Transcript of Tiger’s Crisis, an NBA Mini-Mailbag, the Confusing Knicks, 'Survivor 50,' and the Yucky Red Sox | With Joe House, Jason Concepcion, and Bill’s Dad New

The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up new rewatchables on Monday. It was the last episode of CR Month. We did LA Confidential. Next week's gonna be Eddie and the Cruisers. The definition of a one for us, but it's an awesome movie. Please go find it if you haven't seen it. If you like really good movies with a music theme, uh, I would highly recommend it. We have an action-packed podcast coming up momentarily. We're gonna talk to Joe House, uh, about Tiger Woods. We're gonna talk about a bunch of NBA stuff, and I'm gonna do— I had a lot of great mailbag questions, so I need somebody to bounce them off. So House and I cover a lot of stuff there. Old friend Jason Concepcion came on to talk about, uh, the New York Knicks. What are, what are we seeing with this team heading toward the playoffs? Why is everybody so lukewarm? What's going on here? And then we talked about Survivor 50 for a while, which I wasn't totally expecting, but I had a great time doing it. You can listen to his podcast.

It's called Wait a Second. We launched it, I think, 8, 9 weeks ago, and it's really, really good. And then last but not least, my dad. The Red Sox are 1-5. The Celtics, Tatum's back. Patriots have a draft coming. He just wanted to come on. So what am I going to do? I had to have him on. He was making me feel guilty, but I still really want to talk to him about the Celtics. So that's what we got. I'm taking a risk by finishing this podcast on a Thursday afternoon. There's an OKC-Lakers game tonight, and I'm really hoping that, uh, like, Luka doesn't score like 75 points against Oklahoma City or something. I'm gonna be really mad if I didn't wait until after this game if it turns out to be great. We'll find out. Maybe it won't be great. Maybe OKC would just kill the Lakers. Uh, I hope that's what happens, actually. Anyway, that's all coming up next. We're gonna take a break. Pearl Jam, and then, uh, Joe Hefz. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA postseason is here, and FanDuel knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team win is winning along with them.

FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, and plays during their playoff run. Build the same-game parlay or try live betting and jump in after tip-off. Don't forget, with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app now and play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right, Joe House is here. You can hear him on Fairway Rollin' and the Ringer Gambling Show. He was coming on my podcast all the time during football season as we struggled through our picks. I'm already— talk about nobody believes in us, talk about chip on my shoulder. I am so ready for this next football season. I'm gonna be possessed this summer. I can't wait. Uh, you talked about Tiger on your podcast. We never talked about it here, and it seems like now he's just gone. Like, he's out of the Ryder Cup. He's going to be working on, uh, all his stuff. This is such a sad story. How surprised were you on a scale of 1 to 10 that this even happened?

Surprised, I would say a solid 8, because there hadn't been news reports about questions raised. He was carrying an extremely large load in terms of participation in the redirection of the tour. He's been a crucial element of and a person in Rollap's ear for how the tour might refashion itself. He has been a super active participant in the TGL, and the viability of that property really depends on him. And he, as he was getting physically stronger, was making overtures towards participating on the Champions Tour. And then it was revealed that he was training with an eye towards participating in the Senior US Open. So that's a large load of stuff on his plate. And there weren't news stories saying, You know, all of this is going on, but we see Tiger and he's, you know, he's in public appearances looking less than lucid or in public appearances looking like he might be out of it. And there had been in the past some of those observations made, but this was a full workload, full plate staring us in the face. And so the idea of him, it also is not like public information whether or not he's driving his own car.

Um, it would have been my serious hope that he, um, was mostly not driving his own car after the accident, um, in California. Um, so I, I was surprised.

I was surprised too, but I think the guy, I think his body is just so broken. I was trying to think of it from his perspective because you always think like, why would somebody jeopardize You know, if it's an addiction, that's, that's its own set of things. But, um, all the stuff that's just happened to his body ever since, like, his legs broke down in the 2000s, right? He's playing the, playing the US Open with a shattered knee, basically. Um, then he has the back starts going on him 'cause he put on too much weight. Then on top of it, you know, he has the car accident. He basically has like a bionic tibia. You know, I think his knees are shot. I think his back's fucked up and he has a fucked up leg. And we noticed it when we would go to the Masters and we would watch him walk around. You could tell when somebody's like not 100% just day to day, just standing. He just seemed like he was really uncomfortable. And that, so I can't say I was that surprised, but I was surprised by the timing because it was like we were even talking, is he going to be at the Masters?

Is he just going to just going to show up out of nowhere?

Because, well, no, not out of nowhere. He himself was permitting that question. The question was being posed to him. You know, it was asked at Riviera at the tournament that he's the host of. How does it look? How are you forecasting this? And he was— he said on television to Jim Nantz, if I can go, I'm going to go. I'm trying. I'm trying to get my body ready. And the question I have, and I asked this, you know, Nathan and I discussed this on the Fairway Rollin' podcast. Did the, the, the drug use, did the opioids, was there an elevated— was that all part and parcel of him trying to get himself ready where he previously up to this point where, you know, he was physically unable to contemplate trying to do anything competitive golf-wise? Now that he's in ramp-up mode, does that mean the pain meds need to be elevated? And did that just sort of change the overall risk paradigm Oh, I'm going to practice. That means I have to take the pain meds. And whatever that cocktail is, it does have this narcotic kind of effect. And that narcotic effect is the thing that lets him go practice.

But he shouldn't be driving a car. But he was driving a car. And that's what happened. I wondered if maybe the opioids haven't been part of the picture up until this point.

Or he was pushing his body to come back, and his body wasn't handling it correctly, so he starts upping the stuff. Who knows what happened?

Right?

It's, it's crazy though. And it just, it was making me think like Kanye's playing in LA this weekend, right? And he's playing on Friday. He's a guy for completely different reasons went sideways, but was also a little like Tiger and a little like some of these other people we have that fly pretty close to the sun that have true greatness. And it got like the Michael Jackson movie came out this week. That's another one you could We could argue about different reasons for that one too. But the point is, he was the single most famous person of our childhood. He was our version of Elvis, and he went completely sideways over the next 10, 12 years. And sometimes I wonder about, you know, that level of fame and greatness. It seems like it's really hard for a lot of people to handle the sustainability of it, like what it feels like to be that dominant, beloved, you know, I don't think we think about that piece of it enough.

That's the unique element of, of golf. I mean, you're, you just mentioned two entertainers and entertainers can have careers into their early seventies, mid-seventies, up to 80. How old is Mick Jagger now?

You know, 85.

Yeah. And there's still whatever tours they're doing. Golfer can, can compete. I mean, Tiger won in 2019, won the Masters in, in, in 2019.

Yeah.

You know, Jack won a Masters when he was 46. Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship over the age of 50. Tiger just turned 50. So if you're— if you have the physical wherewithal, then you can do it. And there is the incentive to try and keep it going. And nobody's more incentivized than Tiger. He is, you know, the entire sport, modern golf, you know, owes everything to Tiger, the arrival of Tiger in 1997.

And and it, and it's golf and you, there's kind of no ceiling on golf. With athletes, with professional team athletes, there's always a ceiling. Even for LeBron, he probably sees the ceiling coming at some point. It, it makes me appreciate LeBron even more, like the career he's had and how little went wrong. And the stuff we nitpicked on, on is all like stupid shit, right? But for the most part, like he really handled his business. When you think like just being like a child prodigy basically all the way through, it's about as good as it's gonna go.

I don't know if Anyone's doing better than that in terms of him physically, or do you mean in terms of him as a potential role model?

I'm saying everything.

He really never got sideways in terms of life, right? Never, never really.

Off the court, on the court, he, he somehow stayed healthy the entire time. He never really unraveled in any way other than the decision, which we, which made us all mad. But really, like, he switched teams, whatever, in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah. Biggest misstep.

This is something Eddie Johnson, who, you know, our friend who, who hosts that Eddie and Termini show, he's always said like, we're never gonna see this part again. Like somebody handle their business this well, just from start to finish, just be an adult and a role model. And you know, he does a million things that drive us crazy, but they're all like meaningless stupid things.

It is a good parallel though, because he did change the industry. I mean, he single-handedly ushered in the shorter contract, you know, the player empowerment era that, that we, we quibble with and we complain about. But LeBron was the driving force behind all of that, the leverage, recognizing the leverage that the players have, and he uniquely— and Tiger also kind of occupies that same space. One of the roles that Tiger was playing in trying to, you know, provide direction to the PGA Tour and Brian Roloff was really the voice of the players. Yeah, he was, you know, there's no union, they're not organized, but I really was sort of likening him to the head of the players union, if one existed because he's the most respected voice in the room on behalf of the players. It's just an absolute ton of responsibility, and he clearly couldn't do all the things that he was trying to do, and this is the price.

I wonder who's that now? Rory?

Well, Rory doesn't carry the same sway as Tiger in the room, but somebody's going to fill the vacuum.

Maybe nobody does. Maybe it's some—

there are guys. So Rory was somewhat marginalized.

Mark Hubbard?

I nominate— I nominate homeless hubs. Adam Scott has been— he might be the— he's 45 years old. He's still playing outstanding golf. We're going to talk about him in the context of some Mastercard as this gets going next week. Very excited for that. But he might be the eminence in the room in Tiger's absence.

Yeah, we got Masters. Holy shit, we're not going this year.

I mean, what do you think I'm doing here? I know we, we got it. We'll do our best.

So Fairway Rollin', you're gonna have all your picks?

Oh yeah, Sunday night with Justin Ray. That'll be up overnight for an early preview. Tuesday, Nate and I will get on and kind of finalize the card based on what we're hearing on the grounds and some additional information, what we see.

Who's playing the best right now? Like, what, what golf are saying?

Amazing question. Amazing question. The answer is kind of nobody. That's, that's what makes this so fascinating. Rory's got a back problem and it hurt him in his performance at the Players Championship. Collin Morikawa had been playing awesome. He also has a back problem. He just withdrew from the San Antonio golf tournament where they're playing this week, and he may not play in the Masters. Scotty Scheffler. I don't— I haven't checked the news today. He's, he's due to have his second child any minute now. And again, I keep making this joke, can somebody give that man a calendar? Like, you know when the Masters is, count 9 backwards, count backwards. It's okay to have a kid in March, that would be fine. Um, Scheffler, um, won early in the season and then had some top 5s, but you know, not up to his own standard. And so I'm going down a little. Bryson DeChambeau is coming in having won 2 consecutive events on the LIV Tour.

Beefy Bryson back.

Beefy Bryson, yeah.

Wow.

He's got something going on. He was crying at his, the press conference immediately after the second tournament that he won and referenced a personal issue that he's dealing with.

Oh no.

Jon Rahm has won on LIV also this year, calendar 2026. So, feels really wide open. That's the thing that makes this Masters really compelling.

Well, the NBA also feels really wide open. We're gonna do some mailbag questions. I have you on as, uh, I like to do the mailbags but have a live body. I haven't sent you any of these.

I'm so happy. This is my favorite thing.

So I've gotten a bunch of SGA questions and relatively timely because the MVP, the odds have dropped. We've talked about it a bunch on our threads and stuff, but, um, I, I picked two that kind of captured the spirit of the kind of questions I'm getting. One is from Casey from Long Island. I don't understand your insistence on associating SGA with the all-time great guards this early in his prime. Multiple times you compared to what he's doing to Jordan and Kobe. He's been an elite player for 4 seasons. It seems like you're prioritizing his peak rather than the sustained excellence of the all-time greats. If he's still doing this in the 2031-32 season, then we could start discussing it. Until then, as my favorite podcaster would say, let's drink some settle-down juice. That's one. And then the other one's from Matt in New Zealand. This is the other variation of this. In your heart of hearts, do you genuinely like watching SGA play basketball? Whenever I hear sports media people talk about it and they say he's so skilled, what he's doing is so unprecedented. Even though his game is kind of built on not even really playing the game properly, because he plays a certain kind of foul-baiting, almost anti-basketball, which we hated when Harden did in Houston.

I believe Adam Silver and the players are, like Shaq, are to blame for the league encouraging this stuff. They should be held accountable if anything can change. I don't agree with that second email, but just, just both of those, I do feel like a lot of people feel this way. So what's your take?

I think the first email has some, some good points in it.

I agree with you. It actually made me think like, yeah, maybe I should not, maybe not a 20-ounce glass to settle down juice, but maybe like an 8-ounce glass. Let's let them win back-to-back titles before we bring MJ and Kobe and Jerry West into this.

And yet, you know, what were the conversations? I, we should go back and see if we can tap into it. You probably wrote some columns when Steve Nash won back-to-back MVPs. How are we talking about Steve Nash and what his career trajectory might look like? He didn't even win the chip, you know?

But we were upset that he won the first two MVPs. I actually thought he should have gotten the third one. But, um, yeah, because I think the thing to me with SGA is this is now a presidential turn that he's done this. This is 4 years of excellence. Like, my dad's coming on later, and he said SGA was the best player he saw this year. He's been going to all the Celtics games. So that matters. But I guess the thing that I said when I was talking to Zach about it is this is 4 first teams in a row. This is 31-plus a game for 4 years in a row. This could be back-to-back MVPs, back-to-back titles. This 4-year run matches any other guard, anything really anyone's done except for maybe MJ because he got the 3 titles. And I think that's valid to say that the, the, so yeah, okay. If he did, he needs maybe 2, 3 more years to really move in there.

Yeah, they, they don't, folks don't want us to be invoking the all-time greats yet, but he's certainly on a path where if he continues at this level, it is sustained excellence. That's a great observation. That's what we're looking for out of him. But another MVP, a back-to-back MVP, plus we're, we anticipate them to have the best odds. They have the best odds, right? We're anticipating them at least getting to the Western Conference Finals and then we'll see what happens from there.

There's some stuff where people, because the stats are all inflated, like, right, this is, we're in the steroids era for basketball, like what, what in baseball, not people doing steroids, but just the numbers are outta whack compared to what we've had in the past. So a guard averaging 31 a game this season is the equivalent of probably 27, 28 a game in the '90s. And I, I see that point. Shea is averaging, first of all, 32 a game, but 31.5, whatever. But he's shooting 55%.

Yeah.

And if you're gonna like disparage some, and I haven't even decided who I'm voting for yet, but you know, he has the best crunch time stats across the board. He's scored the most points, he's taken the most shots, he has the most free throw attempts, and he's shooting like 52% at the end of these games. And eye test-wise, he's unstoppable. And to me, that matters more than any part of the case. He's on the best team and he's the best guy at the end of these games.

So, and, and incredible, especially over the last, what is it, 10, 12 games, some just outrageous fourth quarter numbers, right?

Well, so that leads to, I want to go back to Shea, but that leads to an email from Trevor V. You're in this email. You and House both hammered the under on the Lakers win total. They already crushed it. They're the 3 seed in the West. Luka is averaging an absurd 34, 8, and 8. And has the team that you and Joe House, the preeminent NBA experts on the planet, pegged as an easy under. It's like kind of a nice compliment.

Well, for you, that, that's obviously disparaging towards me.

Trevor wants to know, why is Luka not the MVP? I'm getting this a lot from Laker fans lately. You obviously felt he had a terrible team around him as you took the under on the Lakers, which by the way, it was like 48. Shea is the MVP for having the defending champs, which you took the over on exactly where you thought they'd be. Kraka, please. That's how he ended it.

Kraka, please. I like it.

The Luka case. Luka has been the most valuable player in the league, or co-MVP with Wemby for the last, really since the All-Star break, I would say.

That's, it's great.

They've been the best two guys.

Unfortunately, it's a measuring stick.

It's an 82-game season, unfortunately.

That's right. Yes. And honestly, yeah, go ahead.

Well, it's just, he was Player of the Month in January, but somewhere near the end of January and around that 3-week stretch was pretty iffy for him and the Lakers just from the eye test. And there was some November, December stuff. There was one another stretch in there. I don't know. SGA has just been so consistent the whole time. I think that has to matter when you talk about the award.

The MVP of the Lakers is JJ Redick. JJ deserves this credit. Is it that hot? I mean, the thing that we were waiting for with Luka was for the flip to switch, for him to be committed to playing defense. And the, and what you hear—

switch to flip or the flip to switch?

What I said it, however I said it. The flip to switch.

Are we that old?

He was going to flip the switch. We needed him to flip the switch.

This is your and my area now. I'm the one who's supposed to speak to this stuff. This is the problem.

I mean, that's right. You and I talk about this all the time. Yeah, you got it. But I— he's motivated to play defense now. And, uh, on top of that, there has been a liberating effect. We should, you know, re-examine, remember where we were early chemistry-wise between him and Reeves. And then Reeves was hurt for a big stretch of time, and the team wasn't as good defensively without Reeves, and it wasn't as good offensively without Reeves. Now look at their net offensive and defensive ratings over since the All-Star break. They are like 4th in the NBA, uh, on offense, and they're inside the top 10 on defense. They're still in the 17 to 20 range rating-wise on defense, but this, this measuring period, they are inside the top 10 on defense. And what, what do you attribute that to? Well, everybody that I listen to, all the smart people, people that you talk to, Luka is trying to play some defense now. He is an important part of their defensive improvement. And sure, you can say LeBron, you know, found his role. This is a role that makes the most sense for him.

He's also somewhat alive.

We have 40 dunks from LeBron and, right, and Aiton. I mean, when we were sitting and trying to forecast how this Lakers season might go, it felt like even money that it was going to be a catastrophe, a disaster, because they had gotten run the F off the basketball court in the playoffs. And what they did in terms of personnel additions coming into this season didn't look seismic to me.

I'll go further. I don't think they expected this in the beginning of February, because if they did, they would have done more trades.

Great point.

They didn't do anything.

They did nothing.

They didn't— they kept all their picks, and it was clearly a transition year for them, and they had felt like they kind of punted on it. And the only move they really made was Gabe Vincent for Luke Kinnard. And yeah, who's a better fit for this team and is kind of perfect in some ways. But for the most part, you know, they, they weren't even really kicking the tires and talking about different guys because I don't think they thought they had it this year. Now you watch them. I mean, people are smiling during games and people are happy. And Jackson Hayes is laughing together. The whole team, people are talking to Aiton on the bench. Um, I said this before, I'll say it again, that the trade deadline passing was the best thing that happened to this team because you got to give credit to JJ. But, but I mean, all the passive-aggressive stuff, all the who might be here, who deserves to be here, what's gonna happen with LeBron, is LeBron gonna be happy, like all that stuff just goes away the moment everyone's stuck with the team. And the moment they were stuck with the team and then LeBron missed a couple games and came back, and then all of a sudden Now everyone's happy.

Luka does look in better shape though. I will say that.

I agree.

He just looks better and he looks happier.

Should we do the conspiracy theory about a motivated man? You know, whatever's going on in his personal life.

Pouring it into the work?

Pouring it into the work. There you go. Because there's, he might be, you know, if he's a free agent. If he's a single, if he's a, as a very prominent person in the LA community and a relationship-free agent and he's out there, you know, wrecking homes figuratively, maybe he's found somebody new on the basketball court. Maybe he has, maybe he's looking, but he's certainly motivated.

He has an awesome case and there's probably years where he would've won. I mean, he's averaging 34, 8, and 8 and the team's gonna be a 3 seed. Wemby has been the most dominant player in the league for 2 months now. Jokic is going to average a triple-double for the year and is going to finish 4th in the MVP, which is nuts. He's having the best statistical year of his career, I think. It's, we've had this before, like '87 was like this. Bird won 3 straight and in '87 finished 3rd in the voting and had his best year. He had a better year than all 3 of his MVP years and finished 3rd because This is how it goes down. We'll see what happens. All right, next one. This is from Tom in Adelaide, South Australia. Adelaide?

Adelaide. I think that's right.

I love the Australians. The Australians love the pod. We love them too. I'm in Australia. My most hated non-game feature of the NBA League Pass, the horrible in-stadium MCs during timeouts. They yell, make some noise, and I can't hear you. Constant yelling. It's so fucking annoying. I'm watching Spurs versus Warriors right now, wanting to stab my ears with needles as two morons yell, 'Who wants a t-shirt? Make some noise!' Maybe I'm old. I think that's a great email. I completely agree with it. Good.

Everything. What? No notes.

Why did they just punt on the timeouts? They just show the Jumbotron footage and, and you just watch all the same idiots trying to dance and get on the jumbotron that you see if you're at the game. Why do I need to see that?

There's some— there's got to be some lane for some kind of entertainment for those of us who consume these games by League Pass. Give us something special because we're not there in that stupid stadium getting engaged, right?

This is why I'm here. I have an idea.

Let's go, let's go.

I feel like this is a real chance to teach NBA fans about the sport during these timeouts. If we're not gonna run commercials, if we're just punting on this. So I think there's like 12 commercial breaks during the game.

Hmm.

They could make 200 2-minute videos about the history of the NBA, and it's like, we're going to a timeout. Here's 2 minutes on Paul Westphal. He made 4 straight All-NBA teams, first team All-NBAs in the late '70s. And was a white guy who could dunk on dudes, and he made the 1976 Finals, and he was fucking awesome. Here are some highlights, and here's 3 talking heads talking about him. Now back to the game. Because our biggest frustration is all these people under 30, like, they, you know, they try to wade into the historical stuff and they have no context on anybody. Well, let's do it. Great games, regular season games, players, teams. Do like little 83 Sixers thing. Oh, we're going to commercial. Here's Mariah Elliott's kiss of death shot against Phoenix. Here's 2 minutes on how that happened. Like, fucking teach us stuff instead of like, hey, I want a t-shirt.

Well, think about the incredible, incredible archives that the league possesses. There's years of stuff of like mind-blowing, and we're not even— I mean, we've been privileged enough.

Yeah.

To be able to, uh, have— we have an interest in old NBA fights and we've, we've— well, some of them on YouTube.

I just sent you Kermit Washington punching John Shoemate.

Now we're not suggesting that the league would run during the league pass the fights, but what the point I'm making is that there is history to be shared here and people should see, um, what Hersey Hawkins looked like. People should see, like, you know, What? How Alvin Robertson played. Like, just crazy old names. Yes, exactly.

Hey, you know who's awesome? Sidney Moncrief. Here's some highlights. Hey, I mean, the '83 Bucks almost— it was their best chance to make the Finals, and then they ran into the Faux Faux Faux Sixers, and here's, here's how that series went. Like, I, I don't know what we're doing. Uh, all right, we're gonna take a break and then I have more mailbag stuff for you. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. This MLB season, FanDuel giving you a chance to call your shot with Daily Dingers. Make a free pick on who's hitting a home run, and if you're right, you'll get a profit boost to use on your next bet. It's just another reason why FanDuel is the home of home runs. I've watched every Red Sox game, and I think the Red Sox are due for some power as they head into this home weekend series against San Diego. Specifically Roman Anthony, who homered in a pinch-hit appearance in the last Houston game. Him and Contreras would be the two I would think about. And then you never know about Rafaela, but any of those. Head to fanduel.com/bs to opt in and make your Daily Dingers pick.

Play ball and swing for the fences on FanDuel, an official partner of the MLB. 21+ select states or 18+ D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888- day at 789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What makes basketball so exciting? All the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. The craziest thing, I, I mean, Wemby stuff he's doing every game. There's 2, 3 Wemby moments a game. You're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that. The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll, he's going to the basket, somebody throws him an alley-oop and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley-oop, but it's not an oop. It's just kind of an alley. And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100% never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA though. Try Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA and a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman.

He just told me that. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win courtside seats, custom merch, and more. Michelob Ultra. Superior is worth playing for. Enter now at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 25-26. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2025. Ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside. For free entry, entry deadlines, and prizes and details. All right, one more Luka question from the mailbag. This is good for us. It's a history one. It's from John. With Wemby's ascendance, if Luka doesn't lead the Lakers to a miracle title this year, there's a good chance he will never hold the best player in the league championship belt. I know you love lists, so I'm curious who you think were the best 5 to 10 players ever who were never at any point of their career considered to be the best player in the league. So I went through the pyramid. First 9 guys, don't worry about them. 10th guy on my pyramid list, Steph Curry. Was there ever a point in Steph Curry's career where everybody agreed he was the best player in the league?

The 2015 NBA—

LeBron's there though. Nobody think— nobody thought he was 'Cause it was so early. He was the MVP, but nobody thought LeBron was better than Steph Curry. Wow. That's amazing. So you could say 2022, when he single-handedly basically brings Golden State to the title, I think he gets it for that year. I think we left '22 and we're like, that's the best player in the league.

Okay.

Maybe? That was the first one I had doubts on.

I don't have doubts, but your observation around, you know, how does he jump over LeBron? And then 22, how's he jump over Jokic?

He might, he maybe doesn't. So that's the first one. So I'd have him, Jerry West, who was incredible, who I still have in my top 12, but Russell was there and then immediately replaced by Wilt and then Russell again, then Kareem. He was never, he was the best non-center, but he was never the best player.

Never had the belt.

Oscar Robertson. Kevin Durant, even in 2014 when KD won the MVP, I still felt like we thought LeBron was the best player in the league.

Sure, sure. 2014, absolutely.

John Havlicek. Okay. Did we ever think Giannis was the best player in the league even though he won MVPs? Oh, maybe after he won the '21 Finals.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. So he did cross him off.

I think Giannis.

Dirk Nowitzki in 2011 when he ran through everybody and won the title.

I don't know.

I'm still not sure. I thought he was the best player in the league.

Yeah.

So he's on there. Elgin Baylor's on there 'cause he went against Russell. So there, I just gave you 7 guys. Curry, West, Robertson, Durant, Havlicek, Dirk, Elgin Baylor.

It's just sad that we couldn't even include Charles Barkley, but he, well, can he really?

I had Julius Erving. It was a yes when he was in the ABA, so he doesn't count. Garnett, Malone, and Barkley, all 3 of those are in. So if you're rounding out to 10.

Okay.

Brian from Portland, Oregon wants to know, have you seen the ads for this TBS show Foul Play with Anthony Davis? It's been running during March Madness.

I have, I have seen them.

Would you ever have thought—

It's got my attention.

Would you ever have thought Anthony Davis would get his own TV show? How many other NBA players would you have guessed as the host for this before you landed on Anthony Davis? And I think for me, the number is somewhere between 45 and 50.

Maybe there's something that we're missing. Like Anthony Davis hasn't had a chance to cook. Is that, is that possible?

Is that what we think?

Behind the scenes, maybe he's been doing it for, for all this time.

Really?

And, and it's finally being shared with us. It's finally being revealed. Let, let, let AD cook.

Is it?

We've been, we've been hyper-focused on can he play consecutive games? Every other Davis, will he play?

See, you know, maybe, well, he has the most time to host it. I would want Anthony Edwards to host that show. Yeah, I think that feels like a good Anthony Edwards. He's actually funny. Anthony Edwards makes me laugh. Blake Griffin would have been another one I would have thought would have been good for a show like that.

Yes.

Anthony Davis.

No.

Um, Sonny wants to know, Zach mentioned that Donovan Klingen looks like Gunther the wrestler, becoming the first person in mainstream media to make that point. Shouldn't we start calling Klingen the Rim General because Gunther is the Ring General? Doesn't this instantly become a top 5 nickname in the NBA? The Rim General.

A+.

A+.

Give that email or an email.

Rim General.

It's a tremendous name. It works in Portland especially.

Winston writes in, I got, by the way, please stop sending me tanking emails again. I can't. Chuck and I talked about it on Tuesday and it's just, it's like the gates open. Winston did have a good point though. Tanking is like pornography. You know it when you see it. Instead of making more rules the teams will inevitably get around, empower the commissioner to hammer teams that everyone knows are tanking. There's a good of the game clause at the moment. It's not specific enough. The commissioner needs to start hammering people to show he's serious. I've heard variations of this, including a competition-type committee that's a tanking committee where they would watch the Wizards give up 83 to Bam Adebayo and just be like, we're taking 10 ping pong balls away. You're gonna have 10 less in the lottery after that. You don't think that works?

No, the problem is you have to rewrite the incentive structure. You can't have a connection between performance on the floor and the number 1 overall pick. If there's a connection between game outcomes and, and getting the number 1 overall pick, you're fucked. There's no getting over it. You can imagine 10 million iterations. But as long as that link exists, if I'm incented to do poorly, to have a chance at that pick, then every rational actor will do poorly. The only way to change that is to randomize who gets the number one pick. If you want teams to compete, then you have to incent them to compete. I've seen, I saw a nice thing, a guy in the Washington Post, a law professor said for the first two-thirds of the season, It's fine. You establish a kind of position, but then you can improve that position if you win over the last third of the season. You— the incentive is to win when, you know, this, this moment occurs for us every year from the trade deadline to the end of the season, and wins can improve your, your position. So then you get competitive games because you're trying to win at the end.

You, you'll have a certain sort of place because you've demonstrated over the first two-thirds of the season that you suck. But then if you really try, even though you suck, to go win games, you can improve that sucky position. And that's desirable. But I mean, as long as, you know, bad team gets number 1 pick, then the incentive is for the number 1 for it to be bad.

A couple different people had variations of this idea, but I think I tweaked it into an idea that I kind of liked. And it's, I thought of it from when the NFL, when they tell people I'm now going to attempt an onside kick. And you tell the other team, oh, you're onside kicking, okay, we'll get our guys out. But you have to announce it ahead of time. What would happen if teams just basically announced we're tanking and you could decide at any point of the season they put out a basically like best odds for the number one pick, this tanking group. But you have to tell us that you're tanking and you're throwing away, and then everybody who has tickets for your games, now it's 50% off. But basically, if they announce it, and either you announce it or you don't, once— if you don't announce it and then you try to tank, you don't get to be in that group. This is your one chance. Stop. So in November, it'd be like 6 teams have announced they're already tanking, and they're just in that group. And then they could try— you could play guys, you could try to beat teams, and it wouldn't matter because you win— like, you're in that thing anyway.

You don't like it?

Uh, I mean, it— there's an integrity to the games element to it. You announce— so what's the deal?

You're saying you would announce that you are tanking, but you know, in November that Washington doesn't care, right? We knew— you knew that in October that Washington didn't care.

No, they were rationally motivated.

All right, we have these spots for the tanking lottery. Do you want to be in there or not? Do you want to throw away— you're not allowed to make the playoffs. Your tickets are going to be 50% off for the entire year, but you can reserve your spot in the tanking lottery right now. So Washington, Utah, like, that sounds great. We're in. Awesome.

How's that any different from, from where they are now, which is the inability to put more than 8,000 people in the stadium on a Tuesday against, you know, Portland?

I don't know.

50% off tickets, you know, that's not really much of a disincentive.

Adam Silver, grow some fucking chest hair and figure this out, please. Clancy writes in, would you trade Paolo for a top 3 pick in the 2026 draft?

Who are the top 3? I guess it doesn't matter.

Let's say it's Peterson, DiBansa, and Cam Boozer in some order. I would not. Combo of how expensive Paolo is. Not 100% positive he's a winning 4 playoff rounds player yet from a defensive standpoint. That defensive mistake he made, did you see that 3 he gave up when they lost? And he just got lost. He just got lost on the biggest play of the game. I don't 100% trust him as a 2-way guy.

I think it's impossible to have a fair view, a fair assessment of Paolo based on the context in which he's entered the league and competed.

Okay, that's not the question. You could trade him and have one of these guys on a rookie contract. I personally would trade him for any of the top 4.

Well, the rookie contract element of it changes the equation, right? Because—

Does this feel like something Sacramento would do?

Well, let's think about it.

Sacramento gets the second pick and they're like, we can't have the second pick again. Last time we had the second pick, we took Marvin Bagley over Luka Dončić. We have to trade this thing. So we'll, we'll get rid of Zach Levine's last year of his contract and the second pick and we'll get Paolo and we'll have an established super bar and we're gonna be lighting the fucking beam next year.

I, I think that, I mean, Sacramento's a bad example because Doug Christie's the coach, but I think Paolo—

well, they would hire an actual NBA coach. Okay.

If they do that, if they do that, like, that's, that's a goddamn good trade. I don't think that's a, I don't think that's a bad trade at all. I think there's a version of Paolo that we haven't seen yet. And I know, I understand all the criticism, uh, and you know, when, when we're having to question effort and when he and the coach are doing the, the press dueling press conferences about who's to blame. For the, for the fate of the team. That's all bad stuff. But I, I mean, he's really talented.

I would trade him for Dubanza in 5 seconds. You would take the other, the other 3, I would have to really study the tape and feel good about it. But Dubanza, because like, I just think Dubanza is gonna be a monster.

You know that, that he is a, a, uh, 20-plus point scorer, a 10-plus rebounder.

Yeah.

Um, We're talking about Paolo. Is Cam Boozer that?

He's an interesting one. I don't know. I don't really know.

Top 3. If he's in the top 3, that's an interesting—

But the question is, could Boozer give you everything Paolo's giving you with higher IQ, both end stuff, and he's making 1/5 the money?

The 1/5 the money is the thing that tilts me.

Because they have some big tax stuff coming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel wants to know, you said you would not trade the top 5 picks in the upcoming 2026 draft for Wemby. I said that on a mailbag. Do you agree with that?

I thought you considered it. I thought when you got the 5, you were like, no, because—

but I still wouldn't. Did you see Wemby last night?

No chance.

Wemby hit my FanDuel bet last night. I was so excited.

Amazing.

I mean, he was 35 and 14. He crushed it.

Crushed it. Flew by it.

Daniel wants to know, is Wemby at age 22 number 1 overall on the all-time trade value list? And who are some of the other all-timers? I feel like I've answered this before, but we'll do it again. '87 MJ, I think, is one.

Great.

I think he was like 1st or 2nd team All-NBA his 3rd year as a guard and was just— he was probably single-handedly worth more money than any other guy in the league. And this was a league that had Bird and Magic and Barkley and all these dudes. He was a one-man billion-dollar franchise, basically, for sure, even though they weren't worth that much left. 1999, Tim Duncan coming off the title. Okay, knowing I have him for 8 years and I'm just gonna compete.

Incredible.

I mean, Kareem doesn't count. I, I just did guys that we've seen, like post-merger guys, because Kareem would be number 1 on this.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, 1986, Hakeem, 2 years in. Going toe-to-toe, beating, like demolishing the Lakers, taking the Celtics to 6 in the finals.

This is, that's a good one.

Wemby. I didn't, by the way, I'm not ranking these. I'm just giving you guys. No, these are probably 2005 LeBron, I would say, because he was only 20 at that point and was already in the playoffs. And you knew like the next at least 15 years were ahead of him and were going to be spectacular. 1994 Shaq, second year Shaq, which I think he was 29 and 10 first team. Magic and Bird, their first rookie years. 2009 or '10 Durant, somewhere in there. And then Moses when he went to Houston, when Buffalo traded him and all of a sudden Moses was putting up like 20 and 15 every night. We're like, what's, what's going on here? And he was like 20. That was—

You need to watch him during a League Pass commercial. These people need to see that.

Yeah, that could be a League Pass commercial. All right, so I just gave you 10 guys. Who's number 1 out of all those guys I listed for you?

MJ, '87. It's not even close.

That's what I had too. Yeah.

It's not even close.

Another loss for LeBron.

It's not a loss for LeBron.

So now we turn this into another MJ-LeBron thing.

Well, yeah. Only you did.

Well, I—

MJ changed the direction. Daniel, he did. It was his fault.

The direction of the industry.

'Cause '80—

he dragged basketball into the modern—

yeah, 'cause '86 he has the 63-point game against the Celtics. '87 he averages, I think, 37 a game or whatever, and he's first team All-NBA. You're taking him first. Where is Wemby? I mean, there's the injury potential with him is the only thing that scares me.

With good reason.

But I think he's in the area of MJ, LeBron, young LeBron, young Duncan, young Hakeem. He's in—

I have no problem including him in this conversation.

Okay.

I have no issue with it whatsoever.

Ethan Jensen has a Wemby question. My dream for the NBA is to turn Wemby into a villain. I think he's the perfect future villain. He's cocky, empowered, and French. I'd like to start sooner than later. I'm a Jazz fan, but would love to have everyone start hating Wemby, and then we need Anthony Edwards to defeat him. It's the most fun outcome for NBA fandom next 10 years. Villain Wemby.

You know who agrees with this?

Who?

Jacoby. Jacoby's been, he's been trying to see it.

I know. Maybe he wrote that under an assumed name. I was thinking the WWE, this happened in the mid-'90s when they were trying to make Bret Hart a good guy for a while. And the fans weren't really responding. And then they leaned into like, all right, we'll make him and the Hart Foundation villains. But Bret Hart wasn't really a villain. So like, what could be his hook? And it's basically like, I'm from Canada. We do it better than you do it. You Americans have gotten lazy. We're a better country. Nobody believed it. And they're like waving the flag and like, we're—

nobody believed it.

Maybe that's— but maybe he has to do Hart Foundation. When, when they— there, I'm from a country that's figured out political leadership better than you guys. He's waving the French flag.

So there's gonna be natural enemies of the Spurs that will treat Wemby as a villain. Oklahoma City is there already.

Oh yeah.

Maybe, I don't know.

You know what? No, you know what's going to start it? If they play the Lakers in round 2.

I mean, knock on wood, let's get that. Well, so how is Wemby a villain in that series?

Because he's going against the Lakers. That's the most popular franchise we have. He's going against all the LeBron fans. All the Luka fans, the city of Dallas, all the Laker fans, the city of Dallas. Yeah, everybody in Dallas is jumping in. Dallas is rooting for Luka to win the title just so they can get mad.

Dallas might already hate Wemby. I wonder, let's ask Dallas how they feel about that.

They definitely hate Wemby.

They hate, yeah. But I, the reaction of Golden State, like I think by and large as Wemby goes around and plays in these stadiums at the level that he's playing at, there is a significant concentration of people that are making noises every time he does any one of the incredible things that he does. Like you, it was loud.

You saw him, right?

Golden State. I didn't see him.

You haven't seen him in person?

When they came to Washington, he was out. He was out when he came, when they came to Washington.

We're going to have to go see a playoff game. You have to see this.

Let's do it.

Done.

There's nothing like this when you're in this situation.

Say less.

Say less. I'll fly anywhere.

So Nick from Victoria, BC. Um, some good destinations in this mailbag. I did that whole thing with Zach about whether this was the weirdest NBA season of all time.

Oh, I enjoyed it.

He said, one thing you forgot, we were introduced to Albanian Bruce, Black Tony, and the Blazers wondering, where's my coach? I laid out this is the weirdest season ever and forgot that the Blazers coach coached one game and then got arrested. In a gambling scandal because of Black Tony and Albanian Bruce. And Albanian Bruce totally forgot that.

And then, uh, the Asian woman had an incredible name as well. I'm gonna look her name up.

David H chimed in on that. Other things we forgot about, um, like Cade Cunningham being an MVP candidate, blah blah blah. But he's like, forgot about weird— forgot about Billups and Rozier. Yeah, you forgot about all the expansion insanity that's come out of nowhere. You forgot players actually tried in the All-Star Game. That's a good one. You forgot Philly got to duck the tax from Paul George, but did it by trading a guy all the Philly fans loved and enraged them. You forgot about the prediction market discourse and Giannis somehow owning a piece of Kawhi. You didn't mention the Pacers going from Game 7 of the Finals to potentially having the worst team. You didn't mention the 65-game rule, the Pistons-Hornets brawl, and Westbrook versus the media, which has been one of the weirdest things. And then he closes by saying, I now want to see the Simmons Carpool become an annual event with your favorite underappreciated draft rookie. So maybe I get in the car with Acuff next year. He comes to do a pod. I just drive him back to his hotel. It could be— could we get this sponsored?

Let's get a camera in there. I mean, it's not— you're not ripping off Carpool Karaoke because this is an entirely different animal.

You know, when Jacoby and I, when we were first year at Grantland and we pitched them this whole idea for— I've talked about this before— podcasting cars. And we were talking like some SUV and doing the whole thing, and it was like too complicated. And then like, I don't know, a year or two later, the Corden did that carpool karaoke thing, and we were like, fuck, like we had the idea. I was just going to be driving around in an SUV doing podcasts.

How many episodes are there of Seinfeld driving around? Doing, you know?

Yeah, he did that too. We had it. ESPN screwed it up like they screwed up everything when we were at Grand Info. Da Bob in New York, he said, if there is expansion and they have to move a team to the Eastern Conference, could they open up a bidding war between the Timberwolves, Pelicans, and Grizzlies to move to the East Coast? Would any of them actually trade draft capital or players to want to go from west to east? Would you sacrifice a first-round pick or pay $100 or sacrifice $100 million you're getting from the expansion thing to have just a better chance? I don't think so, but I like the idea. I like the concept. Or maybe you give up Zion in the expansion draft, he mentioned.

Um, which is further east, isn't Memphis or New Orleans?

If you look at the map, it's really stupid. Like Memphis should probably be in the east, but Memphis is also really close to a couple Western. Uh-huh. We just— the map is too tilted toward the Eastern teams. New Orleans is another one. Like, it's unclear why New Orleans or Memphis is in the West. All right, you'll like this one, House. Connor from Oregon. As a lifelong Blazers fan, I don't think they're getting enough attention as a Yannis destination. Not only do they own the Bucks' future picks, But they just handed control of the team to Tom Dundon. We just watched Matt Ishbia completely gut a fun finals contender for Kevin Durant. And he's basically worried that this new owner is going to get new owner syndrome right away, trade all their assets for Giannis to go with Jrue Holiday, Dame, Giannis, Deni Avdija, and whatever else. So they have, they can swap picks with Milwaukee in '28. They have their '29 pick and they can swap again with them in 2030. I do feel like this is the stealth Giannis destination now.

Fascinating test of your market theory. You know, you advanced this in the last 10 days or so around what is the market for Giannis? What will market, what will Giannis fetch in return? Because of the diminishing asset, you know, the, the history of a player that— a person that plays the manner in which he plays, um, having sustained health. That team you just said, that's a pretty good team. I'd be interested. That's an interesting team.

What if you traded the rim general Donovan Clingan? Yeah, I just used that. So rim general's in there.

It's too bad.

And basically Milwaukee gets all their picks back and more Portland picks. And here's Scoot Henderson. You can have him too and figure him out for a year.

What about the defensive specialist, Kamara?

I'm keeping him if I'm trying to win a title.

All right.

Man, as I said when I talked about this with Goldsberry, it's going to come down to a desperate team or a team that really is excited to make a move. New owner in Portland. Got my eye on it.

There are odds anywhere where we can pick the next destination. They'll come up in the summer.

You're the odd site. This is the email. This is really the reason why you're on. Last year you were on and we decided Dallas was going to win the NBA lottery.

Goddamn it.

And then I didn't stick to it.

You said it.

You said it. I said it. I laid out the case. We laughed. We were like, holy shit, that's going to happen. And then when it actually got to the week of the lottery, we forgot to bet it. We're not forgetting this time. This is from Mike Smeltz. Hey, Conspiracy Bill. Gotta love when it starts that way.

I might know Mike Smeltz. Keep going.

It's obvious the Warriors are winning the lottery. All the factors line up. Adam Silver wants to punish the tanking teams. Well, the Warriors aren't a tanking team. The league doesn't want to waste Steph's last few years. They want to keep the Warriors a marquee franchise. Gifting the Warriors the top pick lets the team either add Peterson or Dubanza to juice the Warriors core, or they trade it like the Cavs did for Giannis, or LeBron signs there. Steph, Giannis, LeBron, Draymond, and Bronny as a starting five, he suggested. I, I love this. So Golden State, if they lose the first playing game, they would have a 2% chance for number 1. They would have a 9.4% chance for Top 4. Your thoughts?

I mean, first of all, I'm almost positive it's the Smeltz that I know. Just, just for the record, America, I had nothing to do with, with fat fingering this email. I had no idea it was coming into you. Um, it's amazing. It's amazing.

It's the best one.

A top 4 pick for sure. Um, because then you— it throws the scent off.

Then that top 4 pick is 1-in-11 odds, basically.

They can't win number 1 because number 1 would really—

Dallas, they did it last year with Dallas.

That was That was the worst thing. I'll never forgive the league for that. I'll never forgive it.

Well, I was thinking funniest, funniest rigged lottery outcomes where we'd be like, oh my God, I can't believe they did that. That was so blatant. Gold State's one. Indiana winning even though they have like 50-50 odds to get it, but to bone over the Clippers from getting a pick between 5 and 9, that would be pretty funny.

That one, that's, that's, we're gambling on that.

Dallas getting it again.

I know.

God, as another apology for Nico. What if they just won back to back?

Would they do that? And they forced— because, because Cuban's trying to buy the team again. He wants to buy it back.

Honestly, Cuban needs to stop doing interviews. Why'd you sell the team in the first place? Why'd you sell it to those guys? And you hired Nico Harrison. Stop talking.

Minus, minus, minus, minus, minus.

Your blood, the blood is all over you. Stop talking.

Michael Finley had nothing to do with that trade.

Oh my God.

Just want to get that out there. Okay.

The other team that would be funny from a rigged standpoint, Portland, 1.5% chance for number 1, 7.1% chance for top 4. Just because somebody bought the team and they're trying to get a Seattle expansion team going and that guy would be one of the 8 votes of like, I'm not fucking voting for that. Seattle's 2 and a half hours from me.

It's my backyard.

It's like, well, can we offer you little AJ Dabansa?

There is a— if only there wasn't history, a demonstrated track record of the league doing this multiple times.

Funnily, it hasn't happened 12 times.

Exactly.

Do you know somebody told me Utah has never moved up in the lottery? Like in the history of the franchise? Yeah.

Wow.

That doesn't seem possible.

Alec Joyner wants to know, could an all-Jalen team win the 2026 title? That would be starting 5: Jalen Brunson, Jalen Williams, Jalen Brown, Jalen Johnson, and Jalen Duren. It's pretty good. Bench: Jalen Suggs, Jalen Green, Jalen Smith, Jalen Williams, Jalen Wilson, Jalen Wells. So Jalen Brunson, Jalen Williams, Jalen Brown, Jalen Johnson, Jalen Duren. That's a pretty good team. I don't know if they win the title, but I think that's like a conference finals team.

How do they rebound? That's the only thing I'm having a hard time with.

Well, Johnson averages 10 a game.

Yes, I know, I was going to say it, but, uh, the only problem is with Jalen Brunson brings Rick Brunson, I think, hypothetically.

So I think that fucks the team up.

He's not a Jalen. Rick is not a Jalen.

No, but Jalen's gonna be on the team, so then Rick Brunson has to be—

No, I understand, but no, he— we need Jalen assistant coaches.

He also suggested the coach would be the one and only Jalen Rose, which I fully support.

Great.

We saw his work in the 2014 Celebrity Game. Uh, two more. Tim writes, it's 2035, you move back to Boston because crunch cross-country flights are suddenly a whole thing on the body. I don't even know what that means. House is nearby recovering from his second major heart attack.

That's not nice.

I, I'm just reading the email. Sports podcasts are mostly robot clones trained on your voice. You're getting old, but you have slightly enough fastball left to revise the final edition of the Book of Basketball. Meanwhile, the Spurs have stacked 2 more titles in the 2020s, another 2 in the first half of the 2030s. Can they get to 6 titles? Blah, blah, blah. San Antonio will have won at least 1 title in 5 straight decades. Would that make the Spurs the best franchise ever, or are Celtic fans still grading on a curve from the Eisenhower administration? I'm gonna— this is from Tim. I'm pouring Tim some settle down juice. San Antonio hasn't even made the finals yet. We're giving them 6 more titles. Let's settle down.

Great.

And, and how dare you say House is gonna have 2 heart attacks?

My second heart attack.

Come on.

I'm not gonna have—

House's first heart attack will kill him.

I'm not gonna have any heart attacks. How about that? I'm, I'm on cardio fitness right now.

Sure.

Blood pressure. Yeah. 114 over 77 last night.

Yeah.

You're walking.

Fuck on that, Tim.

I did send you a picture of the Wendy's chicken Parmesan sandwich from 1989.

Let's go.

Which led to a whole text conversation about, that's another, like, what are we doing? Why isn't this available? All of us. Why don't we have chicken Parmesan fast food sandwiches anymore?

And it put us right, we immediately could launch into all the throwback food items. From, from bygone eras. But the chicken parm, how hard is that?

You just have— you make, you make the tomato sauce, you melt the cheese on the chicken, and you just pour the tomato sauce on it.

Because they already have— everybody's got a chicken offering right now, like, pretty solid chicken offering.

I would honestly—

much like Popeyes on this.

Well, much like— this is, uh, a great time for an MVP thing, like, just great MVP candidates. We have just so many great chicken sandwiches right now.

It's a, it is a great moment.

If we really, Chick-fil-A really pushed everybody to another level. I think it was like Steph Curry's 3-point shooting taught big guys how to shoot, change the league, change the volume of threes you want. Like he's ground zero that I think.

Have you tried the Big Arch yet? The McDonald's, the big, the new big McDonald's big burger. Have you tried it?

I have.

Oh, okay. Did you do it for an ad read? Was it an ad read? Nobody.

My wife likes a cheeseburger from time to time.

Understandable.

Who doesn't?

No, I haven't tried it. I've really wanted to though.

You son of a bitch.

I wanted to get you excited that I've tried it. I want to though. It's a great idea.

I'm so jealous.

Big Arch just makes me hungry. Me too.

And I love they did the whole thing with the Bozo CEO eating it like in the company cafeteria or whatever and giving it the most flaccid, you know, enthusiasm.

I think it's a bit. See, I think that's what they had to have been a bit. The social media for it. Yeah, I think it works. They did a great job with it.

But I'm telling you, I need to eat this burger. I need to, I haven't had it yet. And I have a whole concept for burgers that I'm going to share with you offline. Like I have some burger concepts in mind.

What do you mean? What burger concepts?

I just have a couple ideas. Like sliders?

Like sliders?

No, there's a whole thing out there.

You want to create a ringer burger?

I'm going to try some burgers. I want to eat some burgers. I want to see, you know, put some cities up against each other.

Kansas is actually pretty good. Okay, Archburger.

Oh, okay. It looks like a giant meal. What's Cahal say about— is it, is it too much food?

Well, you know, on Survivor last night— Survivor's been really good. They had 2-hour episode and somebody won a reward and they won, uh, Applebee's. And Jeff Probst went through the whole Applebee's. He's like, you could have a bacon cheeseburger. Just like close-ups of the food in HD. It fucking made me— and My wife and I went out to dinner last night. I wasn't even hungry. I was hungry by the time they did it. Like, those are the— and then I was thinking, like, how much shitting do they do after when they haven't had normal food for 2 weeks?

Yeah.

And then they have, like, a bacon cheeseburger and a milkshake.

High sodium, high saturated fat, you know, high sugar.

That just goes right through them, right?

I don't know. It might— it certainly isn't good. The outcome is not good.

Yeah, there's no good outcome from, I'm going to have my first food in 12 days and it's a bacon cheeseburger. Yeah.

All right.

Last question from Sean Moynihan. He loves Half Baked Ideas with Kevin Wildes.

Who doesn't? Come on.

My half-baked idea is anesthesia bars. You go in and they put you under for how many hours you ask. You wake up and go about your day. Now the kicker here is we're getting real licensed anesthesiologists, so it's completely safe. It's an above-board operation. Think about it. You're at the mall with your better half. Okay, honey, I'm going to the anesthesia bar. I'll see you in 2. I hope you find everything you want at the store. Or say you're anxious about catching a flight. You show up 5 hours early. Oh, you get put under for 3 hours and 30 minutes till you need to get to your gate. The only thing that could go wrong is your heart stops or whatever else kills people while they're under. But how much worse— but how much worse is that than being bored? I think there's something here. I mean, granted, I can't think of a better person to ask than Joe House for this question.

Well, I don't want to put you on blast, so I'm not going to pose the question to you, but I'll just tell you from my own personal experience that the drugs that they administer when you go in for a colonoscopy are the single best experience that I've had under any anesthesia, any illicit drug, licit drug, The nap that you take when you are in there, that particular cocktail they administer so they can do that very vital check of your intestinal fortitude, it is so goddamn good. When I woke up, I said, "Oh, don't wake me up. I don't want to be awake.

Put me back.

Put me back to that." It was really a glorious state. So much so that I asked if I could come back in 6 months. They said, no, we're going to wait. 3 years is fine. That's good. But if you can deliver that to me, especially the airport concept is especially like, let me be in that frame of mind. Now you're a little groggy. So maybe you don't want to go do anything like get on a plane, but.

What if they did it on the plane? What if that was part of what happened on the plane? Like you're flying to—

International travel.

You're flying to France or somewhere and you just get knocked out by an anesthesia. Anesthesiologist.

There's a 10-hour flight from, from Washington, DC to Honolulu, and you're telling me that, that 4 hours of that flight I can, you know, have that beautiful— it's, it's the—

it's—

you feel so well rested, you're ready to go conquer the world.

I knew you would love this and you would have great thoughts whenever it wears off. So Masters, all the prep, all the preview stuff is going to be on Fairway Rowan. No, I'll probably make you come back on next week to talk about golf.

I'm bringing Nathan with me. We're, we're already inviting ourselves. There's going to be, you know, Thursday round that we can talk about with you.

All right. Good to see you, House. Back in a second with, uh, Jace Concepcion. Sometimes the greatest financial victories aren't the huge flashy contracts, but the mid-level moves that maximize your cap space. Just like TaxAct helps you get a great return by finding every deduction, even the small ones, to maximize your refund. In Great Returns presented by TaxAct, we look back at the best decisions GMs, have made to land an inexpensive player who paid huge dividends down the stretch, and owners that have seen their team valuation skyrocket. Look at the Celtics. They had a huge luxury tax bill last summer. They had to figure out how to shed some contracts. They were able to turn Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday into basically 4 months of Anfernee Simons, and then, uh, like an $8 million version of the Porzingis contract, and they gave away a couple second-round picks. All of a sudden they're under luxury tax, and the guys who are playing for those guys were doing just as well. Shireman, Keita, uh, Hugo Gonzalez. Like, they just figured out how to patch it together because they were shrewd about it. That's the Celtics. Great Returns was presented by TaxAct.

This tax season, simplify your moves. Maximize your refund. Visit TaxAct.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See TaxAct.com for details. All right. Our friend Jason Concepcion is here. You can hear him hosting a fairly new ringer podcast called Wait a Second, which has already gone in a whole bunch of— I didn't listen to the one this week yet. We did the Havana Syndrome this week.

Havana Syndrome.

Wow.

Do you believe— is it fake or real from your perspective, Bill?

I don't— I'm not versed on this one as well. I got a deep— I'm going to listen to your pod and do some deep diving and then—

Okay.

I feel like every, like, 15 episodes I should just come on with all of my scattered thoughts on the previous 14.

We're holding Zodiac. Oh, for you.

Oh, oh yeah. Oh, I'm ready to roll.

I got a lot of thoughts about Zodiac for a long time. Like, I feel like there's layers.

I do feel like our text thread just for this podcast With a few others could almost be like its own Substack, us mailing weird Daily Mail things that somebody found.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yo, what's up with this?

Yeah, the bullet doesn't match in this. Did you see this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, all right. Couple things to hit. I wanna talk about the podcast at the end, but we gotta talk Knicks first. 'Cause we just talked basketball at the house. Um, and I was, my dad's coming up after you who I already recorded with and I was saying how the Knicks are the, one team I don't want the Celtics to play in the playoffs because I feel like the—

interesting—

I feel like the Celtics are the one team the Knicks probably feel like we can beat those guys. And I'm not sure there are other teams in that list.

I, well, I think that our first round matchup, I feel like, is a team that I feel good about.

Which one? Who's the first sort of matchup going to be?

I feel, I feel if it's Philly, I feel pretty good. Now let me knock on wood and not like start any kind of— but That's a team where I feel like I have a reasonable amount of confidence.

Yeah.

Everybody else, I feel very— I feel increasingly nervous about, including the Celtics, who, listen, if you had talked to me in the middle of the season last year before the playoffs, I'd say, you know, no way we touch the Celtics. It's a— they wipe us off the court. And the Knicks dug down and they found something. Is that team still in existence? I don't know. I don't know if we're still that team.

The weirdest thing about the Knicks, and a lot of people have made this point, I'm not inventing it, it's just that their 5 best guys do not play well together. And now we have lots of math that proves this. And so you fundamentally, it's like when these 5 guys play together, it's not that good and they fall behind and then bench guys come in and then they rally back. Not a great recipe.

Starting lineup has been a problem for 2 years. It's a problem last year. It continues to be a problem. Net rating tells you that you're leaking water with the starting lineup, but— and the fact that they are unable to kind of change it lets you know that there's something— it is kind of the crux of the issue with the team. There's some sort of deep-seated personality friction that means you can't change the starting lineup of the team. And, you know, I don't know if that's KAT and Mike Brown. I don't know if that's Bridges and KAT or the rest of the team and somebody else. I don't know what it is, but it's clearly something, and it bubbles up every few games to bedevil the team.

Yeah, I guess my biggest question And I talked about this the other day, how basketball's such a naked sport. We always overrate what we see on a TV and whether guys are getting along like they should and whether they're happy. But I think if you go through, other than Jalen Brunson, if you just go Nick by Nick and you were able to put 4 drinks in them and after 3 hours you were like, hey, I gotta ask you, are you happy? How many of them would say yes? I think Alvarado would say he's happy.

I think Alvarado's loving life.

But how many of them would be like, no, no, I love my role, I love the amount of shots I'm getting, uh, I really love playing for Mike Brown? How many people would actually say that if you drug them and asked them for an answer?

Well, I think we should, we should preface this by noting that there are a lot of guys on this team where no matter what team they've played for in the past, this still would have been an issue. You know, OG was not like loving his role as a Toronto Raptor early. Like, so, KAT, similarly, there were up and down things. So, there's gonna be some carryover in that regard. But I think you're right. I think the— I think there are, under the surface, divisions in the team. I don't know what they are, but you hear whispers about it all the time. And certainly, you know—

I have a couple ideas.

I have a couple ideas as well. But certainly, when you see them— You know, the game against Houston where it just felt like nobody wants to shoot and they're doing it in this kind of like petulant manner.

Yeah.

Tossing the ball around like, well, I was told I should, I have to share, so you shoot it. That kind of feeling, everybody kind of uninvolved.

Yeah.

And it's the kind of thing, like when they went 2-9 or whatever it was earlier in the season, that felt like every game. And it feels like that's never going away with this particular group. And I think, you know, part of it is just there's obviously you feel good about Jalen. Obviously Josh Hart and Jalen are like a solid two. And I think outside of that, there's probably different divisions wherever you look, depending on the circumstance and what's going on.

It's 'cause the, the glass half full that I've heard people point to, well, that there's one stretch where like, we have had the best defensive rating for the last 30 games. There's only 4 teams that are in the top 8 on both sides, offensive, defensive rating. So we, that's why you have to take us seriously. But then the flip side of that is, all right, if I'm using ratings and doing that thing, your starting 5 is the worst starting 5 by rating of, of all the teams that have a chance to win a title. So What do I do with that if you're telling me to also look at this? I think that's why it's been so confusing.

Yeah.

I don't know what to make of this team from one game to the next. Truly. Like, I, I don't— I am a supporter of the decision to—

To untibs? To consciously uncouple?

To consciously uncouple from Tibbs. I think it was the right move. I think we've seen enough of Tibbs, who is a wonderful coach and is the guy— if you're building a culture, get that guy. If you need to build a culture, if you need to build a personality of a team, go get him.

Yeah.

But I think we've seen enough to understand that there's a ceiling and that there's certain limitations to what he does. But he was able to get some kind of ferociousness out of this team despite the divisions that existed. And while I think Mike Brown is a nice guy, it's unclear that he is the guy. And this— that was the decision to fire Tibbs was always a two-part. For it to be successful, it would have to be a two-part plan. You'd have to, one, get rid of Tibbs, which then decided to do that, and then to hire the right guy. Is Mike Brown the right guy? I'm not— I'm not sure yet because I don't know what personality of— despite the fact that they are whatever, a top 5 offense and for a time were, you know, a top 5 defense. And I think they're middle of the league now. I don't know what the— other than Jalen Brunson late, I'm not sure what the personality of this team is. And under Tibbs, they, they had one, as imperfect as it was.

Yeah, that makes sense. I— well, you get to a playoff series and then, and you just want to be in a situation where Brunson's trading baskets with whoever the best guy on the other team is, right? That's when this team— we're within 4, and now we have our closer and we can actually crack down and get defense. But I think one of the problems for them is that the rest of the league is just better. You know, 2 years ago when they didn't have as much talent as they do this year, but 2 years ago the league wasn't as good. Now, now you're looking at even like in the first round you're playing, like let's say you play Toronto in the first round. Toronto's, Toronto's going to be almost a 50-win team. Atlanta has been, what, 20-2 in the last 22? These are teams that are playing well. This isn't like rollovers.

No, completely agree. At the same time, the team that I really don't want to play out there is Charlotte, just because that is— and I don't think there's anybody in the East— do you want to play Charlotte? Like, there's something about them where they don't know any better and they will just erupt from 3 and next thing you know, you, they will steal a game from you. And that's a team I don't wanna play because of the way they play as well.

I watched them pretty carefully, the, the 3 games that they lost at home.

Mm-hmm.

Or they won the first one, they lost the next 2. But it's interesting, the reason you don't wanna play them is also the reason you do wanna play them. Because that's right.

That's correct.

With 4 minutes left, all of a sudden it's like, all right, LaMelo, what do you got? And he's like, watch this, I'm gonna shoot a 38-footer, but then it'll go in. Like you just don't, like he's the complete wildcard for better and worse. And I, you know, Con's 20, like you saw some of these more, the Knicks will be able to, I think, wear down Con and Miller a little bit. Teams are already kind of using the Diabate thing against him. They're pulling him away from the basket. But the LaMelo thing's just a wildcard for both ways. Like I feel like he could shoot them out of a 20-point lead with 4 minutes left in the same way that he could bring them back. I don't know what to make of him.

I mean, neither. And the other thing that makes it difficult with the Knicks is obviously you have the Jalen piece, which you can count on, but their other kind of edge is Mitchell Robinson. And you just don't know how many minutes he's going to give you, when he can play.

But in the playoffs, you don't have the back-to-backs, so you know you're going to actually get him right.

And when he's right, he's a guy that you can, you can kind of plant your flag on. But then you have all the issues of fit with KAT, and now what happens there? I mean, really, the KAT piece is the one, because everything could be— it's like we're trying to reverse engineer a way that this team could work if it would, if it— and all you need to do is just like, hey, can KAT just like get with the program, right? On a night-to-night basis, right? His defensively has been improved. That's great. But like, Can the shot also be there? Can the rotations also be there? Can the screen setting also be there? Can the not just weird temper tantrums not be there? Can all these things be there on a consistent night-to-night basis? And you just wonder. It's hard to know. He's a mercurial guy, and this has always been a thing for— that's another thing that's— this is not— didn't start now, right?

The crazy fouls. So yeah, I'm sure you're on a slew of Knicks text threads.

Yes. Yes.

Who is the most polarizing player on the text threads? Is it, is it KAT?

It's KAT and Bridges.

All right. So what, what are, what are the Bridges complaints?

The Bridges complaints is, though, let me preface this by saying we need to forget about the draft picks.

Right. Sometimes it happened.

It happened. It's water under the bridge. It happened. It's gone. It's done. That said, like, you know, in private spaces with your Knicks fan friends, you're going to talk about the draft picks, you're going to talk about it, and you're going to be like, you know, where was he when he disappeared for this period of time? I think he's been consistent for the team, but consistent at a level that was not kind of the level that I think you were expecting initially going in. So he's a divisive guy.

Yeah. 'Cause you do that trade assuming it basically guarantees that you're going to be in at least one finals. You're giving up all those assets. You, you're trying to lock down something.

Right. And by the way, like, I still think the logic behind all of these moves is pretty sound. You can't hit every bet. You're not going to win every single bet. I think these were calculated moves. It's an open question about whether they will pay off and to what level. But I think the underlying logic still makes sense. We were going to face Boston a million times in the playoffs. And so you want these two rugged wing defenders to try and slow them down somehow, Brown and Tatum. And that makes sense on paper. It just hasn't, despite the fact that we did beat the Celtics last year and that was one of the greatest moments of my life. You know, we'll see what happens this year. The Celtics look very, very scary, you know, and Tatum is like, has like Wolverine mutant healing factor. I don't know how this happened. Like is starting to look like that guy again.

Yeah.

And they just look Unbelievable. So we'll see what happens.

All right, so it sounds like you're more glass half empty than glass half full.

No, I'm— let me be clear. I have made peace with whatever will happen.

Okay.

There's going to be— Mike Brown is going to be held to a standard that honestly, I get it. Like, if they don't make at least the conference finals and do well there, you have to get past round 2.

You have to, right?

They have to. They can lose in the conference finals, but it can't be like 5 games. They have to do well. And he's going to be held to that standard. And if they don't, then it's not a success. And I think that's slightly unfair to him, but that's life. And I've made my peace with that.

Can I tell you the dumbest thing they did? Not just trying to get the 4 seed.

Sure.

Like, go backwards, honestly. Well, I'd much rather be in the 4 seed and play Detroit, a team that you know you can beat, and just have the 4-5 matchup and then rest all these dudes, come up. Because honestly, I think this is what Cleveland's doing. I don't trust what Cleveland's doing at all right now. I think they're delighted to be the 4 seed. I, I thought that Lakers game was really weird by them. I, I didn't really understand it. And I know Luka's playing great, but I just think That's a game, like, if you're trying to win the title, you're like, we have our guys, let's fucking go.

Yeah.

Let's lay the smackdown. This team's a contender. We're in LA. And they'd like, they were out of that game from the get-go. It was weird. I don't think they care.

I, I, I agree with you. I'll say this for why I don't think the, if the Knicks were a team like the grit and grind Grizzlies in the middle of the run, right? Where they know who they are.

Right.

Or if they were, you know, the mid-period Spurs, right? And they, they rock solid. They know who they are.

You go on cruise control for 2 weeks.

Cruise control. Coach has been there for a million years. Your veteran guys are pillars of the team. I think you can do that. I think with a team that is still dealing with the changes that happened from, you know, the previous 2 seasons and that has made a drastic, like a, a significant coaching change and has had the owner go on radio and say, like, we have the group to win the Finals. I— there's a lot of reasons why I don't think you could do it. I think you'd need to be a more established in the postseason club for that to work.

I think that's fair. Well, can we talk about the most positive element of this next season? I think the incredible, incredible performance by Celebrities Every Game. I think it's the most star-packed group they've had night to night. And you have real regulars now. You have people that were going when the team was fucking terrible that are just minted. No one's going to be loyal to those people for life. Matthew Modine, wherever you want to sit, just tell us. Yes. Zaslav. You have like the random Larry David will come back. But just in general, like, they've— I think it's better than what the Lakers have going right now, to be honest.

I think you're right. And some of them, you know, Modine is— I mean, Modine is an OG at this point. There was the, uh, you know, the Knicks did a 50 Greatest Moments at MSG documentary that aired on the MSG Network that is narrated by Matthew Modine. This is from— it must be 12, 15 years ago. So like, he's been around. Imperioli is always there. Kargatay is always there, right? And lately you've had like Ed Sheeran, Aaron Judge is there all the time. Stiller is there like bidding for like Hoffman. Cooper Hoffman. Uh, Chalamet is— well, maybe our next Spike Lee.

Well, oh yeah, and, and Spike Lee. But do you— what happened? Do you get Chalamet for the playoffs, or does he kind of— is he going hiding after the Oscars? I feel like he's got to lay low for a while here.

No, I think after a disappointment like the Oscars, where I think you can argue maybe narrative had something to do with the showing, I think you recharge your batteries. I think you go to where you're comfortable and where people love you and where you're part of the atmosphere. And I think you go back to MSG in that atmosphere and you just recharge. Like, those shots of Timmy— that's Timmy at his most charming and his most seemingly authentic. Like, it's clear that he loves the Knicks and has for a long time. I think you go. I think you absolutely go.

So, this is basically Dirk Diggler going back to Jack Horner's house at the end of Boogie Nights.

That's exactly right.

Jack!

You know, go back to where it started.

Jack! She goes to James Stoller. Jim, will you help me? Can I sit courtside again, please?

Come inside, it's okay.

Come on, I have, I have a game, game 5 tickets for you. Yeah.

Hey, you want to sit next to Zaslo and yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, McEnroe, that's another one. I, I think the Knicks, I really think they're beating the Lakers pretty handily right now.

It's been, it's a good run.

I mean, Lakers were never able to recover from Nicholson just getting really old. They never were able to audible. Denzel's not around enough. Leo's not reliable enough. They've just— true, they've never nailed it. And honestly, Nicholson's kid, I just don't think he can carry it. He does not have the lack of name recognition. It really hurts him.

Well, let's— let me just note that Flea is there every game. Yeah, Dianne Cannon is there every game.

That's the thing, you have like—

Will Ferrell is there a lot. Yeah, that's true.

Will Ferrell's a good one. Yeah, they're gonna have to—

there's still people to lean in.

All right, well, you sound semi-optimistic. Um, Survivor you've been watching. You didn't see last night's Survivor 50. Um, that's right, which I think has been the first Survivor series that really parallels what it's like to follow like basketball or professional team sports.

We had this—

what makes you say that?

Younger, younger people who are in their primes Older people trying to hang on, trying to— maybe they weren't what they were 20 years ago, but they have the expertise and the, and the know-how. And, um, all the same things about the show that drives me crazy, um, just blown up, personified. Like, they always get rid of whoever the best looking people are, gotta get rid of them. Whoever the most charismatic people are, let's get them out of here too. And we just end up with like the quietest, like most manipulative, calculating people. It's always how the show goes.

Well, do you watch Traitors this season?

Of course I did. Come on, who are you talking to?

I felt like Rob, I think he would be great on Survivor. Yeah, his ability— I mean, you put your finger on something. His ability to play into his looks in a way that makes you think that guy's great looking but he's dumb. Yeah, you know, he's not— there's nothing there. And just laying the cut quietly. Yeah, you know, being the hot dumb guy and then all of a sudden make moves. I think I understand that Jeff Probst feels a type of way about other reality shows, but I think that guy would be— I think he would be incredible. Like, he ran the table. It was, it was an unreal performance. Get that guy on whatever the next, uh, Survivor All-Star season is because I think it would be incredible.

And that show is so much harder to pull off than Survivor because they put you in these rooms and it's like you're eating with your other, with your other traitors, right? It's just the three of you. And then like Lisa Rinna comes in and she's like, hey, you guys. Never dawns on her that maybe they put the three people together that are the traitors. They— it's really like a dumb collection of people for the most part. This Survivor, one of the cool things about 50 was These people have, they played it, they've watched all the seasons. You have people on there that have studied every season and all the things they can remember, every mistake or thing any other opponent did. So it almost moves to this like higher level of chess. I've, I've really been into it.

I've been into it too. And, um, obviously don't tell me. Yeah, I'm not gonna tell you, but I gotta say against my better, against my original hesitance. I'm like gravitating to the Riz God. Something about his arrogance, the way he— man, he is a cocky dude, but in a great way. Yeah, he did a thing in the previous season where it seemed like he was going to use his, um, his, uh, immunity, hidden immunity idol, and he didn't do it in this— in a way that was like just let people know that he had read the game in a fantastic way. It reminds me of like Phil Ivey, like peak Phil Ivey at the poker table. Right. And it's been, it, it's been fun to watch him. I think a great example of a, of a person who maybe overplayed a little bit is the great Mike White.

Oh, let's talk about that.

So Mike White is famous.

Yeah.

He, yeah.

I think he felt like the fame factor and people's people's desire to have a cameo on season 5 of White Lotus and season 7 was going to carry him to the final foursome. And he clearly got played completely.

It worked for Angelina. Like, I think it worked a little bit, but it wasn't going to work twice. It wasn't going to work twice. Well, it's interesting because he— you know, it's fascinating how people get in their feelings. It's like you're manipulating people, but then when you get called out for manipulating, you're like, but you're manipulating. He tried to manipulate Christian, who in their, uh, season, uh, David versus Goliath, Christian had a kind of unshakable alliance with this, uh, other contestant named Gabby, who eventually betrayed him. And he, like, Mike tried to use that against him, which immediately made Christian think, Mike's trying to use this against me. I think he's too dangerous. I gotta get him out. Yeah, Christian's fascinating.

He's basically a sociopath. Like, he, he's looking at everything I don't know who's going to win, but he would be one of the ones I would pick because he's, he's playing the game the hardest, putting the most thought into it, but isn't obviously a threat. I don't— the thing I never understand with Survivor, I would just think the 4 kind of strongest, most athletic people should just be like, let's just fuck in the 4 of us. We'll figure it out when we get to 4. We'll just win every challenge. Let's look out for each other and that's it.

I think the problem with that particular— I, I also watch, uh, Australian Survivor, in which that is a more viable— that's a viable strategy in Australian Survivor. That is because it's a lot more physical than, than American Survivor.

But you don't think it can work in America?

I don't think it can work because it's been sniffed out as a strategy for years now.

People try to cut it out. Yeah, because you could see it in 50. They were just trying to get rid of the best challenge people right away.

That's exactly what I— you know, I kind of like that about American Survivor, is they're like, that person's too good.

Yeah, but here's what I don't like is Siri, who like, anytime they have like odd numbers, it's like Siri's gonna be sitting out this challenge. It's like, what the fuck is she there for? She said she— has anyone sat out more challenges than her? And somehow she'll make the final 3. It's like, come on.

Uh, I, I just simply cannot criticize a legend if they're letting her get that loophole. They, they You know, good for her. That said, politically, get her out.

She's the best strategist.

So you have to be careful with her because it's, it's the fact that people leave her around and then she forges all these relationships with people who genuinely like her.

Yeah.

And then when she starts trading information and being like, well, you know who said this and here's this, that's when she gets really dangerous late game. And you never know what would happen. I just think In, in American Survivor, if you are dominating physically, you've got a target on your back. They, they can't wait to get you out.

I love that you're banging out Australian Survivor and doing the compare and contrast.

Yeah.

That's really next level. I didn't, where do you even find Australian Survivor? Is it on, it's on like YouTube?

No, it's on, well, I have a, I have a VPN. I pay for a VPN.

You're amazing.

Only to watch Australian Survivor. It's literally the only thing I do with it. On the 10Play network. And let me tell you, wow, you get all the Australian commercials. Um, I've learned a ton about Australian culture through the lens of their commercials as I watch Australian Survivor on a week-to-week basis. Some of it is really great. And let me say this, there's a character named— he calls himself King George.

Yeah.

And when I tell you, when I tell you, Bill, his second appearance on the program, which I believe is All Stars, is the most incredible run of survivor politicking I've ever— He is not a physical character, and he was faced off against these beefy stud athletes who were thinking time and time again, "This is the type of person I stuff in a locker. No problem. We're getting this guy out." And because this guy George was like a— He's like a political consultant. He was able to, like, flip arguments in a way that I have never seen before, ever, and bring, like, these grown muscular people, like, to the brink of tears time and time again with just his words. It's an incredible experience. You got to see it if you can.

What would be your strategy if you were on Survivor? What would be your divide?

Divide and conquer. I'm going to go in, I'm going to talk to everyone, not about the game, or at least hopefully seemingly, just, you know, chat about your life and what's going on. Isn't it crazy that we're here? You know, just get little bits of information. I want to touch base with everyone so that I have some perspective about potential gameplay strategy, perspectives, the way people might hopefully go through the game. And then I will start when the time is right, just putting information out there, hopefully getting information back, information trading, you know, information trading. But the number one thing is you've just got to— you can't— you see it happen time and time again in Survivor. People get in a funk, they get, they get the numbers are against them, and they're sitting on the beach alone. You got to get out and you got to talk to people. You got to get out of your head and you just Gotta walk up to them and talk about whatever. The beach. Where are you going to the bathroom? Where's the best place to take a piss around here? Where do you think the idols are?

Like, whatever. What are you eating? You know, and just make some sort of connection that you can use. And if you don't do that, you're just not going to go anywhere.

Yeah, that's right. Or right near what I would be doing. I would be trying to just build relationships because I think those are— I think you actually build real friendships, it makes it harder for people to turn on you. But I also think you can't be sneaky and you can't lie. Like, if you're doing the thing where you're walking around like, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna go look for an idol, you don't want to tell anyone you're looking for an idol. And then somebody get, what were you doing out there? And it's like, oh, I had to go to the bathroom. And you just look like you, you were burying a body. Like, just be like, I was fucking looking for an idol. I know there's one out there. What, what else are we doing? There's no TV. I'm gonna— I walked around for 2 hours. I tried to find, see if there was an idol.

So that means you wouldn't do the thing like, like Jeff Kent or Cliff Robinson, may he rest in peace, or, or Scott Pollard, where you go in and you try to pretend that you're just some guy, like, oh, you know, I work in accounting. You wouldn't do that?

Oh, if it was actually like me trying to— being worried somebody would recognize me? Yes, I would. I would probably bring it up. I think it's weirder not to mention it if somebody's like, what do you do? And it's like, oh yeah, I'm in media doing, uh, you know, some audio stuff, right?

You'd have to change your voice, I think. I think, you know, like, if there's a way people are going to recognize you. Yeah, for sure.

I'd be like, hey guys, Survivor, love the program. No, I, I, I would be For— I just don't think you can be sneaky ever. The moment you're sneaky, people file it away and they don't trust you from that point on. So you just have to be transparent about it. I— the thing I'd be the most worried about is what t-shirt I was wearing. I would think about that all the time. It's like, if I got on a Survivor, for the next 2 months I'd be like, what am I gonna do? Is the Boston t-shirt too clichéd? Do a band? Do I do like a ringer t-shirt? Just own it. Wait, because like, when's the last time you—

oh yeah, go ahead.

Well, Christian has that one weird t-shirt he has that he wears every day, right? And it's just like a bad t-shirt. It's like, that was it? That was the best one? But I— they probably can't wear anything that's trademarked, right? You can't wear bands, maybe you can't wear a sports team.

Correct.

So I don't know, I would spend a lot of time thinking about shit like that.

As I understand it, they ask you to, you know, you bring your own clothes and then they go through what you brought and tell you what you can bring to wear during the game.

You probably want like a thicker t-shirt. I'd want shorts that were a little longer because you're sitting and you don't want like them to have to ever have to blurp over your crotch because one of your balls was hanging out or something. Don't want that. Um, but I would be terrible at Survivor because the contact lenses and allergies, I'd be a fucking mess.

Well, I think they give you— they would probably give you medication. They'd let take your Claritin. And, you know, like, people who wear glasses, like Genevieve this season and Christian, sometimes they have them, sometimes they don't. So it's clear that they let them have access to their lenses at times. So I think you'd be okay there. Mike, like, when's the last time you slept outside?

Oh, I would hate that. Oh my God. I never— even as a kid, I didn't like that. Yeah, that'd be tough. I, I would like, if I knew I was going on, I would definitely— you, you'd have to learn how to make fire. All the stuff that made the first season so much fun when they had no idea how to do anything. Um, and then probably try to make like 2 or 3 real friends when you're on there.

Yeah, that's what you got to do.

Yeah, because I think that, that's when like people like Siri. That's why she lasts, because she's a good hang and everybody's like, no, I like having her around. Whereas Mike White, there was a little like, oh, Mike White, you think you're better than me? You think you're better than me, White Lotus guy?

You think you're better than me?

And they fucking got him out.

You know what I would do? I talk about this with my wife all the time. I would, if I got on, I'd be like, give me the HGH, get me the trainer who does Hemsworth and gets him ready for Thor.

Yeah.

And I want to get like in shape that would get me eliminated from the Olympics. Like, I want to be ready to go. Like, Mike White looked— Mike White was like that. Mike White had the washboard.

Mike White was jacked.

Where'd that come from?

Yeah, he was jacked.

And I want to get jacked. I don't want to have a situation where I go out there and I'm like, oh man, I look terrible out there. I got to get jacked.

The one persona that seems to work over and over again is strong, friendly and dumb.

Yes.

If you hit those 3 things in a row, you're gonna make it to the final 5. You're not a threat because people think you're too dumb to be a threat, but usually they're smarter than how dumb they seem. And they're a good hang. They're usually from, you know, not a typical city, and people just seem to gravitate to those guys. And those have been a lot of the most popular Survivor people.

Yeah, I agree. I, I think another secret too is you need No matter what alliances you get into, you need the one rock-solid alliance that you're going to go to the final 3 with. Like, that's it.

Yeah.

Whatever else we talk about with whoever else we talk about it with, it's you and me and we're going there. And if you have that, then you can build other things on top of that. Like, that's— you saw it with, um, Tony and Sarah Lucina.

Yeah.

When you have that, that is a way to go deep into the game. I can't believe— and then you lie more too.

I can't believe the show still works. It does. It's unbelievable. I remember summer of 2000, I was living in Boston. It was like one of the hottest summers we ever had. And, um, career wasn't going amazing at that point. It was— I was writing The Thing, but it was okay. And the Lakers won the won the first Kobe-Shaq title that year. And the Celtics were— every Boston team was terrible. The Yankees had just won. The Lakers now had this new dynasty coming. And I was just like, what the fuck? What good thing is going to happen? And Survivor's happening as that's going on. And I just didn't like Richard Hatch, and I was hoping he would win. And then he fucking won the first season. I was like, I'm just never winning anything ever again. And then Tom Brady showed up a year later and everything was fine.

And then, you know, Hatch has turned out to be kind of a gritty fellow in his own regard. It's funny to go back and watch those two, those old seasons, because he was just rude.

He was naked all the time. It was, it was naked all the time.

He was a bad guy.

Yeah.

And then, so, you know, and then it's, it's a microcosm too of just like the culture. Remember when they did Cook Islands 2006, and they divided everybody by race, the race war. And then I almost came— episode 2, they realized, oh, bad idea. And they were just like, hey guys, forget it, we're scrapping the tribes and we're just— and guess everybody reach into the bag, you're getting a new buff, and everybody's getting mixed up. That was a crazy idea, we're not doing that.

Oh my God, what is— who's the oldest person who's been on?

Good question.

Like, they've gone into their 60s a couple times, right?

Yeah, there's, uh, good question. And there has been a woman in her 60s, and now I'm not sure if I'm mixing this up with Australian Survivor, but the, uh, no wait, there was the Navy SEAL guy Rudy. He was like 70-something, right?

Because that was—

he's getting up there too.

I was thinking, uh, be an interesting show for my daughter because she'd be really good at the challenges, but I think the food would ultimately kill her. Like, she really enjoys like making meals, thinking about what she's gonna eat, and if it was just like the rice and you never know, I, I, I feel like she'd unravel. My son would be probably much better off, but I can't imagine what it would be like to have somebody you know on this show and then they come back and you're just like What happened? I can't tell you. And you're just like studying every face they make for the—

I, I can't imagine having someone I know go on, and I've had like multiple, like, friends try out and get like within a couple of rounds, you know. Yeah, ex-Ringer colleague Sean Yu got to like the third interview.

I forgot about that.

I'm like breaking news here on the podcast, but yeah, he got like, he got close.

Wow. The closest experience I have to this is a friend of mine from college actually got on Jeopardy and couldn't tell us what happened, but won a couple episodes. My friend Kara McDermott from college. And wow, it was the most exciting just rooting for her, not knowing if she was going to win or not, was like So I can't even imagine, um, what Survivor would be like. Anyway, Survivor's back. Who knew? Survivor 50. Probst, you know, they're doing a lot of wide shots with him this year.

I think he looks great.

He looks great. Maybe overdid it 10%. That would be my note.

Well, here's, um, a theory a friend has is that they're using the, um the dimples to tuck the stuff in there. That's how they're doing it, is to tighten everything up. They tuck it in the dimple.

Interesting.

Yeah, but I think it looks great.

I think it looks great. Just be careful, like, you don't want to be careful. You move too close to the Siegfried and Roy area, like, just, just tip toe.

Move the camera back a little bit.

Tiptoe it. Yeah, it's so great.

Harsh light.

There's so many bad reality shows. Like, my wife was watching this show on a boat Where you walk the plank and people— the plank gets— you just fall into the sea if you get voted out. It's like, wow, we've really run out of ideas with these. But Survivor 50 is still kicking it. All right, wait a second. Uh, yes, you're a fairly new podcast. I think I'm coming back to talk Zodiac at some point, but we gotta talk Zodiac. There's gonna be a lot of good stuff going. What's the feedback been? People, people like when this stuff exists. When they have other maniacs like us talking about this stuff.

The feedback's been really great. I'm getting people, uh, bugging me to do various topics including Gladio, which was a, uh, a secret NATO program to have like partisans behind communist lines if the communists invaded Europe. And then that— those groups potentially were Connected to various right-wing terror campaigns throughout mostly Italy. There's a lot of crazy conspiratorial stuff that is less crazy when you dig into it. And that's what we aim to do is get into the crazy stuff, but also be like, okay, what is actually here? The JFK one is a great example of over the years, one thing has become clear is it's 100% there is a coverup. It's basically been admitted. Forget who killed him. There is a cover-up going on about what all happened there, in particular with relations to Cuba.

Yeah, because the, the conceit of the pod was always stuff that made you go, yeah, wait, what? Wait, what is it? What, what's going on?

What happened?

So one of the recent ones we were batting around was this one where the scientists just keep disappearing or getting murdered.

Yes.

And we're up to like 8, and clearly something's happening. So it's less— it's less a conspiracy pod, more of a curiosity pod is how I describe it to people.

Let me say about the scientists, it is up to 8. Only 3 of them are actually mysterious. So let me put the 5 aside because there's one that was— there's several that were murders and it's clear who did it, and it's like there's either family connection or something like around the neighborhood, and it all ties up. It makes a lot of sense. The 3 who we don't know what happened are really, really weird, including one who was like videoed miles away from their house, walking in some random neighborhood, like without their phone, without their anything. Another one who left with like a loaded gun and no identification. Like, there's— those are weird.

Yeah. Well, and then that we, we didn't do a full episode on Savannah Guthrie yet because there weren't a lot of places to go. But that's, that's so— so there's like some sort of line of— I don't even know what that episode would be. That story is just awful, and I don't even, I don't even really know what the conspiracy theories would be about it yet. But the scientist one, there's a little more meat because of like what you just said about, all right, not only Was that— was the person dead? But there's— what's up with this video? Why did that happen?

Yeah, and never found.

Yeah.

And when you— and when you think about it in the context of— I mean, listen, you know, the, the US has been involved in programs to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. Like, is— could it be that there's a program to hit or kidnap our scientists? Like, it's not unheard of.

Seems realistic.

It seems realistic to think about, you know, there have been numerous military personnel both from the U.S., U.S. Air Force, and from Britain's air forces that have been charged and convicted of helping the Chinese pilots get better and providing them with services. Like, could that be— could that be part of what's going on? There's a lot of like, hmm, things happening. Like, it's like the— did you see the story about the two recent illegal biolabs that were discovered? One in California and one in Las Vegas.

Yeah, and one of them, like, nobody even knew there was anything in the area.

Yeah, it was like somebody saw a hose connected to an apartment, like, what is that? They called like a code enforcer and they found like Ebola And you know, AIDS virus and like monkeys in cages and weird stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's like, what's that about?

All right.

So there's a lot of these types of stories, especially these days.

All right. It's— wait a second. It's you. It's Tyler Parker. Um, I'm popping on at some point over the next couple episodes. Um, and, uh, I will, I will see you soon. I'm sure. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

All right. We're taping this Thursday afternoon. My dad is in Boston. We have the Celtics nearing the end of the regular season, headed for a 2 seed. And almost as important, we have a Red Sox season that feels like it's in a lot of trouble. So I don't know.

I think it's all over.

1-5, you're out? I might be.

What?

All right. You want to talk Red Sox first?

It's hard to talk Red Sox. They've been looking so terribly and terrible and the lineup is atrocious.

Yeah. Last year they could hit lefties. And they had Ref Snyder and Romy Gonzalez, who started— Ref Snyder's in Seattle. And at least like when they played lefties, you were like, oh, this is going to be good. This year, um, the lineup against lefties was an abomination. The lineup they had yesterday where they had— what was it? Durbin was 6th, who doesn't have a hit yet. Connor Wong, who somehow has 5 hits this season, was 9th. And then who was the guy that was 8th? I'm blanking. It was somebody. Oh, IKF. Kiner Falafa.

Your favorite, your favorite new sign.

Oh my God, they signed him for $6 million. The sad thing is I talked myself into this team before the season in spring training. I was like, oh, hi, A's. We have pitching, we have a bullpen. The rest, Roman will make a leap. We'll figure it out. And then you watch for 6 days and I'm panicking.

Well, you know, the, the management, the general manager sold this team on when he couldn't sign Alonso and other big hitters. He sold this team on pitching and defense.

Yeah.

Well, the pitching's been horrendous and the defense has been terrible.

Yeah. I think they have an error every game, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and he said that it would, it would make up for the lack of a big slugger coming in here to hit third or fourth. Do you have a lot of confidence in Contreras turning things around?

No. I mean, Durbin was the big one because they traded Kyle Harrison for him, who they got in the, in the Devers trade, which nobody's learned from that trade. And then he's, he looks good for the Brewers. And Durbin, who, when they signed him, my nerd Red Sox fan friends went nuts because he was in the bottom 6% of swing, swing speed. He had like one of the, he was in the 94th percentile of slow bats.

This sounds like a, is this a Hench statistic?

Yeah, the Hench was pretty focused on it.

Okay.

And he was really worried about his slow bat speed. And then it was even worse watching in person. And now The way the announcers are talking about him, it's like he's dead, but he's, he's still coming up for at-bats a game.

Well, you know, the bat spree, that's an interesting— I didn't see that, but he can't catch up to the fastball.

No, no. Not so far anyway.

Not, not—

He's, he was so bad that on one of my Red Sox threads, we were going through the worst Red Sox hitters we've seen in our lifetime with Bob Bailey in 1978 being the, being the worst one, but also Tony Peña's last season. There's been some bad ones. There's, like, bad free agents like Jack Clark. But this guy, like, he batted.600 yesterday in a start for Crochet. And, you know, it just felt like he was an automatic out when he came up.

I mean, the obvious problem is they have no alternative. Even Meyer— Mayer? Meyer?

Meyer.

Looks terrible. He's hitting.200. They thought of moving him to third, but he's not hitting.

He's Roman's best friend, though. He's on the team for the next 15 years. So we need him to start hitting. 'Cause he's gonna be a sidekick.

Roman struck out 4 times on Roman's—

right. All the guys who were in the WBC. Well, the, the craziest yet, I've watched every game yesterday. They're down 6-3 in Houston. Houston's just killing them and Houston looks like a completely different team. So they bring in Whitlock to get some work and this guy Cam Smith, who's on the Astros, who ironically is now on my AL keeper team, so I'm a little invested in him. And he has a 14-pitch at-bat against Whitlock, and all of a sudden Whitlock's over 30 pitches, and the announcers are like, oh God, he's never thrown this many pitches in an inning. And it's like, what's happening? He shouldn't even be out there. But it's like everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. And you can really feel it with the, with the voices of the announcers, the way they're talking about it. Like they're, because they don't want to be too critical, but they can't also think of anything positive to say. So it's a lot of, oh, what a start.

Ah.

One of them, I think Maloney in the beginning of the game said, you know, we're 1-4. He mentioned a team that's 1-5. Said, we can't be 1-5. We can't go there.

Yeah.

Well, we're 1-5.

Yeah. Well, and they lost the Crochet start.

Crochet. Yeah. I had a lot of confidence that Crochet would turn it around yesterday, but you know, Houston kills us. There's certain teams that we— yeah, when we go to Houston, we play poorly every year in Houston.

Um, and somehow their guys never change. Like, Correa is back on Houston now. It's like, I thought he was gone. Why do you have him again? And he's killing us.

I agree. I thought he was on Minnesota. What's he doing here?

Yeah, all of a sudden he's back. And Alvarez just goes— he hits.500 against the Red Sox. Like, he's Just kills them every game.

You know, I kind of understand why they did it because our weather in Boston has been terrible. But to start on the road against 3 difficult teams, it's tough. Yeah. I'd rather they were home, except they couldn't be home. Like today, it's pouring rain. We've had terrible weather, as you know.

I mean, honestly, if Tatum had—

We just want the sun to come out.

If Tatum had come back—

They started home what, Friday night, right?

Yeah.

Or Friday afternoon, I guess.

But if Tatum hadn't come back, if we had this Drake May, this Drake May Super Bowl followed by the Red Sox sucking and then Tatum never coming back to the Celtics, I would actually worried about your personal welfare.

No, I, we've talked about the Super Bowl. I'm okay. I'm excited that we got there. I did before this podcast, I just listened to NBA Today.

Yeah.

And they were showing lots of clips of the Celtics game from last night against—

Miami.

Miami. And they asked Perk what he thought and Perk took a moment. I don't always agree with whatever Perk says.

I was gonna say.

Perk said, they're coming out of the East. So I felt good about that.

Yeah, he's been pretty bullish for a while. I thought they looked awesome. It, it's weird. I felt like the Jalen-Jason thing could have gone one of like 7 ways. And so far it feels like it's gone the best possible way where they've each had little moments. They figured out how to like, you take this part. It's almost like watching 2 guys on a cross-country drive just figure out who should drive and who's going to be, take a break and then who, now you drive and And sometimes it'll be a Jaylen game, sometimes it'll be more of a Tatum game. And they don't feel like when one guy is kind of in control, the other guy doesn't feel like he's completely out of the offense. I've been really pleased.

I have been too. And we talked about it, I think a week ago, that I still feel that one of them has to be in the game at all times. And it looks like Missoula came to that realization.

Yeah.

Because lately one of them is, unless one of them is not playing, like in the Atlanta game. But there was a nice moment in the fourth quarter yesterday where Brown and Tatum just kind of were near each other. Yeah. On defense. And they slapped hands. I think they're good. I think, I think any little message. Yeah, they're good.

No, I, I've been watching that stuff too because there is so much Jalen talking about this, you know, the stuff we talked about before Tatum came back. And if you were reading between the lines in the wrong ways, you could be like, he seems pretty happy to have his own team. But I think both of these guys would much rather win. And, you know, they've been together a long time here. This is 9 straight years they've been playing together.

Right.

And it— but the other good thing is the bench can come in as long as one of them's out there. And there's all these different ways the game can go that are positive. Like, we could have the hot Pritchard game. You could have the game where, like, the wings just kind of create, wreak havoc for 6 minutes and get steals and blocks and all these things. Or you could have a game where Tatum just goes off. There's a lot of variance with them, which I don't feel like we had the same variance last year. Did you?

No, their bench is really diverse in terms of— and guys have matured and taken a step up. I mean, Jordan Walsh, not one of my favorites, but I have to give it to him. He's playing a lot better than he was a year ago. Pritchett. Pritchett can have games where he's unstoppable.

Right.

My worry about Pritchett a little bit is in the big game against like the Knicks on a heavy defense, they can take him out of the game a little bit.

But yeah, the Knicks are, the Knicks are officially looming and it's weird. Yes. Because we talked to Jace Concepcion about them earlier in the pod and I don't even think the Knicks fans feel that confident about the Knicks, but Celtics are the one team the Knicks have a lot of confidence. They're kind of built to beat the Celtics. And even getting somebody like Alvarado for the Pritchard matchup— Alvarado's just annoying. He's gonna guard you for 70 feet and he's gonna stick his feet near your feet and he's gonna push and check you and bump you. And, um, I kind of think that's how to attack Pritchard, which a lot of teams don't do.

I agree. We've talked about it over the last couple years. A number of the moves the Knicks made seemed to be to counteract the Celtics. I don't know that anybody's all that fearful of Detroit, particularly, you know, the unknown is Cade Cunningham's health.

Well, now they said he might not be back until the playoffs.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, the one thing that's happening with them now is they're getting nobody believes in us energy, which makes me nervous. Like Zach and I did something on Sunday about How they weren't one of the 10 scariest teams heading into the playoffs. And it was like, I think it was front page on the sports section of the Detroit Free Press. Like yet more people don't believe in Detroit. It's like, oh God, here we go.

But, you know, but I don't care about Detroit because if we're fortunate enough to get to the Eastern Finals, that's when we see them.

Yeah.

You know, we don't see them before then.

No, the Knicks are the series. Well, although You know, they, this Toronto, Philly, all these teams are flip-flopping around and like we're taping this today and Toronto's now the 7th seed and Philly's the 6th seed. Philly looked pretty scary in one game last weekend, but I've, I also feel like we've had a lot of success against them over the years. But they, are you scared of either of those teams?

No, but you know, I know they're not playing that well. And they're still only one game behind the Knicks, but Cleveland bothers me. They have size that we don't have.

And a lot of confidence against the Celtics. Mitchell always loves playing the Celts.

Loves and always has that 40-point game against us. But, you know, I'm not sure if I want— You know, because the Knicks are only one game ahead of Cleveland, and I don't know who has the tiebreaker. I'm not sure who I'd rather play in the second round, the Knicks or Cleveland. How about you?

Oh, I'd rather play Cleveland.

Okay.

I think the Knicks think they can beat us. I think it might be the one good team in the conference they could actually feel that way about. But I think they have a lot of confidence. And the other thing is, I was thinking about last year, the thought of Tatum going there and MSG, that part sucks, right? You're going back to basically the scene of the crime. Yeah. That's just hanging over every at-New York game.

I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah. And then I don't like that we'll take big leads and then we're kind of back with— this has already happened a couple times this, this year where we'll be up 20 and then relax, you know, and, and do all the worst parts of the stuff that happened last year.

You mean like last night?

Like last night against Miami, we had 53 points in the first quarter and then somehow it's like a 12-point game going into the fourth quarter.

It's a 10-point game.

Yeah.

So they, this is like habitual with this Celtics team for whatever reason. And the Knicks are this team that's always down like 8 to 12 points for most of the game. And then all of a sudden they're making this rally and you're like, what happened? They were just down 16. And I, so you have one team that can't hold on to leads the way I would love it. And then another team that seems to love coming back, which they did last year in the playoffs, in devastating fashion, 2 times in a row.

Last year, did the Knicks, the Knicks play Detroit? They beat Detroit.

Yeah. But it was a, it was a pretty good series though.

Yeah. It was a good series.

Yeah. It was an either or series. Wait, you went to the OKC game last Wednesday.

I did.

I, I, what was the, the playoff crowd like? What, walk us through the crowd.

Oh, it was a definitely a playoff crowd, but I'm, the beginning of the game was a nervous crowd because OKC has handled us and they, I, I know they beat us in OKC this year, but we didn't have the full squad. But we played great. It was playoff atmosphere, you know, back and forth, back and forth. It was a great crowd standing quite a bit. And the Celtic crowd is not usually a standing crowd. And it was great to get that win. I think that was a critical win. I looked at how many wins we have against like super teams this year? Not too many.

Yeah.

We're below.500. So that was a big win.

Yeah. That stat became a big deal like a week ago, but if you picked it apart, there were a couple games where we didn't have guys playing or there was—

We didn't have guys playing. Yeah.

The Spurs game where Brown got thrown out. I thought some of it was explainable.

Yeah.

But also didn't have Tatum for most of the year.

We only have 6 games left. I'm not sure how, Often they'll play Tatum in these 6 games. We have a game against New York in Madison Square Garden, which is always—

I would skip that one.

A really tough place for us.

Yeah, I wouldn't. I just wouldn't play Tatum in that. So what have you seen from seeing Tatum in person, and what are people in the stands saying?

Well, if you asked me 10 days ago or a week ago, I would've said something differently. Last night, the last couple games, I know he didn't play against Atlanta, but he's going to the basket more. Yeah. With force. When he came back, when I was at the games, he was very tentative and almost like he was afraid of falling, or not falling, afraid of landing on the foot poorly.

Yeah. Or stepping on somebody's foot or shoe or something.

Stepping on somebody's foot. Yeah.

Exactly.

Which we see happen all the time.

Yeah.

We saw that happen. To Ron Harper Jr. the other day, and he was out a couple of games twisting that ankle. You don't want to see him twist the ankle because it's too close to the Achilles. Yeah. But he looks a little less tentative now. I mean, he's still going to the basket. Every game he takes a couple shots I wish he didn't take, but Brown does also.

Yeah.

I just like I don't remember him being so forceful and fearsome on the boards. I mean, he got 18 boards last night. That's crazy.

Yeah, I was saying to Zach, like, I wonder if just watching 60 games on the bench made him rethink some of the stuff that both he could do, but also the team might be missing. I agree with you on that. 'Cause they— we really missed defensive rebounding the whole season. And then as soon as he came back, he solved it.

He and, he and Cater are a great defensive rebounding combination. And it's critical not to give up those offensive rebounds, which we always give up. Right. But since he came back, it's really different. Well, there's a— We're control—

Yeah, there's a couple ways this team's different than last year. They, they're a much better offensive rebounding team because the two centers aren't 25 feet from the basket. Right. Last year it was like take a shot, if went in or not, and then the other team was coming back the other way. This year both centers like to crash the boards. They have these wings like Hugo and, and Shireman is like, I honestly think like if, if we could vote for this, guys who come in and tip a rebound either backwards or to a teammate, he's got, he's like elite at that. I've never seen. A, a, a less consequential player better at like the dumbest skill possible. But I'm telling you, it's gonna, he's gonna like swing a playoff game with that one of these times. Jumps over like 5 guys, tips it to you.

No, I, you know, the 2 players that I'm really pleasantly surprised about, there was all kinds of, uh, wondering what, when the season started about our center position.

Yeah.

Uh, 'cause we lost our 3 centers. And Cade has been terrific.

Yeah, but your granddaughter never gave up on him. That was like her guy for 2 years.

Yeah, but he got— he didn't get much time.

No.

And he was still a little gawky out there. He has some moves all of a sudden, and he's a really good rebounder and he's a good defender. But the other guy is Shyman. A year ago, you and I talked about him a little bit, and I just didn't think he was going to— get any time at all.

No, he seemed like a goofball. He's wearing like the t-shirt under the jersey.

Yeah.

It was like, what, what is this guy? Where, how did we end up with this dude?

His corner 3 is deadly.

His— well, the one where he'll fake it and then he'll take a step to the side and that it feels like that goes in 100% of the time.

Yeah.

I think he's a sneaky good rebounder, as I mentioned. And I think defensively he's like Hauser, like these teams challenge him and he can kind of stay in front of everybody. It's impressive.

Bigger than you— in person, he's bigger than you think.

Yeah.

He's actually a little bigger than Hauser in terms of body build. Hauser's been better.

Yeah.

Obviously last night he was great.

Yeah.

He's been hot and cold this year. But it— the one thing I'd say is it's all coming together for the playoffs. Now you get knock on wood because that injury is right around the corner for somebody, and you hope it's not one of our guys. But I don't know. I kind of hope we play Cleveland in the second round. I don't want to see New York. I don't want to see Spike Lee in the Boston Garden sitting 3 rows ahead of me, jumping up and down, you know?

Well, we won't see Chalamet because I think he's in hiding after the Oscars.

I don't think— Oh, is that right?

I don't think he'll be there for—

Well, he was your Oscar choice after the—

No, I was rooting for MBJ. I loved MBJ. I think we've hit the part of the pod where you need to apologize yet again to Joel Mazzulla. You did it when he won the title, and then this year you were saying he was getting a little second row Joe again. And I— he's either going to be the coach of the year or the runner-up. I think Bickerstaff's going to win, but he's probably going to be second. But this team, I think I remember talking to you after I went to that Washington game that they won when they were like 1-3 to start the season. And I was like, we suck. I don't know. I feel like we should just blow this up like this. This team has no chance. And he kind of wouldn't let them tank and is such a maniac. Like, people are like, whose team is this? Is it Jalen's team or Jason's team? It's like, if you watch the games, this is Missoula's team. This is like This team belongs to him and he doesn't give a shit. He'll bench anybody. He'll do whatever the intensity— like if we ever get in a fight with the Pistons, like some sort of altercation, like I'm worried he's gonna like fight Isaiah Stewart or something.

It's like the enforcer on the team. So I don't know.

You owe Larry an apology. No, I'm not ready to apologize. I'll see. We'll see what happens after the playoffs.

What else does the guy have to do? We were, our over-under was 42 wins. We have 51. What do you want?

I think one thing I do like about him is he has the locker room.

Yeah.

And he has the respect of the players. There's some coaching strategies that drive me crazy during a game, but yeah, I'm not going to apologize.

Well, like stuff like you were mad that he was taking out Tatum and Brown at the same time.

You didn't understand that. Oh, I mean, it made no sense.

Yeah.

And we, we particularly, I don't know what game it was, but we started the third quarter or fourth quarter with neither out and all of a sudden we lost a 10-point lead.

Yeah.

And we lost the game. Yeah.

I know why he's doing that though. 'Cause I think he's trying to build confidence in these guys so they're not just like always a Jalen and Jason team. But the truth is we are a Jalen and Jason team and that's what the team is.

Yeah.

So I see it, I see it both ways.

I guess so. No, I think he's had a good year.

Oh, I'm glad he's going to finish second in coaching.

He is a little bit out there though. I loved yesterday when he said he doesn't want Coach of the Year Award and he thinks it's a stupid award. I don't know what other coach would say that, but yeah.

All right. So this has been a good season for you. Who's the best player you saw in person this year?

Shea Alexander. Unstoppable. You know, that baseline jump shot that he has, or foul line, or it's a little bit further out. I don't think we stopped it once. And he can get to the rim anytime he wants. He's the best player I've seen.

Did you see— I mean, you saw Wemby, right?

Yeah. I mean, Wemby was terrific. He had that unusual game where he hit, was that, no, that was at home in San Antonio, hit the 8 threes.

Yeah.

But there are times when he just disappears for some reason.

Wemby?

Yeah.

You just don't know.

Alexander never disappears.

Yeah.

He carries that team. They've won games because I've watched them on TV quite a bit. They've won games they shouldn't have won because he carried them.

Yeah.

I'm assuming and thinking he deserves and will get the MVP. You feeling the same way? You're more of a Wemby guy?

No, he's still favored. I'm still going to vote for him with 6 games left, but you know, it's an 82-game year and we have 4 guys having transcendent seasons. In their own ways, you know? And I think there's cases for everybody, but if you're on the team that has the best record that was missing the second best guy for most of the year, you were steady the whole way through. Eye test-wise, if you go to the games, he's like unbelievable. I mean, this is the way he plays. It's like when in the '80s when Andrew Toney, who was the most underrated player of the '80s, we just couldn't stop him. And it felt like he could get in those zones. It just feels like that's every game for Shea where he's just Andrew Toney, maybe 2 games a year. Every game. He's shooting 55%.

When, when I was at the OKC game, I kept waiting. I, I love the time that he was on the bench.

Yeah.

Because I'm not sure that anybody else scares me on that team. I think as a collective group, they play very well, but He carries them. There's nobody else carrying them.

What was the fan reaction to the foul baiting and some of the calls that he gets?

There was a lot of booing on the refs. He gets calls he shouldn't get. Yeah. When you see the replay up on the jumbotron, Missoula could have had 10 challenges that game.

Yeah.

Because he doesn't get touched. He has a great way of using his shoulder to touch the defender and then moving back and making the shot, and the defender gets called for the foul. More than— I mean, Brown does it a little bit, but he's so skilled at it. Look at how many foul shots he gets every game.

He had like 25 in one game. All right, so you're feeling good about the Celtics, terrible about the Red Sox. Have you started studying the, the draft for the Patriots yet.

Well, I should also mention I'm excited about the Bruins. They're— they've been playing very well.

As you know, I, I don't jump in until the playoffs.

Yeah, I know. Well, the playoffs will be soon, and they'll be in the playoffs, so I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, I've studied the draft a little bit, but if you want to do 20 seconds on the Bruins, let's hear it. I thought you were kind of lukewarm on this team.

No, no, I I think they've done a good job with the 4 lines. They've assembled different groupings that have done very well. McElroy is, I think, playing like a first-star defenseman.

Yeah.

Swayman's been really terrific all year. I think they could go far in the playoffs. So I'm looking forward to—

Oh, wow.

Hockey playoffs and basketball playoffs. It's like old school Boston and not having to watch the Red Sox because all those playoff games will be on.

So we're out of the Red Sox. I gotta look at what their over-under is now. It's the alternate win totals.

It's not so much that they're 1-5. I don't like the team, you know.

You look at their lineup, uh, their over-under's dropped to 84.5 You know who else doesn't seem like he likes the team? Alex Cora. He has that look on his face like he hasn't gone to the bathroom in 3 days.

Well, they brought this, they brought this bean counter in to be general manager. And I like the days when we had Dombrowski because he wasn't, he wasn't afraid to make a trade to bring in a superstar. Now maybe, maybe the message from John Henry is we're not spending money. You can't bring in that guy.

Oh, you think that's the message? That's—

I think that's the message.

And I think, I think that's established. The problem is they, they, they traded Devers and they said they were going to reinvest the money. They gave Anthony a new contract, and then I think they thought they were going to sign Bregman, and he just decided he didn't want to sign with them. But they didn't get Alonso. So now all of a sudden you're doing all this short-term stuff and you're paying Kiner Falafel $6 million, right, when a, you know, replacement player in your—

Well, that, that's always been their issue. If you look at the $6 million players they have, if you got rid of them and just use that money to get an Alonso.

Right.

They just don't do it that way.

No.

It's not their philosophy.

I don't think they care either. 'Cause the ticket price is—

Highest, highest in the majors.

We look, 'cause we're going to San Francisco next week for the rewatchables. And we, we were, I was just curious looking at the ballpark prices there on like a Tuesday night. Wednesday afternoon, whatever. And it's like less than half of what Red Sox tickets would cost. This is in San Francisco, which is a major city, but they just don't care. They jack those up. They know people are going to pay for them.

There is one other thing before we go I'd like to bring up. The draft I'm already looking at, but—

You want tight end?

My two UConn teams are both in the semis.

I don't know. I don't know where this is coming from.

I've always been in on the women's play tomorrow.

You have been on the women's team, but I don't know when the men's thing— you were like a BC— you were always rooting for whatever the Massachusetts school was, and now all of a sudden you're like an actual UConn.

I, I went on the bandwagon. We have no good Massachusetts— well, that's true, we do Division I basketball.

Well, now we're getting Bill Murray's coach for BC. Maybe he'll— Bill Murray's son for, uh, to coach the BC team.

It can't hurt.

No, I know. So you're focused on the UConn. So big sports weekend for you, it sounds like.

Big sports weekend.

Can we get your review on The Madison with Michelle Pfeiffer?

I really enjoyed watching it. I liked all 6 episodes. I liked the ending. It made sense. I didn't know there was a season 2 until you told me. I thought the younger daughter was atrocious. The older daughter was also hard to take.

Yeah, the grand—

the two grandkids were pretty spoiled.

They were awful.

But, uh, otherwise I like the interaction between Russell and Pfeiffer, and, uh, and the scenery was gorgeous.

And so thumbs up, another thumbs up, thumbs up.

Yeah, thumbs up on that one.

Any new—

I wouldn't know, I wouldn't have watched it except you and your wife recommended it.

Any CBS shows that have really caught your fancy this year?

Well, there is that new show CIA.

Yeah, what's going on with CIA? It's in New York City. It's okay.

It's, you know, it's— and it follows FBI. So, you know, they did— that was a good pairing that they did.

Oh, it goes from FBI to CIA. Yeah, I'm all in. So CBS doesn't even try to title these anymore. They're just like, coming up at 8 o'clock, fire. Oh, 8 o'clock. Hospital.

No, 8 o'clock FBI, 9 o'clock CIA. That's the other channel on Wednesday night.

Oh, that's—

talking about the Chicago shows. Yeah.

They do Chicago Fire, PD, and the other one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yet you're not watching The Pit, which I just started watching. I'm the last person who got sucked in.

No, I haven't gotten into that.

My wife started watching it. I got sucked in and all of a sudden Within an hour, I'm completely binging it.

You're binging.

We finished the season now. This weekend we're gonna watch the whole second season. The Pit's great. I knew it was gonna be good. We just— the ER, because they were saying it was gonna— it was like a much grosser, kind of more intense version of ER, the NBC show, right? And it is. There's some, some stuff where you're like, oh my God, I can't believe they showed that. But it's really good.

I Well, I guarantee you'll like it. It's on HBO, you told me, right?

Yeah, well, it's on, yeah, HBO Max, but you should watch it with your, with your wife who's a doctor because I'm sure she'll pick it apart like you pick apart Joe Mazzuola. Like, oh, they would never do that, they would never—

She does, she picks apart every medical—

She tried to ruin ER when we would watch ER in the first year.

Yeah, you're right. Oh, they don't do it that way.

Oh, that's so— that's ridiculous. It's like when we're watching like a basketball movie or something. But I think you would really like The Pit.

I'll give it a try. I have a little time on my hands.

Well, you don't— you have a little time, but you adopted a puppy that has kind of dominated your life now.

You're not going to bring that up again, are you?

You adopted Ruby.

Ruby's 14 months now, and I hope someday that she's behaving. It hasn't happened yet, but—

Oh man. I was saying if she was a kid, she would be in the class with like 3 teachers watching her at all times, making sure—

Yeah, I think she'd be in foster care.

Oh man. What a spring for you. All right, well, I'll see you in Boston for some playoff games.

Looking forward to it. I like, I like this net, your new setup here. Thank you.

Yeah, we, we got that because we could use it whenever, um, whenever I'm back there. All right, thanks, Dad. Good to talk to you. Have a good weekend. All right, good luck. All right, all right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to House and Jason and my dad. Thanks to Gajal and Eduardo as well. I have the Sunday podcast, I think we're looking at 8 PM ET on Sunday. Going live on Netflix with me and Zach Lowe. Lots to discuss, uh, NBA-wise. And new rewatchables coming on Monday. We're doing Eddie and the Cruisers. So that's the docket. Enjoy the weekend. Have fun. I will see you on Sunday. Must be 21+ in President's Select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President's Select states, Kentucky, or Wyoming. No purchase necessary, opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gamblerrational.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.

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