Transcript of The Knicks Land a Haymaker, With Doc Rivers. Plus, a Mini-Mailbag, the End of 'Euphoria,' and a Movies Resurgence With Joanna Robinson and Chris Ryan.

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Plötzlich fühle ich mich so entspannt. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Tiefenentspannt mit WISO Steuer. All right, The Bill Simmons Podcast. We are live on Netflix. Special guest, my friend Doc Rivers, is here after just an incredible—

wow.

Dramatic. Wasn't the best played game, the stats weren't awesome, uh, but a lot of twists and turns. The Knicks pull it out, and I think we thought the same thing with about 3-4 minutes left. One team looked like they kind of knew what they were doing, and the other team looked like the playoff experience, youth stuff was starting to creep in. I didn't like the shots they got. I didn't— I just didn't like anything. And the Knicks just went into Knicks mode.

Yeah, I don't know though, Bill, if it was youth. As far as at the end of the game, I would say this, at the end of the game, if you told anyone, at least me, before the game, it's gonna come down to a single possession game, you're gonna favor the Knicks because the Knicks know exactly what they're doing. They're giving the ball to Brunson and they're gonna play off Brunson. San Antonio in any game down the stretch, you're not sure yet because that's where they are young. They haven't, The two-man game with Fox and Wimby is usually the play. They actually ran it. Fox got a wide open shot that would've tied the game if you remember. Yeah. And he missed that shot and then he followed up with a foul on, I think Bridges where Bridges had nothing that, so those back-to-back plays, there were 3 plays that changed the game to me. The offensive rebound that Brunson got and then got the 3. The missed shot by Fox where he would've tied the game up. Then Fox followed that up where he bailed Bridges out with a foul. That's a 7-point swing in a game.

And San Antonio couldn't recover. And then the turnover by Wemby was the final nail.

And then Brunson with the moonball. Yeah. So it, San Antonio takes the lead 95-94 in the two Wemby free throws, and then that whole sequence happens.

Yeah.

Fox, Fox made that shot in game 7 against OKC. In this game, I think him and Wemby combined were 7 for 27.

Not great.

Yeah.

Well, Fox is, is one of the most clutch players in the NBA over the last 3 years down the stretch of the game. He really hasn't been other than game 7 Oklahoma. That's their go-to play. And, and you know, we know what the Knicks are gonna do and we pretty much know what San Antonio is gonna do. They're gonna go to the two-man game. You remember they lost that game to Oklahoma where Fox wasn't there. They didn't have anything down the stretch to go to. Well, they went to it. Fox got his shot like in the paint, perfect look for him, misses it. And then, you know, the Knicks is gonna play Bronson ball from there on. So I just think it came down to little things. Couple things I was surprised by and I was wrong by. I was really surprised by Wemby, Garden, Towns to start the game. I was shocked by that. I was positive that Wemby would be on Hart, Champagny, or anyone else would be on Towns. And the reason is that allows Wemby to stay in the paint more. If you look at the beginning of the third quarter, the Spurs did that.

And I actually turned to my son Spencer and I said, huh, maybe the Spurs are playing cat and mouse. Maybe that's what they wanted to do all along. Um, but instead they waited until the second half and, and it had some impact. Uh, they got out to a quick lead at the beginning of the third. They really never went back to that coverage, you know, and Harden didn't play his normal big minutes. I think he played 26, 27 minutes. So Mike Brown, I gotta tell you, coached his butt off tonight. He, he really did. Uh, that I never also thought that Wemby would be guarded by Karl-Anthony Towns.

Successfully. Yeah. You thought it'd be a foul machine.

Well, I thought it'd be fouls and I thought it'd be an, an Anunoby. Anunoby, I think this year has the best, best plus-minus in the NBA versus Wemby defensively. So I thought they would go to that and they never even went to it. They didn't. They, so when you look at the Knicks, they still have that in their bag to go to. I thought Carthony Towns played the game of his life. He was, He was amazing. You know, you know what my son Spencer turned to me and said? Wow, Minnesota traded Karl-Anthony Towns. And you know, last year no one was actually saying that, you know, because Karl was up and down. But I tell you, man, second half of this season, he's been absolutely unbelievable. And again, Mike Brown has put him in the right spot to be successful. You gotta give Mike a lot of credit.

Yeah, I had 3 heroes. Brunson, obviously, I think he had 19 in the second half. Hart had 15 rebounds and 6 assists in 26 minutes. And then I thought Towns took it to Wemby. I thought it was a stalemate at worst between them. Not just statistically, but didn't seem afraid of him. Went by him a bunch of times. That was the big thing. I had the numbers wrong on Wemby and Fox. They were 9 for 34 combined, and San Antonio only had 2 threes. In the second half and they didn't shoot well. We'll go into some of the stuff they can do.

Yeah.

We, we can't lose sight of the biggest moment of this game that happened in the second quarter when somebody, I forget who it was, crashed into Brunson's knee.

Yes.

And it looked bad.

Yeah, it looked bad. You know, it, it, I didn't think it was bad honestly when I saw it. I thought it hurt and, and you know what I mean by that? I thought that was a scare because his knee didn't go all the way in. So I honestly, I, I was sitting there and I said, he's okay. He, it just scared the hell out of him.

'Cause then, then he didn't seem okay. Every Knicks fan in my life is like, are you serious? We just won 11 in a row. We're in the finals.

Yeah.

This is our guy. He's gonna get hurt in the first half of the game. He goes into the tunnel and it's just pure panic. And then in an hour and a half it flips and he's the hero of the game.

Yeah. His ankle gets stepped on. I mean, this dude, right? Uh, he is just so tough. The, the move he made late where he took the hit, got bumped, give San Antonio credit. They did it all. The entire Oklahoma series where they stay down, they take the bump, and then you have to try to play through that. And Brunson makes that shot. It, it, it just was a perfect moment for Brunson.

Well, explain this to me with Brunson. SGA looks so uncomfortable against this Spurs team and all the guards, and Brunson looked like within a half he had solved it in the second half. And he was getting— I, I actually thought he could add more points. He missed a couple shots that he usually made. Is it because that the Knicks had better 3-point shooting or better space? Like, what is it? What was the difference with them?

And okay, well, you just hit on one thing. They have way better spacing. All right. So, and they do a great job with their cuts and their spacing. That's number one. Number two, there was one time where he got in the paint and you could see Wemby wanted to help, but Carlton is how kind of, kind of floats out to the corner to the 3. Well, in the, in the Oklahoma series, Wimby got to stay in the paint. He really never left the paint. It was almost like they decided if Caruso and those guys can make enough threes, we'll lose the game. We don't think they can. And they were right at the end of the day.

So barely, cuz Caruso and Wallace made like half the corner threes. Ultimately it didn't matter cuz Chet didn't make anything.

Yeah. And Caruso was amazing in that series. And yeah, so you know, New York, first of all, the one thing that you gotta give Hart he knows before the game that that's who they are gonna put him on or, or they're gonna try to help off of him. He is a great cutter. He's always in a dunker spot. And that's why you remind me of Rondo in rebounding, you know?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. When we put Rondo in the dunker spot a ton. Why? Because when he didn't have the ball, if you didn't guard him, he rebounded the ball and it allowed Rondo to have a free run. At the glass. If you watch Hart, there's no one blocking him out. He's just going to rebound. He has a free lane, right, to go rebound because no one's guarding him and he takes advantage of it. He's one of the great rebounders in our league at his size.

Well, and then on the flip side, Vassell, Champagny, Harper, and Castle, I think they had like 30 rebounds combined with 6 minutes left in the game. They were crashing the board. San Antonio had 14 offensive rebounds. And really it came down, they just couldn't make shots. And if I'm, I actually, they had 2 timeouts with like 3 minutes left.

Yeah.

And we both had the same thought of like, they don't look right. Feels like this is, maybe like reset this. Wemby looked tired. I don't know if he shot as wide in the first half or what happened, but I just, I don't know what the answer is.

I'll text you the first half. I'll text you the first half. Wemby looks sped up tonight. It looks like they're speeding him up tonight. I think he had 6 or 7 turnovers, Bill. A lot of 'em were putting the ball on the floor. I would know, you know, we have all kinds of stats, analytical stats with the team. And one of the things I would look at first is how many dribbles did he have? I know that sounds crazy, but it felt like he dribbled the ball way more than usual. The other thing is time of possession. How often did he hold the ball and have the ball in his hands? It looked like way more than usual. And so I think that played right into the Knicks' hands. I think they would take that. Harper was phenomenal to me. He played great, played normal. It's funny, he just goes out and plays and nothing kind of affects him. The two other guards, the three guards from San Antonio didn't have their best game. That's going to happen. That could be first game jitters, that could be all kinds of things. They'll play better, but the Knicks will play better too.

I thought Anunoby down the stretch, he started playing well, but I thought he was struggling most of the game. You know who saved the bench, the game for the Knicks on the bench? That little sucker Alvarado in the first half.

Yeah, he had really big minutes for that.

He played great. And Sham, you know, I'm just, I mean, I, I, I coached Sham and I'm just so proud of him and, and by the way he plays it out. Like you couldn't keep Sham on the floor 5 years ago, 3 years ago. Defensively, he couldn't guard anybody. And that kid has worked his tail off and he, he competes. Defensively. And the other thing now is he's always been a great shooter, but if he missed a couple, he would never keep shooting. And now he does. That's maturity. That's growing up. That's going through all the stuff. And he's doing that. I thought their bitch gave them a huge lift tonight.

He was, he was out there with like 4 minutes left.

Yeah.

In the Bridges spot. And then they brought Bridges back in, but I was surprised how late he was in the game.

Yeah. So Bridges will play better. He didn't have a great game offensively, but I thought Bridges had a phenomenal game defensively, you know, You know, it's so funny. The, the, the Bridges gets so much criticism, but he does so many things and it, you know, everyone just equates scoring to if you play well. And we all know there's so many other things you can do and Bridges does those things every night.

Yeah. If I'm Wemby, what am I learning from that game?

Patience. You know, to me, tempo, thought he went too quick at times. I think they're gonna put him on a post a little bit more, but not much more. The two-man game with him and Fox, there's something there. They just didn't get anything out of it. The 45 set, which we, I think we started it when I was with the Clippers with, with Chris Paul, if you remember, that's where the 45 set actually came from. They are the best that I've ever seen in it. And they—

explain what the 45 set is.

The 45 set is the, the, the 4 and the 5. And usually they use a guard way up top, that double flat screen where guard goes downhill, Wimby rolls, shooter in the backside, shooter in the corner. They run it as well as anybody I've ever seen. And they ran it 3 or 4 times early in the game and it was successful and they got away from it. So you're gonna see that way more the next time in, in game, in game 2 on Friday.

I wonder what they do about Harper. 'Cause I thought, I actually thought he was their best player in that game. They took him out with a little over 4 minutes left when it was close. And then they lost the lead. And I didn't really like, you know, any of the offense they had except for that Fox 9-footer that he missed. But I wonder if Harper, I wonder if he has reached a point where you can't take him off. Well, he just has to finish the games for you 'cause he can create his own shot.

He can, but the other guards can as well. I have to say that I think there's gonna be games where it's gonna come down between him and Champagny. You know, the other guards, because of their defense, their rebounding, their athleticism, you keep 'em on the floor. But that makes them really small. That's one of the things I kept saying, Bill, I told you this, the Knicks are big. Yeah. The Knicks, they're big. They're big at every spot. I guess Brunson is considered small, but we call him Big Body Brunson. Hart plays like a 5. Anunoby is huge. Bridges is long. Towns is long. They're a big basketball team. And so even though the Spurs guards did way better than I thought they would on the offensive glass, I think size matters. Yeah, it does when Victor's around, but it also does because of all the Knick players with size. And I thought it mattered tonight.

I wonder, what do you think the Knicks strategy was going into that game? Because it felt like they wanted to turn into a track meet early and kind of discombobulate the Spurs and knock them outta whatever rhythm they were in the last game. And then I thought down the stretch you could see it, it wore down the Spurs and it felt like the Knicks were like gaining strength almost. And do you think that was a strategy or was just the outcome?

Yeah, I do. I think it, it's funny, I heard people say at halftime, slow it down. I said, don't slow this game down. This, this is great for the Knicks. The one thing they were doing, they were trying to get up the floor before Wimby could get there. They were, they were, they were trying to, that same thing Oklahoma tried except for Oklahoma kept losing their ball handlers. All they had was Shea left. You know, but the Knicks, they, they pass the ball forward, they attack early, they spread the floor. And it also didn't allow Wemby to get into his spot. Wemby loves being in the dunker spot defensively, but when they go in transition early and early attack, you saw Wemby out by the 3-point line a lot tonight. San Antonio cannot like that. So that absolutely was part of their game plan.

I had a bunch of Knicks fans in my life who were texting me during the game being like, I liked 1B until tonight. Now I hate his guts. I'm tired. I'm tired of this. He's flopping around like he gets every call. It's so, it's so funny how you root against a guy for an hour and you're like, I'm out. I hate this guy.

Yeah. Well, everyone flops around now. Yeah. You know, it's just so funny. That's, I think it was Castle. They asked him and they were trying to get him to say something about Shea. And he looked at the guy and says, everyone flops. That's just, you know, it's funny that it's not taught. It's players work on it, but it's not taught really. Players just work on it. Hell, I thought Bronson flopped and Carl Anthony Towns flopped every bit as much as Wemby did. Yeah. But that's just part of the game.

I like it. We're getting a lot of animosity.

I love that.

Yeah. With the Towns thing, you said that at the top about how Minnesota traded him. With that said, I never ever in a million years thought that he had this in him, and he's been doing it now for a month, right? The way he played today, there was almost like, like a cerebralness about what he's doing offensively. He's kind of staying away from the dumb fouls for the most part. Like some of the stuff, like the quick attacks on Wemby is exactly what he had to do. Like before Wemby got set, he was just trying to beat him and he was physical with him.

Yeah, he was playing smart.

I just loved how he played.

He's playing, he's playing smart. He's not losing his composure. Those are things that he always would do in the past. He's staying out of foul trouble. He may be their best passer at times. And the biggest thing he's doing that no one talks about is his rebounding. He is a great rebounder, a great rebounder, great offensive rebounder. So he's done a lot of things that we didn't know he can ever do. And The other thing is, and I've said this since we won in 2008, Bill, when you hear about teams and they all say it, you improve each round. And teams that don't go deep never understand that. Players who have never gone deep, they never understand it's not necessarily individual improvement, it's team improvement. And the Knicks in the first round, may have been, you could say, maybe gettable, you know, in the second round, you know, they got it going that, that after that Atlanta meeting or whatever they had, they, they have come together. Like when you watch them play, there was a timeout in this game where you heard Carl Anthony Towns talking.

I saw that.

That was unbelievable. That was 6 weeks ago. He wouldn't have said it and no one would've listened. You know, but that's part of the growth that teams go through. Each round you get better, you get closer, you trust more, you let go of all the, the individual crap, you know, all the numbers chasing and you just start playing, you know, and you play the right way. Alvarado, think about, I always, I love Alvarado in this example. He comes from New Orleans where he played a ton of minutes and now he played 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, he doesn't care. He just wants to help the team win. And you can see that throughout the Knicks team. You can see that throughout the Spurs team. These are two teams that have grown each round and they have, they both have come to this like team unity thing. And it's really helped the Knicks cuz we never thought the Knicks could get there. And they're there. They are absolutely there.

I forgot to say that this segment is Brought to you by New Era, which makes a bunch of great caps, all kinds of things. So that what you just mentioned about the selflessness, I remember we did a podcast during the '24 Finals. We were talking about the Celtics when they were, uh, I think they won Game 3 against Dallas and you were excited about it because you were like, I see it, they get it. There's like, they understand what this last level is about. It's not about the stats anymore. It's about looking out for each other, just, just trying to win whatever it takes. You don't care about your minutes, you don't look at the stat sheet. It feels like the Knicks have gotten there. And they have. I thought, I thought San Antonio was gonna win this series and maybe they just suck tonight and maybe they will. But the fact that the Knicks were able to carry that 3 rounds inferior competition to now this stage tonight and it's the same thing, it, it gives you hope if you're a Knicks fan, I would say.

Well, I, I, this is, I've been asked, because I'm always asked who's gonna win the series. And today I was golfing. I bet I was asked it 50 times, Bill, and my same answer was, I don't know. Yeah. This one, usually you kind of have a— this one is too close to call. And you know, if you're a Knicks fan, you feel great. Obviously the big thing is if they do lose another game, but they come back with the next game. You know, and, you know, now Game 2 is the biggest game of the Finals for San Antonio. They can't go down 0-2. They just can't. I guess they can. We've seen teams come back, but, you know, it's just so interesting.

Yeah, this—

they're not coming back. It's the guard play. That's the key for San Antonio. They did not have great guard play and their guards have been dominant in the playoffs. They've been dominant. They didn't— they usually have good guard play by one or two and then maybe two don't. All their guards didn't play well. Yeah. Other than Harper. Harper was the only guard that played great tonight.

I thought one of the things they weren't really 100% doing tonight was just attacking the rim all the time, which is what they learned to do against OKC. Just gotta go. Don't, don't even think twice. Just go, go, go, go.

Attack bigger guys. I bet if you sit back and count the drives that they were bumped off on, Like it, it was amazing. Even Brunson had one. I think Fox had him beat, but he bumped him off path. And Anunoby does it as better as, as, as good as anyone. Bridges does it. Hart is phenomenal at it. Yeah. So they took a lot of the hits from San Antonio and kind of veered them outside to the paint. I thought that was really effective by New York. I thought New York's penetration defense was phenomenal. I thought they guarded the ball. And took hits, held their ground, didn't back up, didn't flop defensively. They, they held their ground tonight. And their size matter again.

When you played them this season, did you see this in them?

No, no. I did say early they're the best team in the East when you go individual, just right.

If you just count the team.

Yeah. If you just counted the numbers, you thought best team in the East. And going into the playoffs, I did pick them. To, to win the East before the playoffs started. But I just thought they would out-talent people. They're out-teaming people now. And when you put that talent together and now the way they're playing, they're a really good basketball team and they're hard to beat.

Yeah. 'Cause I remember when this happened with the '08 Celtics. Now granted, they won way more regular season games, but then the first two rounds were choppy, two 7-game series. And then it really wasn't until near the end of the Detroit series and then you could see something shifted.

Yeah.

Do you remember that? Like what game was that when it just like, just something was different?

I thought it was the game in Detroit after we lost. You remember we lost our first home game was against the Pistons. Yeah. And I think it was game 2 and we went right back in Detroit and won. I thought from that point on we were, we had, you know, been made. You know, I, I love using that term like in, you know, Godfather, we were made finally. Like this team is, I thought that team played together all the time. But you remember going into playoffs, I made that comment, I'm really worried. We have not been tested. We hadn't lost 2 games in a row all year. Yeah. We had, we hadn't gone through anything and it just felt too easy. And that really concerned me. And so those 2 games, Atlanta game 7, wasn't much of a game, but that Cleveland game 7. Yeah. That kind of made us, and then the turnaround and then Detroit, the defending champs come in and they pop us right away., and we have to respond. I thought those are the things. And the Knicks have been going through stuff all year, so they're different. They've gone through all stuff all year.

Turmoil, chemistry problems, uh, role problems. Guys were unhappy. They get to the first round, a lot of that is still going on. Atlanta takes it to 'em. They have that meeting and it all goes away. Since then, they've been playing right throughout. And it's been amazing to watch.

So is that the first recorded meeting in NBA history that actually worked?

That actually worked? Yeah. Because I don't think it was a call meeting. Like, you know, it just— from what I hear, the meeting just kind of happened. It wasn't one of those things like, we're going to have a player meeting, which every coach is like, oh God. Or we're going to have a coach— we want to have a team meeting where every coach says, Oh God. Yeah. Because I gotta tell you, Bill, I've been a player in these meetings and I've been a coach in these meetings and a lot of 'em go haywire. I was in San Antonio as a player and some of, we were down 0-2 to the Houston Rockets, right? Way back in the Western Finals. And I think it was David Robinson or someone, oh, Or Moses Malone. I'm gonna use him 'cause there's all kinds of stuff in this meeting. The first part of the meeting, Gregg Popovich is talking. Now, Bob Hill's our coach, and Dennis Rodman, when Pop finishes, Dennis Rodman says, "Well, who's listening to you? You're not the coach. This is the meeting." And Pop goes back at Dennis. Then Moses starts talking, and Avery Johnson, Moses said, "I love you." But your time has passed and we're not, we're not gonna read your press clippings anymore.

Yeah. Then Avery goes after David Robinson. I mean, the meeting was a disaster. It was a disaster. Having said that, we didn't go to Houston and win game 3 and 4. So you just never know.

But so when you have those meetings, most of the time it's guys screaming at each other and very rarely does it turn into a very productive group therapy session like in an Apple TV show or something.

Well, sometimes, sometimes you have phenomenal meetings. I will say there's been some good ones. But there's usually at some point a player you didn't expect to say something, says something that pisses off the entire locker room or another player. Now those two guys got a beef and it's all falling apart. That's usually what happens. It happens a lot.

Yeah. So when they were trying to put together, I talked about this a few pods ago, like Wes and Leon trying to put this team together. And the motto is the '04 Pistons where it's like, we don't, we're not gonna luck into a top 3 lottery pick, but we can kind of smartly, we can build around Brunson. He could be like our Billups basically. And, and we could just kind of patch together different guys and we'll have wings that can play defense and Towns will be our big guy. Do you see that when you watch them? Do you see the comparison? I mean, they're completely different teams, but—

I don't, they're two different teams because that Pistons team, anyone could have a big night.

Yeah.

Right. If you remember that where, yeah. For, for the most part, Brunson is their go-to guy.

You know, 31 shots tonight.

Yeah. He's the guy. And, and Detroit played more team ball, more movement. So I, a different team. Detroit was prob— was a way better defensive team. Yeah. I think New York's a better offensive team in some ways. But listen, when you look at the two teams, two teams couldn't be built any differently. The Spurs have done it basically through the draft. Yeah. Fox is the only guy that you can make a case that they traded for. They, they, they signed some, some low-budget free agencies that have turned out great for 'em. But other than that, it's been Fox, right? Yeah. Where the Knicks, I asked my son Spencer, who on a Knicks team was drafted by the Knicks that plays? There's only one.

Mitchell Robinson, right?

That's it. Yeah, that's it. Everybody else they traded for, they signed in free agency. So you gotta give Leon, those guys a lot of credit. They, they, they got the right pieces. They, they did. I thought the Villanova thing was smart as much as people want to knock it because it did create a team, it did create unity, and that was good. No one, and I don't care if Leon or anyone, no one thought Brunson would be this good. And I really liked him, you know, 'cause people forget what he did to Phoenix.

Oh yeah.

In that series. Like, yeah, it was, it wasn't just the Luka show, it was a Luka Brunson show.

And he did it to Utah too for a couple games. Like he did have moments.

Well, the Utah series, remember, I think Luka misses the game. He does., and he just takes over. So he showed that he could do it. No one thought he could do it full-time every night and be this clutch. Yeah. So give New York credit. They signed him. What I think they did better is once they realized what they had, they built around it. And I don't want to take shots at anybody, but I will say this. There are a lot of front office guys that can go out and get the stars.— there's very few of them that can then build a team into a championship team. That's what you have to do. You can go out and get these names, but can you make the other moves? You know, you look at Danny Ainge, he's done it a ton. Brad Stevens has done it. You know, Sam Presti, you know, it took him a while. You think about all the talent that Sam Presti had and he finally kind of figured it out. Like, All right, we got the stars. All right, now I gotta go get Hardenstein. I gotta go get Caruso. I gotta go get some of these role players because that's what's gonna win the games for us.

San Antonio, we don't even know who their role players are yet because they're so young. All their guards are so good. We don't even know who can be the next star. Could be Harper, could be Cassell. I mean, there's so many guys, but the Knicks, give them credit. Hart is a role player. That's who he is. He actually knows who he is. Bridges is a role player. That's who he is. He actually knows he is. Robinson's a role player. And then the, the, the Karl-Anthony Towns trade was humongous. And at the time, I don't think anyone knew if it was a good trade or not, but it's turned out to be the game changer for them.

Yeah, that was one of those. It was really hard to have a hard opinion on that trade.

Yeah.

You could see it from both sides being a disaster, or I just, I remember being like, I understand why they did it. I don't know if I like it.

I don't understand.

I understand the logic.

The logic was perfect. One of 'em was because the way he shoots to, to take a big outside of the paint and let Brunson work and then give Brunson more space. Yeah. So that absolutely is happening. It happened tonight.

And they needed a center 'cause the league barely has any centers.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, you talk about the team building part and you just came from Milwaukee. They went the opposite way where They had Giannis and they were like, we, we gotta get another star for Giannis. And they traded basically all their future stuff for Dame and tried to put them together as, as the combo, which I think is the old school model. Do you think like with the way that this new CBA and the second apron penalties and it feels like, it feels like the depth and having a bunch of guys in that like $7 to $15 million range is gonna be more important than that second star.

Yeah, I think, and it depends on who the first star is. You know, if you have a Shea, if you have a Bronson, yeah, you can get away with having a lot of other players. And you know, Williams is better than just a lot of other players. He was injured, but yeah, maybe two, maybe the two guys and then you have a bunch of two and a half. Yeah. You know what happened to Milwaukee is they got old quick and their star wasn't, you know, he was the young one. Everyone else got old really quickly. Yeah. You know, I think if they could redo that trade, they still do it, but they would probably keep Drew. I thought, from what I heard, they didn't think Drew and Dame could play together. And what they didn't realize later is no, Dame needed Drew to protect him defensively from everybody else. So the thought, I actually thought was right. The execution of the rest of the part probably didn't work out. Now moving forward, all these teams have to be very careful. Like if you, Your number one guy is your number one guy, but your number 2, 3, 4, 5, you better with the cap and the apron.

It's so much harder, Bill. The 3-star thing is gone. We know that just contractually you can't do it. The 2-star thing is still alive, but you can make a case having a superstar, Shay and 4 really good players, maybe better.

Yeah. 'Cause the Celts are in that situation now with Tatum and Brown. I think Tatum has the, I think he has the 3rd biggest contract per year next year and Brown has 7th. So 2 top 7. I don't know. I don't know how sustainable that is for the rest of the decade. How do you put a team around that? Especially when you're watching a series like this where both teams go 9 deep. Cornett, who we didn't talk about, he came in at one point. I think Cornett's a good backup center, but he's now a tiny backup center. As soon as Wemby comes out of the game, all the players in the other team are like, just, you could see the hop in their step that he's gone for 4 minutes.

Yeah.

But there's no player in the history, maybe Wilt back in the day, you know? And I'm being honest. And Shaq a little bit, but I mean, listen, when Wimby walks off the floor, I don't care who you are. I think there's high school kids running right when Wimby walks off the floor and they yell like, drive the ball now. Right. Do it. Because it was so obvious. The Spurs, I think they get the 9-point lead, they sub him out, and it was like the Knicks just attacked the basket immediately.

And so, you know. Yeah, it was 63-50. Yeah. He goes out and by the time he comes back in, it's 67-61 and the Knicks are back in the game.

They're back in the game and Brunson got it going.

Brunson got it.

Yeah. So you needed, you, you had two things going at the same time.

You know what else was going, by the way? The, I, I had multiple Knicks fans friends there. They said it was like 15% Knicks fans.

It was more than I thought it could be.

I was surprised.

Yeah.

That's for game one.

San Antonio people don't sell tickets. Well, clearly they do. But the Knicks fans have been impressive. They really have been. You gotta like, Joel Embiid makes that ridiculous speech, you know, after they beat the Celtics about, you know, I'll pay for the tickets. And the Knicks, it was almost like the Knicks fans took that personal. Right? What? We're gonna buy the whole arena out. I mean, yeah, with the Knicks fans in Philadelphia was unbelievable.

Yeah, that was crazy. Uh, you played for them a long time ago. Yeah, got injured, but, uh, you were involved with that team that came the closest they've ever been, and that was 32 years ago. Yeah.

Um, but I should have been active.

Well, yeah, you told that story on another pod that we did about how they should have activated you for the last 2 rounds. Yeah. Um, now this is 53 years. I've been saying, I think this is the biggest title that anybody can have right now, unless maybe the Bills. But the problem is the Knicks have, you know, 6 generations of fans and they're the biggest city.

This is, it's not even close. Yeah. I know that sounds funny because we're comparing football and basketball. Yeah. It's like the Cubs winning. Yes. You know, it, it, it really is in a lot of ways. If the Knicks can win this, They've been through— first of all, they went through a lot of bad basketball. It's not like they've been knocking on the door. Yeah. I mean, they went through a lot of bad basketball and then they kind of built this team. Leon, and you got to just give them all the credit in the world and kind of him and Wes, they, they put this team together piece by piece and now they're in it and they're going to be in it for a long time. This is not a fluke. This team's going to be good. They're going to be good for a long time. Contractually, they're set up really well overall. So yeah, I can't think of another team with size of city and haven't won it that this would be any bigger. This is as big as it gets.

Yeah, this century, Red Sox and Cubs were the two big ones.

Right. That's exactly right. Yeah. The Red Sox and the Cubs were the two that they had to remove it from. And then they got 'em. So now it's the Knicks.

Well, we talked about the chess match of the series. So the Knicks come out and do two things maybe San Antonio wasn't expecting, having Towns guard Wemby and just playing super fast and seeing if they could discombobulate him.

So now I think they knew that. I think San Antonio, you think they're ready for that pace? Yeah.

All right. So now we go to game two. Yeah. And San Antonio's like, okay, they're gonna have Wemby. Do you zag now if you're the Knicks? I'm like, no, actually I'm not gonna have Wemby on. Towns and Wemby this game, I'm gonna put OG on 'em right away. I'm gonna do this.

No, no. I, sometimes you overthink things. Yeah. That's in their back pocket. They still have that. I, I, if Towns had gotten a quick foul, I guarantee you they would've switched and then they'll be on 'em right away. They didn't have to do it. All right. That was one. Two, I would be very surprised to see Wemby guarding Karl-Anthony Towns. I just think it puts Wemby out of help. And without the help, I think it really hurts San Antonio. It also takes Wemby away from the glass. Right. And so even though Towns or Hart will have free run to the glass, you still got a 7'6" alien standing under there just swiping every rebound. So I think those are the two biggest changes that you'll see.

I had two mailbag questions for you quickly. First one is from Jeremy in Portland. Is the NBA experiencing the greatest parity era in the history of the league? This year will be 8 champions in 8 years. Half the league will have made the Finals in the last 10 years. Do you think this is a fluke? COVID's part of that, or do you think this is just what the league is now?

I think this is what the league— I think this is what collective bargaining and what they wanted. It doesn't allow the big marks to just outspend like the Dodgers. Yeah. It doesn't allow for that. Now it's going to come down to, in my opinion, GMs that know how to build real teams. I really do. I think coaches get fired all the time. I think this is the era of GMs, you better do your job. You all got the same type of money. You gotta draft right, you have to trade right, and more importantly, you have to sign right. I think this is also the era that most stars stay home. You're not gonna see a whole bunch of movement anymore. It's not gonna be a bunch of guys just leaving their team. I think you'll see more of the stars staying at home. Number one, they can make more money, and number two, teams can build around them. So it's gonna come down to Yeah, we know you can get us Kevin Durant or we know you can get James Harden, but what, how do you build around that? How do you put enough pieces around that?

And so I think that's gonna be the biggest change. Now I will say this, mid-season, Bill, everyone said there's a dynasty and it's in Oklahoma and we've been proven once again.

Yeah, right. There are no dynasties.

There are no dynasties. Winning is People, when I hear people talk about, well, they just gotta win a title. People have no idea how hard it is to win. Everything has to go right for you. Yeah, you gotta get lucky at times. You gotta stay healthy. You gotta make big shots. Someone you don't know on your team has to make, and they all have to get along and buy in. It just takes, it takes so much to win. And that's where I mean by you better build the right guys on the, on that team. And it's gotta be 1 through 15. And I think that's the biggest difference.

Can you, can you talk about how different it is now with all the two-way guys and how much having a bigger roster, how, how do you manage that?

I think that's hurt in some ways. I think the smart teams, San Antonio, or give them a, give a great example. Okay. Yeah. They're, they still have all their two-way guys, but they thought it was smart enough to get some vets, some older vets on their team, Cornette and Harrison Barnes. Olenek. Olenek. Like, that's a smart move. Now, those could be two ways, and I think a lot of the teams wouldn't sign those guys, Bill. And those are the teams that aren't winning. I'm telling you, you need a couple of those guys at the back of your bench. Always thought in Boston we had the stars and then we had the older guys and it kind of boxed in The young guys, they had nowhere to go but to listen, you know? And I think that's really important on teams. So, but it's harder now. You have these two-way guys, it's making the league younger and younger and younger. It's what it's doing. I do like it. But if you are one of those teams that have a chance to win, you may have to give up one of those two-ways to sign a veteran on your team.

A good veteran, not a guy that just wants to talk and then can't play, can't do anything. Those, these guys are important and all All the teams have, all the good teams do.

Right. That's how like guys like Pat Connaughton, Olenek, these guys end up hang— Joe Ingles, these guys end up hanging around for 2 extra years.

Yeah.

'Cause they're not gonna be talking to teammate 1, 2, and 3 about, oh, I should be playing.

Yeah.

I don't know why I'm not in.

Think about what Charlotte did. Charlotte has had a chemistry culture problem. They brought in Pat.

Forever.

Forever, right? Yeah. You remember they cut back counting for one day and went back and re-signed him because they knew he's not gonna play, but he's good. Now that doesn't last. That probably won't even last next year. They'll probably have to go get someone else. But those type of guys are invaluable coaches. In the old days, you know, when I first started coaching, you would always put someone at the end of your bench that you knew had your back. I remember Monty Williams when I was in Orlando. I just assigned Monty, you know, middle or late to his career. But I knew Monty was gonna be loyal. That's what teams, coaches did that all the time. Not, not as much anymore. You actually need guys that are just great team guys now.

I got a lot of emails wondering if the Chet Holmgren series against Wemby had parallels to Ben Simmons and the infamous Atlanta Hawks series.

No, no, no, completely different.

You think Chet's fine? Okay.

I, I just wanna make sure.

Yeah. There was like, there was like, he did not wanna look at the rim anymore in game 7. I was getting flashbacks.

Yeah. Well, first of all, he didn't get it a lot either. But you're right. You're right. He just was outplayed and it was clear. This is why I like Wimby. It was so funny. I love Chet too, but this is why I love Wimby. Wimby, for whatever reason, he takes Chet personal. Chet's the greatest guy and so is Wimby, but Wimby will never— he can't stand him. Wimby sees him. And he goes right after him and it's so obvious. Well, you had—

that was Zach Randolph and Blake Griffin, remember?

Yeah. Oh yeah. Same thing.

Same thing. Zach Randolph for some reason hated Blake Griffin and every time he saw him, he just wanted to go at him.

Yeah. And it's so interesting because all they did, somebody compared them. Yeah. And for whatever reason, Windy has Michael Jordan. That's what I call him. He's Michael Jordan guy. You know, if, if you compared anything to Michael, you, you had to deal with Michael. And, and that's what it is. But Wimby, listen, Chet's still one of the top 4 or 5 best defenders at his size in the league. He's still an all-defensive guy. He's gonna be a better offensive team, a player. Oklahoma had 2 guys out in this series and they should not overreact, nor, nor, nor will they with, unless they got a great deal.

That was the last question I had from you, from Eli in Chicago, talking about the check, the check game 7. Yeah. And he said, can you imagine what your podcast would've been like after Scottie Pippen's migraine game in the '90s Eastern Conference Finals when the Bulls lost to the Bad Boys? You would've had topics like, can MJ win without a real number 2? Who can they get for Pippen? Oh, can Phil find 5 guys to trust? And I do wonder, like, this culture we're in now, you know, we, when we were when you were in the league in the beginning, like Magic sucked in the '84 Finals, right? Yeah. Pippen had the migraine game. Like he, people would, Worthy had the '84 Finals when he threw the pass to Henderson for the steal and teams would lose and they would just move on.

Isaiah turns the ball over, the game's over. Turns the ball over, the ball flips the series. You know, when we were in with the Clippers, Chris Paul had two of the worst minutes in the history of the game, right?

Against Oklahoma City.

Yeah.

Yeah. That, that game's over with. You know, can you imagine if there was a podcast during those times? I mean, that's all we would talk about. And all those players, for the most part, recovered and had great careers. You know, Vince would be the exception to the rule.

Yeah. 'Cause this was, they, you only have one champion every year. You have 30 teams. There's gonna be some ups and downs. Sometimes it's not gonna be your year. You're gonna have bad luck. You're gonna have Jaylen Williams get hurt. You're gonna have Chick get psyched out in a series.

It's a tough one though because they, they are, most times it's not gonna be your year. Like if you, if you really thought, thought about it, like if championship is the only thing, then most of the time it's not gonna be your year. And a lot of times you go into the season knowing if that's the bar, this is not our year. Like, right. If you're honest now, when you have a shot at it, then you go after it. I've been fortunate. I've had some teams that, you know, you can make a case, had a chance, maybe not. When you look back on 'em, but at least we were trying to get it. But even that, you know, I coached 20, what, 5 years, what, 5 times, 6 times, 7 times, you know, it's not that many chances that you get unless you're on one of those teams that you win young and everybody stays and you get a chance to coach a star over and over and over again. Phil Jackson has had that, Steve Kerr's had that, Pop has done it really in 3 iterations, really 2. I mean, because you gotta combine the David Robinson, Tim Duncan, but then Ginobili and Tim Duncan, they're all with Duncan though.

You can make a case they all were Duncan related. And now, this is where, like, I love Pop, right? This is where it bothers me the most. That bothers me because I love Mitch. Is that Pop probably was thinking about retiring, right? And then he's like, oh my gosh, I got this guy.

I got, I hit the jackpot. Yeah.

I hit the jackpot again. And then it kind of gets taken away from him. That's really sad to me. For whatever reason, I don't know why it's sad to me, but it's really sad to me.

Well, you mentioned Steve Kerr and, and how lucky you are to be able to get to coach somebody for most of their career, their entire career. He's just never leaving Steph. It's become clear. I think he might just move into Steph's, Steph's guest room or something. He never wants to leave that guy.

Listen, but you, you think about the multiple winning guys. Michael, stone blooded killer, great guy, you know, kind of great glue guy team-wise in a tough way. Tim Duncan, come on. You, you can't have, —like a better guy, a better leader of a team. And Steph, you can't have a better leader. You know, as much as I, you know, I love LeBron, KD, and all these guys, that part of it, they really did not have, you know, or I don't know if they didn't have it, but Steph is just, he's so coachable. All those guys are coachable. Michael Jordan is crazy and tough, as he was, the one thing you always heard about him, he respect coaching. Like he really did. I think it came from Dean. I think Dean kind of embedded that in him. Tim Duncan clearly did. And Steph clearly does. And it's easy to build around guys like that, you know? And none of those teams have you ever heard Tim Duncan. Have you ever heard Tim Duncan say, this is my team, right? You know, have you ever heard Steph, this is my team? Think about Steph went in and got KD, he could care less.

You never heard him say, I want my team, this is my team. You know, and Michael didn't have to say it, you know? Right. But I do think that kind of stuff matters.

Well, it's, you talk about Michael and Curry and Duncan, and then I think Wemby and Brunson are both like this too. Which is ironic, they're playing the Finals, but they're like, I'm here, I'm with you guys to the bitter end. Build around me, I'll be the leader. I'm gonna stick up for everybody else, but I'm not gonna leverage anything. I'm not gonna go to the papers and I'm just, I trust you to build the right team around me.

Never gonna hear them whispers, you know, rumors. They're just not going to do that. And that's part of what I mean about character. I mean, yeah, that's so important on teams, especially winning teams.

Yeah. All right, Doc Rivers. Well, I'm gonna make you come back at least one more time during the finals. How, how's our guy Larry David doing? Is he all right? He's all right. Did he make it through game one? Okay.

He made it through game one. He's actually going to the Garden, which I'm shocked by, but he is gonna do it. But we do know if things aren't going well by what, he'll just leave. Yeah, he's out. He will absolutely leave.

All right, thanks Doc. We're gonna take a break, come back with a little mailbag. Thank you. Take care. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. It's all come down to this. Who do you think will be wearing the ring at the end of the NBA Finals? Make your call with FanDuel right now. New customers can hit the court with $350 in bonus bets guaranteed after betting $5 for 7 straight days. FanDuel, the best place to bet all your favorite players during the Finals. Bet on their baskets and boards, build a same-game parlay for a chance Any bigger payout, bet futures, do whatever you want to do. Visit fanduel.com/bs to get started. 21+ select states or 18+ D.C. Kentucky or Wyoming restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gamble problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 1-888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Kaffee in seiner besten Form mit der neuen Qubo One Kapselmaschine von Chibo. In jeder Qubo-Kapsel steckt Spitzenkaffee aus besonderen Anbaugebieten. Für Espresso, Kaffee-Crema oder Kaffee-Grande auf Knopfdruck. Die neue Qubo One überzeugt mit Premium-Design, kompakter Größe und kleinem Einstiegspreis ab 29 €. Dank innovativer Press-Brew-Technologie wird jede Tasse besonders aromatisch mitsamt dicker Crema.

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Alright, I'm gonna do a little solo mailbag. Got a lot of good mailbag questions. You can email us as always at bs-podcast@qubo.com. Podcast33@gmail.com. The most emails I got, two subjects. One was Steven Spielberg coming on and doing 2001: A Space Odyssey and the rewatchables. Uh, just a lot of questions. Um, surprised that that was a surprise guest that we did not tip off. And also, um, I think everybody thought it was a pretty amazing podcast, myself included. Um, the biggest question was, what was he like? What was it like to sit there for 2 hours with him? And, uh, here's what I would say. One thing I've learned over the years, when you're with or in the presence of somebody who's really great at what they do, no matter what it is, um, there's gonna be a joy and a passion and a love for whatever their expertise is that, um, they can't hide. And it really is one of the reasons that they're so good at what they do. And you can see with Spielberg, um, greatest living director, um, probably the greatest director we've ever had. And just loves movies, just loves talking about them, loves the whole process of them.

The stories he was telling about the set, how he does, you know, how he interacts with different actors depending on what their methods are. Just a huge student of it. And I don't know, after spending 2 hours with him and just seeing how much fun he was having with us and with the format and just discussing the movie, it just— the whole thing made sense. Like, yeah, of course he's the best director. This is how much he loves movies. This is his life. This is what he's devoted it to. So, um, that's the thing that, that would be the big takeaway for me. Um, especially somebody comes in, they haven't been, you know, over at the studio in my house. They don't really know what's gonna happen. And he just like completely bought in and was so excited to talk about the movie with us. So that was really cool. The other subject, um, people were wondering why I didn't seem more excited about the AJ Brown trade when I did the podcast with, uh, Max Kellerman on Tuesday. So he's definitely one of the 5 or 6 best receivers in the league, and he's gonna be 29 when this season starts.

So you figure they'll get 3, 4 seasons outta him, ideally when he'll be awesome. 2 would be a worst case scenario. It's a little like trading for Giannis where it's like, you know, you're probably gonna get 2 really good seasons after that. You don't know. The salary stuff is pretty easy. He's in the high 20s. You don't have all of these, crazy bonuses that you get if you're just signing a guy. The reason I didn't seem more excited about it is I'm not positive why his production dipped the last couple years. And there's been a lot of good dialog and a lot of good stats about this, about when he was at Tennessee, he was over the middle a lot more. At Philly, he wasn't. They basically just used him on the sides. And yet all the stuff with the man-to-man stats with him, he's like, either he's the best receiver or one of the best receivers at just getting open and, and just being able to catch balls in traffic, everything. So the question for me is like, did he just kind of lose the will to live as a receiver by like 5%, especially last year after they won the Super Bowl?

Because he wasn't being used in the way that he would've loved. And ultimately these guys have to be inherently selfish to be great at receiver. And he's just like, I'm here, I'm a race car, I'm in the driveway, please use me. Take me on the highway. You're not taking me on the highway enough. My engine needs to rev. And he's just gonna come to the Patriots and the Patriots are gonna use him that way and it'll be Moss in 2007 all over again. Or do you get a little worried that the Eagles, who have always been a step ahead of everybody really for the last 9, 10 years, who seem like they're selling high on a guy that they traded a first round pick for. Rode for a few years, got a Super Bowl out, then traded him for another first-round pick. How much did they know? Did they think he was heading toward a different phase of his career? I'm old enough to remember a lot of different receiver trades of guys in their late 20s, early 30s who were awesome, might be awesome again, and you just don't know. I think the Patriots had to do it.

I wish they would've had to been able to put a protection on that 2028 pick, but Ultimately, the reason they didn't win the Super Bowl last year, um, and got kind of killed in the big game wasn't just because they didn't have an awesome receiver, it was 'cause they couldn't block. And to me, with the tougher schedule and all the things that are happening, um, this season with the Super Bowl hangover and not knowing if Drake Maye's 100%, I'm glad we're gonna have guys who can get open and we're gonna have big play guys. And we might have a guy who's gonna have 150 targets and 1,500 yards receiving and 15 touchdowns, and he's just going to be awesome. But if they can't block, none of it's going to matter. So I'm, I'm a little more worried about that. Anyway, I was— I'm probably like 70-30, 70 optimistic, 30 a little suspicious why we were able to just grab one of the 5 or 6 best receivers in the league for a pick 2 years from now. That's why I was a little tempered. Anyway, some mailbag questions. Got a lot of questions— or a lot of answers from different readers about Zach and I wondering what to call the Wemby Box and One.

And everyone was saying just call it Area 51. Um, Adam from Toronto said call it What's in the Box After 7. But the bet— uh, Kyle T wanted to call it the French Press. Thought that was fun. But the one Dan from Seattle was the first one that sent it, and there were a couple more after. This is the best one: Vic in a Box. Dan, Dan from Seattle wrote, Vic in a Box and boom goes the dynamite. Perfect. Vic in a Box is great. It's an homage to, uh, I think Dick in the Box was 20 years ago, that SNL thing. But, um, I love Vic in a Box, and I'm going to be calling that from now on. Um, so if they do it against the Knicks you could just say, look, oh, they're playing Vic in a box. Um, Steven got this email a few times too, and I should have, and I'm about to apologize. Steven from San Francisco listening to the Kellerman Pod wants to make sure he's not taking crazy pills because we talked about the best crowd killers and never mentioned a guy named Steph Curry, the greatest shooter ever.

The second that got brought up, I, like many others, immediately thought of the OKC game winner in '16 or the 2022 Finals. Game 4, Game 6. What am I missing with the definition of crowd killer and how was he omitted? Well, obviously Steph would've been there. We kind of stumbled into that conversation. There was not a lot of thought put into the post-2010 guys, obviously, because we didn't include Steph Curry. That conversation started, just to remind you, it was what I wrote about Walt Frazier in my basketball book in 2009. And I wrote, I'm too young to remember watching Clyde live, but he was a legendary crowd killer by all accounts. In my basketball watching lifetime, only 7 guys were crowd killers: Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isiah, Andrew Toney, and strangely enough, Vinnie Johnson. So those are my 7. All right, so I actually went in, I looked through Basketball Reference, I looked through all the scores. I really wanted to make sure I didn't miss anybody. And I also want to explain the definition of a crowd killer because there's been a bunch of guys we've had in the last 15 years that have had moments that would've been added to that list.

Like most famously LeBron, Game 6, 2000, 12 in the, in the East, LeBron, Durant, Kyrie, Kawhi, Dame, even James Harden. They've all had crowd killer moments. But I think the crowd killer thing is, it's a little different because it's a recognizable heat check, but there's an inevitability to it. And that's what we were talking about with Brunson. It like, in that Cleveland game, they're down 22 and he makes a couple and the inevitability kicks in like, oh boy, I've, I've been here before. Um, I think Edwards can get here. He's not there yet on this list. I think he can get there. Um, I would— he would be a draft pick for me. And I think SGA is like 95% there. And the thing that probably kills him with this is the, the fouls and, and the flopping. And sometimes the crowd is so mad at some of the calls that they're not being killed because they're actually engaged because they're mad at SGA. So he doesn't really 100% fit, but maybe he'll get in there. So for the last 15 years, I had initially Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isaiah, Tony, Vinnie Johnson. From the last 15 years, you have to add Steph and you have to add Brunson.

There's one other guy though. I think Wemby has to be added, even though he's 22 and even though his whole career is ahead of him. And who knows, this might be the peak, but the combo of him on defense and then him when he gets going on offense And his ability to make 30-foot threes like he did in Game 1 of the OKC series. I think Wemby, Wemby might be the 10th. He might be the only center. It's funny, Embiid had a couple crowd killer moments, but we've never seen him do it when it really mattered. But Wemby, I think when Wemby is kind of starting to levitate above the game, the crowd gets psyched out in a real noticeable way that you could feel. So that would be the 10th. Jonathan C writes, Is there any country that had a worst 8 sports months than Canada? Blue Jays, one out from World Series champs. The Bills flame out. I like that Canada claims the Bills. They should. They lose to their biggest rival in OT in men's and women's Olympic hockey. Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg all miss the playoffs. Montreal makes the Eastern Finals and loses to the former Hartford Whalers.

SGA becomes one of the most maligned players in the league and loses in Game 7. He's still going. We have no Canadians in golf or tennis making an impact and no MMA guys. He's still going. Bret Hart came off awful in the Hogan documentary, and then he said Sami Zayn seems lost lately. Help us out, Bill. Um, Jamal Murray just said he wasn't playing for the 2028 Canadian team. That was another thing that came out. Uh, the Maple Leafs won the lottery. That's all I got. SJ won the title last year. He's gonna be— he's already probably one of the best 30 guards, 30 players of all time. I don't know, it could be worse. You got to figure out the hockey thing though. Not, not, uh, not winning a Cup since '93 when it's your national sport is pretty embarrassing. There's got to be a lot of soul searching going there. I got a lot of emails about this. I'll just read 3. Um, Alistar in the Blue Mountains of Australia— that's how far this, this Theories trickled. What if Game 7 was the Ben Simmons game of Chet's career? And he put in parentheses, professional fisherman Ben Simmons, not my son Ben Simmons.

Chris from Philadelphia said, Chris's Spurs series, or Chet's Spurs series, reminds me of when Ben Simmons's career ended against the 2011 Hawks and how he completely imploded. I look back at the box score from Game 7 and Simmons went 2 for 4 from the field. He did have 13 assists, but But still, maybe this ends with a Chet versus Simmons Bassmaster Classic in 2035. Want to hear your thoughts. And then the last one I got on this was from MJ from Milwaukee. My comp from Chet is Rocky in Rocky III facing Wemby as Clubber Lang. I think I made that joke. He was scared. He didn't want any part of him. Too fast. Hasn't said anything like this. Wemby basically said, don't give this sucker no statue. Give him guts. My question, who's going to be Chet's Apollo? Who's gonna take him to the gym and find his quickness? Who's gonna race him on the beach, hug him uncomfortably? There is no tomorrow. It's from MJ from Milwaukee. I don't think that person exists. Here's the thing. This is, you know, I got a couple OKC fans emailed about this too, and I hadn't thought of it about the, uh, when OKC lost to Dallas the first time they made a playoff run in 2024 when, uh, Dallas made the finals.

And Dallas guarded Chet a little bit similarly where he's a slow release 3-point guy, so you can kind of play off him and then dive back at him, which is what the Spurs were doing. And I think his real Achilles heel, other, other than he's in the same league as a 7-foot-6 UFO, is that he's gotta figure out how to have a quicker release on those corner 3s, 'cause he is a good 3-point shooter. I still like Chet. I'm not gonna get psyched out by that series. We talked about this in the, uh, on one of the pods recently. There's been a lot of great players that have sucked in the playoffs. And, um, I'm, he's at his age and what we've seen from him so far and the fact that they've already won a title with him, I'm not quitting on Chet. With that said, I still wanna know who says no to a Chet to the Clippers for the 5th pick trade. 'Cause the Clippers do have cap space. And that would give them the foundation of Chet and Garland and Kawhi Leonard. And then they could kind of patch around the sides.

They've been really good at finding, like, mid-level free agents and veteran guys. One trade I thought of, Clippers get Chet and a future Kings first. So they move back 2 spots. Kings get the 5th pick so they can take Acuff, who I think is gonna go 5th. OKC gets the 7th pick from the Clippers., and then they take Mara, the, the Michigan center, and that's their Chet replacement along with Hartenstein. They save a bunch of, they would save $30+ million with Chet versus the 7th pick, Hartenstein, the whole thing. So I kind of like that one. Plus the Clippers could pick up a future Kings asset and still get Chet. That's around the range. I don't think top 4 is a Chet range, but I think 5 to 7 could be a, chit rage. But as I said multiple times already, uh, it is not Presti's history, or, or, uh, it's just never something we've seen. He's not a panic trade guy, and he's not a, oh God, we got to do something guy. He's a continuity guy. Um, Andrew, speaking of fake trades, Andrew said, it's not just the Finals, it's fake trade season.

You should come up with at least one fake trade for every podcast episode until free agency starts. Well, we are doing a lot of episodes. This month. Or rank your favorite 5 fake trades every Sunday night with Zach. More fake trades! Exclamation point. I don't have a question. If we ranked our favorite fake trades every Sunday night with Zach, um, he would spend way too much time on that and probably have to be hospitalized, but I'm not against it. Okay, June 3rd, 2016. My favorite fake trades right now. One of them is a Celtics one that I've kind of been hinting at for the last couple weeks on this podcast. I keep mentioning Murphy on the Pelicans as a possible Celtics piece. And the reason is because if the Celtics decide, we already won a title with the Jays, we don't wanna pay both of these guys right, right now, they're two of the top 7 contracts in the league. And not just by length of the deal, by what their price tag is just for the 2026-27 season. And if they decide that's not sustainable in this current era, We have to figure out how to turn Jaylen Brown into multiple pieces and a cheaper guy.

Trey Murphy makes $25 million, which is $30 million less than Jaylen Brown. Here's the trade. The Celtics would get Trey Murphy, Missy, the, uh, the young center who I like, Herb Jones, and Cam Johnson from the Nuggets. Stay with me. Plus a 2030 Pelicans swap. And pick 26 from Denver, which they would have to do after the draft because Denver's not allowed to trade their first-round pick. Um, New Orleans gets Jaylen Brown, Denver gets Sam Hauser and pick 40 in the trade. So then the Celtics would have too many swingmen, and then they could flip Herb Jones for something else. The other thing about Cam Johnson, they could put him in their giant trade exception they get, but I think if the Celtics trade Jalen, I don't think it's going to be for Giannis. I think it's going to be a trade like this— multiple pieces, more flexibility, um, guys that would lead to one extra move after this. And I, I think that's what they're thinking. I also think they could separately just trade Sam Hauser for Cam Johnson and put him in that trade exception and get pick 26 and try to have pick 26 and 27 in the draft, then see if you can move up into the teens with those two picks.

Um, I mentioned Denver the other day and a bunch of Nuggets fans, Nuggets media members are mad. Bring it on. I stand by what I said. Hey Denver, you're rich. I know about the second apron tax. I know about that, all that shit. But they could, um, just not pick up the Valanciunas contract for this year and then figure out how to trade Cam Johnson for less and sign Peyton Watson. And by the way, I don't think Peyton Watson's getting as much money as everybody thinks. I don't know where his 20 million a year is coming from. We saw the guy play well for like 5 weeks and he got hurt. 6 weeks, 8 weeks. I can't remember what it was, but I don't think, I don't, I think that's the range of guys that everybody's scared of right now. 17 to 22 million where you're overpaying. Like basically exactly what happened to the Nuggets last year with Christian Brown, who I think was hurt last year. But, but if I'm Denver, I'm not picking up Valanciunas and I'm trying to downgrade with Cam Johnson. And if I'm the Celtics and I can turn Sam Hauser into Cam Johnson, and then if, if it is time to trade Jaylen Brown, who knows?

My instinct is still that they're gonna keep these guys. But if you could turn Sam Hauser into Cam Johnson, do it. Especially 'cause he's an expiring at $23 million. That gives you flexibility for February. I think everything the Celtics are gonna do this summer is gonna be about flexibility. They have a lot of young players that they like. Um, they have two giant contracts. They don't have really any of the in-between stuff. They have the Pritchard extension coming. Anyway, that's my first trade. Second one, Portland gets Giannis and all his brothers. I think there's only two. Milwaukee gets Jeremy Grant, Scoot, all their picks, swaps back. Portland has, I think, two firsts and a swap, something like that, plus another first and another swap, and Portland gets Giannis. Listen, we've talked about this trade before. I'm not I'm not breaking new ground here. And I don't know if Giannis wants to go to Portland. I had heard he wants to be in the East Coast. That's too far for him. And who knows if he wants to play for El Chipo, the Blazers owner, who's already on a media tour trying to claim that he's not El Chipo.

Plus Carolina is in the Stanley Cup Finals. So he's like, look, my El Chipo stuff works. If Portland can figure out how to get Giannis without really giving up anything in their core and being able to put him with Jrue Holiday and Klingen and Camara and, and most importantly, Denny. And I just think that's like, that's a better situation for him than Miami trading basically everything they have except Bam Adebayo and all their picks and just ending up with Bam and Giannis and trying to figure it out. That's the most fun. I'd love to see Giannis on that team reunited with Dame, reunited with Jrue Holiday. The other one would be Paolo Frianes straight up. And I don't know who has to throw in more for that, but as we mentioned a few pods ago, Orlando hired Giannis's old assistant in Milwaukee, Sean Sweeney, who is the all-time I can't believe you're not from Massachusetts, Massachusetts guy in the NBA, Sean Sweeney. But Paolo Frianes makes a ton of sense for everybody. The last one, Washington gets Jimmy Butler and a Golden State 27/1 unprotected. Golden State gets Anthony Davis, followed, followed by the Warriors signing LeBron James, and we officially had the Expendables again.

We have Anthony Davis, we have LeBron, we have Draymond, we have Steph Curry. By the way, they can get Jimmy Butler back thanks to this stupid Mike Conley rule that we— nobody ever knew about, where Mike Conley got traded by Minnesota to I think Washington or Chicago somewhere, then got traded again and waived, and all of a sudden Minnesota was gonna, was able to pick him up. So maybe they could end up picking him back up in February. But I'm all in. I, I listen, I've been driving this Golden State bandwagon. I also think there's real smoke and I think there's some fire with LeBron going to Golden State. I think it's his best option, especially when you look at San Antonio and you look at OKC, the young cores they have, how good their players are, and what the, kind of the ceiling of those teams are compared to any other situation LeBron could be in, you're better off doing the All-Star team and the tour with Steph and the puncher's chance of maybe all these old guys together could do some magic in the playoffs one last time. They'd sell out every arena, everybody would be in on it.

I still love that idea. Nat in Oakland says, hey Bill, I know you like a good title defense. What do you make of the Thunder's honor level in their title defense? And how does it make their '25 title look? I think the parallel is the 2015 and '16 Warriors. The '16 run proved the 2015 team was legit. I completely agree. I've talked about this a lot. Title defenses are really important to me. I wrote about it in my book. It's the biggest thing you can ding the '83 Sixers on. They lost in 5 to a really weird Nets team in 1984. And I just, I feel like when you win the title, you gotta defend it in some way. You have to have a little bit of pride. '87 Celtics being the best example of this. The team's just breaking down like a, like an army platoon and they still somehow make the Finals. I would give OKC's defense an 8.5. The Jalen Williams thing, the further we get away from it, losing your second best guy. I was trying to think like, is there another example of anyone in this century who lost their second best guy and won the title?

No. They went 75-22 this year. 8 of their losses came against the Spurs. They went 71-14 against everyone who was in the Spurs this year, and they went 155-35 in 2 years. So I thought that was an awesome title defense. Plus they turned into villains. What else do you want? And now they have the Eye of the Tiger for next year. We have a great Chet subplot. Maybe he goes to Australia, hikes the outback, grows a beard, grows a bigger beard. He has a beard, big bushier beard. Noah from Conway, South Carolina said, massive Spurs fan here. My question is, when be the first true non-USA face of the league? Has Shay or Jokic ever truly been the face? Has the media or the fans truly ever accepted them? He mentions Hakeem, he mentions Dirk, Nash. Even as USA has fallen behind in the best in the league conversation, it feels like Jokic, Giannis, and Shay have not got ass in their seats. Like, Wemby, thoughts? Um, I hate the face of the league. I, I said multiple times, I don't like it. I think it's stupid. People act like we always have to have one.

It's kind of, it's the mountain in the league they have to climb if you want to win the title that people are just thinking about at all times is how I would think about it. Um, and in football, you know, it was Brady forever and then it just became Mahomes and it was like, if you get by Mahomes, That was almost as big of an achievement as winning the title. So I think that's a piece of it combined with the mom test of, um, does my mom know who this player is? Does your mom know who this player is? Does anyone who doesn't follow sports know who the player is? Are they bringing in casual fans? And is just there a general recognition of the person? And we have just not had this since LeBron and Curry, and we definitely haven't now with Wemby. And this is what I said all along, you know it when you see it, you can't force it.. You can't say, oh, it's Grant Hill. Oh, it's SGA. You, you just can't. You know it when you see it. Jokic was 90% there, but never totally got there. He doesn't resonate like Wemby did.

LeBron was that guy from 2011 to '16. Curry and the Warriors collectively from the second part of that decade. Kobe and Shaq together. MJ, Bird and Magic simultaneously. Kareem, you know it when you see it. And Wemby has it right now, no matter what happens in this Finals. Next year when we go into the next season, we'll be talking about Wemby and the Spurs, who could beat them, and also Wemby, Wemby, Wemby, Wemby, and he will sell out every arena he's in. He will get the biggest ratings, and that's what happens. Josh S wants to know, if the Knicks win the title this year, is this the most improbable NBA championship when compared to where everything stood at the start of the playoffs? They completely revamped their offense halfway through a playoff series. Their best player is 4'7". I, I think he's taller than that. And it's the fucking New York Knicks. Given where we were 6 weeks ago, this would be the most improbable championship if they pulled it out. So they were 6 to 1 to win the East before the playoffs. I gave, I tweeted out some picks before the playoffs and one of the, uh, long shot picks was Brunson to be the Eastern Conference MVP was +650.

And I think they were 6 to 1 to win the East. That obviously flipped. So for improbable championships, '22 Warriors, the 2011 Dallas, 1977 Blazers, the 1978 Sonics making the finals. They didn't win, but that was incredibly improbable, as was the '20 and '23 Heats. But they didn't— neither of those teams won either. The '75 Warriors was pretty improbable. And then the '69 Celtics are the big ones. But this, I think the parallels to this one would be the, the 2011 Mavericks where very similar to the Mavericks where it felt like they hit rock bottom in the first series and the Mavericks had Portland. And then there was multiple times when it just felt like they didn't have a chance. Then they even get to the finals, they're 2-to-1 underdogs. So I would say the 2011 Dallas, the '22 Warriors, it was always felt like if they could just stay healthy and figure out their shit, Pudons with Boston and Milwaukee. Milwaukee had Middleton banged up. Boston never been there before. And there was always a sense like if Golden State could just get there, that they could sneak it out. Dallas, especially when they're down 15 in Game 2 after having lost Game 1, that was improbable.

As the Finals was happening, it seemed improbable. Zach Hogue said, he mentioned how I've always had a theory that championships and success come in bunches for cities. Is France having that moment right now? France, who's already won a World Cup final or made the World Cup final last 2 years, and they've won one. PSG's now won back-to-back Champion League. French swimmer Marchand, not very familiar with his work, but he's apparently shattering Michael Phelps's world records. The French rugby team has won a couple championships. Big deal in Europe. Sure. Wemby's down in the NBA Finals. You could make the case he's the best player in the NBA. So Zach asked, why not hammer France to win the World Cup with the Spurs to win the NBA Finals and just bet on the summer of France? Now you're seeing this after Game 1 of the Finals. That was +770 before the Finals. I already had Spurs money. I threw some more on that. I like that one. The Year of France. So this is something I didn't realize until after I did the podcast with Max. Game 6 of the Finals is on Tuesday, June 16th, and that same day France is playing in New Jersey.

At the, uh, Giant Football Stadium. They have a World Cup game at, at 12, and then potentially Game 6 with the Knicks would be that night. And people could be like, could you try to go to both? It's so crazy that France would be playing in the same night that Wemby could potentially be, be, uh, quenching his first NBA championship that I almost feel like it's destined to happen. I really do. I was thinking about when I, in 1994, I went, my buddy Jim Grady was living in Port Chester with my friend Camp, and I went up there and we were supposed to watch Game 5 of Knicks-Rockets, and that was the night of the O.J. car chase. And it just was like this crazy night that has been immortalized in multiple TV shows and documentaries, and they're doing split screens. And it was definitely one of those, I remember where I was when I watched this game and this whole car chase thing. I do wonder if that June 16th is going to be kind of a crazy day like that with the double France thing. Just something, some sort of signature French moment.

Plus 770. We'll see if that one hits. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back and we're going to talk about TV shows and TV versus movies and a little seesaw that's starting to shift. And also, we're going to talk about Euphoria and the season finale of that show. Series finale now. Uh, we're gonna talk with Joanna Robinson and Chris Ryan, and that is next, right after this break. This episode is brought to you by Duluth Trading Company. Whether it's the 19th inning, the 12th quarter, or the 5th and a half shift overtime, not going anywhere, which is why Duluth builds hardworking gear for folks who work their butts off. Their Surefire Arsenal work shirts are built for function and comfort. Giving a big foam middle finger to all that is futile. And the new No Quit utility shirt is equipped with cooling and wicking tech. Oh boy. To keep you comfortable, all while being tough enough to take down your most daunting tasks. When it's marathon work session versus you, give no quits. Shop at a Duluth store near you or at duluthtrading.com. All right. I'm here with, uh, Joanna Robinson, Chris Ryan.

We just did a Rewatchables taping. So I kept them around to talk a little pop culture. Euphoria was last night. Series finale, it sounds like.

It is the series finale. They confirmed it.

One of my least liked seasons of television I've had.

I've never gotten so many all caps texts from you. I was furious. Filled with hatred.

I really hated it. Yeah. And I hate shitting on TV. These things are hard to make. There's a million actors and our expectations, but there's certain seasons. There was a Dexter season I remember that I was just like, I'm never fucking watching the show again. Did you keep watching it? No.

Oh, um, you were out before the end of Dexter? Oh yeah. Wow.

Did you do that on Lost? Did you ever freak out on Lost?

I didn't like the last season of Lost, but, um, I— that show had built up so much goodwill for me. Euphoria, it goes away for years, right? Comes back and has 3 of the biggest under-35 actors that we have and just fumbles it. So I was— it was an F- for me. But what did you think?

Uh, it was like a C, I would say, for me. I think there's some stuff in the finale that was really, really good, but I'm baffled by the way in which this season and this finale especially got bogged down in this, like, there's this Nazi cohort and then there's, uh, Alamo and his, uh, bad guys. And so there's like two big shootout sequences that take up a lot of this episode. 30 minutes into the finale, and we're still shooting Nazis. And I'm just like, "What about all these characters we spent all these years with?" Hunter Schafer, who plays Jules, is barely in this finale. Cassie and Maddie are kind of in the finale. It was just really confusing to me. I understand the impulse, and it's okay to want to sort of try something new with your show. We've reinvented ourselves for this season, but you still have these legacy characters that have been there from the beginning. So to not give them a conclusive story or, uh, more airtime in the final episode was absolutely insane to me.

Yeah, I was probably a lot warmer on it than you guys were. Uh, the addiction stuff really worked for me. I thought the Zendaya-Coleman Domingo, like, relationship was amazing. Very good. And I'll say what I, I've kind of been, like, trumpeting the whole year. With this show, with Andy, is I was just never bored. And so much TV bores me, you know, like so much of the time I'm like, oh, I can see where this is going, or I know what's going to happen now is like this XYZ is going to kind of play out. And when she— I guess obviously spoilers for this episode of Euphoria, I mean the finale— but when she passes away at like the 40-minute mark and there's still another hour, I was like, oh, are we gonna spend an hour kind of remembering Rue and doing the funeral? And then it turns into fucking Taxi Driver. I was like, well, I didn't see this coming. I kind of thought maybe Ali would sacrifice himself for Rue in some way, but it was such a weird dark fantasy of the vengeance that probably people who lose people to addiction feel, like they want to take out.

And it was just— I mean, you could say a lot of it, but it was very unique. So I'm probably more in the B zone. If you're F and she's C, I'm I'm a little bit higher on it, but just because I was like, this, this never, this never was dull to me.

Well, that's why I wasn't sure until HBO confirmed it, um, after we recorded our finale discussion, but that they confirmed that this is the final season. But I wasn't sure that it would be. Not— I mean, Jacob Elordi and Zendaya would no longer be on the show, but you have plenty of other people, and people are talking about it every week. Yeah, that's hard to find in this TV landscape. So I was a little surprised that HBO didn't try to squeeze another season out of Sam Levinson.

It feels like they were probably good. I'm just saying, now you have this Idol season that was pretty crazy and super expensive. I'm sure this season was not, not expensive with probably—

yeah, I think the season was also marred by like the strikes and COVID and stuff like that. So it sounds like it went through a couple of different like full creative reimagining, and then they lost an actor.

Yeah. Lost an actor, and they also were cursed by never having their best actors all in the same scene for different reasons. I think for shooting schedules, but personal reasons. I really does seem like Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney did not want to be in a scene together, um, which I think hurts the show. It was just— it felt very disjointed to me. I didn't like the Elordi stuff at all. I didn't understand it. Nate should have been a really good actor. Like, what the fuck was the point of that?

Nate shouldn't have been in this season at all.

Or should have died in the first— if you're gonna use it that way, just kill him in the first episode.

The whole point of him is create this—

well, the whole point of him is to say, we have Jacob Elordi on our show in 2026, right? Yeah. So that's why you keep Elordi around. But for plot reasons, you really just needed Cassie to be in debt. And so he could have died in the— they could have had the wedding and he died like the first episode.

But that's, that stuff kind of hardly gets interrogated in the finale. Like that was one of the, my problems with it is that like this sort of chain reaction from Rue tells Lexi that she's a DEA informant. Yeah, and then Lexi tells Maddie, and Maddie tells Alamo. Alamo seems like probably would have found out either way, but like, there's no reckoning with like Maddie being like, I can't believe like this is what happened to Rue.

Like, does she even know? I don't think she's the reason. And that was— that was— that really bothered me because I know you're not like a huge Maddie slash Alexa Demie fan, but I really love that character, and I think she's one of the smarter characters on the show. And so for her to just casually drop this DEA, uh, information in front of Alamo, I thought was like a bizarrely stupid move to not then have any ramifications at all for that character. Like emotionally is very strange.

I mean, this is like a show that did, does some, did something in an incredible way that TV shows rarely do anyway anymore, which is like mint stars. Like when you think about the fact that like that there's that shot of Zendaya, like the young Zendaya. When she's having her flashback. I'm like, wow, she was a kid when she started this show, right? And like, so for them to have this lightning in a bottle with 3 performers, especially Elordi, uh, Sweeney, and Zendaya, and to kind of have it wind up where it winds up, I guess it does feel a little bit like a wasted opportunity. But it's not surprising that, you know, like, but given their schedules and stuff like that, it is, it is disappointing, but it's not surprising that they're, they're not more scenes together. But I just don't think some— like Andy was just saying this today on the pod, like I don't think like anything like this is ever gonna happen again where you have this amount of like talent.

So that's why I give it the F-. I don't think it was an F-minus show, but I think they had the opportunity to do something really special with the people they had, and I just don't think they pulled it off.

And I, you know, I don't think Heat and Rivalry is headed that way. You don't think Off Campus is headed that way? Maybe.

I don't know what they tried to do with Sydney Sweeney this season. She seemed to enjoy it. She's— but were they—

she seemed to love it. And I'm so curious what you thought.

Were they mocking what people think is the perception of her, or was he mocking her without her knowing she was being mocked?

I think it was the former.

I don't— I feel like it was a little call me, little call me. Like, I, I think there was just like a little bit of Sydney Sweeney not being entirely in on the joke, but her being somewhat in on the joke. That's how I felt.

So my daughter, who loved this show, and that's a big part of like her generation. Yeah. And she liked this, the finale, but she likes everything because she really liked Rue and the Coleman Domingo character.

Well, Zoe had the theory that, like, I don't think Rue's gonna die because she's the narrator. Right.

Yeah. And she thought that he would die and then she would take his place. And so they flipped it. But I guess the problem with Levinson is also the best thing about him. He can make anything look good and entertaining. Right? So this turns into, like, a Western. We have, like, a whole Nazi shootout. Yeah. And it's all— it's really well done and well well filmed and just interesting. And then you kind of think about it after, you're like, what the fuck just happened? Why was that? I'm just not emotionally invested. Yeah, why did I just spend an hour 45 minutes watching that? And if that was a movie, would that have been a good use of my time? I don't know. I disagree with you on one thing though. I was pretty bored. Yeah, through multiple stretches yesterday. I just was like, what the fuck?

Shootout I thought was like unbearably long. And this like, and the Laurie suicide when I'm just sort of like, I don't care about this character.

I didn't care about anybody in that house when it— I So when I say that, I mean, even when I would be like, this is the third time they've had this conversation or the fourth time this scene has happened, visually, I would be like, yeah, yeah, there's something that popped. Like, even the shootout and the Nazi, like, I thought the tunnel sequence was cool. I thought the lasso sequence was cool. Like, there's stuff where I was like, oh, shit. Like, nobody really makes Westerns like this right now.

Well, and as two people who were, like, podcasting about it week to week, like, there was always something to talk about. And people were talking about it. And in this, like, like, you know, attention economy, like the fact that people were engaged at all, even if they were angrily engaged. I mean, I don't know if that's a negative message to send, but like, there's something important. Provocative about it. Yeah, important about that.

I guess the bigger issue is, can any show end in a way that satisfies the fan base?

Yeah. Hacks finale ruled. Also happened this week.

When did the two specials come out?

Uh, what year?

No, I mean like, was it between one and two? One and two. Yeah. So like between one and two, they did these two specials. One was about Jules and one's about Ollie and Rue. And I was— I remember thinking back about those, like, just after watching last night and being like, man, like, I wonder if it would have worked better if it was like three of these weird— yeah, I'm gonna do a Nate movie, I'm gonna do a Cassie movie, and then I'm gonna do the Ollie and Rue movie. Yeah. And we'll put it all together and it'll be a 6 to 8 week special event of like wrapping up the Euphoria storyline. Yeah, like, yeah, but like to your point, I wonder if there was holding out hope of like, well, maybe we'll do more, maybe like in 5 years we'll come back and they'll be like, they'll all be older then, and maybe I can do the Rue as a private detective story then, and all this stuff that had been kicked around as ideas.

Yeah, too much time passed and I think That was a huge problem. I think it's really hard to figure out how to land the plane correctly when you're also trying to land the plane on— this is 5 years after the last time you've seen all these people.

And I do— I mean, like, you know, would I rather had season 3 of Euphoria rather than The Idol? Yes. But I do— I mean, we can't underestimate the impact that losing Angus Cloud had on this entire crew and this creator and stuff like that. So, like, I, I can understand that while still not enjoying the end product of what we got.

Is this better if it's just a 5-year reunion for high school and we don't go completely over the top and make this, like, the absolute craziest— I mean, there were scenes this season where it's like, you're trying to set the record for the craziest scene that's been on HBO 5 different times.

It's like the dildo limit in that single scene.

Would it almost have been better scaling it back the other way and trying to make the show a little more normal when it wasn't?

Yeah, it's almost distracting at points, 'cause, like, when Ali is doing his vengeance tour, And you're like, wow, I'm really engaged. This guy's got his military uniform on. This is like Rolling Thunder. It's happening. Yeah. But then you've got like fake Brazilian butt lifts, like walking across the screen every second. And I know it's set in a strip club, so it like works, but there's no strip club in the world like that. But it's also just like, dude, fucking concentrate. Like, like tell the story that's right in front of you rather than making sure I see 4 snakes and 2 butts.

You have one of your main characters of the show, Maddie, here in this shootout, but she might as well have not been there. She was a piece of furniture. It was so weird. You like the Hacks finale a lot? I loved the Hacks finale. Yeah, I did.

I liked it and it was also, but it was interesting. Did you watch Hacks at all? No. Something happens in Hacks where they like kind of get up to the edge of something very, very, you know, like unexpected and impactful happening. Uh, and they back off of it at the last second, probably for the best for like in terms of people's enjoyment of it, but I'm glad. I'm glad that with, with Euphoria, they were like, this is what happens to people who dance too close to the sun a little bit.

But also, I would say with the Hacks finale, and I guess we're talking around it, like, they don't say it's not gonna happen. Sure. It's just not happening in this episode.

In this episode, yeah. Right. TV's in a weird spot right now, even though we're all watching a ton of it.

This year is very weird. The back half of this year is very strange. I don't know. Like, I don't know what—

I think the whole year's been weird because one of the weirdest things that's happened is we thought TV had taken over from movies. And now movies is having this huge renaissance because they're actually making movies about original IP.

Sean just heard you across town. I know.

Sorry, Sean. Um, conversationally, he and Steven Spielberg clinking espresso. Yeah, conversationally, I think more and more people are doing the— have you seen it? Yeah, like, it's the way it used to be. I don't know why we had to die for 10 years, and I don't think it was You know, and I know this is— we've done so many pods and different things about this, but I really just think everybody got lazy for a long time, and then it finally started not making money, and then it's like, well, maybe we need to find new stories. It's like, yeah, motherfuckers.

Oh, in terms of movies.

Yeah, COVID definitely fucked it up and knocked it backwards. Maybe this all would happen 3 years sooner, but movies just feel a little more vibrant than TV right now. Like, if I see another fucking Apple show, and I've watched most of them, where it's 3 actors I've known a few times from different things. Yeah. And there's a murder and one of them died. And now we go backwards and like, how many fucking times can you make that show?

Are you excited for Cape Fear?

No, I'm not going to watch Cape Fear. Widow's Bay.

We're loving Widow's Bay. The Pit. Couldn't get there. The Pit. Were you into The Pit?

The Pit was the last one. Yeah, I love The Pit. The Pit was the— you know, because I was sending you texts about it. I do know. Um, The Pit was so— and now people are going to rip The Pit off, and then we're going to get a lot of like every hour in a day.

The Pit was just ripping, you know, the crazy state.

Allegedly.

Yeah, allegedly. The Pit is just doing old school television. There's something about—

they got— I think that collectively, and you could do a Matt Bellany conversation about Moving away from networks and into streaming services and why, like, different priorities change. But there was something about the golden age of television that basically raised Joe and, Joe and I as, as people who talk about this stuff, where it was like Breaking Bad and Sopranos and some of these shows, even if maybe there had been a feature script at its origin story ever, felt like a new and different way of telling stories. And then when you have this gold rush and talent rush into TV, but it's like, yeah, guess what? Nicole Kidman's going to be on this, but she can only shoot for like 4 weeks. So can we do all of her scenes in 3 sets? And they have to be like before we know what the end of the show is. Or I'm not even talking about her specific show, but yeah, I feel like more and more you can see the scene schedule reliant of shows where you're like, oh, that's Did they actually not have like the ending or what, like what happened here?

And that, and also it's connected to what Bill was saying about sort of this, the way in which IP or superheroes or whatever you, however you care to put it, took over movies. Then all those like mid-level original idea movies became like drawn out limited series because that's the only place you could tell those stories. Yeah. But you didn't have enough story there. So then you just get this like really thin sort of diluted version of what would have been. A good, like, you know, just movies for adults movie. And, and people could tell you get tired over time. A lot of those Apple shows that you're talking about are just stretched out movies that people can't get made as movies. And so they're taking them to—

and you make more money if you stretch it out.

There's a behavioral going on and I recognize it in myself where I get like 3 episodes into a show and I'm like, that's pretty good, but I think I'm good. I got it. You know what I mean?

Oh my God, you make it 3? But you know what I mean? I'm like an episode behind. You know what I mean? Where I'm like, I think I'm out.

You're kind of cruising through a Netflix or an Apple or an Amazon show, and you're like, I think I got it. I think that this is kind of—

Did you do any more Burrows after we talked about it? No. I think I got it.

Yeah. I mean, that's a good example. Legends is a great show on Netflix. I was like, I got to finish this. But there's something daunting, especially if, like you said, movies have kind of had this a little bit of a revival of like, we got to go out and see Backrooms like the weekend it comes out because it feels like that's—

people are talking about it really.

Like, I couldn't believe it. I mean, we live in LA obviously where everybody loves going to the movies and we have great apps now where you can see how many seats are available and things like that. And so I was thinking about making my wife go to see Backrooms last night and looked in the morning and there were a bunch of seats left on like the 10 o'clock, you know, they— it was By the time it got to 2 o'clock, like, everything was gone. It was like sold out. It was like, holy shit. And I was talking to my son about it because he, him and his friends, my son's 18, they love going to movies, obviously. But I do think a big piece of this, other than the original IP thing, um, people were COVID stuck kind of in their house for a while, not being able to go out as much. And then that started to slowly shift away, and then now it's back to normal. And now people are looking for excuses to go out again that I don't feel like was there a few years ago for a variety of reasons.

They've also— now they're learning that, and they just announced that Obsession was supposed to come out this week on paid video. I couldn't believe it. They delayed it, and now they're delaying it for like another 30 days or 40 days. And the exact opposite is happening with TV, where it's like there's 4 or 5 shows a year that are big deals that are weekly, and everything else is like these binge drops that it's either— or you're a psycho and you watched it on Friday, or if you watched it over the course of 2 months. Yeah. And you gotta finish it, but you haven't yet. And Joe and I are both huge fans of Widow's Bay. One of the reasons why it's been kind of like this cool little show is that you can kind of feel it gain momentum.

The same thing happened with The Pit. Yeah, in his first season of The Pit, watching Audiences need time to find these things. And if Widows Bay had been a binge jump, you wouldn't have this, like, as the audience grows and then week to week. And Widows Bay is a little bit of a theory show, so like people get to trade theories and get really invested. And I've just like always been anti-binge. It is very antisocial. And like what you're talking about in terms of this like post-COVID thing is a social, uh, experience. When you go to a movie and you sit in a dark room with people and you laugh or you You cry or whatever it is, you are feeling something with people around you. And we are in a psychological space, societal space right now where people feel so isolated. People feel like they can't connect or agree on anything. And if you have this communal experience, TV can be that if it comes out week to week and if everyone's watching the same thing, which is so hard to capture.

It's happening with sports, sporting events too. Of course. It's like sports is completely back and attendance is doing great in all these different places. Yeah. Because people like being around people. Yeah. Um, the binge thing, like, we've been talking about it on this podcast forever. Um, I just don't like it. It's horrible. But I, I'm— for selfish reasons, dating back to Grantland, it's like, it's just bad. Stranger Things was bad for us the way the schedule was. If they had spread it out, it would have been better for us. So I'm being selfish about it, but I just think the ability to dive into a show every week, wonder What just happened? What's going to happen next? Is— I think that's how people want to watch shows. These networks aren't stupid.

If, if they thought there was more money or more interest in it being a week to week, I'm sure they would do it. I do think it's a little bit of like an us problem where it's like, we like to talk about these things. We like to talk about these things episodically. I'm bummed out that the last season of The Bear is going to go up on like a Thursday night. You know what I mean?

I'm bummed out that The Bear has been a confusing case the entire run because like its first season was a binge. Dump, but once it was such a huge thing, we were confused every year. Should have been 2 a week. And well, and FX is like, we've got the numbers that support this. This is the model for us. But like, it's, it's more of an instant gratification versus a long-term investment thing. But I'm sure the numbers prove that if you binge drop something, you know, um, you will get more eyeballs on it immediately. But in terms of like building a Widow's Bay audience or building a Pit audience, like there's longer-term benefits. Comes Emmy season, come all these other things in terms of its endurance. Yeah, it's an us covering shows problem, but I also think it's like an impatience. Um, and, and that anxiety, that insecurity that a lot of like studios and streamers are experiencing.

I only like superficially follow this stuff, but I am very much aware that there's usually like a huge flood of shows right around now, the previous few weeks, because people are trying to get in. Under the Emmys nomination this summer. And to me, that's a lot of, like, uh, you know, maybe bigger stars doing TV who are like, if I'm doing this, I want to be up for an Emmy. Yeah, don't put me out in August and have— make people try to remember me next spring. Yeah. And I don't know if there's that many shows that it came out in the last couple of weeks that I would be like, this is so good, I wish it had a better runway or had a better window. But they were putting out way too much shit in like a 6-week period because they're like, we have to get this up to run an FYC campaign, to get an Emmy nomination, to satisfy the talent relations that we have and do whatever. And I do think it's like kind of now blinding people to like be like, it just seems like 5 shows just pop up on Peacock every week and I don't know what to do about that.

And I think that like we used to—

5 shows where somebody gets kidnapped.

Well, or just like do the HBO finale, the Hacks finale.

There were like a ton of finales, but do the HBO thing where you have two shows on at once and you promote them and you like build conversation about them and then hand the baton off to the next two shows.

It just doesn't make any sense because when you're thinking about— I do think a lot about the FYC stuff. And when you think about what they're running, like Task is a huge thing they're running and they didn't run that in the classic Emmys window, you know, but it is, it week to week built an audience and was a huge thing.

For them. Yeah. The one other thing with the binge that I think gets lost is we always talk about how it's bad for us, it's bad for discussing. I also find when you binge a show, I just don't watch it as carefully. No, for sure. Because especially, it's like, "Oh, I'll bang out 4 episodes." Like, I watched those seasons of The Bear, and they all just are kind of lumped together because I don't feel like I watched them the way I would normally watch them if it was just spread out. Yeah, like even Euphoria, which drove me crazy, it was at least once a week and I actually watched it and it was something that I was concentrating on. If I was trying to binge that, I'd— that would have been a nightmare.

Yeah. I remember the bear thing that was—

jumped out at me was like that first season. You're right. It had almost like a Stranger Things kind of thing where it went from like, have you seen the show The Bear?

I remember you slacking me and you're like, have you seen this bear thing?

And it's like, no, now I have watched The Bear like in, in 5 hours, you know? Yeah. And it was the second season. And I think I had screeners, so it wasn't like a personal thing, but I remember being like, oh man, it sucks that not everyone is going to watch the Christmas dinner episode at the same time. Yeah. You know, and that there's going to be prepackaged articles going out about how did the bear do that episode? And you're like, I would love for everybody to be like, oh, it's bear night. It's Wednesday night. And it's like, holy shit, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal are in this episode. Like, and Bob Odenkirk.

Some of the best shows ever benefited from that more than anything. I mean, Thrones, certainly. Sopranos, which still doesn't know. But Lost. And you think about Lost now, would have been 10 episodes a season. It would have been a binge show. And it's just like a completely different animal. When Jack says we have to go back, it just would have been trapped during the season-long binge. Then everybody would have experienced it at different times, and it wouldn't have the impact.

I was thinking of— with the pit, I was thinking so much about this idea of water cooler culture and water cooler conversation and the way in which shows like Lost or The Sopranos or Mad Men or whatever, to a lesser degree, like, that idea of the water cooler is so rare. And it feels so good when everyone's watching something together, when everyone's watching Task. And, like, we can see it with the podcast numbers. When people are, like, dialed into a show, and then people want to text me and talk, you know, people want to text me on that night while they're watching it, and they're like, "Holy shit, I can't believe this happened," or like, "Why did Robbie do this?" Or, you know, "Who's the secret warrant on Widow's Bay?" You know? And that's just— that's better for our culture.

When I was working for Jimmy's show, we came in on Monday when Sopranos was running. And so we would— all the writers, we'd all get together with Jimmy, and we'd try to figure out, like, Act 1, and we'd do it. We'd all go around the room and pitch bits. And during this time, The Sopranos had, like, was one of their runs. I can't remember what season. And we were just all around the room on the Monday. We would talk about the show for like an hour and a half. We'd have like no bits. Everybody's like, damn, that bit. And it was just like, that's just gone in the binge model. And so I don't know. I understand there's reasons why they do it. I'm sure the numbers are just as good. But like, I watch DTF. Because I had screeners for that. Um, DTF St. Louis, I watched it the day after New Year's all at once. I watched like 6 episodes in one day because I was hungover and I just wanted something to watch. And, uh, it hit me differently. I think if I had watched it week to week, I would have liked it more, but it was like too much all at once.

And that's another issue. Some of these shows are like too, too dense to binge.

That's a show that didn't really work for me personally, but I will, like, you respected it. I really— and also, like, is the kind of thing that we should have more of. Now, you could say DTF might have been, like, a good 2-hour movie and— or, you know, whatever. But I, I wish more shows had, like, the sensibility and also, like, the creative bravery to be like, this is not like every other show. Like, right, the sense of humor is going to be different, the performance style is going to be a little bit different. The tone is going to be different. You may or may not love it, but we're going to take a risk with it. And I think that there's a lot of, like, risk aversion in TV that you can really feel. Yeah. Every show starting with a flash forward and then a 6 months earlier is like, you guys don't—

it's like putting the hook at the front of your song.

Yeah, you guys don't trust me to watch your TV show because you got to show me a dead body in the first 5 seconds. I know, I know what show I'm watching. It's Presumed Innocent. You know, like, it's like, I assume I've seen the movie.

Yeah. And to go back back to your, um, your point about how you don't watch binge shows that closely, then we get into that feedback loop that, you know, people have been talking about more and more recently where, um, Netflix execs or whoever say you have to repeat things 10 times because people are second-screening this, they're not paying attention. And so then the shows get worse, and so then people want to pay even less attention to them because you're like, oh, I already saw this scene. You keep repeating the same lines over and over again because you think I'm not paying attention.

And so I won't pay attention. Yeah. Sadly, I was late on The Pit and we binged it. And I really tried to lock in and, but I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff, but it was still fun to watch.

I think it's, it's an amazing week to week experience, but watching it in binge is almost representative of like the quality, like the durational quality of the day that they're having on the show. So if you watch like 5 episodes, you really are like, holy shit, it's been 5 hours.

And like, yeah, it did work, but I still feel like I missed—

you cut up right at the end, didn't you? I thought you caught up like by the time the finale— I did. I caught up for you guys.

Yeah, yeah, I made it in time. It was good. But, uh, I do wonder, like, the seesaw of the movies versus TV. This is gonna be an interesting next couple years because if I'm, if I'm a creative person Do I want to have a movie and I can get out of it? I can just create something from scratch and have people see it and do well and make the next one? Or do I want to emulate what these other people are doing with these TV shows where it's like, I might be locked into this for 5, 6 years of my life? By the way, I'm not going to make as much money as I used to back in the day, and I actually might have more upside on the movie side. Your brain's going to shift toward the movie making, I think. Like, even somebody like the guy in The Bear, Right. Jeremy Allen White. No, the director, Chris Doherty.

He's making a movie next.

Yeah, The Bear was amazing for him, right? It's the stepping stone for him to make movies, which is where I think that's where the real money is going to be for them.

I hope so. But there's still plenty of movies that come and go and people pay no attention to them.

But you can at least move on to the next thing when you're doing— you do a show, this is— you're locked down. Like, even these Euphoria actors couldn't get out of these movies.

Kind of flopped if he had been locked into like, I have to do Everybody Loves Raymond for 10 years. He probably— Mr.

Mom for 10 years. Yeah.

Although that was like kind of like, maybe that made more sense. I don't know. I mean, I, you know, the, the differences is like, yeah, Joe's right. Like there's, there's going to be for every Odyssey and Backrooms and Obsession, there's going to be 10 movies.

A bunch of me didn't know. Yeah. But then some, some of them can even do well when they end up on like the Amazon on demand. You know, the pay-per-view, the Roku. Does that even exist? I don't know. Fandango universe. It is fun.

You know, I'm relatively new to living in Los Angeles, and but having worked with you guys for years and years and years and having listened to Mallory say every screening of this is sold out, and I'm in San Francisco, I'm like, not here, man. So it is nice to be in this town where people are going to the movies all the time. And any time of day that you decide to go to the movies, there are going to be other people there.

But you're really right, though, about there's something different. But I remember even last year with Andor, and I was like, me and the 10 people I know who are watching Andor are obsessed with this and can't believe this is happening. And then there's all these people who are like, I know I'm going to love it. I just don't have time right now. You know what I mean?

It's too much because there's too much stuff and it's too much of a commitment to go into any of these shows. That was one of the things that kept me from The Pit for a while. I was like, I don't know. I'm busy watching important stuff like terrible NBA games.

Yeah. Showing up on time for the piss.

Yeah. But it is a commitment. And I found the same thing. It would be a funny Letterboxd of like, did I quit this TV show? Yeah. Where it's like, I lasted an episode and a half with that new show on HBO that I just kind of started watching.

But I also feel like I hear from you more often than not, it was horrible. I watched all of it. Yes. When it comes to TV. Yeah.

But usually that means I had it on as I was doing other stuff. Beef is a good example. So when I saw every episode of Beef, but if you quizzed me on it, I'd probably miss like half of the second season.

My nanny stole my dog and turned it into a fighting pit bull. Like when you're watching that on Netflix, like, yeah, well, and that's another thing that's winning right now.

It's certainly winning for Netflix is these hour and a half true crime documentaries. The Crash has been, I think, number one on Netflix for like 2 weeks. And I feel like everybody saw it at some point, had an opinion on it. There were other documentaries about it. And from a watercooler standpoint, it feels like true crime documentaries are hitting as hard as any TV show. It's really a strange time.

Can we talk about our pals at HBO who, like, you know, HBO, FX, and Apple are the ones who are, like, holding it down on the week-to-week releases despite the bear. And Hulu is doing the— they'll release 2, and then you have to— Right, the mini— the half-binge sort of thing. HBO this year had Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which was great, but that's like their IP. Um, Euphoria is their IP to a certain degree, right? Um, DTF, which you, you liked.

I liked, but that was like, my dad would not have made it 10 minutes on that show. Like that, that show had a distinct audience and I'm not sure middle America. Um, interesting one, ironically, because it was set in middle America, right?

House of the Dragon, Lanterns. So, and then Harry Potter at the end of the year, you know, off the back of them doing like Welcome to Derry and Dune. So them investing in these like IP shows. Yeah.

It seems like they're kind of going a little bit more either big blockbuster stuff or, um, getting into the Pittification of other genres.

And I'm in, I'm here for the Pittification of other genres, but like, and the Pitt obviously, but like. I'm, I'm curious, like, where's this year's Task? Or where's, you know, where's like—

to me, it's just like, as long as those guys still make Industry or something like it, as long as like there's a show that comes out of nowhere and just kind of like feels like lightning in a bottle and it feels different.

Industry was great. Industry was great.

Industry was fantastic. And that's the kind of thing that you really, really need to keep TV feel alive.

What's the show you're looking forward to the most?

House of the Dragon, because I get to cover it with Chris. Actually, the real answer is The Vampire Lestat on AMC. That's just my own personal— that's where I don't know.

I think Lanterns. I'm really excited to see Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre in a show together. I'm a big Kelly MacDonald fan. She's in it.

Excited about that. If you knew a super talented 25-year-old who made shit. Would you tell them to go into TV or movies?

It depends on what kind of shit they want to make. You know, if they're, if they're little Vince Gilligan, then I would say try to, try to pitch.

What would you want them to make?

Uh, again, it depends on the person. Yeah, it depends on the person in the story. We love TV and movies, so like, you know, I, I wouldn't trade a well-made movie for a shitty season of television. I wouldn't trade a well-made season of television.

The one thing I have learned is that over the 15 years is like, this will go in some cycle that's way faster than, than we understand. And whether or not, like, the kind of TV that we're watching in 3 or 4 years feels way more like the kind of TV we were watching in the early 2000s. I think that's possible. I think people could start being like, there were certain things that people expected. There's a reason why these kids are watching 300 episodes of Gilmore Girls and not this other show that kind of feels like Gilmore Girls, but isn't as well made. Right. Like, how do we go back to that? But The economics have to work.

That did happen, by the way. Yeah. Grey's Anatomy and Gilmore Girls, for whatever reason.

Friends, The Office, you know.

I think the '90s stuff is starting to die according to my daughter.

Oh, well, because we're in the different nostalgia cycle.

It's too far now.

The nostalgia cycle is now the 2000s. It's now into the aughts, yeah.

What's really interesting is that Lost hasn't had its real moment again yet. And I keep waiting for it to happen.

It had a mini peak during the pandemic, I would say. But, um. I mean, because everyone was at home watching everything. But, um, but yeah, it's, it's not, it's not in that nostalgia cycle yet, you know, because in the '90s we were, we were usually 20 years is the nostalgia cycle. So which is right now, 2030. Like, I was talking to Yasi about '80s movie soundtracks. That's what she's going to be doing on Bandsplain. Yeah, we were talking about The Big Chill and we were talking another time.

I didn't get the call from Yasi and we were talking about— she won't take it in person.

We were talking about We were talking about Dirty Dancing and that like '50s nostalgia that infused the '80s, you know, and how like all we listened to in my house was '50s music in the '80s. Yeah.

The '90s, it was the '70s. Yeah.

You know, like, well, the '70s was amazing because like Happy Days, people going backwards. Yeah. Yeah. Basically pre-Vietnam War.

What did we just talk about that with? What movie was it?

We talked about it with, uh, yeah, we brought it up with something. Animal House. Right. Yeah. Oh, because Animal House was set in 1962. Yeah. But it's so weird that that never really happened for the '90s.

I don't know. Oh, it did. I mean, I feel like the '90s nostalgia has been a real—

like, I was not— not like we never had our Happy Days set in Seattle in 1992.

I mean, everything from the love story show to the way that, like, jean cuts came back the way, like, the '90s— is the closest that we had. Also, there's like, I can name 100 bands that sound basically like, yeah, obscure bands from the '90s but are now like much bigger.

It's, it's crazy. I was in, I was in New York a couple years ago and a friend of mine said, she's like, oh, '90s fashion is back. I was like, yeah, kind of. And then 4 girls walked past us, like teenage girls dressed exactly like they walked out of My So-Called Life. Like exactly, just like the flannels and the Docs. And it was just like all there. And I was like, never mind.

Yeah, my daughter's big on this. Yeah, she thought Love Story just fucking nailed it. She's like, all this stuff you could wear now. She was all excited about it. Love Story is a good success story. True. I wonder if we're gonna get more of those too, like the real life stuff with the twist. We watched— when my daughter was home, we watched the entire OJ show that they did 10 years ago.

That OJ show is fantastic. Ryan Murphy OJ show.

Oh yeah, it was great. I forgot how awesome the actors were and like the same people on Love Story. Paulson's like out of control. Courtney Vance is out of control. Like, there's like Sterling K. Brown, Sterling Brown, um, Travolta's— Travolta-ing. Travolta's— Travolta. Cuba Gooding is really good. Yeah, I emailed Rob Mills, swimmer. I, I texted Rob Mills at Hulu and I was like, you guys, you know, we're, we're— it's almost OJ time, it's June 12th. You guys should put this on them on the main page because my daughter didn't know anything.

Can they put it on the Page with— it's almost OJ time. It's OJ time.

It's OJ season. No, but my daughter didn't know anything, and she, like, couldn't believe it. She didn't know the car chase happened. Yeah. And she's like—

I remember that happening when it came out and we were covering it, and I was just like, you had to write explainer posts. This is like what happened with The Crown, where it's just sort of like the Diana season of The Crown. Yeah. Don't spoil The Crown. And don't spoil The Crown. Don't spoil the OJ show. Don't spoil what whether the plane crashes in love story.

That's another thing that's going on now is we have so much good content from the last 25 years that you can just repurpose the content, pretend it's new, and somebody like my daughter would have no idea.

What's the true crime story that you would want to tell in a love story? That story happened. Yeah.

You know what, the Kunanan doc was pretty good. Was too long, or the show was too long. That was the Versace one I thought was good. It was just like too many episodes. That's— I don't know, man. I thought the further we get away from that Thrones, Breaking Bad, um, what else was in that? Mad Men. Mad Men. Yeah. What was— there was a fourth one. Sopranos. Sopranos was over in '06. No, that was 2000s. We had that run with the bit when we were at Grantland where we just had all those shows at the same time.

You could go down the list. Americans. Yeah. Uh, Justified. Like, yeah, I mean, there was tons and tons stuff.

Hope it comes back. Join Robinson, thanks. Chris Ryan, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, man.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Doc Rivers. Thanks to Chris Ryan and Jordan Robinson. Thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Jack Wilson and everybody on the Spotify and Ringer side. Uh, I'm not sure if I'm going to be back on this feed this week, but you know what, where I'm going to be, we have a Rewatchables mailbag that's coming, uh, on Thursday. So stay tuned for that. It is in the bag. That is coming. And then our next Um, 3 movies because we are doing From Hell Month, and the first one's going to be on Monday. Hand that, uh, no, Single White Female on Monday, then Hand That Rocks the Cradle the next week, and then The Good Son. All those movies are on Netflix if you want to watch those. So I will see you again on this feed, um, maybe, maybe Sunday night, maybe earlier. I don't know, but I'll see you soon. 21+ in President Select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. First online real money wager only, minimum $5 wager required for 7 consecutive days. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bet should expire 7 days after receipt.

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