she was friends with Roseanne. And I walked past her in a restaurant like 6 months ago, and I wanted to stop and be like, do you remember me? Fuck you. But she seemed like she was having a good time. I was like, I'll let it go. Yeah, those were the days when those things could happen.

Book club, end of September.

Jesselnik Book Club, September 30th. kickoff on The Ringer. People have been waiting for this. People have been waiting.

I'm pumped.

Together.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris and Eduardo and Gahau. Thanks to Jeselnik and Zach Lowe as well. I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday with an action-packed— all kinds of stuff on Thursday. I'm going to go big. I'm going to go like a 2.5, 3-hour pod on Thursday. Don't forget about the rewatch Archibald's with Law Abiding Citizen as well. And I will see you later in the week. Go Red Sox! Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18+ and present in DC or Wyoming. Opt-in required bonus issued as non-withdrawable Profit Boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.