The Bill Simmons Podcast - A 76ers Soap Opera, RIP Michael K. Williams, and Kanye’s Latest With Wosny Lambre, Joe House, and Van Lathan

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre and Joe House to discuss the increasingly strange situation in Philadelphia between the 76ers and Ben Simmons (2:25). Then Bill is joined by Van Lathan to remember actor Michael K. Williams, discuss Kanye West’s much-anticipated album ‘Donda,’ talk a bit about the New Orleans Saints with Jameis Winston at the helm, and more (42:30). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Van Lathan, Joe House, and Wosny Lambre Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We host the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on the Ringer Podcast Network. To avoid eating 12 waffles in a waffle house, follow the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on the Ringer Podcast Network. To avoid eating 12 waffles in a waffle house, follow the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality,

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You might remember on Sunday, Sal and I did a podcast and we talked about the six teams in the West divisions that we thought could potentially make the playoffs. The Niners, the Cardinals, the Rams, the Broncos, the Chargers, and the Chiefs. Both of us thought three teams from each division would make the playoffs. The Niners, the Cardinals, the Rams, the Broncos, the Chargers, and the Chiefs. Both of us thought three teams from each division would make the playoffs. So we said, well, what would the odds be to bet on actually six making it from the two West? We challenged FanDuel to come up with the prop

and that's what happened. You can bet it on all day Wednesday. It's a boost from FanDuel plus 1,500. You have to have six teams, six out of the eight from the two Western divisions have to make the playoffs. 15 to one. Go to FanDuel, FanDuel Sportsbook. Obey all the disclaimers, everything else, and get it done.

I don't know what else we could do for you. Coming up, Joe House and Big Wads. We're going to talk about this Ben Simmons soap opera, which we're calling Days of Our NBA Lives, which just keeps going and going. I think this is week three and all the ramifications, what we would tell Ben Simmons if we were in charge of giving him advice as well as the most likely destination and just all the variations from that topic. And then Ben Latham came out and we talked about the death of Michael K. Williams, Omar's relationship to the great TV characters of all time,

Kanye's new album, Little Saints, whole bunch of things. So we've got sports, got pop culture for you. It's all next, first our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we are taping this. It is mid-afternoon Tuesday.

Joe House is here. Big Waz is here. I was on Rosillo's podcast last Thursday, and both of you were delighted because we kind of went in on Ben Simmons. We did a whole layout, basically, for that this is the unsolvable situation of the guy who doesn't have leverage,

but seems like he does. The team that doesn't want to give him away and the GM that never wants to lose a trade, but has no trade. The fan base, who's the worst possible fan base for this whole situation to happen, who wants him out. And there's no coming back there.

And then on top of it, this ticking clock with Embiid, where it's like you have one of the best seven, nine players, whatever list you want to make, he's on the list. his peak. And as we saw with Giannis last year, if you have one of those guys and they can catch fire for a couple of rounds, you actually have a chance to win the title. So you don't want to squander that either. And it's just this giant impasse all the way around. But the part that both of you seem to enjoy was the Ben Simmons seeming to think that he can call his shots on this one. Waz, I'll start with you.

What is your favorite thing about this? There's so many places to go here. My first favorite was the idea that Simmons, it was put out there that Simmons only wants to play for the quote-unquote three California teams. Which I was just like, that is so rich in so many ways in the sense that one, there's four California

teams, but he's just like, I'm too good for Sacramento. Like, get that out of here. I just love that part of it, but it's like and we haven't seen anybody do it yet, which I don't understand why.

The guy has four years left on his deal. Call his bluff. Are you just going to stink up the joint for four years straight? And is that going to get you paid again in four years? I don't understand why teams feel the need to capitulate. I think the thing with Philly that's important to know is, one, they tried to trade him last year. So it's not like, Ben, we love you. And like, you already tried to trade this dude.

And he understands that. And two, look, man, if Ben Simmons were as desirable as him in his camp, like to think that he is, I think those ridiculous offers that Darryl put out there around the draft would have netted something close to that. Obviously, teams don't think he's worth all of that. And so that's why we're here. House, this is like a relationship where the husband was caught with a cocktail waitress, but the wife was caught with the tennis pro. And now they're deciding how to proceed with

the marriage that clearly can't keep going and there's kids in the house and nobody kind of knows what to do. In this case, the tennis pro was Daryl trying to trade Ben Simmons for a solid month for James Harden. And then the, what was my other example? Cocktail waitress?

The cocktail waitress in this case was Ben Simmons taking three shots in seven fourth quarters against Atlanta and shooting a playoff record 34% in the playoffs from the free throw line, which has never been taught for anyone over 70 attempts. It's an impasse. What's your take? I do like very much. You trying to come up with that, that kind of analogy, because this really truly is days of our NBA lives. Like we are in the middle of this fantastic drama amidst all the entire sporting landscape right now.

Like how could we possibly be talking about the NBA? We got the NFL in two days, college football. The first weekend was titsy. I loved it so much. I didn't lose as nearly as much money as I thought I was gonna. Congrats. Baseball's fine. The playoffs are around the corner. It's interesting to see some of these teams, but like, there's a lot of stuff going on. And here we are talking about a dude who won't take shots in the fourth quarter of an NBA, a playoff series. I love it so much. It's so wonderful to me. The thing that is so intriguing, the most intriguing thing

is it feels like this is truly a referendum of the power of Clutch. Ultimately, at the end of the day, Clutch's ability to figure out a way to thread the needle here and the sway and persuasion they have across the league, it's really up to them to come up with a graceful exit for Simmons because they are doing their best, the entire Simmons team, to generate leverage where no leverage exists. The whole league knows it. The whole NBA fandom knows it. The court of public opinion is not on the side of Ben Simmons or Clutch, but Clutch is powerful. We keep hearing that, and there's plenty of evidence out there. There is a story, I think, over the course of this season that somebody should write about does Clutch's power wane as

LeBron James becomes less and less prominent in the league but that's not we're not at that crossroads right this second but I do think it's an undercurrent of of the story here because like if Clutch is able to come up with a solution to this that gets Daryl what he needs, that gets Simmons to a place that he'd like to be in and doesn't adversely impact the Sixers fortunes in the East and helps other players along the way. I keep hearing weird names. Oh, Cleveland might have an angle. Minnesota's my favorite, but they don't want to give away any of their assets the minnesota and sacramento ones have that kind of logic of of those um uh folks in those offices have history with daryl so you know that they're

they can have conversations and there's absolutely no reason whatsoever for the sixers to do a goddamn thing before training camp, before the season starts. Which is the best thing about this. Before the trade deadline. I mean, I think that they're well positioned to just chill for a bit. Here's what Barkley said on the Mike Massanelli show. He's talking about clutch, Wes. You know how that group works. They try to trade their players to where they want to. Anthony Davis, they had better deals from Boston, maybe even New York. They're like, no, he's going to play with LeBron or he's not going to play. They just bullied the league. A team got to stand up and say, I paid your guy. You can't bully me to trade him and have me take some trash back. I'm hoping somebody in the

Sixers organization got some stones. That's what Barkclay said we have not seen a team dig in before and the clutch thing you know there's a persecution complex with them look we're so amid this point the the most powerful agent is always the least popular agent david falk in the 90s was basically presented as the antichrist and blamed for every bad thing that happened the league in the 90s scott boris same thing in baseball everybody hates Scott Boras. When you're the top agent and you're attached to the top guy and you're swinging elbows and getting clients what you want and doing all that stuff,

you're going to take shit. I don't like some of the stuff they do. At the same time, this is a referendum on them, right? How much power do they actually have? Because in this case, Philly has no trade. How does this play out?

What happens? Look, a lot of the stuff that Clutch has done in the past has been to project power. It's like if people think you're powerful, then you're powerful, right? They've done a very good job of marketing Clutch as very powerful, very strong-willed, et cetera, et cetera. But they've had leverage in a lot of those situations, right? You think about something like Tristan Thompson's ridiculous deal that he got from the Cavs. The leverage was our other client, LeBron James, is doing one plus ones with you every single year. You don't make this guy happy. He can actually leave next year.

That's actual, real, tangible leverage. Even in the AD situation that Chuck brings up, where Boston could put together a much superior package to what the Lakers ultimately ended up putting together, AD didn't have four years left on his deal. So it's like, I'll go over there and play for a year, and then I'm out. Right?

Like, there was actual leverage on the side of Clutch and their client. That's not the case here. It's just a guy who's unhappy with the situation. And the only thing

that I will say is that the team clearly doesn't think the world of this dude. Like, that's just so obvious to me. But they have to present a public face that they do. This isn't New Orleans and Anthony Davis was like,

obviously we're going to be way worse for not having this guy here. I don't think Philly actually feels like that about Ben Simmons. And I personally don't feel like that about Ben Simmons. But in order to, you know, extract the maximum amount of value, they have to put on this public face that they do. And so that's the, you know, the delicate dance

that's being played by Maury. It's like tough talk and, oh, we love Simmons. He's such a great player. But have they done tough talk yet though? Because that's the one step that's missing. They haven't done it with Simmons. They haven't done it with Simmons.

They haven't done it with Simmons. They don't need to. But they've done it with other teams, meaning we're not going to just give the guy away. Right. But at some point... They don't need a tough talk.

Why do they need to? No, this is where Doc Rivers comes in. Okay. Because Doc Rivers had tough talk right after the playoff series, right? Where he said, somebody asked him,

can Ben be the starting point guard on championship team no i don't know yeah but you know what it's brutal that fucked up the sixers leverage it did the thing in that moment and that's part of the thing that that makes the nba so compelling like he just was reacting he was responding the same was true of joel both of them asked those questions. And, you know, God bless NBA journalism. Journalists doing journalism. And both those guys just gave candid answers in a raw moment. And it really fucked up the Sixers leverage.

I mean, it put them, you know, it was a 10% walk back. Now, the thing that Daryl has going for him is, I believe time is on his side because let camps open. Let some of these super duper star players go see what it's like. Is Dame really going to be satisfied when he gets there and they go through

camp? Come on, House. They got Larry Dance Jr. He's set. Advanced analytics. Love Larryance Jr. Love that guy. They go 10 games in. They go 15 games in. And that will be true of a handful of teams that we're not thinking of right now.

So there's no urgency for Daryl unless he thinks that it's going to be such a distraction. And this will be a real interesting testament to the fortitude of the Sixers institution. Do they have discipline across that professional organization sufficient enough to push down the distraction? Hey, everybody, if we're going to get asked 10,000 times in these next three weeks, what's happening with Ben Simmons?

Here's the answer. And if they all stay on script, then it's not a distraction. It's not a distraction because we're all here. We're playing this. These are our guys and that's it. The wild card is shit like Tyrese Maxey. Now, where did that come from? Is that really a thing?

Yeah, it didn't seem like that was a real thing. I ended up deciding not to buy that. Is it a thing? That's ridiculous. Yeah, it didn't seem like that was a real thing. I ended up deciding not to buy that. That's ridiculous. That's just a ridiculous notion that some dude that you drafted in the 20s in his second year somehow matters in any way, shape, or form. He's never done anything for you. Like, what are you talking about? Tyrese Maxey is not a thing.

He's not a guy that matters at this point in his career. But what I will say to disagree with House a bit is that, look, Simmons and them coming out and saying we're not going to training camp, I get it. That's a smart move on their part. Like, yo, we no longer want to be here. There's no use in getting my guy hurt out there, you know, performing for a team that we're ultimately not going to be with long term.

Forget that. We're shutting everything down. I think the problem for the Sixers arises in the fact that, sure, this locks you into a certain value of Ben Simmons, meaning since he's not going to play, he can't play any worse than he already did in the playoffs, thereby decreasing his perceived value to the rest of the NBA. However, there's no scenario in my mind, or it's a very small chance that this guy comes back and plays and is better, thereby increasing his value. His value is basically locked. And teams can call your bluffs in a sense that, all right, let's take this to the trade deadline where this guy's not playing. You're up against that clock.

And then what? You don't play him the whole season and bring him back after the deadline and say, well, you're still in the contract. Start playing for us again. That can't be an option. Like that would seem insane to me. I would never say that the timeline is indefinite, right? There's definitely a timeline here. It's just

not the start of training camp or the start of season. That's all. Can I disagree with one thing? Sure. I think Ben Simmons can play worse than the playoffs. You said he hit rock bottom. No, no, no, no. I agree. I just think he could take zero, one, or

two shots in the fourth quarter of a seven game series. He could also shoot worse than 34% for the free throw of the playoffs. So there is room for him to grow. Wait, I want to keep talking about this. Hass, I have some news for you really quickly. Okay. This is from our friends at FanDuel.

Sal and I talked on Sunday's pod. We were saying, why isn't there a prop on FanDuel on their sports book for six playoff teams from the two Western divisions, AFC West, NFC West? Because we both thought there would be six playoff teams. We're like, why can't we bet this? Why can't our friends at FanDuel do this? Well, they did it.

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All right. So go to FanDuel Sportsbook. Special BS podcast boost. AFC, NFC West. Make the playoffs. Plus $1,500. All the rules apply. Go to FanDuel for all the guidelines, details, disclaimers, etc., etc.

All right. Back to our guy, Ben Simmons. Waz. Ben. All right. Back to our guy, Ben Simmons. Waz, Ben Simmons calls you. He says, hey, Waz, it's Ben Simmons, not Bill Simmons' cool 13-year-old son, the other Ben Simmons, the one who shot 34% in the playoffs. I need

help. I need a makeover. I don't like where this went for me. I don't like the place I inhabit in the NBA, in the NBA circles and NBA talking circles right now compared to what my actual talent is. I'm, I am one of the top 20 talents in the league. I'm one of the best two or three defensive players

in the league. If the right team was built around me, I could be a devastating point forward athlete slash, you know, Scottie Pippen 2.0. Like there's a world where I'm a really meaningful player. And now people just think I'm this guy who's afraid to shoot. Who's, you know, taking the bitchy way out, not showing up for training camp. What should I do? Was this has been Simmons asking you, wait, help me, help me help you help me.

I think the first thing you got to get out of your mind is this idea that you're going to go to some glamour market and you're going to call your shot. Like, get that out of your mind. If you really want to rehabilitate your image, get your own team. Let them send you to some NBA backwater or some team that doesn't matter and make them make you the focal point of what they do going forward because you've absolutely never had that in Philadelphia. So if you want to prove to people that you're the type of guy that was being compared to LeBron's and the generational talents that came before you, you need to go to your own team and sort of run your own show. Because I remember the season that the Warriors first got Kevin Durant, the Sixers beat the Golden State Warriors in a game where Ben Simmons was just like out of his mind in the sense that

he's switching on everybody. He's grabbing every single rebound. He's pushing it down the defense's throat on the break. I'm like, oh my, this is the guy. This is the dude conceptually who everybody has been telling me this kid is, but he's never really had that opportunity to sort of show that on a consistent basis. And I know we've said this over and over again. Your best player, Joel Embiid, is most optimal used near the basket. And so is Ben Simmons. Those two things are incongruent. So like this stuff was never going to work out with these two guys. They were never going to be the best version of themselves playing with each other. I don't believe. And I don't think Joe McGee believes that. I don't think Maury believes that.

I don't think anybody who has eyes believes that. So if I was talking to Ben Simmons, I'd be like, get the idea that you're going to the Clippers or Lakers or Warriors. Let them trade you to a team where you're going to get to be, do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want,

so that you can show people that you are this special talent. Because I got news for you. On a team that mattered with a lot of talent on it. Last year in the playoffs, you did not show yourself to be there. So we're thinking how Sacramento, Oklahoma city,

um, San Antonio, San Antonio is a good one. Now I, I brought that up on Rossellos pod last week. Cause they could put together a three for one. They could throw in a bunch of picks. That's a team that you might not mind having their picks

since they don't have a top 30 guy. I wonder from a culture standpoint, if Popovich-Presti, would they want to deal with the Ben Simmons circus? The team I keep coming back to is Sacramento. And I mentioned on Rossello's pod that I thought Halliburton and Heald was the trade that made the most sense

to me as a basketball trade, as a trade that would actually help the Sixers. Sacramento is giving up stuff. Maybe there's a pick thrown in, maybe not. Sacramento allegedly won't give up Halliburton. I think they're posturing. The easiest trade for Simmons, just for his future and his upside

would be if it was Simmons for Fox. Because then Simmons could come in as lead ball handler guy. Halbert, we already know, can play off point guards. Mitchell could be that kind of third guard, defensive stopper. Really nice. Devastating defense.

Yeah, so that would be a nice one. That's two guys. Then the other one I was thinking, and I don't think Oklahoma City would do this, but if it was SGA for Simmons in some form, maybe Philly has to throw more from that. And you just basically give Simmons a team of young guys.

And you're like, you know what? Go get your reps. Go get your reps on a couple 20 and 62 seasons where you're just doing everything for a team. I don't see the path of Minnesota. They don't have anything I would want other than towns. And the Edwards isn't helping Philly for what their timeline is. And then other than that,

as, as we discussed, uh, on the Rosillo pod, like at some point, there's just no trades. Everybody's out. I see.

Just go through the teams, go through a trade machine, go through each team. There's not a lot of trades. 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 that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research.

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York U's programs are strategically designed to prepare you for a meaningful career and long-term success. Join us in creating positive change at yorku.ca slash write the future. So Sacramento is the one that makes sense to me. And House, the reason I bring this up, once upon a time, going back to the previous century, there was a player in a team who's extremely talented. Yeah, I know exactly. Who kind of wore out his welcome in a certain city. Well, circumstances drove him away. There were circumstances.

That's the polite way we'll put it. There were not nice circumstances. They were unfortunate. And he needed a change of scenery. Yeah. And this team decided to trade him. And his upside that had never been realized, he had never won a playoff series.

He looked great on paper, had a tendency to disappear in the clutch. And they said, we're getting this guy out. Send a new Sacramento for a guy named Mitch Richmond, who was at the tail end of an all-NBA guard run. And that's how you lost Chris Webber in Washington. Does this remind you of the Chris Webber? I know the circumstances are completely different, but does the Chris Webber shadow of this hang over the whole discussion for you at all? There is that legacy connection.

I mean, the circumstances could not be any different, although the idea of a player who finds himself through his own hand and the hand of fate, basketball fate, um, has no longer like, you know,

he's, he's reached whatever the, the, the peak is with that organization, Sacramento as a, as a, as a place to go to solve that. Remember C-Web didn't want to go there.

They didn't want to resign. There was mad the whole time. And then they offered him an incredible amount of money and ended up signing an extension. But he was the whole time. We kind of went kicking and screaming. And they did a good job. I mean, they built a team around him.

It's not, you know, I know it's a different ownership structure now, but they've been doing, we give Sacramento shit every single year because A, they deserve it. B, it's hilarious. And C, you know, it's comfortable. But I honestly think that they have been doing some good things over the last handful of years.

Well, you think like, Waz, the legacy of NBA history of giving away a guy at the wrong time, underestimating a guy's ceiling, kind of the new GM coming in and panicking and making the classic three for one. There's all kinds of examples, right? You have the TMAC getting traded from Orlando to Houston trade. That's probably your worst case scenario. You have the Barkley in Philly, where they're just like, we got to get this guy out of there. We have the C-Web example in Sacramento. The difference for me with those guys, when we go through the history of the league and different decades, it's like,

these were guys that could be the best guy in a championship team. Like the upside of them was like, this could be the A-list guy on a team that might make the finals. And I did the three of us think Simmons could ever be the number one guy on a finals team? I don't know. You made this point with Priscilla, and this is the most important point. All those guys you just mentioned

had accomplished something on their basketball resume before they went to that other situation. What would each of us say is the high watermark? What is the biggest basketball success that ben simmons has had in his entire playing career there was like that end of that one season where joelle was out and he played well look that look i know that's what we're saying that one season where joelle was out that's what we're saying. That's what we're saying. I remember. Look, I've been

off for the Simmons train and I've said this a lot. I've been off of it for a while, probably by his third year where it just didn't feel like he was getting better materially at the things that he wasn't good at, that he needed to be good at in order to be this elite type of guy, right? Like getting to the rack consistently,

getting fouled, getting to the free throw line, making open 12 footers, you know, like, I don't know, little things that you assume people who are supposed to be superstar pedigree are supposed to have. And, you know, again, this is what I keep coming back to. One, the idea that this guy would come back at all

just seems to be completely off the table for a myriad of reasons. But mainly, Joel Embiid comes out on Twitter trying to clean up the situation. And he basically says, not everybody's built like me. Not everybody can come out and take the hits, take the criticism. I get the criticism. I go back, I bust my ass, and I come back even stronger. I'm a beast. Some people don't got that.

And he's talking about Vince Simmons. And Bieber's like the wolf in Pulp Fiction if the wolf just then shot John Travolta and Sam Jackson. I'm going to clean this up. Oh, I murdered everybody. It was a cell phone too. You needed the criticism. That was the thing that spurred you

to go get better, Joel. What about just go get better? What about that part? Well, we haven't mentioned the S word yet with Ben Simmons and it's a crucial point. And again, I'm regurgitating this from Russel and I the other day,

but it has to be mentioned. When somebody looks scared in a playoff series, that's the S word. That's the S word. There's real fear with the other teams at that

point because that's and you could be talking about quarterbacks. You could be talking about baseball closers. You could talk about a hockey goalie. You could be talking

about a golfer. Bryson DeChambeau house. Looking a little scared in some of these back nines lately. We talked about that the last time he came on. When somebody has that look, it's really hard to be like, this will be fine. No, no, change the scenery. We'll turn this around.

C-Web is about as successful as anybody's been, who also looked terrified in the last two minutes. But, you know, that was a really good Kings team. Waz, the scared word. What's your take on that? Look, as low as I've been on Simmons, I got to cut up some slack here in the one sense. He could have justified all those decisions he made last year about not shooting.

It's like, it's Joel's team. Tobias Harris is making $40 million a year. Like, is it really my job to do this kind of stuff on offense? Like, he could have made that excuse. That's why I think he needs to go to a situation where he is unquestionably the person that the team leans on, and so therefore he has to go out and do it. Like, he then has to do it.

On Philly, he doesn't really have to. We can say that, well, it'd be a lot nicer if you did. But ostensibly, it's Joel's team. Joel is the guy who named himself the process. Joel is the guy in MVP conversations. Joel

is the guy. And the favorite son in the city. He's the favorite son in the city. All of that stuff. So he has that built-in excuse to be like, I passed him shots. I'm not even a shot taker on this team.

So I'll cut him that slack. It's never been something that he's had to do in his entire career. That's why I think he needs to go somewhere where they force him to. House, can I give you

my advice for Ben Simmons and then you pretend you're Ben Simmons? I'll do the best I can. Okay. I think he has to do some sort of interview in a really safe place. Like one of those uninterrupted type

where they can edit it and just like an eight minute interview that goes online. So he should go to the shop. Yeah, the shop would be great. But he really needs to hit these two points. I don't know if the shop's the perfect venue. Maybe the Draymond's show. That's a little more long form.

I don't want long form. I just want like two bites from him. I thought I was going to be in Philly my whole career. They tried to trade me. It really fucked with my head. I'd never been in that situation before. I thought that place was my home. That's the team that drafted me. We came so close in the Kawhi series. And I thought Joel and I were going to win a title together. And then I find out they're on the finish line of a James Harden trade.

They're willing to send me packing. I'm out. And then Harden at the last minute goes to Brooklyn. And now everybody's like, no, no, we still love you, Ben. And it really fucked with my head and I lost my confidence and I didn't get it back. And sometimes when you're a professional athlete in the playoffs, when things start unraveling and you lose your confidence, I literally unraveled. And it all started with

that trade and the way that was handled. So now I'm deflecting it two ways. I'm blaming the team in a really smart way that is kind of foolproof. And then I'm also tapping into the, you know, from a headspace standpoint, I just got knocked out of my headspace. So now it seems like I can be saved once I'm back in the right headspace. Joe House says, Ben Simmons, what do you think of that plan? All right, Bill Simmons,

I really like what you're suggesting to me. I mean, I think I really have an Australian accent. Wow. He doesn't have an Australian accent. I can't do it. He needs one. I think he desperately needs one. I'm, I think I really have an Australian accent. He doesn't have an Australian accent. He needs one. I think he desperately needs one. I'm really committed to this bit, but the problem I have with it is he had a good season, not just a good season. He was top two for defensive player of the year. So if it fucked with his head, he sure had a funny way of showing it. I have a, hold on. I have a little asterisk

point for this. This is like minute five of my interrupted video. I actually played well after the trade because I was so angry. I like that. That's not me. What I realized was and then he could bring LeBron into it

and be like, you know, I watched this thing about LeBron. LeBron talked about 2011 Miami. He became a person that he wasn't. He just played with anger. He was the wrestling villain. And then it all fell apart for him in the 2011 finals because he was trying to be somebody he wasn't. And that was me last year.

I was trying to be somebody I wasn't. And I want to get back to the player that I am. And I want to get my confidence back and rebuild it. But this team really hurt me when they tried to trade me. Everybody wants the player that he was last season. They had the best record in the East. And he was a defensive player of the year candidate. That's the dude I want.

I want him. Here's the only problem with what Bill is suggesting. Oh, wait, here comes Waz. That's third man in. Yeah. The problem with what you're suggesting, Bill, is that Ben Simmons is so hyper image conscious. It feels weird that he would ever come out and admit that somehow something he was a part of went wrong.

Right. We've seen it this season with this offseason, with the sizzle reels. Like, bro, how like if you had even a scintilla of self-awareness, you would not be putting out jump shot sizzle reels for the fourth offseason in a row after shooting 34% from the free throw line in the playoffs. were born was this horrible playoff that you had. The idea that he's just business as usual after that freaking performance shows you Ben Simmons doesn't think there's anything wrong with Ben Simmons. The footage should be

a security camera far away from a basketball hoop that shows him shooting 1,000 free throws over the course of two hours. Every night. I'm impressed by that. Every night. His Instagram feed should be that from now until he plays for a different team,

there should be two to three hours of free throws every fucking night. That's absolutely right. He should have a tattoo that says 34% on his left arm as he's, as he's shooting free throws. He could do that to me. That's like, that's just a basketball failure. You failed. We agree. Worst non-center like, that's just a basketball failure. You failed.

We agree. It's the worst non-center free throw shooting thing anyone's ever done in the history of the league. And you're supposed to be this incredible athlete. To me, that is just

a lack of focus, lack of practice, and overconfidence. And for him not to even fix that is kind of disgusting. And again, to go out and do that and have you and your team put out videos of you making jump shots

at half speed against a bunch of dudes at the LA Fitness, like that just seems so wrong-headed to me. And again, God only knows, maybe he is doing this thousand free throws a day type of stuff, and he is putting in an insane

amount of work. I just find it hard to believe again, that he could ever come back to Philadelphia and ever, and like have the confidence and basically be so right mentally that he's now making jump shots at a good clip. I, yo, it just seems. Whoa.

Absurd to me. You know what else really hurts him? And this is why this is a segment on this pod right now because I wanted to talk basketball there's really no other basketball conversation that matters right now every other team is kind of settled everyone's digested Westbrook

on the Lakers and I mean the Paul Millsap signing was a big deal come on now Brooklyn's adding a bunch of vets the Lakers are adding a bunch of 35-year-olds. Hernan Gomez to the Celts. Oh, yeah. We got Wancho.

Yeah, Wancho. The thing that would help him the most is some sort of something that would take everybody's mind off. What do you call days of our lives? Yeah, days of our NBA lives. That's right. Days of our NBA Lives, that's right. He needs some other storyline, but there is none. So now we're in three weeks.

Just give it three weeks. That's why Daryl has an opportunity window here. There will be those stories. Training camp's going to open. I hate to say it, guys are going to get hurt. There I mean there's gonna be opportunities that we can't imagine right now

it is the domino that will set in motion a whole bunch of other dominoes so it's very exciting to see what happens with Simmons but you know I think the right play is what Darryl's doing which is just let's just see how things shake out over the next month to six weeks

alright before we go it's prediction time, guys. So it's September 7th, midday. Where is Ben Simmons on February 15th? Was? Probably Sacramento. They can put together competent NBA people plus fairly young people plus pigs. They can put that together in a package to get Ben Simmons if they want to.

And I think ultimately Philly's going to realize that the Brad Beal thing isn't happening and neither is the Dame Lillard, which is all they're waiting for. They're just waiting for Dame to want them, right? Because I think if Dame really, really wanted to be in Philadelphia, this thing would have happened already. You know, I think they're just waiting on Dame Lillard

to not like what's happening in Portland before the trade deadline and hope that that happens. It's, you know, It's a staring contest between them and the Dame, but I don't think... I just don't think it's in Dame to do a blow-up situation. He's been so diligent about crafting his public image

that I don't think it's in his plan for how he's crafted his image to blow up the entire thing in Portland on some diva stuff. Like I think he just got married too. Exactly. When you're planning a wedding,

you're not, you're not focused on trade requests. People are the last second wanting two extra seats. Yeah. Right. Who's sitting where exactly. Plus he was getting the, you know,

the rider, right. For Snoop dog and comedy. You know what I'm saying? So, but I think the Dame thing is what they've been waiting for. And I don't think it's going to happen. So ultimately they're going to have to do an alternative

because Simmons can't come back. I don't care what Amari says. He can't come back to this damn team. I'm with you on Sacramento. That's also my pick. I wonder if they can somehow get Fox for Simmons. And even if that involves them throwing in more stuff.

House, does that make it more likely that they still have, I feel like they would have a better chance at Dame in a couple months. And maybe Darren Fox at that point becomes this generation's Terrell Brandon,

where he's always the point guard of these other point guard trades. Just getting moved around. It's like, wait, I'm on another team? What just happened? The fulcrum asset. That's right you agree with sacramento as the as the i do i i i if i had to come up with you know a dark horse it would be san antonio because i just think that like

they believe that they can rehabilitate anybody they have the uh you know the gravitas the organizational heft. They'll teach his ass how to shoot free throws. The community will warm to him. If he does just a little bit, bends over this a little bit to genuflect to the community, they will love him. So that would be my dark horse. By the way, that's the most fun destination

because San Antonio now is just, I could care less about ever watching them. But if Simmons was on there, I would actually be kind of interested. And it's not like Philly would lose any luster. I'm with you. I think if you're San Antonio, you have no path at having a top 40 guy right now.

You're just patching together a bunch of assets that people kind of like, but ultimately, how are we getting... So either you have to throw away this next season and really try to get a top three draft pick, whatever, or you take a fire on Simmons. Was you down with that, San Antonio,

Popovich, and Ben Simmons? Yeah, conceptually. I think I like it as an idea that Simmons would go to San Antonio and they would be the smartest about crafting a plan for him. And, you know, Pop doesn't really care about threes anyway. So, you know, if anybody's going to figure out how to make this guy work, it's going to be Popovich because, you know, he he freaking traded Kawhi Leonard to get DeMar DeRozan in there, right? Because he wanted DeMar DeRozan. So these are the types of people that Pop likes. So I think San Antonio would be a great landing spot for him

because they'd be the smartest about making it work for him. Little Kelden Johnson, DeJounte Murray, some picks, some other bodies. I don't know if Lonnie's in that trade. I think Philly's like, no, no, we're good with Lonnie. Okay.

All right. We'll see how it goes. This is the only NBA story happening right now. Wads and House. Yeah. A pleasure. As always, good to see you guys.

Thank you. Of course. Anytime. Thanks, fellas. A pleasure. As always, good to see you guys. Thank you. Of course. Anytime. Thanks, fellas. All right. My guy, Van Lathan, is here. We're coming off our Pulitzer Prize winning

Rewatchables podcast about hardball. I don't know. Did you hear yet? We won. We won the Pulitzer. We delivered. I didn't know they had

Pulitzers for podcasts, but we won. We brought G-Baby back to life 20 years later. We started the debate again. People were excited about it. So Vans popped on to Rewatchables a bunch of times. Yeah, they didn't have Pulitzers before that podcast. And after they heard it, they were like,

we ought to hurry up and invent a category. By the way, we also started a trend. Have you seen this on the internet? You haven't seen it, have you? What is it? We started a trend of guys telling their wives to watch Hardball. And then taping them as they realize that G-Baby is dead. Shut up.

This is a thing? It's been about four or five videos. I've retweeted them. Listen, if you're listening, do this to your wife, your significant other. The lady's getting on it too. If you've seen it, they haven't seen it, watch the movie and then tape them as G-Baby's death reveal happens. It is high quality internet content. So I said on the rewatchables, my wife, who is a 10 out of 10 for breaking down during moments like that

during a movie or TV show, I had seen in the theater and I wanted her to basically pay-per-view it. I wanted her to break down when G-Baby died. And as I'm renting it, she's like, nobody dies in this movie, right? And I'm like, no, no. She's like, none of the little kids die.

You swear to God. And I'm like, no, no, we're fine. We're fine. I didn't swear to God. And I'm like, no, no, we're fine. We're fine. I did swear to God, but I was like, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. And then my fingers crossed. And then she got so mad, she actually assaulted me. As G-Baby was dying, she was in tears and punching me. You want to hear something that one of my friends was so devious that he came up with? What is it? Okay. So he came up with a way to swear to god and not blaspheme there was a guard that played back in the day i can't remember

the squad he played for was it providence was it played in the on the East Coast. Remember God, Sham God? Yeah. And so when a girl or anyone would be like, yo, you swear to God you weren't talking to some other chick? He'd be like, I swear to God. And then he'd go, he'd look at me and he'd be like, Sham God. So he would swear on God, Sham God. That's really smart. Yeah. So they would think, God. That's really smart. Yeah. So they would think because his name was he changed his name to God.

Jam God. I remember this guy came up with the sham God, the basketball move. But he would swear on God. Jam God. So if you guys out there and you want to be scumbags or lie for any reason, you don't want to swear on God. Swear on God. Jam God.

Swear on a point guard that played the Atlantic 10 or the Big East or something like that. I've never crossed the swear to God thing. I think she said you swear. And when somebody says you swear, I feel like there's loopholes because the answer is like, yeah, I swear. Like, no, I literally swear. Like, there's no way to prove that.

I don't swear. Anyway, hardball, 20th anniversary. So check out that podcast. There's a bunch of reasons you're on today. First of all, it's been a while, but our guy Michael K died. We wanted to talk about him. He was Omar on The Wire. He was a great character actor, Michael K. Williams, and looked like he OD'd in New York yesterday. So people were upset about how he died, but also that he died. And I think he was such an indelible

guy. And I really think like the Omar character, which you did the Wire podcast with Jamel for us and you went through all the episodes. But I think the Omar character is one of the great characters of all time. I don't know what the final list is. To me, TV characters are like football players. Like in basketball, we have our lists. We have countdowns.

We have tiers. We have hierarchies. We're going to see if we can get up to 75. And with football, it's a little more, it's harder to do that. So you just kind of like, Lawrence Taylor, he's one of the best. Jerry Rice, he's one of the best. Like, we just kind of go there. I think Omar's one of the best characters of all time.

So I'm going to start there. What was your reaction? Well, my reaction was, of course, of intense sadness. I had gotten to know him just a little bit, you know, in passing, we shoot each other a message every now and again. And I remember I got a message from him last year and he was asking me to be a part of an initiative that he was, to help publicize an initiative that he was doing in Brooklyn. So he was consistently reaching back, consistently being a part of any community that he represented. And I think a lot of the outpouring that you're

seeing right now is that there was a quiet grace and dignity about him that came across through his portrayal of Omar, came across in his portrayal of Omar, just a quiet grace and dignity about him. the truth Omar was portrayed with a a weird battering truth the character uh made no bones about who he was and what he was and took solace in that truth. You know, a man got to have a code. And I think the soul of that character, it exists in the side of Michael. Michael had things in his life that he was trying to get control of, obviously. He had been a lot of places and seen a lot of things,

but he was always very forthright about those things. And he always comported himself with a dignity, um, that let you know that he had nothing to hide and that that's the best artists, the best artists come to you with a full open heart and open mind and give you their art, uh, you know, and don't make any bones about it. And that's what he did. And so when you, when you look at, you know, somebody like that and you lose someone, obviously, but losing a, it hurts, should I say,

but losing a genuine soul like that, a genuine soul, a genuine soul like that cuts everybody deeply, very deeply. I interviewed him twice. I interviewed him for my HBO show and I interviewed him for a podcast a few years ago. And one of the things I appreciated about him was he knew for a lot of people, he was just Omar, right? Sure. But he was also a really

good actor who'd been a lot of stuff and it all balanced out in his head. It seemed like where he was fine talking about Omar is fine talking about the wire, but he also knew he was more than that, but he had the ability to not you know sometimes with people when they have like that one iconic role like that you could you could feel the wear and tear with them when it comes up like oh god i gotta do the omar thing again i'm more than omar don't you understand he knew he was more than that he knew he had done a lot of good stuff and he had taken a lot of swings but he also really liked talking about the wire and Omar and what that character meant. And he understood, I think part of the reason was because that show had such a

slow burn where it was a little, I don't want to say it was underground, but it wasn't like a widely watched show, at least for the first few years and the audience built and with the re-airs and the stuff and the reruns and people catching up and binge watching. By the time I got to season four, season five, the audience was bigger. And then when the streaming stuff came in the last 12 years, it became even easier to catch up on it. And now I just feel like the audience for that show

is so much bigger than it was. So I think he appreciated that too, because I think they felt like they were on this show that year to year, they didn't know if it was going to get canceled. They never knew if the audience was really going to be there. The critics loved it, but they weren't really sure how big it was ever going to get. And then belatedly it got big. And I think when that happens, it enriches your perspective on, oh yeah, we really, we really did it. But fundamentally,

one of the great characters of all time. And one of the reasons is what you mentioned, the code. I love in shows when a really complicated character who's totally capable of doing bad things also obeys some sort of code. And sometimes there will be characters where when they go outside the parameters of however they live their life, you almost like can't get it back with them. Like this is a dumb example because it was the OC and the OC wasn't as meaningful of a show lived their life, you almost can't get it back with them. This is a dumb example because it was the OC

and the OC wasn't as meaningful of a show as The Wire, but that OC, the dad was like the heart and soul of the show. And then there was some season he had an affair with somebody or it was going to be an affair. And I was just like, I'm out. The dad would never do this. You spent years building up what a fucking awesome guy this was. And I'm out.

He abandoned his code. Now the show has no moral center. And I feel like the show, not that it was a great show, but it just was never the same for me after that. And Omar was always about, he had these rules that he lived by. The people that paid in his mind were always the ones that deserved it. He never took advantage of people who shouldn't have been taken advantage of. And just the way that was sketched out, it's such a memorable character. There's never been anything like it.

What am I missing? You're missing nothing. So I'm going to bring up something that's a little bit, that, you know, shout out to all my nerds out there. I'm going to bring up something that we got all pissed about because I'm just going to pretend like in no way did the OC come up in a conversation where we're talking about The Wire. I'm just going to pretend like in no way did the oc come up in a conversation where

we're talking about the wire i'm just going to pretend like that so so so so just just you know i'm giving you the full gamut of characters that's a moral center i remember that like i remember it was oc there was an orange county movie there was an orange county show i was like what's going on here people are obsessed with orange county you know it's where they wear masks that's kind of the deal um but uh and this was something that really literally set the Internet on fire. Luke Skywalker. OK, so you spent three movies when you were a kid. Learning about Luke Skywalker and Luke Skywalker and how much he loved his friends, how much he loved his friends.

What do we know about Lukeke skywalker and han solo and and leia what we know about them is that they're gonna do whatever they can for each other right whatever happens they're gonna be there hey man we gotta turn around i can feel luke he's back there go rescue him from cloud city gotta go get luke hey luke i you gotta finish your training nope my friends need me i'm flying across the galaxy. Luke Skywalker. Rian Johnson made a movie that I liked. Mallory loves it. But Rian Johnson made a movie called The Last Jedi to where Rey comes up to Luke.

The whole galaxy is on fire. The First Order is taking over everything. Leia needs Luke. Everybody's looking for Luke. Rey finds Luke. She comes up to Luke. She hands Luke the lightsaber. Luke takes the lightsaber, throws it over his shoulder into the water.

He's done with it. Forget about my sister. Fuck her. Fuck all the First Order. Fuck it all. And we're sitting in the theater as a bunch of grown 30-something nerds seething. We're looking at this like there is no way

that Skywalker would ever do this. And what do we do? We take to the internet and actually go way too far. The fandom moves Disney. That's how much we believed in the character and the code that Skywalker had. With Omar, Omar is maybe the only character that I can remember in a show, and people are going to think of more, that never broke his code. Omar's code got him killed. Yep.

Because the reality is that Omar had retired, moved away from the life, was down there. He was being Tropical Omar. By the way, Tropical Omar was my favorite spinoff that nobody ever made. I could have watched three seasons of Tropical Omar. Tropical Omar, wherever he went, he already had the kids with him. And what happened?

They killed Butchie. They killed Butchie. Omar got to come back. Yes. And one thing I want to make sure I say about Omar Little's character and about The Wire itself. The reason why The Wire was a slow burn

is because the show was too truthful. You didn't have a big concept or a big gimmick. You didn't have, like, even with The Sopranos, one of my other favorite shows, hey, mobster who goes to a psychiatrist and has family issues. We're putting two worlds together. The Sopranos is a genius title because you don't know if it's about his family or you don't know if it's about his family. Right. There's no gimmick.

The Wire has none of that. You have to get into it and let the characters wrap you up. Right. Yeah. That's challenging. And inside of that, Omar Little is the most challenging character that at that point in my life I ever had to watch. I was in my early 20s. I was not an evolved brain in terms of issues of sexuality, in terms of issues of how I viewed the police, of how I viewed all of these things. And Omar continuously challenged you. He made a whole

generation of men who had a lot of hangups. He became the hero of the show. He became the realest one of the show. He became the strongest one of the show and he really took aim on the show and literally at a whole bunch of preconceived notions and stereotypes that a lot of brothers around my age hadn't fully come to terms with right and they didn't cut any corners you saw omar loving on guys in the show you saw omar not just having illicit sex and going around, not illicit sex, going around and cruising, picking guys up. You saw him in real, loving,

actual relationships with men. And it changed your perception of what you thought orientation and preference was. It just did. There's no way I can say enough about what an important character Omar preference was. It just did. There's no way I can say enough about what an important character Omar Little was. And the fact that when everybody else in the wire,

everyone else, sort of, you know, went against their own morals and they contradicted themselves. Omar never did. Well, Avon's the only other one that I feel like stayed pretty close

to who he was in season one by season five. He did. The only thing I would say about Avon is that in Avon's position, you can't really have a code. Because Avon is... Your code is green. Your code is green.

Avon is a straight-up capitalist Your code is green. Avon is a straight up capitalist. You know, Omar robbed drug dealers to to to to get his money, too. But in a way, what he had to do was decide who was and who was not going to get hurt with with Avon. That's Omar's code. Basically, who is and who's not going to get hurt with Avon, you just never know who's going to have to get hurt. Like, it doesn't really matter. It's whoever's in his way. It's whoever's in his way. You just never know

who's going to have to get hurt. But this show, the show in and of itself was grounded by Michael K. Williams and his dignity and the dignity of that character. Omar's the hero of the show. Well, we talked on Hardball,

we talked about G-Baby and whether that was the most shocking death of the history of movies, which is bizarre to say of this, know random keanu reeves movie from 2001 that certainly wasn't going to win an oscar or anything but if you just talk about oh my god did they actually do that g baby has to be discussed omar getting killed the way he got killed the way that scene was set up and who did it is among as shocked as I've ever been watching a television show.

I don't I didn't see it coming. It just seemed like after he jumped out of the building, I just felt like if anyone was going to make it to the end of the show, it was going to be him. And then the way it went and then the way all the callbacks when you rewatch the show and it's like, oh, it's all, they had all the breadcrumbs leading to the liquor store. And I just missed it the first time I watched it.

The second time I watched it, like, oh, this is, clearly this is how it's going to go down. You just didn't see it the first time. But shocking. Couldn't believe they killed

the best character in the show, but that's what made The Wire The Wire. Yeah. Kids down there torturing a cat. Torturing a cat. He's a psychopath.

And had been hard his whole way like that. Like that. Oh, he walks past. He sees Omar. I remember that scene leaked that week and it was going around.

And, you know, I could never stop myself. I watched it and I couldn't believe that they were actually going to do that. I didn't think that they were going to do it.

Then they did it. And even in death, Omar Little, the titan of the show, the guy that we had really kind of that we rode for, that we watched, they were able to contextualize his life after he died by the fact that

the coroner mixed up the toe tags. Very subtle punch in the gut. For as big as Omar was to us, for as much as he meant to that show and that entire universe, his life didn't really amount to anything.

He was another victim of the game. And even in his death, they slapped you with truth and a wire. And a show like The Wire that deals in truth is always going to take a little longer to catch in because you're looking at things that you don't really want to be looking at. It was such a well-written character and it's

such an iconic show. It's still on my Mount Rushmore. You still need the actor. Yeah, of course. And I just never seen anything like him on a TV before. And he was so identifiable with the long scar. There was something about his face and his eyes

and just the way he carried himself. Like when he was in any scene, your eyes gravitated to him, which is one of the hardest things. It was always weird to see him in other things. Like I remember he was in Boardwalk Empire. He's been in a bunch of movies. And your eyes always gravitated to him. And it's weird because at some point,

you're just going to be a character actor, but you can't also be a character actor that's overpowering everybody else in these scenes. And I always thought it was weird that he never got discovered by one of these actors that does these big ensemble things. Like that he didn't have a crucial part in Wolf of Wall Street, something like that.

You know, he was around, he was in some good things, but that nobody kind of tapped into that. It was the kind of thing Tarantino would have seen when, you know, Tarantino sometimes can just be like, this guy had a moment.

I'm bringing it back. I'm running it back with this guy. This guy, when he's in there, this guy's a star, but he just, he never found that in a movie, so the TV show ended up being his legacy.

By the way, one thing about the code, it's so funny how this can shift. You mentioned Luke Skywalker. I said to Dad from the OC, my wife, when Carrie Bradshaw with Mr. Big, when Mr. Big got married, and then Carrie Bradshaw started the affair with him when she was dating the guy, Aiden. And then Mr. Big's wife fell down the stairs and all that.

My wife was like, I'm out. I just don't like her anymore. If one of my friends did this, I wouldn't want to be friends with them anymore. And now it was like she, even though Carrie Bradshaw was a mess, that was kind of the point of the show. It did feel like some code had been slightly betrayed.

And my wife never, my wife loves that show. She was never totally the show, it did feel like some code had been slightly betrayed. My wife loves that show. She was never totally the same with it. These storytellers, especially now in the age of the internet, they have so much power and they also have so little room for error. Succession's coming up next month. They could completely fuck up

that right now because I'm doing a rewatch right now. Those characters are doing a rewatch right now. Those characters are, are just perfect the way they're sketched out and the way they're acted. Each character. There's no, there's no like weak link character. There's no like, Oh man,

they got to build the episode around this guy. Even, even a Connor, the oldest son who's like ran for president in season two, like kind of the pseudo black sheep. That might be a guy that doesn't work normally on a TV show or it's like the actor's wrong

or they just can't totally figure it out. But even when he's in carrying the thing, he's awesome. But they could fuck it up, you know, and all of a sudden season three, it's just one wrong turn

and you're never the same. And I think that's what with The Wire, one of the reasons I love that show so much and one of the reasons it's such a great rewatch is the only fuck-up they had was the season five, the newspaper thing.

But I still defend season five. We could argue about that forever. I still think it's totally watchable. People are too down on season five. The season five thing is like, you know, it's kind of, it's a weird thing. The season five of The Wire, is it as good as the rest of The Wire?

No, but go back and watch season five. It's fucking great. It's great. The season finale is probably one of the three or four best season finales ever in the history of television. It's great. And it has a completely, an incredibly engrossing story

with Bubbles coming to terms with his addiction and his past and what happened to one of his friends, the little man that he had, Sherrod. Season 5 has more than enough for you to call it one of the outstanding seasons of television.

Really, as far as you compare it to any other show. But if you compare it against season four of The Wire, which was a fucking masterpiece, or even season three, or even season two, then you start to kind of look around and go, wow, people have problems with the serial killer stuff and

all of that. But no, season five of The Wire is just fine. It's amazing television. When we rewatched it and um four way down in the hole both jamel and me came to terms with the fact or had the realization that people a lot of talk a lot of shit about season five just because they need to have something to talk shit about but season five is great um coming back to omar i just remember so many different scenes with michael k williams as omar that shows so many different scenes with Michael K. Williams as Omar that show so many different parts of the character sometimes Omar would just

fuck with you Omar walks into the Proposition Joe's shop right and he knows he has to drop on Prop Joe he's already taking the guy out and he's doing all of this he's telling Prop Joe what he needs him to do and he gives

Prop Joe a clock for him to fix. Right. And the whole time, there's a certain there's a comedic energy under there. Like he's flexing a little bit. Omar can be a little arrogant, too. He knows who he is. Right. He knows that he's Omar Little. When he walks through the hood, gun or no gun, he knows that people are afraid of him, and he knows that he's earned that respect. So Prop Joe, the biggest dealer on the East Side,

Omar's fucking with him a little bit. Then you have the scene where Omar has to identify Brandon's body. And he goes in there, and I've never seen an actor, had never seen an actor to that point, should I say, be able to vacillate from intense grief to insane rage just that quickly. Those same eyes that give you that burning, like destructive anger just completely soften up.

Like right as the camera is in his face and they give you tears. Yeah. So give you tears that are so vulnerable, gives you emotions that's so vulnerable that you don't see the scar anymore. Like he could completely soften his face. He could completely soften his face, even though he's got that big scar

that tells you that he's had a tough life. The guy was just putting in work. He was just doing his thing. And I'll be honest with you. Had James, had Gandolfini survived, he'd have had problems acting out of Tony Soprano. It's just not, sometimes you do a job and we see you that way. This is not the only great work that Michael K. Williams has done. And I think that part of remembering his life and his

legacy is going to be people over the next couple of days and months pointing out and bringing attention to things that he was in outside of The Wire. He just had an amazing turn on Lovecraft Country. I think he's currently nominated for an Emmy right now for that. So, you know, he's been

doing great work. He never stopped doing great work. But sometimes the moment meets the man and it creates perfect work. And that's what Omar was. There was a huge outpouring from the Hollywood community yesterday. Yeah. It really felt like

an A-list actor had died and it made me think like, there are these people that aren't A-list actors, but they kind of feel A-list anyway because either they had the one great part or they just had some sort of moment that becomes eternal. And I feel like Omar was like that. And, you know, with The Sperano, same thing. You're seeing some of it with Gandolfini as the movie's coming and his son's in it. And I think one of the themes as they promote that movie is going to be just how impactful Gandolfini was. To the people around him, it was almost like an athlete. People talk about these athletes that they were on this athlete's team for two years, and they have 17 stories about the guy. It really does seem like he was like that.

Yeah. I mean, look, there's a difference between popularity and importance you know so uh an actor that everybody loves an actor that everybody likes is one thing but an actor that really made a difference that had a role that really impacted you that all those actors are dreaming for roles like that they Every one of them wants a role where they're an Omar Little, a role that's that medium, that chunky, where they can actually get in and say that they did something outstanding.

They can't be recreated. He might have not been among the most popular actors, but I think looking at him now, you can see how important he was to a lot of people and how important Omar Little was to a lot of people. Where does he rank on best HBO characters

ever for you? That's like a whole other podcast. It is best. I still feel like Tony Soprano doesn't get enough love as like an obvious number one, at least number one seed. Well, he is. To me, he has to be the number one seed.

You know, so I rewatch The Sopranos all the time. I literally watch The Sopranos every day. The thing about Tony is that does anybody have any clue just how villainous and how much of an asshole tony soprano was by the end tony soprano gets dark from being a lovable guy in some you know morally compromising positions by the end of that thing he's's fucking Darth Vader. He killed Chris. You know what I mean? By the end of that whole thing, he is just completely

somebody different. Tony definitely is up there. I would have best characters, man. It's going to be Tony. It's going to be Omar. You might have a couple other characters from The Wire, too. And then, you know, you're going to have, if you're not talking about just HBO,

you know, you're going to have Breaking Bad in there, too. I was just a pure HBO since they've been. Pure HBO? Yeah. 40 years. OJ's first in 10 character I think is up there. Whatever that guy's name was. I love that show.

It was a good one. All right, we're going to take a break and then we have some other pop culture stuff to discuss. So I got to live something as a parent over the last few weeks. It was interesting to watch my kids go through it. The Will Conde's album, Drop or Not, soap opera, that lasted for a couple months. And my son stayed up until five in the morning one night

thinking it was going to drop and it never did. And just the whole rollercoaster ride of that. And then when it finally came out, it was like the kids had waited in the rollercoaster line for three and a half hours. And there was just no way the roller coaster was going to live up to how long they waited in line. It was kind of their takeaway. Ben loved a couple songs. So we didn't like it as much. But Ben's in on a couple songs. So he's fine.

But I think at the same time, the foreplay made the expectations impossible. I know you talked about it on the Ringer Music Show, which was excellent, by the way. But just regurgitate your takes here for my audience. Man, shout out to Ben Simmons. Shout out to Ben. Ben's out there. He's doing his thing. He's finding his way.

Shout out to Ben Simmons. He's your favorite Ben Simmons right now. Yeah, it's not even close. Me and Ben was up there chilling. Ben was doing his thing. Ben was telling me about all the movements he's making. Ben's ready for high school. He's got another year,

but shout out to Ben Simmons. We appreciate that, Ben. Yeah. No, so we're in like the... So I'll give you a weird, totally disrespectful comparison. Like the Jake Paul fight. Okay? So we're in a Jake

Paul fight era of art. And what I mean by that is we all wanted Jake Paul, the Jake Paul fight with Jake Paul and Tyron Willey to be something other than what it was going to be, which was going to be a letdown from the huge spectacle that preceded it. We wanted to go in there and see him get beat up or see him look unstoppable we wanted some something to justify everything that led up to it okay yeah but the problem in culture right now is the everything that leads up to these things is constant and the art is like spor. So we live in arrested development awaiting things. Like Shang-Chi just dropped. Now it's time to await Eternals.

So the Eternals drop. Then it's going to be time to wait Spider-Man No Way Home. All right, so we're always waiting for something, and we're always getting told how awesome it was, how awesome it's going to be. So when we sit down for it, there's just a letdown that's going to happen drake and kanye both know that kanye knew it kanye continuously over and over and over again hyped up an album hyped up something and set the expectations for it so high

that jesus would have had to have been featured on the album himself for it to meet the expectations. And not only was Jesus not on the album, he couldn't make it. He was referenced a few times. A couple of times, but it was just okay. And normally, if you say, hey, I'm giving art to you, and the art is just okay, then that's fine. Butvel jumped over the grand canyon it was something that was cool to look at but that's not going to inspire you in any way it's a

spectacle and it's something that's worth watching because you know it there's danger and there's all those things but spectacle doesn't nourish you the only thing that really nourishes you is the art that's what inspires you and it didn deliver. There were three songs on there that I felt like were actually really beautiful songs. But other than that, the guy who used to be able to do inspiration and nourishment in his sleep, Kanye's throwaway songs on late registration. When you talk about joints like Celebration and stuff like that, throwaway songs made you feel something. And now,

it doesn't seem like he has it anymore. What do you think the shelf life is for musicians? I feel like I've discussed this on pods before, but where they can really be great. And I'm not just talking about rap and hip hop. I think just in general, because I always felt like it was about eight years. And I think it's the same for directors too, unless they're transcendent. Scorsese, obviously it doesn't count. But for the most part, you look at directors and they have these eight year runs where the films are kind of clustered into the, maybe it's eight, maybe it's 10, it's somewhere in there. And then for whatever reason, the landscape tilts for them. They don't see things quite the same way.

With musicians, I don't care who it is. Once you get past that eight-year window, I think it's really hard to, not only to keep coming up with stuff to sing about, write about, talk about, but also your audience gets kind of burned out on the sound a little bit, you know? And they're kind of used to you in a lot of ways. It's tough to keep surprising them and challenge

them. That's why I'm so amazed by what Taylor Swift's been able to do that. She's in like year, I don't know, 15, something like that. And it still feels like when she puts out new albums, her fans are like really delighted and, and, you know, there there's little gems in there and she's reinventing herself over and over again. People care way less though now than they did about Taylor Swift four or five years ago. Yeah, but that's the nature of the beast. But when she put out the two

albums in the same year, I feel like that mattered though. It was a big thing, at least for the people that gave a crap about her. So what do you think the window is? What would you say it is? You say eight years. I say six or five. And it depends on how often you drop. Like Kendrick probably is still in his window, you know?

But Kendrick might be an outlier because of just how he's constructed his life, you know, and how careful he is with everything. So he might be almost more of like, I hate to compare anyone to Springsteen, but how Springsteen was able to just kind of prolong it for almost 30 years before it started to fade. Well, what happens is the music starts to intersect with your lifestyle itself, right? So you have guys who've been around for a long time and they don't give you as much as they think about how

much we know about Kanye that has absolutely nothing to do with music right we know kanye's political affiliations we know kanye's religious stuff we know the ins and outs of kanye's relationship it almost gets to a point to where kanye naming naming this album donda actually reignited our interest in it because we hadn't heard him go deep into his relationship with his mother and what it meant for him to lose his mother he had referenced it and talked about it a little bit but if this was going to be a whole album that was sort of uh about that then it made people think that maybe you would get something that you hadn't gotten in a while which he didn't do that on the album like uh he it doesn't have very much to do with that. Just to be quite blunt.

It doesn't have very much to do with that. So yeah, it also depends on like what it is that you know about the artists themselves, how much you feel like they have left to say. Like Jay-Z is an artist right now that still feels like he has a lot to say. There's a lot to get off his chest.

He's doing a lot of new things and he doesn't talk to us about them very much. Think what you want about Jay-Z and some of his, you know, leans towards being a super, super capitalist. And a lot of people, right, right. A lot of people have problems with that, but he's still talking his shit. Right. Um, Kendrick still feels like we don't know what Kendrick thinks about a lot of these things. We don't know how Kendrick feels about the pandemic. We don't know how Kendrick feels about Joe Biden or all of the rest of the rappers. We don't know how he feels about that. We don't know how he feels. So when he drops, we're going to be super interested in it.

So that has to do, that's a big part of this too. A big part of this is how much of these people are you getting? And the equation for putting out music has changed because like a guy like Drake, he wants to stay on top. So he feels like he can't stop being in your face. But what'll happen is after a while you get on a, on an album and you just have less to say. Well, the other piece with Kanye, especially the first seven years, there's an authenticity and honesty to him in the way he weaved things about his life into his songs that was really unique to him. And I think once you go into that whole Kardashian whirlpool, how do you take that piece? How do you take that authenticity about your own life? When you're in this whirlpool where the whole point of the Kardashians is nobody knows what's authentic ever at any point. We don't know what to believe. How real is their reality show? How

real is this? How real is that? That's kind of like trying to solve a mystery every week if you're a big fan of them. And I don't know how you write music about that. Right. You would think that Kanye marrying Kim Kardashian would make Kim Kardashian a West, but what it really did was make Kanye a Kardashian. And that's nothing new.

Everyone's talked about that. Not great for a musician. Not great for a Kardashian. And, you know, that's nothing new. Everyone's talked about that. Not great for a musician. Not great for a musician. The standing rule with the Kardashians is believe nothing but be entertained by everything. And so you cannot say that watching Kanye over the last four or five years, six years, whatever it was, however long it's been, hasn't been entertaining. It's been entertaining was, however long it's been, hasn't been entertaining. It's been entertaining and compelling even when it's been really frustrating. And there's been some great musical moments in there. He made Life of Pablo while he was with Kim and that was a fantastic record. That was a fantastic album. So it's still there.

Kanye still touches you on this album. Don't get wrong god uh come to life hurricane no child left behind the the guy who can kind of like twist your soul and knots and just make you connect with him he's still in there but a lot of other things too dude's got a couple of billion dollars that he's evaluated at so just looks at the world different who's the best rapper alive right now oh good question um if we had the championship belt who has it i would throw out some names that maybe people wouldn't think of like okay so the biggest rapper out right now is drake he proved that again drake is the biggest rapper out nobody's close to drake as far as who's the biggest rapper some people say but the best rapper i'd say some names people haven't heard.

I'd say Conway the Machine. I'd say Freddie Gibbs. Freddie Gibbs, Indiana's own. Oh, Freddie Gibbs is a monster. And he's putting out inspired, real rap music that has to do with what's going on. Obviously, Lil Baby. Can I tell you something about Freddie Gibbs? Royce the Five Nine. inspired real rap music that has to do with what's going on obviously little baby can i tell you something about freddie gibbs royce the five nine what like who what about freddie gibbs you

know fred i wouldn't i wouldn't think that you'd be fucking with freddie you know freddie freddie gibbs may or may not have come to a grantland party okay what happened but freddie gibbs right now ben simmons his favorite rapper see see what i'm talking about give favorite thing like number one right now gibbs do his thing gibbs still got a lot to say um and he's just one of those guys that like you know just continues to get better vince that's a that's a separate championship belt there's who has a championship belt and then there's the who is the best rapper right now championship belt right's who has a championship belt and then there's the who is the best rapper right now championship belt right because like the intercontinental belt almost right no best

rapper is you know who's just making the best rap music right right now who's just at the peak of their powers right now but then who is like the biggest is drake yeah it's straight it's yeah it's been for a while it's it's going to be to be Drake until Drake makes the decision that it will no longer be Drake. Lil Baby has a chance to come up there and get Drake. There's some other artists that have a chance to come up there and get Drake, you know, that really move a lot of units. But Drake is just important to so many people that a rapper typically doesn't become that important to. And he's also a rapper and a pop star so it's different in that way do you feel like there's an infrastructure now with

all this stuff that almost mirrors high school where the athletes have become a piece of you know like drake's the guy for a bunch of these dudes, right? Like LeBron, et cetera. And anytime there's an album coming out, they also have like all their buddies who are all these other famous people that are all like pushing whatever. And it's like this armada of celebrity that it just becomes a machine. I don't know how anybody would top Drake

and the connections that he has at this point around him to help push the stuff he's doing. Does that make sense it does so when you watch i think i might have said this on the podcast before so when you go i want people to do something when you go to a celebrity's instagram i want you to compare something i always do this a celebrity drops song, puts the song on their Instagram. Instagram lines up the blue check mark celebrities first. So you can see what they think.

Watch what they say. Oh man, this is fire. Fire, fire. You still spitting. You still got it. Girl, this is crazy. This music you got, you dropping shit. This is the best shit we ever heard before in your life. Oh my god, we fuck with it so heavy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, crazy. This music you got, you dropping shit. This is the best shit we ever heard before in your life. Oh, my God,

we fuck with it so heavy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Way through that. Okay? Then get to what the actual people who have nothing invested. Pass the blue check marks. Go past the blue check marks.

The unblue. The unblue. Go to what the people who actually don't have any vested interest in being friends with a celebrity, like what they say. What? Hey, man, I'm not going to lie, bro. This shit's a mid. I'm going to be real.

You waited all of this time to put this shit out. It's whack. You sound just like this. Listen to what they're talking about. Get through the people who are just trolling and then get through the people who are super fans and just look at the overall consensus. There's just a difference. And celebrity is such a currency now that nobody wants you in the club. Nobody wants to fall out of the club. Right. Nobody wants to be out of it. So once you're in it and you got the blue checkmark and you and people's dap you up when they see you and they're all of that.

No one wants to be outside of Delilah, can't get in the club no more. So you're not going to get on this shit for them. And also, just to be real with you, those people are artists. So being that they're artists, they understand how sensitive people are about their art. That's why if you really want to know the temperature

of something real, there's only a couple of people you can actually trust to give you what the actual temperature is or help you contextualize it. And then you just go to the average people that are doing it. If LeBron, like Drake could, if Drake dropped and Drake's album wasn't whack, it wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't whack at all, at all. It wasn't whack. But if it was whack, you think LeBron James is going to say that?

No. No. at all at all it wasn't whack but if it was whack you think lebron james gonna say that no no like he like drake could have literally he could have literally done like a schoolhouse rocks album and like put it out and lebron gonna be there like i'm only a bill like driving like driving down with his maybach and shit like that so it doesn't even matter you know what the lane is right now for somebody who's great at this? A great up-and-coming musician who doesn't want to be friends with any of these guys and calls it like it is. And then does songs, you know, drops lyrics

like making fun of like that Ben Simmons was afraid to shoot in the fourth quarter and stuff like that. It's just dropping bobs up the right. I feel like that would work. Vince Staples is probably our best chance. Vince keeps it gangster, but at the same time, most of the people like that, they're too focused on their own art to care

about anybody else's. And I'm going to come out and just diss another rapper for no reason because it's a whole bunch of static behind it. I'm not saying rappers. I'm saying cross cultures and cross you know, like instead of mentioning LeBron in a song as in some sort of positive thing, take a shot at the 2011 finals.

Just take a shot at it. But they like LeBron. No, I know. I'm just saying it's a lane for somebody. Somebody can go wrestling heel and just be like that guy. Oh, we had a guy that went and said, fuck you to everybody. It didn't really end up working out for him.

It was a guy who tried it. Remember the guy? I'm not going to say his name, but he tried it. We won't even say his name. That's how badly it didn't work out. Turned the state's evidence is what happened to the team.

Before you go, can you give us the Saints, the over-unders, nine wins? Some people are like, the team's going to suck. It's over. Other people are like, like myself's going to suck. It's over. Other people are like, like myself,

wait, Drew Brees was, couldn't throw a pass more than eight yards last year. Now they actually have a quarterback who can throw the ball. And it's Sean Payton. The division's not like unbelievable except for Tampa.

NFC probably has the three NFC West teams, Tampa, the Packers, that's it. Why not the Saints? Why are we writing them off? They came in with a play of making the Super Bowl last year. If their tight end doesn't get stripped, why are we writing this team off? We're writing them off

because people are writing them off. I'm not writing them off. People are writing them off because it seems counterintuitive that you can lose one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time and not take a gigantic step back and also there were some salary cap casualties off the defense we lost some pass rushing we lost a couple of different guys and then uh the defense this year is going to be very solid very solid but we did lose a little production on the defensive side of the ball um and then on top of that, you know, you have questions right now as much as, you know, we're having some unexpected standouts from the wide receiver core this year in the preseason.

Callaway. Callaway, of course. I just paid for him in my keeper draft yesterday. It's a good pick. It's like 19 bucks. Guy's going to have a good season. There's still the whole question with

Thomas and just how things are going to go there and what things are going to be like. And then you just never know. This is way too pessimistic. This is so disappointing. I am not pessimistic. I say the Saints are not going to win in nine games. I say the Saints are going to win 10 games. Oh, this is better. That's what I

think. I think they're at least ten. I think the Saints are going to go ten and six, but if you're asking me... Ten and seven. Excuse me, ten and seven. I think the Saints, but if you're asking me why people feel the way that they do, it's because of this. I'm telling you right now and

old takes exposed. Everybody, get ready for it. Jameis Winston is going to have a pro bowl caliber season this year. Oh my God. Jameis Winston is not going to be okay for the Saints. Jameis Winston is not going to be all right for the Saints. Jameis Winston is going to be good to great.

Finger licking good? Is he going to lick his fingers like that good? He should never fucking do that again. But he is going to be good to great for the Saints. I'm with you. I got him for $2 in my keeper draft yesterday. I was delighted. I'm like, sure.

I'll take Jameis Winston. He might throw for 5,200 yards again. Yeah. He's going to be on turf with a way better offensive coordinator. Why not? He's not going to throw. So the touchdowns that he's going to throw for, he's going to throw for less

touchdowns than he was when he was just throwing the ball all over everywhere in Tampa Bay. But he's going to make fewer mistakes. And overall he's going to look like a much more competent QB. And we're going to figure out how to make Taysom Hill a real contributor in the offense too.

I think Sean Payton is looking forward to this challenge. That young kid, Taysom Hill, who's now 30? Yeah, he's like, yeah. This young whipper-snapper up a cover? It's been around for nine years. But I think he's looking yeah young whipper snapper up a cover fed rat for nine years but I think he's looking forward to this I think as long as Sean Payton doesn't do what he does

which sometimes Sean Payton actually out coaches himself but I think the Saints are going to be strong I think they're going to be strong I think in the next couple years if they can make a couple moves I think they'll be really strong my Sean Payton take I don't think people realize how limited Drew Brees was. And it's almost like Sean Payton was in the Indy 500 with bad tires

and still like finishing in the top five. And only the other coaches kind of realized how limited Brees was near the end. And I think he's going to relish the chance to be like, look at all the stuff we can do now. Yeah. Look at this. Watch this 50-yard throw that my QB just made

that we wouldn't have had last year. We've had the Ringerverse pod for almost six months now. What's the biggest argument you've had on the Ringerverse pod? Oh, the biggest argument by far was me and Charles Holmes

versus Mallory Rubin and Joe Miedenaron on which Spider-Man was best out of Tobey Maguire. by far, was me and Charles Holmes versus Mallory Rubin and Jomie Adeneron on which Spider-Man was best out of Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland. I'm actually beyond with you. They got angry? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

were you upset? I don't like Mallory anymore. She does get very headstrong. I don't like Mallory. I don't like Jomie. They were way too good at this like Mallory anymore. She does get very headstrong. I don't like Mallory. I don't like Jomie. They were way too good at this. Mallory is, I'll tell you what. So we lost, right?

We lost because it was like a midnight court is what we do where we go back and forth when we state our cases or whatever. We lost. I'll never lose to it again. Mallory came in there like fucking Clarence Darrow. She was so fucking prepared. And we prepared too. She's a maniac.

Charles was amazing. I actually was the Smush Parker of that team. Like Charles Kobe'd us. But right now, there's a little beef right now. A little beef. A little LaBringer vs. Beef. But we're having a lot of fun. The podcast is going fantastic.

So what was the answer? What was the winning they won they won they they won we lost that we let the people vote i think they got something it was like 72 percent them 28 us we got swacked it was the first time i think i ever lost midnight court i can't remember midnight court is normally me against charles but mallory and joey jumped in i still believe what i believe is they argued a bit of case, but we'll never, I'll never, I'll never lose to Mallory again. Never. This, the podcast thing is so funny sometimes. We knew we wanted you on ringer verse.

We were trying to figure out who's going to be Van's partner. Van needs to be on this. Is it rotating co-hosts? What's it going to look like? And then you did like one thing with Charles. And then you called me and you were like, it's Charles. That's the guy. I'm like, really? Was that easy? You're like, no, it's the guy.

You actually need luck with this stuff sometimes. Sometimes you just have it with somebody right away and there you go. Man, Charles. I read Charles's. If you haven't read Charles's piece on Drake on TheRinger.com right now, go read it it's fantastic he is just all of our guys but Charles

is just fantastically talented you looked at you have two good partners because you have Rachel on higher learning too Rachel is your weeks with two fun people and not just but Jomie and Steve as well we all like we're like bro we're stealing from you, man.

Like, the fact that we get to talk about this shit. Like, the fact that we get to do this. Like, I'm waking up. People are saying, Van, what are you doing today? I'm like, I'm watching Marvel shit all day preparing for work. What kind of shit did I fall into? But it's great. We're having a great time.

It's a lot of fun. Well, we love having you on the rewatchables as well. It's great. We're having a great time. It's a lot of fun. Well, we love having you on the rewatchables as well. It's great. So there you go. All right. Van Lathan, good to see you. Good luck with the Saints this year. Good luck. Also, I want to say one thing before I leave. For all of you out there who are fucking writing

LSU off, go fuck yourselves. We're going to be okay. I was in the Rose Bowl. Top five worst experiences of my life. The UCLA fans, I hope one day we get a chance to play you guys again, hopefully in Tiger Stadium. Hope you guys come on down.

Great victory by UCLA. LSU will have a strong season this year. Tiger Nation, don't hang your heads. We'll be better than that. All right. Ben Latham, thank you. All right, that's it for this podcast. It was produced by Kyle Creighton.

Coming back on Thursday, the return of Million Dollar Picks. And you're going to have the ability to play with me or against me in Million Dollar Picks onuel. So I'm really looking forward to that. Peter Schrager will be here on Thursday. Not sure, might just be me and Schrags. We might just roll with the big guns and we're going to break down the week one slate, talk about our favorite bets. He's going to give us last minute scoops, last minute sleeper buzz, a whole bunch of things. So I will see you on Thursday. Very excited. Getting very close, very, very close to football.

See you on Thursday. I don't have feelings within. On the wayside, I'm a person I never was. I don't have feelings within.