The Bill Simmons Podcast - A 12th L.A. Lakers Title and Remembering Eddie Van Halen with Ryen Russillo and Chuck Klosterman 

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss a hard-fought Lakers win in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the Lakers' role players stepping up, Jimmy Butler’s ascension to a “top-10 guy,” superb defensive play by Anthony Davis, LeBron’s command of the series and what a fourth NBA title will do for his legacy, Anthony Davis contract speculation, and more. Then Bill is joined by author Chuck Klosterman to remember the late Eddie Van Halen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight on the Bill Simmons podcast, we're going to talk to Ryan Rosillo about game four of the NBA finals. And we're going to talk to Chuck Klosterman about the death of Eddie Van Halen. That is all coming up. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey, And it's on prime all season long. Watch prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays. The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL is best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on prime. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan

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tomorrow night, Wednesday night. So stay tuned for that. Coming up, Rosillo, game four of the finals. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, taping this a little before 9 o'clock on Tuesday. Lakers just won game four of the finals. Really seemed like there was some hope there that this was going to turn into an awesome series. LeBron, he hit the switch in the third quarter.

He hit that long three right when it really seemed like Miami was going to be just not going away. And you could see LeBron realize like, okay, I got to step it up a little bit. He was terrific. But to me, the story of Rosillo was the fringe guys. These were the guys that you point to and you go, this is why they can't win the title. KCP, Rondo, who's been on six teams, Alex Caruso. But when you win a title, those are the guys that end up coming through in an awesome game like that. I really enjoyed that game, but those were the guys that stood out to me. Yeah. So if we stay with that, I love that you brought up Rondo because I mean, it's really pretty remarkable that he can look this good after looking this bad for so long but the conversation around rondo's always frustrated me it's a bit like the aaron rogers thing that's happening

right now aaron rogers was the best quarterback in the league for a long time maybe the best thrower of the football we've ever seen he had kind of two down years it was real they won some games but he wasn't the same guy and now he he's on fire again. And everybody's like, see, like, well, no, both things happened. And Rondo's regular season and flaming out with multiple teams where they couldn't wait to get him out of the building. And now him turning into this, like both things have happened. So he impacted the game in a bunch of different ways. Those two offensive rebounds.

I mean, his first bucket wasn't towards the end of the game, but if that was a big buzz, it, that, that was the drive by a lot of bios, like a clincher. It was his first basket of the game. But that was a big buzz. That was the drive by a lot of bios, like a clincher. It was his first basket of the game. I couldn't believe it. Right. But he was, he had those two misses

and Van Gunney made a great point because I'm at home going, you're right. Like he's looking at the way they're playing him and he's going, okay, well, you guys aren't paying

any attention. And both of those are good looks despite them being misses. But, you know, I just, I just feel like Rondo can get a ton of credit,

but it also doesn't balance everything out because I didn't think he was even capable of this. I think a few weeks ago, it looked like you couldn't quite figure out why he's playing. I think in the regular season, Lakers fans were like, why is Vogel keep playing this guy? And then you watch him in the playoffs and you trust him probably as much as anybody out there besides LeBron and AD. I want to get back to Rondo, but you talk about the fringe guys, the fringe guys for

Miami. They really needed him tonight. Kendrick Nunn, as House said when we were texting, Kendrick Nunn was N-O-N-E Kendrick Nunn. He was Kendrick Nunn. All caps. He was just a train wreck. He looked like the 83rd best point guard in the league.

And the Drogic drop-off, it's not just that Drogic was a killer in those three playoff rounds. It made a bunch of huge, tough, contested threes, which were a lot like the threes that they were trying to make tonight. It's not just losing that. It's that Harrow now has to play more, you know,

and he gets exposed the more minutes he's playing. And then Nunn has to pick up all these extra minutes. And the combo of those two things, it's probably worth eight to nine points a game. I think in these finals, just, just that calibration being off. And it's a bummer because I still think the Lakers probably, um, would have had the upper hand if their fringe guys are playing like this, if everybody was healthy on both sides, but it would have been an awesome series. And I really think Dragan would have given them problems like coming around screens and stuff,

and we'll never know. Well, the none part of this is a win every time he takes a shot. I mean, every time he takes a shot, despite his scoring prowess early on in his rookie year, it's never in the flow of the offense. I mean, he just decides to do his thing. So really what he is is a really great

regular season second unit guy, and now he has to play those minutes. You're absolutely right about Hero. I mean, his final line looks a little bit better. He hit some really tough shots, that baseline shot that bailed him out late in the shot clock, but it's great when you have all this confidence in the world, but it's also incredibly frustrating when you feel like a 20-year-old is just trying to win you a finals game in Game 4.

I think the biggest thing, though, Bill, when you talk about what this series could or couldn't have been, I still feel like human nature is a factor. When you're up 2-0, you're going to play differently. We saw that in game three. But great at Spolstra for getting out of that zone because that was a disaster against LeBron with his size and getting position on catches and then AD running the baseline. And you could see even with man-to-man and undersized, it's a completely different game. So I think that and Dragic, getting out of the zone and if Dragic were healthier,

maybe makes this more of a series. But look, I still picked the Lakers at the beginning because I just didn't really think Miami could hang with them. Back to the fringe guys. You mentioned Rondo. I was going back and reading some of the stuff I wrote about him over the years, like in 2009 and 2010.

Remember in 2011, they were talking about, should they trade him? Should they not trade him? They dangled him for Chris Paul. For like two years? Yeah. But remember when Chris Paul got traded first to the Lakers, then the Clippers, the Celtics were the other team in there dangling Rondo, trying to get Chris. Then finally Rondo leaves. And if you just look at the way his career played out, it was the worst case scenario, every step of the way, right? Goes to, uh, Dallas that goes terribly has this weird Sacramento run ends up on Chicago with this, these two different cultures that are fighting each other at the same time. For some reason, he sides with the young guys

goes to new Orleans, boogie goes down, then goes to the Lakers last year. And that was a train wreck. And I had written him off. I don't know about you, but I just felt like, all right, we've seen this happen in basketball before. We have this guy who's super talented, but he takes a couple of hits, goes in a couple wrong directions and that's it. And I thought he was a write-off. I can't remember. You'd have to go back to Bob McAdoo and people like that. Bill Walton, I mean,

he was injured. That wasn't totally his fault. But Bob McAdoo was somebody everybody gave up on. He was bouncing around. He was in New Jersey. The Lakers end up, I think, getting him for a second-round pick. Melo's not a bad comp, by the way. Yeah, but Melo was never a key player

in a finals game. I was just trying to think of finals dudes. Just basically resurrections because you could see there was this moment at the end and LeBron's congratulating everybody. The game's not over, but they know they're going to win in the timeout. He goes over to Rondo and gives him the

two elbows next to the head, really close. I love you, hug. Because he gets it. Like the stuff Rondo was figuring out. And it's more than that because there were plays when he was initiating that gave LeBron little rest. Because LeBron played a lot of minutes in that game.

They were hard minutes. He got hard fouled a few times. He was guarding Butler on the other end, even though he was going under the screens. but he was putting miles on left and right and they really needed that second playmaker. So that helped. And then the other thing is, I think KCP stinks and I can't think that anymore because he was awesome tonight. That was a huge, huge, reminded me a little bit of Trevor Ariza in 2009, when they just needed this Ariza performance

they didn't know they were going to get. And they got it. And he was really good. And he made a couple of huge plays in big moments. And that was a big reason why they won. Yeah, KCP's stinking seems harsh because- I know, I'm just saying he's one of the guys that I just personally are like,

eh, he's not good. But I'm wrong. I'm admitting I'm wrong. Yeah, I just think that plenty of teams would find a way to are like, eh, he's not good. But I'm wrong. I'm admitting I'm wrong. Yeah, I just think that plenty of teams would find a way to use him with the way he shoots from outside. I mean, granted, his numbers are probably not high for his career as you'd expect at like 35%. He's not going to rebound.

He's not going to assist. He's not really in a position to do any of that stuff. I mean, he's kind of stuck in the corner. And he's like 38% this year. So that's a big plus. And you still have to close out on him. And by the way like the biggest bucket that he had was after he hit that whole thing kind of fell apart because lebron hit

all his free throws the most part tonight 10 to 12 so that wasn't a disaster when jimmy butler missed that three down 90 88 and it was a really weird play because they had he had rondo on him and this is where screening becomes like the players are just so programmed to screen all the time for drivers. They screened. And then he ended up getting LeBron as a defender instead of Rondo. And you're like, the whole reason you do this is to get the original matchup that you had. And then Butler misses that corner three, Pope hits a three.

And then Pope hits that layup when the shot clock was falling apart. The Lakers had like three AD had a three in there, but there was three really big possessions. The game was still in the balance where Lakers players hit huge shots before the shot clock expired. And neither of them were, and that was the thing, it wasn't LeBron or AD.

Those three shots in a row. Well, yeah, that was like the ender. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. But those two KCP baskets, and we see this over and over again, that's actually what wins the finals. You don't just need the awesome performance from your best guy or your best two guys. It's these random dudes.

And it's like, I look back at the 08 Celtics and that game four, and it was Eddie House, James Posey. And those were the guys that flipped that game. And then Allen and Pierce did the rest, But you needed the two randos. I just didn't think the Lakers, if they ever truly got in this position, because you could see it in their eyes in the first, I would say, two-plus quarters. This was a weird game. It was.

This was a really weird game the first half, which I think we need to talk about. Yeah. I think they can get a little front-running sometimes when they're up 11, that's when they're all doing the muscle stuff and the, and Miami was just hitting them back and you could kind of see them looking around like, okay. And that was why I thought it was so important when LeBron hit that 30 footer, when Miami had just taken the lead and you could tell he was pissed at everybody. And he was like, all right, fuck this. And he just launched one and made it and just kind of kicked it into gear from that point on.

And LeBron, we, you know, I don't want to say we take for granted because everybody talks about him constantly, but he's just, this was just a typical game for him, right? 26, 12 and eight. He's been doing this in the finals for, what, 80 games at this point?

I don't know how many finals games he's played. 70's just like another routine 26 12 and 8 well this game at the start you're going what the hell are you guys doing out there they were throwing the ball out of bounds i mean lebron had three of the worst passes i think i've ever seen him have in one single game just in the first half uh rondo threw one away pope threw one just straight up out of bounds. And you're thinking, okay, the biggest problem you guys had in the start in game three, even though they still almost stole game three, which felt like it was a Miami game because of the way Butler played, but they had 10 turnovers in that first quarter. And then Vogel after the first quarter of the interview was like, hey, what's up with the turnovers? And you're like, all right.

But the other part of it too, is that coming out of that zone, I really felt like the Lakers, like the Lakers were playing good defensively, but the Lakers offensively, it just felt like a struggle. Like nothing felt like, Hey, here's the thing that we can go to. There was one play that I counted. Well, there was one, I'll say two, there was a switch where they got AD with Olenek and it was a deep catch. He turned around and finished off the backboard. But then there was another little action at like five minutes of the first quarter where they got in a switch and then Davis rolling hard to the hoop and Rondo gets it to him. And you're like, why can't you guys even attempt to do some more of that stuff?

Like, do you really need another Marquise Morris three? Who's been good. Kuzma shot it well again in this game. And he's, he did in game three, or at least he did, you know, in the first half, he'd missed one a little bit later, but getting Anthony Davis with some momentum towards the hoop, the Lakers just couldn't do it. And they don't, they don't do a good job on some of the entry pass stuff with him. I don't think AD fights all the time to get deep possession.

And I think a lot of times Miami just does a really good job, whether it's fronting him or always having a double on him where Davis is going to pass out of the double instead of forcing stuff. Cause that's just the way he's wired. But it was a really like, you're watching it going like, how about LeBron at the end of the first half? It may not seem like a big deal, but he caught the ball with 3.1 seconds and didn't do anything and looked like he wanted to pass it to somebody. And again, these are all like small things, but they were adding up in that what's going on. Like,

is this Lakers team really flat? Are they going to lose this one? And LeBron definitely had like a weird energy. I think he was frustrated by some of his teammates. And, you know, I started to think when we got into that third quarter, like, all right, this is their fourth game in seven nights. He's 35 years old. If his legs aren't there in the fourth quarter, like this could get really, really, really interesting. But, you know, back to Davis for a second,

because I thought he was really good defensively. And, you know, you could make the case he's the best defensive player in the league. I voted for him, I think, second for defensive player of the year. And he swallowed up a whole bunch of different stuff. I thought he was at a really important point after game two, you know, career-wise, big picture, all-timer-wise,

where the series was going a certain way and it felt like it was going to be a sweep and it felt like he was going to be like a 35 15 in the finals and i was thinking like wait what what do we do with this guy historically now and i was texting with the uh my hall of fame pyramid committee by the way if you want to be on the committee i'll send you an application it's basically just me uh my friend house, who you know, and then one other unnamed person. So basically the thread we have going right now?

Yeah, pretty much. But it's basically like, wow, Davis, if they pull this off, he might actually be in the top 40. This has just been a completely dominating postseason performance. But now he's slipped a little bit those last two games. And I think the big thing for him, because I don't feel now he's slipped a little bit those last two games.

And I think the big thing for him, because I don't feel like he's hit his peak yet, as great as he is, he's got to learn how to, when teams are playing him like this, to just be like, I'm going on the block. I'm just getting the ball seven feet from the basket. And you're just not going to be able to do this.

You're not going to be able to guard me with Iguodala. And my point is, if he learns how to do that, they might actually even be better next year. Yeah, I don't know if that's going to happen. Because if you're going to do one, and I don't love doing this to some of these guys that are truly special, because then it turns into like you're dogging them.

And here I've defended Anthony Davis basically from day one and just said, I don't want to hear about it. He's just on a bad team. But he can be taken out by some defenses. We saw that in that regular season game against Toronto where like they ran doubles at him hard and you were like, okay, what's going on here? Um, there were other times though. And like another side note of this whole thing, Dwight Howard, we didn't see him again. It only took a year bill. It only took you a year to be right about the Dwight Howard. So I was saying that's

my, that's my personal win. That's my moral victory in the series. Dwight Howard is unplayable in these finals. It's great. I'm so satisfied. He's also going to spend a lot of time on the ground. When he gets hit, we're going to hang out for a little bit. That's just part of it. A little Braxton Miller-ish, if you remember that back at Ohio State,

which I doubt you do. But yeah, he was so good defensively. I know Jimmy Butler's final line, if you just look at it a couple, I mean, he still, he was so good defensively. Like I know Jimmy Butler's final line. If you just look at it a couple of days from now, you go, what was the problem? Eight to 17, 22 points, 10 boards, nine assists. It was a completely different Jimmy Butler experience in this game because Anthony Davis took him on. And when Davis was lined up with him, Butler didn't really want anything to do with it.

He just did. Can you remember seeing a team as good as Miami pass up as many possible laps as they did in that game? Probably golden state board during the regular season when they just kick it out to as many people as they can. By the way, Houston does it all the time. Don just does it all the time. It's a, it's an absolute epidemic in today's basketball where guys just are so convinced they're supposed to kick out on every drive that you're like you know you're giving up layups and attempts to get but they weren't they weren't doing this against milwaukee and boston though they were just taking it to the basket i think it's davis yeah that's what i mean i i think and that's why he's not going to get

finals mvp and and honestly lebron deserves it after what he did in the second half today and just what he means in general. Rondo third? You're kidding. AC? Did you see LeBron was saying the nicknames of the Laker guys when he was talking to Rachel at the end of the game? And he called Rondo Doe? I didn't catch any of that.

He said he called Alex Caruso AC and he called Rondo Doe. And he's like, you know, Doe made some big plays, and that's what Doe does. I'm like, who's Doe? Is there a glossary? I'm just glad he didn't call Alex like Steve. I'll tell you, though, he was good today.

I mean, Caruso, the best case scenario of him where it's just like, here's this fucking annoying guy who's in your jersey, who's tipping out rebounds and is just kind of relentless and he's not that good, but he doesn't care and he's just that guy.

He's the guy that you hate playing pickup against. That's who he was in this game. It was effective. He's strong, too. He had one drive in particular that I was just like, oh, that was huge there were little moments where you're right the secondary guys helped these guys out a little bit

i know plus minus can lie pretty viciously to us but davis was far and away better than everybody else he was plus 17 and lebron was minus two and to prove that um plus minus does because jimmy butler's out there for 43 minutes remember he started five started five of five, but that wasn't all against Davis. He got Dwight in that switch. And I kept thinking like, wait, if you're going to get a switch, if you're going to get a Jimmy Butler and Bam switch against Dwight and AD,

don't end up with Bam having to try to back down Anthony Davis, which they did the first time. Then he got Dwight. He got that bucket at the end of the first quarter that was a mix-up with a Kuzma-LeBron switch. But I thought that what Davis did defensively, even though I was frustrated with him offensively because the interview, they were like, oh, he was a lot better, more assertive on offense. I'm like, he played 12 minutes and had four points in the first quarter.

He wasn't assertive at all. And it was the, the, uh, opposite of that, the entry pass thing that we brought up a little bit earlier, but his defense, I mean, it's just stupid. And you know how great he made that play when bam in the second half where he had already figured out, oh, wait, Bam's going to want to come back to this side if he stops. And he waited on him and blocked him on the right side. And it was like, it was him figuring something out from a move earlier in the game.

It's just so much fun to watch him play on defense. What'd you think, Bam, 75% in that game? I'm bad at this. You guys all scream 61%, 84%. I don't know how you're all good at figuring out what percent anybody is. I thought he had some awesome moments. So I didn't think it was a huge drop off. I didn't, I thought his drives, like the way he can dribble into getting a shot, the way he can pull up. I thought he had a lot of really good moments tonight. So maybe it was rebounding and defense that I wasn't paying enough attention to. So you sound like you're an 80% guy. Yeah, maybe 84. 82?

I thought he was a little different defensively. I didn't think he was the monster that he was in the Boston series. But, you know, I also think there's... Might be because it's not Tice. Well, yeah, you're going to be more confident in the Boston series, right? You're the big kahuna in that series. I want to talk about Butler, but let's take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked

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Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. Okay, Jimmy Butler had the fairly iconic game three. Really memorable. A hardwood classics. No question. Awesome. Just toe-to-toe with LeBron, one of the greatest players of all time, and really gives it to the whole team. not just LeBron, but everybody, and controlled the game and reminded me a lot of the best things that Kawhi did last year in the playoffs, where he's just not only controlling the game, but controlling

the actual speed of the game. And he's just dominating every single aspect of it and controlling it mentally and controlling the energy of it, the whole thing. And he was really good tonight because he didn't really... Nobody else, I think, on the Heat, you would say, played a really good game, right? There were some guys who were okay, but I wouldn't say... In the Boston series, they would get the random Duncan Robinson game. They would get the random hero game. They would get the Iguodala half. They would get the random Duncan Robinson game. They would get the random hero game. They would get the Iguodala half. They would get the BAM game.

Nobody really had a great game offensively. He controlled it. I think being guarded by Davis, I can't even imagine what that's like. My point is, he vaulted a level in these finals from how, you know,

really the whole playoffs and the whole season, but these finals specifically, I don't think we can overstate how important it is to watch somebody go toe-to-toe against these great players like he has. And now just thinking about like his place in the league, you know, you've heard me talk about this for two plus years as we've been doing these pods.

Like I value this the most. I value the winning guys. I value, do you show up in moments like this? Do the other players respect you? How competitive are you? How much does it mean to you? Do you care about stats? All the shit that I care about, that was one of the reasons I wrote

my book about the secret and all that stuff. This guy's the embodiment of this. Now I'm thinking, I don't know what my list is, best and all that stuff, this guy's the embodiment of this. And now I'm thinking like, I don't know what my list is best eight, best nine, but you know, he just has to be mentioned now. And I think that's,

what's changed for him over everything else in these playoffs. Like he just has to be mentioned as one of the best players in the league. Now I don't feel like that's an overreaction. It just depends on how far you want to go with it. Because then I think sometimes we become really guilty of like trying to have to reassess everything and come up with some big picture topic or observation that can really be more about the moment. I mean, he was unbelievable in game three.

He was, I think he's flirted with being a top 10 player at times, but I don't know that he's always been invited into that group top 10. But then I think to be fair to Butler, like why would any of us ever want Carl Anthony Towns before Jimmy Butler? I mean, we can talk about age and all that kind of stuff, but when you really break down where your head is at and you watch two guys, are we ever going to see Carl Anthony Towns do something like that in a Game 3 of an NBA Finals with his team down 2-0?

That seems impossible. I'm not going to put him ahead of Kawhi. The Paul George thing's been a mess. It's been a mess now for a while despite what his ceiling has been. I'd probably put Jimmy ahead of Russell Westbrook, but the Westbrook part of this has been declining except for that blip of a few months that got him on an all-NBA team this year.

Let's talk Harden. That's where I wanted to go. Is it fair to say, if I'm actually trying to win a title, am I better off with Jimmy Butler than James Harden? I know who I like walking onto the court to

have the fuck you win them, but I also, to be fair to Harden, either really think Harden couldn't have gotten out of the East the last couple years and put up big numbers in a finals game. We all know I'm not the biggest Harden guy, but to be fair here, Harden almost got out of the West two years ago against Golden State.

I don't think we should just write off that Harden couldn't do it. Now, would I expect Harden in game seven to be brilliant? You know, probably not. But I don't know if Butler's going to get to a game seven. Is that fair? Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. You're shaking your head a little. Yeah. Well, because I just know what I like in basketball players.

And the stuff Butler, what he did in game three, that's all I want. That's what I've loved for my entire life. And it's like, I think just about every good guy probably rolls over in that situation or does the whole, I'm going to try to be the guy and then it goes badly. Or does it for a quarter and a half half or tries to do it, gets frustrated. Nobody else is joining them and kind of bails on everybody. We've seen all the variations of it and he did it. And now granted the Lakers were half asleep in that game. And I think the fact that Miami so smartly moved away from the zone and did some great adjustments and Davis got in foul trouble.

There were a lot of reasons that game happened. But I'm just really impressed by him. And it made me actually think back to that Philly series where he was the most important guy on the Philly team. In that game seven, I remember us talking about him. Like, wow, I didn't realize that this was going to be like Jimmy Butler's team, but that's kind of how it felt leaving that series. And man, what a tough loss for them. I've had so many Sixers fans that I'm friends with texting me during these last couple rounds being like,

this really hurts. Like, we had this guy. We traded for this guy. It was supposed to be him and, and Ben and Joel, like what the fuck happened. And I think it's a fair question. Yeah.

I mean, when you look at these numbers too, I mean, he's 28, eight boards, 10 assists per game in these four finals games. He's getting to the free throw line, 10 times a game hitting 91% of those.

I mean, he wasn't, I thought Van Gundy brought up a good point if they're going to play you believe uh below the screen that much then you got to maybe just tease them a little bit you know take a couple of those shots to make them feel honest you hit the first one you know maybe you hit the second out of three just to keep a little honest i'd rather butler take a three that doesn't feel entirely comfortable with and kendrick nunn taking 11 shots in a game so i think that's something to maybe think about for game but you're like

whenever i look at somebody taking bad shots, I go, yeah, I'd rather Anthony Davis just post and turn around. You know, I'd rather, I'd rather something else. What I love about Butler though,

specific to that Philly team is yes, it can be abrasive and it's been abrasive. And I don't always love the guy that decides like I'm out of here. I'm out of here. I'm out of here. I'm out of here. But it sounds like Philly didn't want to step up for the extra year for him, which sounds ridiculous in the face of going and giving that same money to the bias Harris.

But that's because they, I guess they felt like they'd given up more recent assets. But while Butler's watching like Simmons and Embiid figure out whose team it is, he's like, I'm just going. All right. You guys could sit over there and figure out who's going to stand where and who's not getting enough touches and whether or not you're ever going to take an outside shot. I'm going. And you need guys like that. So even though I think the Butler momentum can take him into a neighborhood with players that I don't know that he's ever really lived in, and maybe I'm not being fair to it.

The part about him that I absolutely love is I just know that I'm going to trust that he's bringing the fight more often than a lot of these guys were probably too enamored with. Well, you know, the first time we really saw this, I don't know if you remember this, but he's bringing the fight more often than a lot of these guys were probably too enamored with. Well, you know, the first time we really saw this, I don't know if you remember this, but I wrote a column right after- Bulls-Cavs? No, Bulls-Heat. Okay. So the Heat 27 game winning streak, Chicago beats them. And it's the greatest regular season game

of all time. It's an awesome game. I don't... Yeah, I wrote that at the time and I stand by it. It's the best regular season... Best regular season game ever.

They've won 27 straight. They have San Antonio like two games away. They have a chance to go for their 30th straight against San Antonio. It was the second best team in the league.

Everybody's rooting for it. And the Chicago team comes out, no Derrick Rose, and it's Luau Dang, it's Noah, and it's this kid named Jimmy Butler. And Butler has, he just kind of belonged.

And it was kind of one of those revelation games. So that was the first time I remember thinking like, wow, that Jimmy Butler. The second one was when they had that Celtics-Bulls series when Rondo got hurt after two games. Remember that? When it seemed like the Bulls were going to beat the Celtics, the Isaiah Thomas here. The 8-1, yeah. And Butler, that whole series, you could just see. It was like, oh, this is somebody I would want to go down with in a playoff series. This guy's got some real fight. He just didn't have the horses. So he's the quote unquote gamer.

I love seeing him go at LeBron like this. I got to say, I think he's brought out an awesome version of LeBron. It's not like this wasn't there already, but people don't go at LeBron like this. You think of even back to watching the last dance and Jordan, every time somebody went at Jordan, it was either, it was never somebody who played the same position as him other than Drexler that time. You know, it was always like, he's going against Carl Malone or he's going against Ewing or he's going against Barkley, but it was never same position. And when he went same position against Drexler, he destroyed him.

Dino Raja. This LeBron thing. This is kind of what we want. Dino Raja. This LeBron thing, this is kind of what we want. Dino Raja. This is kind of what we wanted from the Kawhi thing, right? Butler's giving us what we thought we were getting

from the Kawhi series that we actually never ended up getting, sadly. Yeah, I don't know. Because the defensive part of this is really interesting because Kawhi was really bad defensively now for a while.

And he was bad in the playoffs. So I don't know what would have happened there. I think they would have just put Paul George on him. As bad as all the Clippers stuff was, I thought Paul George at times was really good against Jamal Murray, at least effort-wise.

But I don't think LeBron can guard Butler one-on-one. I don't. I think at the end of the game three. I mean, when you're doing those drives, and the other thing that Butler does, it's kind of nasty. He gets his elbows and knees up. When you go to meet him at the rim, you better be ready because he's got that down perfectly.

I'm surprised guys aren't losing their front teeth going and trying to meet him at the rim or maybe guys are just not as interested lebron got into it with him a little bit there but the elbow missed but it's not even a knock on lebron but like when yours dialed in as jimmy was in game three to drive deep drive like deep dribble in and then those turnarounds there's really not much you can do with any of that stuff. If you were Giannis and you were watching this series and you were thinking about switching teams and Miami is a team that has cap space, would you be thinking about where you fit in? I'd probably go, I think I'm going to go sign with my brother in LA which one Thanas

there should be an agent right out there have you met Joe he's like hey what's up I just murdered Giannis' last name it is if you added him and they somehow kept Bam and Hero, they would still be under a rookie contract

and then free Agent X. My question with Butler is, I don't know the longevity of some of these guys. The swing guy who goes to the line a ton is a physical kind of player. Those are usually guys with the exception of LeBron that don't usually last in their mid-30s. This is probably his peak.

I don't see another level in him. I think this is the best we're going to see from him. A butler? Yeah. I definitely do. I could see it being the running back that had four straight 370 carry seasons. A Larry Johnson type?

Yeah, not Larry Johnson. Maybe like Emmett right before he goes to the car and stuff like that. I wanted to ask you about I was thinking about something weird about this Laker team. Okay, good. Because I was just going to call a timeout quickly that with the Butler talk and then Giannis free agency, this is dangerously becoming

a first take segment. No, this is dangerously becoming a first take segment. No, no, it was becoming a bill is upset. The Lakers are up three one podcast. No, because they're heavily favored to be up three one. Um, I was trying to pinpoint why this Lakers thing felt like a tiny bit off.

I don't, I think this would be the first team that won the title that had nobody that had kind of been there from the ground floor in a way where the fans were like, oh, I'm attached to that guy. This is, I think, our first hired gun title team. Because even like the Heat, Miami, when they win with Wade, LeBron, and Bosh, Wade was there the whole time, right? They drafted him.

And I was going through all the teams in my head and I was like, I think this is the first one that it was just basically like putting together a fantasy team and it worked. I don't think it's ever happened before. Yeah. I see what you're saying because I did think it was kind of weird. I was seeing some stuff being debated today on social media about like how this is built versus bought you're like look butler's a max free agent too and they traded for dragic and yes they drafted bam and they drafted hero and bringing in duncan robinson and kendrick nunn like there's definitely development parts of this too but you know lebron signed as a free agent max guy and then they traded for anthony davis so i mean is it really that different just because danny green was a free agent, Max Guy, and then they traded for Anthony Davis. So, I mean, is it really that different just because Danny Green was a free agent too,

and they got rid of their draft picks? So, yeah, I mean, look, Miami has more development side of it, but it's not like it's, this isn't like homegrown versus the mercenaries. I don't, I'm not, I don't think that at all. If anything, I think Miami is almost a new team too. Like the, the guy, the longest, the longest terms of service guy is like draggage okay but back to your original point that's why like i kept saying this with the east last year and then this entire nba season is that it was all going to feel new so whatever those lakers flaws that

would seem overwhelming especially at the restart you're like wait a minute why can't anybody shoot what's the rotation what's going on do they really have enough depth there were just as many things about the clips like hey they're ever going to play like two weeks in a row together? No. Okay, am I supposed to buy into Denver? No. Am I going to buy into Houston? Obviously no.

Utah loses one of their big guys at the end of the year. So I think the storyline of all this, even with the unprecedented nature of the whole restart and the bubble, is that whatever it was, it was going to feel new because we're always going to feel like the first version of these teams is flawed because we've never seen them do anything together before, right? So I think what you're talking about, though, to get it back to you on the unprecedented part of this,

because what, Boston had Pearson, the other guys came along, Dirk was there in Dallas for a while, Oklahoma City was all young guys, Miami was bought, but yet it was Wade that was there before. So yeah, that's what you're saying. Golden State had Curry basically since 2009. Yeah, I'll give you that. Even Toronto last year, Lowry had been there for, I think, six years and they had lost. This is the first team I could remember winning a title where nobody on the team had kind of had this tough loss on the team. You know what I mean? Where it's like, oh man, like with the Pierce thing. And I remember writing about it at

the time was meaningful because it felt like we had gone through this whole arc with him, right? Where he was this young gun. He was awesome. They almost made the finals. Then he gets stabbed, goes to a dark place. He had kind of this up and down roller coaster ride and then kind of became an adult. And then they brought in KG. And then I just remember being so happy for him. And with this Lakers thing, it's like, all right, I'm happy the Lakers are back, would be my reaction if I was a Laker fan. We're back.

We're relevant. We did it again. Greatest franchise, All that stuff. But I don't know who you would attach yourself to out of the actual players. Would it be Jeannie Buss? I'm so happy for Jeannie. It's been such a hard road. Yeah, but they don't care

and you wouldn't care either. You wouldn't care. If the Celtics won a title and it wasn't one homegrown guy, you could talk yourself into it. It would have been nice if they were able to hang on. I think we would have talked about something to caruso you would have been like i'm so happy for alex avery bradley finally i just knew it i always knew he was more than a combo guard what about cleveland and what about cleveland and uh well they didn't win it until 16 because kairi had been there for three years and then lebron comes back i really been there for three years, and then LeBron comes back. Kyrie had been there for five. Well, I meant when the guys came back.

But yes, you're right. I mean, because it took him two years. This is our first free agent title, basically. The Miami titles, to me, are free agent titles. Yeah, but Wade was there, though. They drafted him. He was top five pick. This feels like a made-up category.

Why? Because you're acting like this is the only time free agency has impacted the outcome. I think this is what the league's like from now on. I think we're going to look at this team as the first of many that a team that got thrown together with these short contracts

and then all of a sudden it's like, wow, we just won the title with these guys. Amazing. You know what I mean? Because I felt that way. I felt that way in 08. I remember feeling that that year. Pierce was the only guy I felt like I had any attachment to. I didn't know KG. I didn't have any attachment to Ray Allen.

By the time we got to 2012, those were my guys. I had been through all these wars with them. I love those guys. But in 08, I felt like I had just met them. Wow. Were you less excited then when they won their first title in, what, 22 years? No, I was excited that we won. I was

excited that the Celtics were good again. And if you're a Laker fan, you're latching on now to the 17 championships thing, even though the first five happened in Minneapolis. I mean, let's be honest. It's one of the most bogus things of all time. I dare you to tweet that minutes after the trophy goes up.

Yeah. Congratulations on your 12th title. I want to see it. That would be a good re-entry for you into Twitter. So if I live in Oklahoma City, do I get to be like, man, we've only won one title in 79 in Seattle. At least i have one coming at least we have one you've won 12 you did not win 17 look whatever this is why 2010 hurts you so much because you think it should be if rashid walled Wallace... Rasheed Wallace could get one more rebound.

One more breath. His lungs were so beaten up by the end of that game for other reasons. If Ronald Test didn't hit that three. And Nate Robinson playing three minutes, I'll never get over. Just play him 11 minutes. He would have run around.

The Lakers were afraid of him. Lakers are up 3-1 in the NBA finals. We're talking about Nate Robinson's rotation 10 years ago. Listen, congratulations on your 12th title. I already knew

you were going to do this. I already knew this was happening. You should make a shirt. Let's congratulate everyone in OKC on the 1979 title. This is great.

Will you make ringer merch that says number 12 with an la logo and like a 12 on the back to say it's such a great argument because then the laker fans can come back with you won most of your titles when you know they didn't have a three-point line it's like ah you're right i'll i'll admit i have no comeback understood i've never understood that counter whenever like somebody would you know it's going to happen it's going to be brought up and people are going to take their sides in it but then that well the celtics

only one there is what well yeah but it was in the same city you know listen five of the titles were in minneapolis end of story right it's not like they're called the balls the the uh like the Alps. Fair. You're smiling. I don't see many lakes. Let's bring in somebody from OKC to see if they count the 1979 Sonics title. I'm counting. I'm messing with you. I just knew this was happening.

I knew this segment was going to happen. So if you're an Atlanta fan, you're like, well, we haven't won one in Atlanta, but we have that 58 St. Louis Hawks title. So we do have one. We have the one they won in St. Louis. How mad do you get when American-born players with Greek heritage play for the Greek national baseball team? I hope you...

You know what? I was off this. Now I want to see how long you're going to go. If we do 20 more minutes on this, I'll be... If we only do 20 more. No, I'm good. you're going to go. If we do 20 more minutes on this, I'll be... We only do 20 more. No, I'm good. We're going to take a quick break and come back.

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for your business? It's the ability to reach further with access to over 1400 lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit mx.ca slash business platinum. So Lakers win this one. We assume they're going to win the title.

It's Friday night, three days rest. Was the bubble a success? How will you remember this whole playoff thing? I'm not talking about the social justice stuff, all that stuff. I'm talking about the quality of basketball, the lack of home court advantage, the quality of play round to round. Did the right team win? Because I would argue that the right team did win.

And you could go through the series and be like, what the fuck happened to the Clippers? I have no idea. Oh, Miami had these injuries. That sucks. I did a column in 2012 about footnote titles because I don't like the term asterisk. I think there's only been a couple of titles over the years where you could really be like, man, that one gets an asterisk. Like I think the 88 Pistons, Isaiah spraining his ankle at the worst possible time.

I really feel like the 88 Pistons were better that year, but it's tough to say asterisk because the Lakers still won the title. So I call it a footnote title. I don't know if this will qualify as a footnote title because it's not their fault. The Clippers didn't show up, you know, like the Clippers rolled over. It's not, it's not their fault that they stayed healthy and Miami didn't. And I really do feel like they were the best team.

They had this amazing combination of guys, this duo that is the best duo we've seen in 19, 20 years. And it feels like the right team won. So from a basketball standpoint, I'm going to say the bubble is a success. There's no debate. Who's on the other side of that? There's no way. This has been unbelievable.

And I love that they did this. I've said this about college football. I said about the NFL with the NFL stuff that we had this past week. It's like, oh, here we go. You know, they should, well, you look, baseball had a little rough start there and it looks like they're going to pull off their season. We're going to have a world series champ. However, you want to frame this, but they tried and they tried to pull this off. And just, if we go back to the beginning of all the doubt and what's the point, and you can't do this, listen to the scientists, listen to the medical people when all of them disagree with each other.

And that's where I think I just in the past when we talked about COVID and its impact on life, and at least for us with sports, because it's something I'm clearly more comfortable talking about. It was just, okay, well, why can't you put together a plan and at least figure it out? Can't you figure this thing out and give yourself a chance of completing the season? Now there's some in the camp that said exposing anybody taking any risk greater than zero is a mistake. I don't know if the world works that way, but that's why I look at this and I'm just like, I don't know Adam Silver other than interviewing him a couple of times, but he's been incredible this entire time. Like, you know, look, I'm an NBA guy. We all know that. We know how big of an NBA guy you are. It sounds weird to say like, oh, I'm proud of this league, but I'm proud

of these guys. I'm proud of the players for putting up with what wasn't perfect. Um, but I would always think that players wanted to play and that's why they voted overwhelming to come back and play. So I don't know how anybody other than unless they just wanted to zag on a TV show would look at the culmination of this and think that this was anything but a massive success. And I think it's been a really special LeBron season from the sense of all these other people either folded or they didn't hold up physically or, you know, they're blaming whatever.

And that dude just put his head down and they ripped through everybody they played, you know, from what they lose to. They looked a little shaky in the bubble. I think they were trying to figure out. They were bad. No Bradley and no Rondo. And I think they're trying to kind of figure out what their new identity was

and get back to where they were in March. But from that second Portland game on, they ripped through everybody and it's a really good team. And you think about them historically, um, best team ever. Well, the size,

you know, if you start matching them up against different teams, the, just those two guys are going to get to 55 points. Like you just have to know that go, go again, whatever series you want to play with them. It's like, well, those two are going to get to 55 points. Like you just have to know that go, go again, whatever series you want to play with them. It's like,

well, those two are going to score 55. So you got, you have to match that. And they're just going to keep throwing out three point shooters who are going to get wide open shots. And if somebody misses a couple, they'll take that guy out.

They'll put in the next guy. And eventually two of them will make a couple like today, Danny green, who you would, you know, I don't think we saw him in the fourth quarter. It was MIA. And I actually thought he played pretty well in that game, defensively at least.

But it's a weird team. It's a little unconventional because the physicality combined with the finesse, you know, where they can crash the boards, but they can also... LeBron can create these just amazing corner threes, whatever. And I can't remember seeing another team quite like this. Can you?

Like this specific version, I don't know if there's a team I remember that was like this. Davis is the best player LeBron's ever played with. Yeah, I'm starting to... I used to think Wade until they win a title, but now they're going to win a title. So, I think that's the... I think him as a two-way guy, I still think Wade in 2011

was incredible. Yeah, I'll give you that. I mean, and then, you know, you go back to earlier Wade and his run, but I'm probably giving Davis too much credit projecting on what the next couple of years would be like. I mean, eventually this LeBron thing is going to slow down. I would think, I mean, it's, I don't know. I've given up. I've given up waiting for that moment. Like, fuck he's 35. He looks fine. Yeah. But if you look at LeBron's run against Portland, 27, 10, and 10, against Houston, 26, 10 and a half, seven and a half assists,

against Denver, 27, 10 and a half, and nine. We're talking rebound assists. Right now in this series, he's 28, 11, eight and a half. I mean, he actually really hit threes all that well in the middle two rounds. He's been a little bit better after a great start against Portland, but the threes that he's hitting, he hit two bombs today where you just went, okay, all right, like there he is. This is the part where he separates himself really. And Kawhi had put together like a four year playoff stretch where it was unbelievable. And then now that he has the three, one blown lead in that horrific game seven on his resume, if you start to go like LeBron doesn't ever have that awful game he just doesn't it i mean you know how hard that we did 10 years ago it's just yeah really i mean starting in 12 it just stopped

happening completely yeah so i don't i'm not saying there's nothing there and you know with that much usage yeah maybe there's there's a weak semi-triple-double in one of the playoff games. You want to dig through all of them in the last decade, fine. But we haven't had a game from him in this entire run where he had 16 in a Houston game. But if you go back to that game, that thing was over. They were okay with it. So the Davis LeBron combo bill, I think speaks to also, um, why, when you're faced with a trade and you can move all of these things. And the reason that trade got criticized so much is that there was a ceiling that could

have been great, but there was a floor that could have been terrible considering Ingram's health stuff, where Lonzo was at, where the picks ended up landing. You could look at it and go, oh, this is going to be terrible for new Orleans. And then there's a version of it. Ingram ends up being really good. We're like, you know what? At least they got something in a couple other pieces out of this whole thing. But that's why you do it because these two guys back when we were in March, you go, you know what? It's going to be hard to bet against these two guys because I just trust them probably more than any other duo in the

league. Well, especially in games like this, when, you know, you know, you knew we were at, I love the under, I didn't bet it, but this felt like a slow methodical street fight kind of game. And what was the total? I mean, I don't know, but like the game three total was, I don't know, two 16,

something like that. So it was probably around there. I didn't even look, but I was thinking about if I was going to bet, I would have bet the under because game fours perennially are the street fight game. They're usually, you know, if you look at the hardwood classics, there's always a lot of game force through the years. The teams have, they've tried all their adjustments. They kind of know what to do against each other. And then it turns it out, turns down to like,

what seven guys do I trust? What eight guys do I trust? And they, they kind of go at it. Um, but I think in those kinds of games, that's when they get tough. Cause you know, one of them is going to go to the line 12, 13 times. Right. And tonight it was LeBron Friday. It could be,

could be Davis, could be Davis with like the 14 for 16 from the line, but they're always able to get to the line. Um, they're always able to get these offensive rebounds with Rondo and Caruso tipping stuff back out or Davis just flying in. It's a really good team. I'm impressed. And

the supporting cast being passable, I think is really surprising because I just didn't think they were going to be good enough. No, Markeith has had some moments. I've never been in love with him. He was washed. He's at least playable. Right. And Kuz some moments. I've never been in love with him, but he's playable. Yeah, he's at least playable.

And Kuzma, who I've been off of now for a while, and you just feel like he's just sort of out there doing his own thing. You know what I think it was, too, Bill, is that we've become so obsessed with the third guy on these teams because that's what it's been for a long time. It was the third guy with Golden State even before, well, Durant,

because it was Draymond. I mean, Draymond's a better third player than the third player for anyone that's on this Lakers team. The third guy in Toronto probably didn't really exist, but we still look at that Toronto thing as a great run to them. But if you're doing footnote championships, I mean, let's face it, they weren't going to beat Golden State with Durant and Klay. Toronto's a pretty big footnote. Right. i actually think toronto gets more of a pass

you know it's funny how toronto will be like oh you guys overlook us you don't give us enough credit because we're in toronto but actually because you're in toronto you don't get nearly enough shit for winning that title against the gold like everybody was just so in love with the toronto and kawaii story that i actually don't think that they're criticized as much as an american team a big american franchise would be winning that title with players and saying, oh, wait a minute, that other team didn't have two of their main guys. And again, especially the way Durant was playing before he got hurt because he was the, he was the best player in the league when he went down. Yeah. So my question to you would be,

if you run through the last decade, Cleveland had the third guy, Miami had the third guy, Boston had a third guy before that. I think that era is over. I think it's a two-guy league now. I think it's switched. Because of money or because of design? Because of money. Yeah. Because the salaries are out of whack. The only way really to have that third guy is if you're in a situation where, like if you're Miami, you draft somebody like Bam and he becomes a third guy while he's on a rookie contract. That's how you get a third guy. You can't acquire a third guy in free agency.

It's too expensive. But they kept talking about it. The Lakers part when it didn't look as good. And you were right to, I don't think anybody that would watch Lakers all year and go, like admitted Lakers fans, there were moments where you saw they were supporting cash. You're like, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. But when it comes to 40 minutes from two guys that are top five players in the game, that's really your formula. So I don't know that the third guy thing is anything where you go, oh, I want one less awesome player and I want more depth because we kept wondering what their depth and their closing unit was going to be. And it hasn't really mattered because those two guys are so good. And like you've pointed out at the very top of this,

the secondary guys have been way more good than bad. Much maligned KCP last two years. And Rondo. Rondo, the Laker fans were freaking out about the first half of the season. They were like, what does Vogel, what does he have on Vogel? You know?

Well, you know, Vogel's another fascinating piece of this to me because there was a world in which he wasn't going to be a head coach again. Like the Orlando thing went really bad. He ended up, he got fired, I think, with a year to go in his contract. And he ended up working kind of under the radar for Brad Stevens, doing consultant stuff, I think for free. I don't even know if he was allowed to get paid for it. I don't know how that worked, but it was this

kind of conciliary type, just kind of learning from Brad how the Celtics did things and stumbled into that job. I think even when his name surfaced, it was like, well, they're obviously going to hire Jason Kidd. They didn't. And now Vogel, this is, I think, the most improbable coach of a title team probably since Paul Westhead. And Paul Westhead got that job because Jack McKinney got in a bike accident and ends up coaching the 1980 Lakers to a title. The Vogel thing, like, if he didn't get this Laker job, I don't know if he would have gotten another job. And I think they really liked him because they knew he was going to bring a defensive mindset to a team that really needed a defensive identity. They have to worry about the offense part, but he's done a good job. I think the best coach in the league, it's him or Nick Nurse and Spoh did all the adjustments and the Lakers

responded. It's been impressive. Yeah. I love Spoh. I'm right there with you, but this is why I think the whole coaching matchup stuff, you know, it gets kind of stupid. Um, part of the stuff with the anti Brad Stevens things that we've been over where you're like, oh, you know, like, do you really think he went to bed at night going like, I have no idea what's going on. I guess I'll just never figure it out. It's Spoh. Like, it's just, it becomes kind of ridiculous, but I'm glad you brought up the Vogel point. Cause I heard a different story. I'm not a hundred percent on it, but I'm going to share it anyway. Hopefully it gets aggregated and it ends up being a thing that's inaccurate and has our names all over it.

But I had heard Vogel talk with Phil Jackson because you're absolutely right. Like when Vogel got bounced from Orlando, you're like, okay, he's done. Like he's done. It was over. He liked him with the Pacers. And then Vogel, to his credit, was like, I was way behind the times. Like I needed to evolve I was bringing something to Orlando that wasn't really working granted it's not nearly as good

as his team it's the Lakers team but I had heard that Vogel met with Phil and then when the Lakers were going through their what at the time felt like a debacle with the coaching hiring that Phil told Jeannie you gotta meet with Vogel you gotta meet with Vogel. You got to meet with Vogel. You're going to like him. He's like, he really, really impressed me. And that's who you should hire. So it would actually make sense because of that relationship and the trust Jeannie has in Phil. But think how silly it can be

and how we treat coaches. Like coaches become the newest, hottest tech stock where you're convinced it's this thing. Like this city was upset that they didn't get Monty Williams. Right. And they were like, oh, we didn't get Monty Williams right and they're like oh we didn't get Monty Williams we got Vogel really again I'm not knocking Monty Williams but in the moment you could just be so weird about like oh this is a hot name like it's just all about the human stock price of these coaches where if you get a guy in the way down you think

it's a disaster and somehow monty williams becomes this like far superior choice which i'm not saying monty williams can win with his team but it seems it's not like he missed out on phil and ended up with patino i'm biased on this because i like vogel i try to keep it on the down low but uh he really got fucked in orlando If you actually go and like, you look at what happened there, it was just a disaster and the organization switched and they're trying to play young guys

and tank for draft picks. And that's like your worst case scenario if you're a coach, because, you know, that's on your record. If you look at the stuff he did at Indiana, those teams really overachieved and they didn't have a top 10 pick, and Granger

got hurt in 2012 and that was supposed to be their best guy. He was their most expensive guy. And they kind of patched it together and were able to get to the Eastern finals two years around. I always thought he was impressive, but he also belonged to this other era where, you know, you're building defenses around Roy Hibbert and verticality and everything switched that Atlanta series. What was that guy's name? Piro Antic? Piro Antic? Antic.

Remember he was 25 feet from the basket? And the Hibbert pulling Hibbert out. And Hibbert's like, what's this? And that's kind of the year basketball really changed in all these different ways. Does Antic not get enough credit? I think it's, people say Steph Curry. I always say, what about P Does Antic not get enough credit? I think it's people say Steph Curry. I always say,

what about Pierre Antic? But that flips the script for him. And then all of a sudden it's like those Thibodeau vocal types, you got to bring some other wrinkle to it, but they figured it out. I thought they did a really good job today with some of their adjustments, especially the way they defended Butler and dared him to shoot threes. By the way, Marcus Smart would have taken 23s. If you were playing Marcus Smart, that would have been like, fine, I'll go down in flames. I can't pass this up. This 25-footer is too irresistible.

And Butler was just like, no, I don't want to do that. I would rather do this and kind of play it into their hands a little bit. And you're right. I think he probably should have taken a few of them. LeBron did the same thing. They were going under on LeBron. Go ahead. Knock yourself out from 28.

And then it's like, all right, fuck you. And he made two of them. And then, you know, they had to recalibrate what they did. I thought it was a really good game. I actually would watch this game again because I thought there was a lot of high level stuff going on on both ends. And it wasn't like especially well played. There were a lot of turnovers, a lot of sloppiness, but the both ends and it wasn't like especially well played there were a lot of turnovers a lot of sloppiness but the chess match of it i enjoyed it was weird

though because it was one of the first times it felt a little dead um and well because i think they were tired it was four and seven nights four games in seven nights i i felt like the legs weren't totally there but i'm talking like the whole thing the atmosphere granted i'm not making a bubble joke here at all where you know okay we get it hey pat crowd tonight or hey look yeah just like all right we got it we got all that content out there the jokes about nobody being in there but i would say like there was even a different rejoin music that they used that i had never heard before that sounded like a bad video game and i just was walking around my house like during the commercials kind of just not pacing because it's not like i bet on the game or i just was walking around my house like during the commercials kind of just not pacing

because it's not like i bet on the game or i have a rooting interest but i'm just going this is just this whole game feels off it feels weird but i would agree that there were little things that you would see where you go you know there's just little adjustments and van gundy's always pointing him out all the time which is a great help you know because i don't think all of us pick it up as well as those that have played at a high level or have been coached i was glad they talked about the zone stuff because i felt like that was a really important subplot and i was waiting for them to bring it up and then they finally did and they actually went into what they were doing which i thought was cool yeah because the zone breakdown everybody always knows this but you want to catch it in the middle

of it and it's entirely different when it's somebody LeBron size catching and making the decision there that it is the Celtics wings, you know, and those Celtics wings aren't necessarily small, but LeBron's just a completely different level. And then you throw in his passing vision and then it's like, okay, which side of the baseline do I want to get to the Anthony Davis? That's why early on, I'm like, okay, well, this is especially once LA woke up after six minutes in game one, I go, this isn't going to be a series at all.

And then you add the injuries. Four titles. It's impressive for LeBron. He... Kobe had five, but Kobe was the best player on two. LeBron has four, is the best player on four. You're talking about Russell with

11. Jordan was six. Mike in, I think, had five. I mean, they didn't even have the fucking shot clock for those, but I think we have to at least mention them. And then LeBron with four. Were two of those in the Tri-Cities, though? I don't remember.

I know the Laker fans know all about those Minneapolis titles. I know there's a lot of big Jim Power fans I've noticed in Maine. I remember a doubleheader with Rochester in the Tri-Cities. And they had the shifty Italian. Too bad. Four. So if he gets to probably the favorites next year, too, he gets to God. So if he gets to probably the favorites next year too, he gets to five.

Now you're really putting together the totality of the career case versus MJ, which is how he beats MJ. Because I don't think he beats him with the peak, but if it's career, it's going to be unassailable

at some point. Wait, so you think it's still open to debate? Will there be a last dance part two? It'll come right out before the finals start again? I think I'm always going to say MJ, but the case for LeBron will be the career. It'll be the totality

of two solid decades of a dude who won titles in 2012 and four between 2012 and 2020 and all of these top three MVP finishes for MVPs in five years titles for three different teams. There's going to be this, all the point assist records. He's going to break all the playoff records. He's going to have, there's going to be the

totality of the case that people are going to be able to wave when they're defending it. There's something I want to bring up um yeah because for me it's mj and it was reinforced watching him close out every one of those games we went back and watched and i'm not just talking last second shots i'm talking plays with two minutes left i'm talking that lakers finals game that we watch where he goes length of the court and pulls up and sends it over time and changes the entire series it was a reinforcement of something now i've always argued hey skill wise i don't think there's this big gap and i think that sometimes the resume thing gets

really stupid where you'd go would anybody ever argue that joe montana was better than brady now because brady lost three of them like of course not you should is it just because brady has a little bit more i mean magic johnson with five rings still doesn't get enough credit when you're like look in his peak he made it to nine finals in 12 years. Oh, I forgot magic when I did the ranks thing. I'm sorry. Magic.

Yeah. Magic has five. So I saw, you know, some of the MJ LeBron content that you just can't avoid. And the pro MJ crowd that look, it's just like politics. Who's ever on the far extremes.

I can't stand either one of them. Whatever group is like so far away from the center. It's just like, I can't stand either of you. And that's how I feel about like psychotic MJ or psychotic LeBron guy. But when it's brought up that LeBron is doing this at age 35 and then Jordan fans were like, oh really? Cause what was Jordan doing at 35? And you're like, Hey assholes. One guy entered the league at 19. The other guy entered the league at 21. He missed almost his entire second season. And then he missed basically two full regular seasons. And then at 35, 36, 37 didn't play. And I always thought the last two

Jordan years add to his legacy in Washington for what he did as opposed to detract from it. Put it 31, 32, 33, 34. To say that LeBron at 35, never missing any seasons and entering the league two years younger than MJ, that that's somehow the same type of mileage. It just isn't. It just isn't. I think MJ is better.

I'm siding with MJ in the big picture thing, but that's a very bad anti-LeBron argument. Assess. Talked about it a million times, but the advantages just favor the modern athlete

versus the guys from MJ's era. You can't compare the longevity because it's not fair. The stuff... I remember... I talked about this on a pod five years ago because Maverick Carter told me about just all the money LeBron spends on his body to keep himself in tip-top shape. Because I was like, what's the one thing people don't realize with LeBron? He's like how much time, effort, energy, and money he puts in his body. He wants to stay at his peak performance

level at all times. And the reality is in 2015, 2020, whatever, there's more ways to do that. There's better everything. There's better knowledge of your body, all that stuff. And that's when it gets really hard to compare guys from different eras. MJ's era was just starting to figure that stuff out. But when you were 35 in MJ's era, you were 35. You were feeling it. It wasn't like it is now. And that's why the more I think about

this greatest player stuff, I almost feel like you got to do 20-year eras because I think each era is so different. Russell was... Russell gets no credit whatsoever. For the first 25 years, he's hands down the greatest player ever. And then Kareem for the next 15 years

is hands down the greatest player ever for that era. And then it's MJ. And now it's LeBron for the last 20. And maybe that's the way we should look at it. You should look at it like generationally. So I don't know how you can... I had a lot of trouble doing in my book. I'm doing this pyramid and I'm putting like Bob Pettit next to Carl Malone. And it's like Bob Pettit played nine years and was this balding dude who was, you know,

great score rebounder, but playing in a league where every, every team had one black guy. And it's like, how am I supposed to compare him to Carl Malone? This is apples and oranges. Well, no, I'm with you on that one. I don't think we should just have to do time machine all the time. Cause it completely devalues anything the previous generations have done.

I just don't know the LeBron MJ one, to me, at least as close enough. I just don't like that. This idea that LeBron is being lauded as the only one that's ever done this with 35 when Jordan was doing this 34, 35. And it's like, yeah, but it's just, you're, you're basically like, LeBron is being lauded as the only one that's ever done this with 35 when Jordan was doing this 34-35. And it's like, yeah, but it's just you're basically like there are extra seasons there that LeBron has played to get to this point.

But if you're going to go science on me, I can't counter that. So I've struggled with it. Look, I didn't write a book. I don't have the definitive history of basketball book on my credits, but I've struggled with being real about what would happen in the time machine version of this with also not wanting to discredit these guys because if we're just doing rings, then Russell gets dumped on continuously

in all of these arguments. Like why is Jordan just the best when we're talking about Bill Russell and his game seven record? And granted, some of the stats are ridiculous because he just dribbled up the court and took a shot immediately. So that's why you have 40 rebounds in some of these games when you look at the

possession totals but uh well the one thing but the one thing i really valued it's impossible to solve the one thing i really valued with that that i really when i was trying to figure out my book and i read every book and tried to get all the different vantage points i could is there is like real value to the quotes from the people who were there watching it. And everybody who was there for Russell was like, this is the guy, like, this is the greatest force we have. If he's on your team, you win. And it's just everybody saying that everybody who played against him, his teammates, all that stuff. And it's the same stuff people are saying about MJ. And, you know, I think LeBron has a chance much like Kobe did when Kobe in 08, 09, and 2010 turned himself into a top 10, top 12 all-time guy because of this kind of second prime he had.

That's what we're seeing with LeBron now. There's a world in which 2017, 18 range, it should have started to tail off, and it just didn't. And now he's with Davis. He's got this cohort who's there at least another year, I think. I don't think Davis is going to leave. I think Davis is going to

do a shorter deal. Like we've talked about, I thought what we talked about was smart because other teams are never just going to admit defeat. They're going to admit defeat. They're going to play angles. They're going to hope. Like anything, you never know.

I mean, when LeBron left Miami, the 2014 bill, remember, most people thought he was going to do one more year and then he'd probably bounce. And it was so ugly in that second series, the rematch against San Antonio, that LeBron was like, all right, you know what? It's time to go on. Wade isn't playing a ton. It's something I brought up before. I think people, for whatever reason, resist this information, but it's true. And LeBron decides. So you never know. There could be things, weird things that would happen. What if the Clippers had beaten them in the Western Conference Finals? And then all of a sudden there's turmoil and they're like, oh, this isn't the right coach. All the things that happen with negative outcomes to these different teams. But

the way this is going right now, it would be, it just seems impossible that Anthony Davis would let clutch, uh, advise him the entire way, get him to LA, get him out of new Orleans, help out their guy too. And LeBron and then say, oh yeah, let's go have you sign somewhere else. And KCP, he wins too. Yeah. They got a couple of contracts and he actually came up big. The funniest thing would be if Davis went to the Knicks after this. Then the Laker fans would be in the same situation the Toronto fans were last year with Kawhi, where you're like, well, you want us?

Good luck. Thanks. All right. Russillo, you have one more podcast this week? Yeah. Matt Leinart, USC legend, Arizona Cardinals legend. Rob Stone, co-worker. That's right. I haven't seen Rob since I moved here.

Well, Rob's got four kids. I don't, you know. Yeah, I don't think we're a good fit. Yeah, we're not a good fit. He's basically just a chauffeur for his kids. All right, so you're on that pod. And then we'll probably do some sort of wrap-up pod next week here. But that draft's not for another six weeks.

I don't know what they're doing about free agency. I've heard free agency might be December 1st now. It seems like they're stringing everything along because they know the next season's not going to start anytime soon. So they might try to elongate things. I'm sure you've heard the same. Yeah, I think our info, what was it, two weeks ago

we were talking about the start of the season? I don't know if it was last week or the last one we did. But yeah, well, let's do one more. So yeah, my liner pod will come out on Thursday. And we have a professional life coach

that's going to join us. Actually, a famous guy to give some life advice. All right. Rousseau, good to see you. Remember, the Lakers only won 12 titles. At Pennzoil, we have one job, pioneering a motor oil so advanced,

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Available at your local Canadian tire. Enrollment required. Keep your receipts. Other conditions apply. See Pennzoil.ca slash warranty for full details. Life and death were two very realistic, coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to, my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that

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And here's that conversation right now. All right, we're taping this 1. He was one of the true icons of my childhood. And here's that conversation right now. All right, we're taping this 1.30 Pacific time, this specific piece. Chuck Klosterman is here. Just found out Eddie Van Halen died about a half hour ago. And this is one of the few people that I feel like we could just turn the mics on and go and talk about. I'm sad. The guy was an icon. Hard to imagine, hard to remember music without him, at least for me. Somebody you've written about a lot.

What was your first reaction? To his death or to Van Halen in general? Just the whole thing. Well, I mean, his death is, of course, sad. In a sense, it does feel like he has been dying for a while. I mean, there a a real strong rumor that he had died i think about three months ago um but then he went like went to a tool concert after this you know seemed like he had recovered um you know i i i

my relationship with van halen is you know i met him one time when I interviewed him and that was very cool, but it is the longest relationship I've had with any musician as a consumer. I mean, it was like, so I'm the seventh kid in my family. One of my brothers was 11 years older than me and he had like a Monte Carlo and he would drive me and my sister to school and we would listen to the first Van Halen album on a track. This is like when I was in kindergarten, I think first grade. So I, I like, I didn't know what it was or who Van Halen was, or really even like the conception of what rock music meant.

It was just like music was music. But I, I liked those songs then. I liked them when I was six. And then when 1984 came out, it was almost sort of surprising to me that this music that I got into as sort of a normal kid, normal adolescent, was connected back to this early thing, you know? I I'm sure that there's probably no musician who has sort of shaped my taste and what I like about music and in to a degree popular culture than Eddie Van Halen because you know he was just like obviously technically amazing guitar player he was just like, obviously, technically amazing guitar player. He was also sort of underrated as like kind of a rhythm musical person, like in terms of the way the songs were constructed. But I mean, the big thing, almost more than over like, you know, the ability of their hands or whatever. The real key is the sound that the person is able to pull out of the instrument.

And Eddie Van Halen is, along, I guess, with Tony Iommi, the most copied hard rock guitarist. But it has really never been replicated. I mean, because people cannot replicate the tone of his instruments, you know. And it's, I don't know, that's kind of just what I think about when I think about this. It's just the way Van Halen songs sound and how instantly recognizable they are, even if he's doing things that a lot of other musicians, you know, could have done in eighth grade or whatever. It sounded different when he did. Yeah. I feel like he was a one-on-one, you know, when I, when I think of like, all right, what made this guy special? It's like, I don't even know who

I would compare it to. I know Hendrix was dropped with him, stuff like that. But for me, like growing up as a kid in the 80s, they were the first band that seemed to matter after the classic rock guys, right? And all of those bands. And they were like the generation that kind of belonged to the generation I was going into. And it was like, well, these are our guys, Van Halen. And when 1984 became as big as it was, it was really kind of stupefying in the moment. It was like, cause they were over there as this stadium rock band, this new generation, but then to watch them become massively popular and be on MTV every hour was kind of crazy to watch.

And there were some people who loved Van Halen at the time who didn't totally like it. Oh yeah. The, the, my brother who I mentioned, my brother hated 1984. He hated the fact there were keyboards on there.

Um, he liked the song Panama, but like, he thought like jump was terrible. He thought all waves is terrible. Um, there was always part of that. You know what I mean?

Van Halen still felt like a young band in 1984. They had several records. But it's just, you know, there are some individuals who just kind of create these shifts in musical culture. And he was one of these people. Because Van Halen, but specifically, well, it wasn't just him. It was him and David Lee Roth, I guess, who changed sort of the caricature of what hard rock and metal was. That prior to the first Van Halen record, it was really kind of built in this like black Sabbath, deep purple, just that there was a, you know, UFO maybe.

It's like these bands who were, seemed to only kind of work in this, in this one sort of limited range of the, particularly the kind of person who'd be into it. And, you know, Van Halen made metal less heavy, more melodic, and much more inclusive, in the sense that Van Halen had tons of female fans. And I really hope I don't get this wrong,

but I remember an interview I'm pretty sure Billy Corrigan did with Eddie Van Halen. This is probably 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago now. And they were talking about Sonic Youth and how Sonic Youth had given an interview. I think it was Kim Gordon or something. Maybe it was Thurston Moore talking about how how what a bummer it was for like Sonic Youth to have to play in Iowa and have to like play in Nebraska and stuff and how much they hated it and what Billy Corrigan was sort of celebrating was the fact that Van Halen was the exact opposite of that they were like playing in the middle of nowhere is the same as playing in New York or in California it is the it was the most almost like consciously monocultural thing that there was no limitation as to who could be a Van Halen fan. You could like them for all these different reasons. You could like them seriously.

You could kind of like them ironically. You could like them as a pop band. You could like them as somebody who's like, the musicianship is so incredible. I mean, I just, I don't know if it's, I mean, I would say it's impossible now for there to be any kind of musical artist that would be as sort of across the board acceptable as a band like Van Halen is. Well, to continue that point, you think about the concept of approval rating with athletes or musicians, things like that. And you go through all the famous bands. And, you know, like take Led Zeppelin, for example.

Huge backlash to them pretty much from when they hit their peak all the way through. And yeah, I remember you wrote a great piece for Grantland about, what was it, one of their last concerts? Yeah, their Nebworth concert. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Van Halen, up until they broke up You know, they got a little bit of backlash

With 1984 just because As you said, it was Eddie on the keyboard And it just seemed to some people Like it was an obvious sellout I didn't feel that way at all, I just felt like they were smart It was smart to put your music on MTV But for the most part, as the years have passed since

At least the David Lee Roth era I think is about It was smart to put your music on MTV. But for the most part, as the years have passed since, at least the David Lee Roth era, I think is about as respected of an era as I can remember from a band. My son got into rock music, I don't know, three years ago when he started playing the bass. And it was fun to introduce him to these different bands. And he really liked kind of kick-ass old school rock. And I was like,

oh man, I can't wait to play him some of these Van Halen things. And watching him react to some of these Van Halen songs, they're just bangers, man. They're iconic. They're going to live on for as long as we have music. They're going to have nine songs everyone's going to love forever. I mean, there was some pushback against the early Van halen records for two reasons one well one that was this it was the loudness and the volume of it actually similar to when you know it's odd eric clapton we don't think of eric clapton as this deafening guitar player but when eric clapton was new that was the knock on him why is he playing so loud van halen was the same way i think robert crisco wrote about them in the village voice and said it was like music for aircraft carriers.

The other thing was, is that Eddie Van Halen did you something that, as is often the case, an innovation that a lot of people sort of kind of perverted, which was the idea of guitar playing almost being this athletic endeavor where it's that, that it wasn't just something that, that like, okay, here's the best way to describe it. So first Van Halen records coming out in 1978, that's like the height of punk music. Okay. And the draw of punk music for a lot of people was like, anybody can do it. You can just buy the instrument and go

to your garage and you can do this too it's something anyone can do but van halen was the ultimate example of you can't do this like you got to sit in your garage by yourself for three years to play one of my songs and he did create this distance between the artist and the person who was receiving the art. Like there was a huge chasm there. And I think to some people that was just a real unlikable thing because while on the one hand, while Eddie Van Halen is making this music that I say is very inclusive, anyone can be a fan of it. It wasn't something anybody could do.

And, you know, I've used this example of much of other times, just like kind of like how people have talked about, say, like Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, whereas like Jimmy Connors seemed to love the crowd. And John McEnroe was almost like telling the crowd, like, shut up. Right. Let me do my thing. I'm a genius. Yes. Yeah. Like, like, this is hard. Like, I don't, you know, and I think some people got that telling the crowd like shut up right let me do my thing i'm a genius do this yes yeah like like this is hard like i don't you know um and i think some people got that sense from eddie van halen i mean there were like also you know eddie van halen was extremely dismissive of the guitar players who sort of uh copied what he did and used him as an influence he didn't really seem i mean when i

did that i did a story on him um for billboard and you know i don't we'll never know how totally true this is but like his the big thing he always insisted in my interview and in many years is that the last record he had purchased was peter gabriel so in 1986 that he had not bought any record since then that you know didn't couldn't name any guns and roses songs couldn't name any metallica songs didn't even know who radiohead was could name one song by that randy rose played on like almost this idea that like he said like he liked listening to his car the engine of his car more than music and his wife was like yeah it sucks like we're in this you know we can't play the radio or whatever. So he did have this idea that

he was really separate from the kind of music that he's associated with. But then interestingly, at the same time, he would occasionally, on almost every Van Halen record, at one point, try to sort of re-illustrate that he was not just somebody who could play a lot of different notes but he could play these heavy riffs that would sort of make other bands who doing the same thing seem you know like cheap or whatever like i mean he's a complicated guy there's weird things about him he had a very weird interaction with nirvana one time where he said some things about another guy in the band that, of course, now is really problematic. The other dudes like Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony and a lot of these other guys have mentioned that there's kind of these two different realities,

like how Eddie Van Halen saw the world and how it actually was. So it's not like he is this, you know, untouchable figure, but he is an untouchable musician. You know, I mean, he was my favorite guitar player. He'll always be my favorite guitar player. I was thinking about the concept of when they're at their peak, what they were like in an arena, which I never got to see them with Roth, like in that whole era. I just, I wasn't old enough. And, you know, even if I'd gone to see them when I was like, I don't know, 15, I don't think it would have resonated the way it should have. But a lot of their stuff

has lived on on YouTube and you can see it. Like it's different. There's something, there's an electricity to some of their concerts. There's stuff, I think, starting in maybe 78, but you go through and they're just playing in these different NBA arenas, basically, or hockey arenas. And Roth, for his limitations as a singer, was an incredible stage man. And what Eddie was able to do, and, you know, especially those long riffs that he used to do and people were just losing their fucking minds. It was like, he was like the Messiah,

you know? And I don't, other than guns and roses, that little three-year run they had. Um, can you think of another band in the last 40 years that could own an arena like that? Uh,

I mean, I don't know. There probably are a bunch of bands. I mean, Metallica is a good arena band. I mean, I don't know. There probably are a bunch of bands. I mean, Metallica is a good arena band. I mean, you choose... Yeah, Metallica is a good one. I mean, there's like... In some ways, the ability to be good

in a really large space is at times less complicated than being in sort of a normal-sized venue because if you're playing to people who of a normal size venue. Because, you know, if you're playing to people who are a quarter mile away from you, like if you look at the footage from like the us festival in 1983, where they're playing. It's incredible by the way.

Yeah. That like, it is, it's like the difference between being good and bad. It's like almost hard to tell if you can hear it, it's good. But Van Halen was good in any size place. I mean, I've been extremely lucky in my life. And one of the most interesting things that I've ever been able to experience as someone who covered music was Van Halen performed at this bar, club, I guess, in New York called the Cafe Wah. It's like 150 people were in there like i remember going to this because um for a lot of reasons but one was that we didn't really believe van halen was going to play like it was such a

small place it was like well van halen just was is it all a joke or will they show up into a press conference could they possibly playing you know acoustically but they just played regular music he just plugged in their electrical instruments and they played. So I was able to stand six feet away from Eddie Van Halen while he's playing these songs. And it was surprising to me how it seemed like it was almost more impressive at a small scale than it would have been at a large scale. But I mean, that's, you know,

there are people who can play small rooms and there are people who can play big rooms and some people can play them all. small scale than it would have been at a large scale. But I mean, that's, you know, that's, there are people who can play small rooms and there are people who can play big rooms and some people can play them all. Yeah. Right. I think it's hard to be great in a huge space. And I think that's separated a lot of like, when you're talking about the levels of the great bands, like the bands that can own a football stadium and actually still be really good. That list is a lot smaller than who could dominate a club. I think one thing that I loved about just having Van Halen in my life the last 40 plus years is the classic arc of the prototypical music act, right? Where the best version of it can't last

because it never lasts in music. It's always four to five to six to seven years and then something has to happen. You have to break up. And then they kind of reinvent themselves with this Sammy Hagar thing. And it's just good enough that it becomes controversial in its own way.

Like it was like, is it okay to like this? Because some of these songs are good. And the old Van Halen people are like, no, no, no, no, no. It just sucks, man. It's the old ways. And it became, I don't know, a pretty good musical argument there for a couple years. Because I actually thought 5150, it wasn't as bad as maybe it could have been.

It got bad later when Gary Cherone joined the band, all that stuff. But they did it. It just was fun to watch the arc of them. And then Roth tried to make a solo career. Couldn't make it. He clearly needed Eddie. Then they finally reunited and it wasn't, wasn't the same. Well, at the time, 5150 was technically their biggest record.

Yeah. That, that opened at number one immediately. It was, it, it doesn't, it's hard to sort of, it doesn't feel that way now, but Van Halen was at first more commercially successful with sammy hagar than they were with david lee roth the idea though is that you know somehow that that the shift that they made was kind of away from this kind of bombastic over-the-top party music to something that was more for like kind of more middle of the road-ish like you know i think the first like i i did this thing for new york magazine a couple years ago

where like i rank all 131 van halen songs i remember and and the last song like the 131st song that i put on there is is uh why can't why can't this be love? Which was the first song of 5150, the first single. Um, and the reason why is not because the song is so terrible, but it did kind of illustrate this huge shift in what the band seemed to be about, you know? Um, now as I've gotten even, I mean, older and older, the Sammy Hagar material actually seems much better to me because I was, I was so against that shift. I mean, older and older, the Sammy Hagar material actually seems much better to me because I was so against that shift.

I mean, I was definitely sided with David Lee Roth, like Edelman's smile I thought was so superior to 5150. Like I was almost like a caricature of that side of the argument. Like it was just, I wouldn't listen to Van Halen after, for a while after that shift happened. Now it doesn't seem that bad. It seems pretty good, actually, a lot of it. And it also, I think, allowed Eddie Van Halen to just kind of,

even though the music he made, for the most part, wasn't as good as the stuff with Roth, it was, I think, allowed him to sort of follow a trajectory that he couldn't have done if he had stayed with David Lee Roth because there was just certain limitations in the band with Roth as the singer. You know, I think back to, I'm a teenager, obviously,

and the police break up and Van Halen breaks up and it happens relatively close to each other. And, you know, it, it was my first experience with that where you're going, wait, so they're not going to make any more songs.

Like, are you, that, that this is just over and just kind of like this loss that you feel, which I think you feel sometimes with sports too, if you have a favorite team or a favorite group and then somebody leaves for free agency or gets traded or whatever,

and you're like, oh man, I guess we're not having that anymore. It was interesting that Van Halen and the police were just so close where they felt like they were at the peak of their powers in a lot of ways. And then the plug got pulled, which really has only happened a handful of times in music. I mean, we've seen a million bands break up,

but usually you see the writing and the end of the wall in some way. In this case, they were two bands coming off the most successful albums they'd ever had. And then it was just over. Well, okay. But on the one hand you have Sting, who I think believed I can have a solo career that's bigger than my career with the police, and I can play any kind of music I want.

And he was right. Well, he put a lot of records out. I mean, if you go on Spotify and you look at Sting's solo discography, it's like, I had no idea he put out that many records. I mean, Van Halen, it's not like okay so so you know broth and van halen split and then devastating well it was but you know it was it was clear that there was going to be more david lee roth music and then the assumption was like well okay so well van halen he has sort of three options some people thought maybe he'll just like start scoring movies and

become kind of more like a Steve Vai figure where he's like kind of making instrumental records with his brother. Another idea was that they would try to get somebody who was sort of like a Roth clone, maybe an unknown person, or they would kind of move in a different direction. Now, one of the people that he wanted to have in the band was Patty Smythe from the band scandal. Remember that song, the lawyer.

Oh yeah. Yeah. They have a friendship or they had a friendship, you know? So he was like, well, maybe her. And she was like,

well, that could be kind of odd because it's like being a woman in this band, it's going to be obviously under the microscope. They get Sammy Hagar in andgar in and uh you know and they were actually in that transition just i mean seamless is a weird way to say it but they just they just kind of keep going like there was there it's not like they made one record where they were figuring things out i mean i think most people who like the sammy hagar period van halen prefer the first record that they think that record is the best

and that's what started off pretty well um and I know that you'll probably kind of get this reference I mean okay so do you remember the season of Dukes of Hazzard where there was the cousins yeah we're like coy and Vance yeah um I got a lot of jokes out about that way back when. So like Bo and Luke leave the show for a year and Coy and Vance come in. I fucking hated those guys. Well, my point is that I think that in some ways, Eddie Van Halen kind of perceived his guitar

as the general lead. That's like, it doesn't really matter who i put in this car it's like you know it's like that is the the foundation and and the reason that that eddie van halen has consistently had issues with singers i mean like you know the reason they kind of you know roth several times hagar several times but one one thing with Gary Cherone, they had almost made a record with a guy named Mitch Malloy at one point. I mean,

he definitely saw Van Halen as a musical endeavor and not a lyrical endeavor. He would claim he didn't know the lyrics to a song like Panama. It was also interesting that he would claim he didn't know the lyrics to a song like Panama, you know?

And it was also interesting that he was, he would claim he didn't remember writing Panama. That's like he would just go into a hotel room while they were on tour and drink vodka and do cocaine all night and play into a tape recorder. And when he woke up in the morning, there was songs there, you know, he kind of almost made it seem like this magical experience. You know, it was like he didn't remember writing the songs he couldn't sing it was a weird deal but uh it just i don't know i uh i'm glad sort of that van halen now is there was a period where it seemed like van halen was going to be one of the groups that just kind of disappears, who was huge, and then just no one talks about it. I mean, like, you see this happening, interestingly, to a degree with like the band REM, who seemed like one of the three or four biggest bands of the 80s, their stature seems to sort of be eroding. And I'm not exactly sure why. It seems like that was going to happen with Van Halen. But I get the sense that as guitar music disappears from the culture, while there are still a large number of people who still

like it, that the connection that they have to those records especially the early records um is just going to kind of exist in perpetuity i mean the guitar solo eruption there's that's like the most important freestanding guitar solo ever made i mean it's like there's no it's like it's not part of a song it's's not, it was, it was formally inventive. There had never been a guitar solo like that. It involved a technique that had never really been seen before that much, with just a few exceptions, and then became the main technique used for the next 15 years.

It's, I don't know. It's weird he's dead. It's weird that He's dead. It's weird that he's dead. I'm with you on the guitarist overpowering whoever the singer was thing. And I actually think it's interesting. Cameron Crowe definitely tapped into it a tiny bit with Almost Famous,

even though Russell Hammond and Eddie Van Halen have nothing like, but the concept of the guitarist actually becoming the alpha dog in the band for the fans, and the singer being aware of that, which had to have been one of the reasons the guitarist actually becoming the alpha dog in the band for the fans, you know, and the singer being aware of that, which had to have been one of the reasons they broke up. But I always felt like I,

all I cared about was that Eddie Van Halen was in the band. If you had to choose, which I don't think you could say about, you know, how many bands would you say? I picked the guitarist over the weed singer. Ultimately the bands usually ebb and flow with the singer for how popular they're going to be that this is one of the ones where i think everybody would have picked eddie in the in the fantasy draft right well yeah i mean there

are other bands i think where the guitar player is the most famous guy i mean it also depends you know it's not like this though not like where they're the meal ticket of the band. That wasn't the case, though. I mean, David Lee Roth was more famous than Eddie Van Halen for much of their career. But then he left and the band got bigger, though. It's true. That's true. When the first record came out, there were a lot of people who thought David Lee Roth's name was Van Halen. That's what I mean.

So he was such a, you know, did all the talking in the band, you know, kind of represented the band in a way that like, like really a front man, like more than a singer. But, you know, you say you look at the last half of the 20th century, say you start from 1950, you go through 2000. It's like, what are the two defining, like, pieces of equipment of that period? Well, it's the television and the guitar. Those important cultural mechanisms from 1950 to 2000. And he was arguably the first, second or third most talented person at that instrument. So who who's in that list other than him and Hendrix? Well, Hendrix is probably the would have,

I think he has to be considered the most talented guitarist in terms of like the, just completely expanding the, like the vocabulary of what sounds you could use. Yeah. This idea that it was like, that, that it wasn't just a component along with the bass and the drums. It was sort of like, this is really what it is, you know? And it's, it's really like somebody like Eddie Van Halen probably would not exist if it not had been for Jimi Hendrix sort of making the idea of like being this ultra skilled guitar player was an important thing. I mean, I would put Eddie Van Halen second on this list in terms of just pure riff creation, like making riffs. That would probably be Tony Iommi and Jimmy Page, and somebody like Eric think any, you take those five guys and after Hendrix being at one, I think the other four could kind of be shuffled in a lot of different ways. I liked OU812 more than 5150, just for the record.

In case you're wondering who in your life liked that album more than 5150. What did you like about it? I just liked some of the songs. Oh, sure. I was just was just looking as you were talking. I liked... I mean, some of them, there was a campiness to it that I think I enjoyed just because it was that time of my life. I'm in college where

a song like Mine All Mine is just so ridiculous. You're kind of like, I kind of enjoy this, but this is also completely unselfaware. But I thought Finish What You Started was good. I liked Cabo Wabo. I kind of enjoyed it.

But again, there's a campiness to all of it that has to be factored in. I do like the song Cabo Wabo. I probably overrate that song to a degree. I love the way the song begins because Sammy Hagar says, I've been to Romeome dallas texas i guess i've seen it all like those two cities that he picked by the the entire experience of being alive it's like if you've been to real um you know i i don't i don't i guess oh you wait with you that's that's okay. I mean, like the, you go to the early,

like the first Van Halen record, almost the greatest hits collection, really not a bad song. It's ridiculous. Almost in a, like, it's amazing that it exists. And it's also amazing too,

that you can go out. If you go online, you can, you can put in like Van Halen zero, which was essentially the demo for this. And the playing is almost the same. It's like it's almost identically good. Van Halen 2 was really rushed, but those songs are also great.

I mean, it's like that, just like the residue from the initial recording session of the first record left so much good material that they were able to make, you know, this other amazing record. And things like, you know things like Fair Warning and stuff, it's like Women and Children First. Those are more for musicians and sort of more of a, not really hits as much.

Well, at that point, they're touring and we're in the excess culture at this point too. So I can't imagine there was a lot of time in the studio, you know, cause they're going all over the place and you know, the band was pretty, pretty honest about, they were,

they're huge partners. They were, they were, but I mean also, uh, uh, like a lot of bands like that, they were able to sort of live that lifestyle,

but also be extremely prolific. I mean like when i went to eddie van like 5150 his studio it's like that room he has a room that is just filled to the rafters with these tapes of that he's recorded that i don't like who knows what's on them it could be like 800 versions of like everybody wants them i don't know or it could be totally new stuff um you know and he was like a he was like a real okay it's like it's a strange thing okay so he plays on beat it i'm sure like if he plays the guitar solo on beat it and um and you know he famously did not get paid for that didn't even ask for any money for playing on this song kind of like changed the arrangement according to him slightly with

quincy jones so he could have it be in the right key and then you know his response to that would be like i don't know why everyone thinks it's such a big deal like it's like who like i took no money it's just i played on this guy's record or whatever almost as if he didn't really understand the hugeness of the song beat it or or like how um how much that opened up that record to probably a lot of white people who had never bought a record by a black artist before so in that sense it's almost like he has this laissez-faire almost like uninterested view of his own work. But when they were recording Van Halen records, the producer was a guy named Ted Templeman. He actually had a book come out, I think this year, I read it, it's very good. It's the same guy who wrote the first book about

the early years of Van Halen, he's done the biography of Ted Templeman. Eddie Van Halen would go back in the studio at two in the morning to fix these little errors that he felt were being pushed through, that they were like, no one's going to notice this, but you. And he was like, well, if I notice them,

that means they're there. So it's like, you know, so he was like a perfectionist, but he also didn't care. And, you know, it's like,

he was like a classically trained musician, but then he also kind of made like party rock music for like guys to get loaded in the parking lot it's like he he was very contradictory he was just like he could kind of play any song according to him if he heard it twice you know he could play it he said like if i hear a song like the first time i listen to it the second time i hear it i can play it you know, he could play it, he said. Like if I hear a song, like the first time I listen to it, the second time I hear it, I can play it, you know? But he also claims he's not interested in new music. Like he hasn't bought a record since 1986 or whatever. It's just real.

He was a very contradictory person, you know? His personality, like I think a lot of geniuses, did not really fit in to the normal parameters of how a person acts. Like he loved his brother, Alex, you know, basically looked at his brother, Alex, as like this, this, you know, it considers him like the only good drummer almost. Another part of me wonders that if Alex wasn't his brother, would he have fired him? Like, I don't know.

It's like, it's like he, he loved his family. Like he thinks his kids are better bass player than Michael Anthony. It's possible, but it was always weird that he was so adamant about that. It's like, yeah,

really only wanted to play with his family. There's a song, there's a record called diver down from 1981. Oh yeah. It's got a cover of a song called big, a record called Diver Down from 1981. Oh, yeah. It's got a cover of a song called Big Bad Bill. It's Sweet William Now. It's a very old song.

It doesn't sound like Van Halen at all. It's David Lee Roth's choice. But Eddie Van Halen, while hating that song, is happy it exists because his dad, who was a musician, was able to play on it. Eddie Van Halen was very interested in his own family. Long after he had been divorced to Valerie Bertinelli, they still seemed to have a pretty good relationship. She was one of the only people, there was like 100 people who went to his second wedding and she was one of them.

So I wanted to mention a couple of things and Valerie Bertinelli was one of them. There were wanted to mention a couple of things and Valerie Bertinelli was one of them. There were a couple of reasons that he was bigger than just how big he was anyway. One was that he ends up with Valerie Bertinelli, who's a huge star at the time. One day at a time was, I don't know, one of the 12 biggest sitcoms during a time when everybody watched sitcoms. I don't even know what the comparison would be now in 2020 of what her stature was as an actress, but that felt big and crossed over the mainstream. The second thing was Beat It, which just as a kid, Michael Jackson, it's not like he showed up on the scene with Thriller. He was a massive star already, hit off the wall a couple

years ago. But for Eddie to play on that album, it felt like it was like this crossing the beams and Ghostbusters kind of moment, like these two worlds. And the song was so good. And it was right there in the high end MTV, which was the third piece where MTV was able to take some of these people that we loved already and kind of humanize them in a way. And that's how I felt like I didn't really know what these guys looked like. How was I going to know unless they popped on a late night show or went on Saturday Night Live or something? It's not like I go to YouTube and see them.

But when MTV started, it wasn't just like the videos, but they would guest host stuff. I remember they popped on there a couple of times and you got a sense of the personalities in a way that I just don't feel like you could have gotten 10 years earlier.

It's weird though. What was your sense of Eddie Van Halen's personality? Just to see him. See him interact. He always seemed kind of weirdly happy. And I know he wasn't because we read all that stuff. But in those kind of things, he just seemed like this good guy. He just wanted to play music, didn't want to overanalyze stuff.

And I remember one time, I think it was when Letterman went to Los Angeles. It was like one of the big TV weeks of my life. I think that was the week Eddie came on and played with Paul and the band and just kind of was just in the house band for that. And I really stuck with me like, Oh man, what a cool guy. He's playing with Paul, you know? And there was a lot of moments like that with him where I just felt like, I just liked this guy. I'm in on him. Before the term like hair metal became the pejorative term for glam metal. There was another term. Some, some i guess musicians use called teeth metal

which was like hard rock bands who were constantly smiling while they played right kind of that's kind of comes from van halen yeah van halen when you when you would see van halen perform like if you see you know footage of them even like you know, footage of them, even like, you know, 1978, 79, whatever, they seem to be enjoying playing so much. I mean, it's almost like, it's so fun. It's just great to be so great at something, you know? Yeah. So he was, he did appear to be a happy person.

I mean, you see, if you go through, do a Google image shirts of early Van Halen, when he's playing, he's either making kind of this goofy guitar face or he's smiling. I don't think he was a super happy person, to be honest. It turned out that he wasn't, but I didn't know that in 1984. Yeah. I think that there was probably some really dark elements, I think, to his substance abuse that was, and it was almost, you know, it was almost darker because it seemed as though he could also sustain it.

Like it wasn't, there's only really, there's, in Sammy Hagar's autobiography, he talks about one tour they did where he felt that like Eddie's alcoholism was affecting his playing. But if you look through most of his career, you know what kind of lifestyle he lived and it did not seem to in any way diminish his ability to play these incredibly complicated runs and riffs and everything so you know and um in fact i might kind of go just going by memory but one of the things that he said when i interviewed him i recall was that you know he was like my dad was an alcoholic but you it never affected his ability to work. And I guess I'm the same way. Like it was, it was like, I could do this thing that was destroying my body.

And yet my fingers kind of operated almost as a separate extension that no matter what I was like, his brothers liked this too. They would always talk about Alex Van Halen being like basically drinking all morning, passing out in the afternoon, kind of being revived at six o'clock at night and then playing wonderfully in a concert. It was like, there were just, there were these, these kinds of guys from, you know,

Europe basically. And they were like built to drink. Right. Yeah. Well, um, I was like, when you were talking, I wanted to see what year that Letterman was. He was on in 84 and the LA thing was in 85, but it's actually on YouTube. And you can kind of see what I'm talking about. Not you, but just anybody listening.

Like there was definitely a joy to him that whether he, you know, whatever was going on in his personal life, I felt it when you watched him and you could see in those YouTube clips, and I'm glad a lot of the YouTube clips live on. And the reason I think it's significant is there weren't a lot of bands you could say that about.

A lot of the bands, either they were super serious or the guys just seemed drugged out of their minds or they were trying too hard. There's this window with Van Halen, especially those first three years that you can see on YouTube where there's like real joy watching them and the way the crowd's like interacting with it, where it's like this guitar goddess showed up to their small town or their medium-sized city or whatever and just like kicks ass, you know? And I think that's going to be their legacy for me.

It's just like, man, if I could have seen four bands in person in my life at their peak, they have to be one of the four, right? Well, yeah. I think their legacy is actually going to be the best possible legacy, which is the records. I mean, I know that David Lee Roth is this outstanding live performer, and the biggest arena rock for a whole bunch of years. But I, those albums sound so good. I mean, when you like listen to that, you know, that first record was basically, it's like recorded live in a way it's like four you know three guys in a studio and then the vocals put on top but they're playing together it's like not a it's not a bunch of tracks put together it's

like them just playing and like like a song like like feel your love tonight somebody's like or like uh they're like you know just i'm the one these songs when you play them they it feels as though they're being played directly in front of you i mean like you know because they were this is like a something that eddie van halen hated but one thing that they did and anybody who listens to a lot of van halen will know this is they put all the guitar through one channel usually it's the left speaker and then all the other music through the right channel so like if if you unplugged one of your speakers you could just hear Eddie Van Halen playing and you know uh and so that was both like a real gift for guys trying to learn these riffs true but it also created this like a you know I mean okay so like you know like

like distance creates depth so the distance between what you were hearing from the left side and what you were hearing from the right side kind of gave that music a feeling of, it, like a car, yes, but like in a pickup especially where the speakers are behind you. It was kind of an amazing thing. I mean, you know, it's like it was almost like being inside the music. So I think that those records,

there's never going to be a point when someone's like, ah, yeah, yeah you know i went and reinvestigated those van halen records actually they kind of suck or whatever that's not going to happen right there was i had a i remember this is like 15 years ago a friend of mine was like we're talking about this he wasn't didn't really like van halen he was like oh you know like the riffs are pretty good but like the guitar solos are kind of astroturf like they seemed like kind of like a fake harsh thing to him and i understand that's actually a

pretty adept description of something in a negative sense which i found is positive like i like the unreality of those guitar solos partially because i knew they were real like if i just had heard if i just heard Eruption or like, or say the beginning of like Romeo's Delight, like anybody who's listening to this doesn't know much about Van Halen, like go listen to the song like Romeo's Delight. Listen to the beginning of it.

You might think that was somehow faked or rigged or like they did some kind of trick, like some studio trick, but like I knew it was real. So like, there's just something incredible to me about hearing the unreal and having the conscious understanding that a person did do that I mean that's where that cafe washa was so amazing to me it's like to stand so close to somebody and see something that I I knew you know it's like

I maybe we've talked about this in other podcasts, like you go to a play, right? So you go to a Broadway play. And in some ways, it's like watching a movie, you know, then every so often, you're like, you'll see somebody spit, or you'll see someone look the wrong way just for a second. And it will suddenly dawn on you that what you're seeing is happening, that this is a real event event that these people are memorizing all these things and becoming these different people and they're doing it on command that's what it was like to see this concert like to see eddie van halen do these things which i in my mind like intellectually always knew was real to actually see it in person made it emotional real and i'm not a very emotional person right like i just i'm just not an emotional person but like uh you know uh like i like i i think

you know i'm kind of embarrassed about my memory of this cafe wa thing because i got so drunk that i was really obnoxious to a lot of, I think probably to a lot of people. There's only 150 people there. And I was a real drunk person. But part of me wonders if I got so drunk because I didn't want to deal with the actual sense that I was seeing something that I had been thinking about my whole life and had loved my whole life. And now I was actually going to have it happen in front of me. And when I realized that, I think I was like, I don't want to feel that much. Right. That makes sense. One of the great documentaries that I always wanted to be

involved in, which was never happening, was the Van Halen documentary, which never happened. They would never do it. They would never do it. And i kicked the tires on a couple times even with this hbo project did another tire kick and just like now eddie doesn't want any part of it axis you know that that uh that music channel axis they have a lot of documentaries they have a doobie brothers one that i love it's terrible um are you talking about are you talking about the breaking the band show no no no they no. Axis has a whole bunch of documentaries that, you know, a lot of times bands just produce documentaries

about themselves. Somebody tried to make a Van Halen documentary, but they couldn't get any interviews. And it's all like still pictures and none of the songs. But they told the story about it. I watched it. I was like, because I didn't know that much about, especially like how they formed and David Lee Roth part. And that's one of the great documentaries that's sitting there because one of the reasons it's so great is we have the video of all this stuff. We have all these early concerts with them and these early performances, basically all the way through, you know, and then you have the classic breakup, the new guy coming in, all that stuff.

But yeah, you know, there's so many good beats to it. On YouTube, you can find a recording. Maybe it's not still there. I haven't listened to this in a while, but it's a recording supposedly of Eddie Van Halen playing guitar like in his room when he's 17 or 18. It definitely sounds like him. I mean, I have no doubt. But it's so strange is that every so often as a 17 year old, you'll hear just a glimpse of a riff that would become a song like 20 years later. There, there was also an attempt to make, I think a Van Halen kind of like concert documentary when Hagar was in the band. Um, I feel like maybe it was going to be, it was a performance in Canada or something. It, it wasn't like Live Without a Net. It was later than that, but the band killed that. Um, you know, they, they, the thing is, it's like, like every singer the if you really probably the best way to understand

the van halen story weirdly is there was at one point a collection of every interview anybody in van halen had ever done on the howard stern show all collected um and so then you you know you you can hear them have conversations about when they were friends with Roth and when they hated him, when they were friends with Hagar, when they hated him. And, and that kind of, cause they keep, you know, they did change the story a lot. Like it's still kind of unclear if David Lee Roth quit or was fired. It seems as though we have the answer, but not totally. It's not quite on the level of who actually broke up the Beatles, but it's similar.

Because they both sort of kind of blame the other person. And then when things are good, they kind of blame themselves. But then when things go bad, they blame each other again. So you don't know what part is true. Um, uh, Greg Randolph, Greg Randolph's book though, is probably the best way to understand the early, the early part of Van Halen.

Before we go, um, I have to ask this cause in sports, you know, we have all these different ways to, to rank player, especially NBA. You can,

you know, look at my freaking pyramid. I did. Music is art and nobody tries to do that. Here are the best four bands ever. Here are the best three singers ever. We don't do that. They do that all the time.

But nobody takes it seriously though. Well, that's true. There's no way to prove it. It's more subjective. But what's interesting to me with music, and especially rock, and it reminds me of football in a way, where when football, they try to do the 100 greatest players of all time.

It's like, there's no fucking way we're figuring this out. But you kind of work backwards and you go, all right, well, if I'm starting the list, well, Lawrence Taylor has to be on it, and Jerry Rice, and Jim Brown. And there's probably like eight guys that kind of have to be on it. It doesn't really matter how they're ranked. It's almost like this exclusive club. And they're the first guys that jumped to mind because they have to jump to mind, right? If

you're talking about who are the greatest football players ever, if you don't say LT as one of your first five guys, I'm like, I'm not even interested in the rest of your list. Whatever Eddie accomplished, he comes to mind pretty much immediately when we're talking about guitarists, right? It's like him and Hendrix are going to be two of the, and probably Clapton, they're going to be three of the first five on everybody's list, which is a really hard place to get to, you know? And I think that to me that when you're talking about like, what's your legacy? It's like, he's the first one that comes to mind other than hendrix as guitarist that's it he figured that instrument out the best oh yeah you know there's that there's the scene in back to the

future where michael j fox is trying to show someone that he's a space alien to pretend he's a space alien right so he plays the guy a cassette that says eddie van halen now that's not actually eddie van halen i'm pretty sure that actually was steve by who's basically faking eddie van halen's music um but just the idea that if somebody was like okay so if i had to go back in time and have someone hear what the future would sound like. This is in the 80s, of course. But if someone goes back in time and I want to show them what the 80s sound like, what would I play? Well, that was the best choice.

That was, in terms of hard rock music of the 1980s, Eddie Van Halen invented the future. I agree. Awesome rock name, too. It's pretty hard to top Eddie Van Halen as a rocker name. I don't know. I don't know if we can do better than that. Chuck, thanks for coming on on short notice. I think we both loved Eddie, so I'm glad we did this. Thanks for coming up. That's it for the BS Podcast. One more coming on Thursday. It's going to be action-packed

football, basketball. Probably the last time we'll have a football and basketball at the height, NBA Finals and the NFL regular season. But it's been a crazy couple months here on the pod. We went from having nothing to talk about to everything to talk about. Don't forget about the rewatchables. Don't forget about Bakari Sellers. He is doing a live podcast right after the debate,

which you can watch on Twitter and then you can listen to if you subscribe to that podcast. And we'll be back on Thursday. See you then. On the wayside, never on the side I don't have feelings with him On the wayside, never on the side I don't have feelings with him