The Bill Simmons Podcast - A Genius Westbrook Pick, Rose vs. Love, and the 2008 Redraftables With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to talk about their early years in podcasts and radio, respectively (3:10). Then they revisit the 2008 NBA draft and discuss some of its subplots, draft comedy, and NBA legends before redrafting the top 14 lottery picks (40:33). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the bill Simmons podcast on the ringer podcast network brought to you by zip recruiter. Hiring can be difficult, but if you're currently hiring, you face new difficulties, housing wire. They could relate. They needed to hire a reporter to cover news stories on the U S housing markets. So they turned to our presenting sponsor zip recruiter and that's how housing

wire found Alexandra Roja. She never imagined she had a reporter job during COVID-19, but then she created a profile on ZipRecruiter. They matched Alexandra to HousingWire's reporter job because she was a great fit for the role. HousingWire received her application only four hours after they posted the job and just a few weeks later, Alexandra was hired. See how ZipRecruiter can help you hire.

Try it now for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. That is ZipRecruiter can help you hire. Try it now for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. That is ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. All right, I have a little bit of an announcement for you. We have a new podcast launching on June 29th, which is a Monday. It is called the Bakari Sellers Podcast. He was on my podcast two weeks ago. He was just brilliant. And he's,

in general, an amazing guy and could not be more happy that he's going to be joining us. He's going to be doing two podcasts a week and really diving into this election and this moment the country's having right now. But he's going to be reacting to the debates after they happen. I think there's going to be at least four big debates and then doing preview pods for those debates as well. And his guest list is ridiculous. And I am really excited to get his perspective on stuff. We had the Keep It At 1600 guys in 2016 that eventually became Crooked Media, Pod Save America,

all those pods. And it was great to have them, their perspective and their intellect during one of the craziest elections of all time was just awesome to have. And we've had looked around for a while after that, trying to figure out, is there a way to have that again? And I think Bakari is the answer in a lot of different ways because he is really, really talented and couldn't be happier to have him on board. So we'll have details probably midweek on how to subscribe. The feed will be live midweek and we'll be ready to go on Monday and super pumped to have him.

So we will have a few more announcements over the next few weeks and months. We are kicking into gear. It really happened, I would say, the last five, six weeks. The pandemic was a little paralyzing to know what to do. But now I think we're making some moves. And it's been awesome being with Spotify, by the way. So in general, very excited about the future for us. I'm very excited to have Bakari.

All right, it's time. Pearl Jam! about the future for us. I'm very excited to have Bakari. All right, it's time. Pearl Jip. All right. So we're taping this on Father's Day. Shout out to my father, Dr. Bill Simmons. I posted an Instagram photo today of him during the 1987 Pistons Celtics Series. DJs in mid-jump shot from 17 feet. Everyone in the crowd is just watching it. My dad has his fist pump up, knowing it's going to go in. It's the crowd is just watching it. My dad has his fist pump up knowing it's

going to go in as the kind of fan he is. So happy father's day to him. Ryan, you have a happy father's day to give out. Yeah. My dad, uh, my hero started as a bricklayer. I used to hand him one brick and then it was a big, big thing the next summer when I can hand him two bricks and, uh, I would have posted something, but people probably ask me how much he pays in taxes. So I was just going to leave it alone. Fair. I wanted to start with a curveball. So I didn't know that these still existed.

Wait a minute. But the first four podcasts I ever did are on YouTube and have been on YouTube for four months. Back when it was called Eye of the Sports Guy. And my first guest was Mark Stein. And my second guest was Adam Carolla. One of my first four guests was Alton from The Real World. So you can listen to that when he buys cigarettes during it. And then Marv Albert, which I honestly had no recollection of doing a podcast with Marv

Albert. Like when I say I don't have a recollection of it, like I do not have a recollection of it. Wait a minute. You like, so if somebody had bet you, you interviewed Marv Albert, you would have said no and lost money. Yeah. I would have been like, no, I've never had him on.

I would love to have him on. I was like, no, apparently I had him on 13 years ago. So I made the mistake of listening to the first two podcasts. And I listened to the first 10 minutes of the Mark Stein one. And then I listened to the whole Corolla one and I was so bad and I got so bummed out because I actually thought I knew I wasn't that good the first couple of years, but it was like, I had no idea what I was doing. My voice was off. I sound like a little nervous. I don't know how to fake laugh. I didn't know how to fill silences. And Corolla is, he's doing a 15 minute pedophile pitch. Cause he had this fake movie called pedophile and he's

pitching it and he's stopping and I'm not jumping in. And, and I was just thinking like, wow, I kind of wish this actually wasn't on YouTube. Do you have stuff from the deep recesses of your past when you were breaking in that you are like, oh man, I, I wish people couldn't hear that. Cause I sucked. Uh, I don't know. I'm actually, I give you credit for even bringing this up because now everybody's going to go look for it. And it's just like an advertisement for, Hey, let's go back and listen to how bad I was at this. And anybody that ever tries to do anything like this, you know, somebody starting out a radio show or a podcast, or, you know, maybe they're like first jump up into doing TV at like a national

level. I always say, cause it took me, I didn't understand until after I had sucked was that however you can be as prepped as you want to be, you can want to, you can care so much about how good you want to be. There's no possible way you're going to be as good today as you can be as prepped as you want to be, you can want to, you can care so much about how good you want to be. There's no possible way you're going to be as good today as you will be in six months and then two years and then three years. And then you don't get great really until you realize like, Hey, I'm pretty good at this.

I'm just going to relax. And then you get to a whole nother level. So my first radio show at ESPN, I don't even think exists. I hope it's so bad because they called me and I think I was 29 when they got my, my, uh, tryout tape. It was a demo. And I actually just did the demo. I said it was from a radio show. And instead I just did like three segments that were never even aired. And that's what I use as my demo, even though I'd been in Boston for a few years. And they were like,

they actually got back to me, which I was shocked about. And I think they were like they actually got back to me which i was shocked about and i think they were so worried about me being young they're like are you 30 i was like yeah yeah i'm 30 i think i just rounded up the year and then they go have you ever done solo and i was like all the time love being solo and i'd never been i'd never been solo in my life and as i always say solo radio is the hardest thing to do in this business so i did two hours solo and it's when I memorized every one of the world basketball, world baseball classic rosters. I studied everyone and memorized them all because that was starting. And for some reason I thought I needed to know all those. So the point that I make, it was so bad. I was rifling through all this pointless information.

And then I think I even threw the heart out two minutes before because I looked at the wrong clock so in the middle of a segment I'm like okay all right yep coming up next Jason start and the producer's like you still have two minutes you still have two minutes don't don't throw it a break so I hope that doesn't exist I do have some play-by-play cassette tapes still that I've never gotten rid of that maybe it's time to maybe bust those out as a ringer special I'm you should you should could blackmail yourself them. Yeah, I remember Gus, my buddy Gus and I, who, you know. Yeah, right.

And I'm going to say 0506 range. ESPN Radio had three afternoons in a row, like a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And they'd always been like, hey, do you want to do some stuff? And I was like, I'd love to do like a couple of shows with my buddy Gus. We've always dreamed of doing it since we were in high school. He used to have a pirate radio station. We used to go on in the 80s.

I was like, I'd love to do it. And we did it. And I remember the first two days, we were just terrible. It was like, we just, the eight minute, nine minute blocks or whatever and had to do it and just had to have takes, had to sell each other.

It's one thing to do it on the phone, but then when you're actually doing it, it's like, and then the third day we were a little better, but it was the same thing for the pod. I'm probably a little better than I'm making it seem. I'm just comparing it to how all the things I know now, listening to the guy in the first couple of pods, my first five were Mark Stein, Adam Carolla, Paul Shirley, Alton from the real world and Marv Albert. And those are, those are the five. I, the sports guy, why we called it.

I, the sport who came up with that. I have no idea, but you can hear me in the second one. Like this isn't a good enough names. Please send me suggestions. So then my sixth one was David Stern. And I think, and I think that one went okay. And then I started to kind of get the hang of it, but it took me a while, but it's like, you know, it's really hard to host podcasts. And I think, I think people don't, people kind of feel like anyone can do it. And the reality is

not everyone can do it. It's a real skill, especially if there's multiple people. And we've always, at least at Grantland and The Ringer, we've really tried to be careful about who we put in the actual hosting position, how to give somebody enough reps to be comfortable, things like that. But man, I listened to this other one because this guy on YouTube has all these old pods I did and I wanted to I forgot the whole JFK assassination I just forgot all my takes So there's one from 2013

Me, Klosterman, and Chris Connolly Breaking down the JFK assassination For like an hour and ten minutes I gotta say it's great Oh that's good This is 2013 By 2009 I kind of knew what I was doing, but listening to that, just the six years from 07 to 13, it was like a different human being.

So anyway, it was a big ego blow for me this weekend. Okay. But there's, there's a couple different things that I want to follow up here. And as I look at all the different people that I've worked with, I'm sure you feel the same way with the people that you've worked with. There's some real value in being delusional about your own talent. True. So, so it's great that you're self-aware that you go, wow, you know, I'm, I'm much better now. Or wow. I wish I hadn't done that. Or like, here's all these little things that I've noticed a difference and that's cool. And that's cool. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's good to be that self, but there's also something about those guys that are like, man, I killed it. I was awesome. I'm awesome. I'm even, I'm awesome now. Like who just never have any doubt about their abilities

in anything, especially being on the air. I kind of envy those guys. Well, that's why I knew I needed the podcast. Once I did four or five, I was like, this is going to be great for me. I'm going to get reps. I'm going to put in my 10,000 hours was like, this is going to be great for me. I'm going to get reps. I'm going to put in my 10,000 hours. And ultimately this is going to help me not just with podcasts, but with radio, with TV, whatever else I'm just getting conversational reps. And I, and I think I've said this before. I didn't really feel like I, I totally could drive the car for about 18 months where, cause it's not just about getting off your takes. It's about kind of selling the other person, accentuating what they're saying,

push nudging them in the right directions and all these different things at not overpowering them. There's just so much that goes into it. And, uh, it's just, it's really weird because there's this guy, still Bimmons on YouTube. He has all this stuff. And I've done like, I don't know, I did like 980 podcasts at ESPN to Greatland. I didn't even remember I did Marv Albert. You must have shows where you're like, oh, I don't even remember I talked to that person.

Yeah, but it would have to be insignificant. Yeah, and our interviews are so short. I always remember like Bill Russell, when I introduced him, him saying, excuse me. And I was like, oh man, like I've already screwed this up. And I was looking forward to that one as much as probably still any interview in my entire life. And he goes, if you're going to introduce me, can you introduce me as Bill Russell, captain of the Boston Celtics? Cause I'm like hall of famer, you know, 11 time champion. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no.

And so it was actually really cool the way he did it. I remember one with Canseco where he was promoting his book Juiced. And so I was like, well, how did steroids change you as a player? He's like, oh, you're just assuming I use steroids. I was like, uh, the book is called Juiced. Yeah, you talk about being juiced. Right. So he's like, well, you're just going to have to read the book. And he was like such a jerk about juiced right so he's like well you're just

gonna have to read the book and he was like such a jerk about it the whole time so i was like all right cool um yeah i'm sure there i'm sure there's some i'm surprised the marvel i'm surprised the marvel never came up because we talked about marv so much during the watch a bull stuff where i caught myself watching another jordan game the other night and marv was on the call i'm just like i feel like we never realized this in the moment and it was something we've discovered after the fact we're going anytime you get a chance to kind of dig michael be like 12 points so far but six of 18 from the floor and yet to make a free throw and you're just like what are you doing why are you assassinating him? I'm surprised you forgot.

Yeah. I forget a lot of things. I mean, I am old. The most important pod I did out of the first 20 was with Tony Stewart, which you can listen to. It's terrible. It was late July 2007. And it was a really valuable lesson to me for three different reasons with the pod.

One was that don't have somebody on if you're not interested in what they do. and it was a really valuable lesson to me for three different reasons with the pod. One was that don't have somebody on if you're not interested in what they do. And I'm not an Asgard guy. And it's like you're hosting a radio show for three hours a day. You're going to have to occasionally have the college coach who people pass through and you just kind of have to set some picks for 20 minutes.

You can't really hide in a podcast. It's just you and the, and the guests. And with Tony Stewart, one, shouldn't have had him on. Cause I don't know anything about NASCAR too. I didn't prepare enough. So I actually, one of my lead questions, you could hear it. I'm like, you know, you, you're number 33 and that's my number. So you've always been one of my favorites, but it turned out. No, he's not right. In the research I did, number 33 was like a special time. He wore it a few times, but his other number was the other number. So right off the bat, this guy's like, Oh,

this guy's a schmuck. Uh, and, and then three, just don't run it. If it's bad. That was the other thing I learned. Yeah. And I should have buried that one. It's so early. Like even you being established and being successful. And again, you were were kind of i don't know how many guys are doing it before you which is something that i've always not many that you know you you find a way to kind of get on some of these things earlier than other people and i think that's a big part of the success that you've had and so no one at espn cares because they're thinking podcasts and i remember when you first started doing it and even like the radio guys be like do you listen to bill sting like yeah and then like the hardcore radio guys would be like he's a little shaky you know but that's also on air guys being jealous of the other

on air guy yeah he's getting his way and that's just the egos that all work out but like it's almost it's this really fucked up thing where you can almost see the joy in like another on air guy seeing another big time on air guy maybe maybe not kill it. It's like, right. You know? And it's like, you're happy. Like I can see in your eyes, you're actually happy. Bill's not nailing it right now, but well, you know, in either the first one or the second one, I actually make a point of saying that ESPN wasn't forcing me to do this, that I wanted one of these. And I told the whole story of why. For some reason, I was concerned that people thought ESPN had a gun to my head, forcing me to do a podcast to make money or something.

It's really weird. All of it's weird. I barely remember any of it. But whenever I've had to do that one, like this is always a good rule. When you have to do the one that you're not interested in, don't prep like you're going to cram and try to pretend that you're an expert. Ask him the questions that those of us that are an idiot on the topic would want to know the answer to. So I remember we had Rusty Wallace in who ended up being one of my favorite dudes

there. He's just so nice. And he came in, and Scott and I are definitely not NASCAR guys either. So I was like, I'm not going to ask him about like a green, white checker, you know, like whatever. And so I go, Hey, you know, when I'm on the highway, long distances, sometimes you'll just go like, man, 30 minutes just went by and I wasn't paying attention to anything. And it just, your, your subconscious takes over as you drive these long distances. I go, I know this is going to sound weird, but do you ever just sort of space out when you're in a race? And he was like, no, no, it's locked in every time. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah. It's, you know, I, I go two ways on preparing. Cause I don't, I don't ever want to be over prepared because then I think you have a tendency of driving the interview in the directions that you want it to go because you prepared so hard. I think this is a, that's a Howard Stern issue. If you really listen carefully to Howard Stern, he's got this whole script that he just wants the guests to follow as he plows through it. I, sometimes I'll do ones where I don't do any research at all. And I just attack, attack it like curious person. Like I have this person on, I'm going to genuinely ask him

questions. Like I just met them at a cocktail party. Other times I'll try to be, you know, like have a little more background. So it almost depends on the person, but I think it's fun to mix it up. I don't think there's one right way to do it. No, I definitely am more on the prep side because I don't want to have that moment where you're totally off. And then the guy, if you don't have the relationship with the person, if you have a relationship with somebody somewhat, like I have a guy coming up who I've talked with a few times, I won't prep as much, but it's going to be really interesting because I already know what stories I want to ask him.

But you're right, because if you over prep, you have a tendency to not listen. And it's also hard, though, to just find that guy that's so interesting. You're like, I'm going to do zero prep and I'm going to let him lead the conversation and then he'll take it whatever direction. I mean, again, like a lot of things, it's a big balance, but if you over prepping was definitely my issue and over prepping is, I don't know what's worse. I guess I'd rather be over prep than completely clueless. And then sound like an idiot where 10 minutes in the guest is like, this guy sucks. What happened? The one thing that I do every time, I don't look at notes when I'm doing the interview. Um, I try if, if I am going to

prep beforehand and try to think about how it might go, I'll do that. But when I'm actually doing it, I'm trying, I try to have a conversation and I don't remember what year I learned that that was the way for me to do it. I don't know if it's for everybody, but probably, um, I'm going to say around oh nine, when guests started to come to my house more often, just before we had the great lid studio, people would just actually literally come to my house and do the pod with me. And I always found if I had notes, they weren't as invested because they would kind of feel like I had some script I wanted them to follow. And if I'm looking down, then they feel like I'm not listening to them as much. And at some point, I was just like, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm eye contact the entire time.

This is hard to do because you can't just overnight be this person that everybody buys into. But because you were so early on this and you're successful with it, you have this advantage that most people aren't going to have. I mean, on top of them coming to your house too, when you're looking at them, maybe back then we're doing all of this stuff on phone. And, you know, when you look at Stern, Stern's not just good at it, but the advantage that he has is, you know, if you go on with him, you want to stand out. You don't want to be his awful guest. So you're more willing, like he just has this advantage over everybody else. you know once you go on with them it's like okay well i better bring it and that doesn't happen for most people that are interviewing people where you get this benefit of the doubt especially with ex-players or current players and coaches and gms you know these guys that live it every day

and even you know those of us on the outside that they may respect a little bit we're still going to get so much of this stuff wrong the the inner workings of like, actually, this is what happened. I think a lot of those guys kind of start with everyone that's interviewing them kind of like a zero or maybe a two. And then you've got to prove yourself to them over the course of the interview unless you have that relationship with them already. And I think with you, you've always had the advantage that even if somebody didn't know you, they know your success. So therefore they're just going to be a better guest. So, you know, it's not something you can plan, but. Did you have somebody that was like the final level of the video game for you? Cause for me, it was David Stern. Cause initially I went to his office pre podcast. Cause there were no podcasts yet. I'm going to say,

Oh six and interviewed him for about an hour. And we ran into the interview as a transcript and he was controlling the interview. I was trying to control it, but he was controlling it. Then he came on my podcast. I'm going to say four or five times, at least once a year from 07, 08, 09, 2010. And then I remember the summer of the lockout 2011, he came on when it was really heated. And I was really determined to win, to win the podcast with him where I was like, I am going to be incredibly prepared. I'm not, I'm, I'm going to be listening the whole time. I know, I know the little tricks that he's going to do to me. I know how he's going to use sarcasm to try to, in a real way to kind of like knock the rug out from under me. I know he's going to use sarcasm to try to, in a real way to kind of like knock the rug out from under me. I know he's going to filibuster with certain things, concise, direct,

stay on them, keep it moving, make fun of him. Cause when you make fun of him, it's like, Oh, you're making fun of me. And I got to say it was, I left the pot. I was like, I fucking did it, man. I played the final level of the video game. I went toe-to-toe with the dragon. I really felt that way. Did you have somebody like that? I don't know that I've had that one person that, you know, Stern was coming through ESPN, Mike and Mike were going to get him.

True. So a lot of that stuff, when it was this big, big moment, I probably wasn't going to get him on my show uh goodell basically only would do mike and mike there towards the end and i don't i don't know that says it all yeah what his routine is now i mean he just knew he could go on there and he was like my big thing was always to never be afraid so yeah i don't i don't think i've had that amazing one-on-one. Yeah, my answer to me right now, that's incomplete. I haven't had that one-on-one that's like, holy shit, and everybody pays attention to it.

And once it starts to kind of reach those other levels where people are talking about an interview you did that never would talk about anything you were doing, I don't know that I've really had that moment. I guess it would just be these individual things. Like I remember asking Reggie Bush, it's one of my favorite questions I've ever asked, and it's one of my favorite answers, and Reggie Bush was such a good guest. You know, look, you're arguably the most dominant college football player I've ever seen. You go high in the draft,

and you've made some money, you had a nice career, but do you ever have a moment being like, I thought I was going to dominate? And he goes, yeah, yeah, I do. He goes, this is not really the career I expected to have in the NFL. And he was, but he was answer was awesome. It's better than the answer that I'm giving you. Um, you know, I was critical of DeMarcus Cousins and it ended up being one of those pre all-star game phoners where they just go, Hey, which all-stars do you want? And I go, I can't be critical of cousins as a teammate in Sacramento and then go, Hey, big fella, you know, excited

about the weekend. Cause then I'm a fraud. So I just said, you know, whenever you're watching video of some of the games and you're having one of those moments where you don't get the ball, and then maybe you get a technical and you don't set a screen and then you take bad shots. You don't get back. Like I just laid it all out. I go, what's that like when you're seeing some of those mistakes in film? And he was like, what? That was it. There was no answer there.

But I was at least proud of myself that I wasn't going to do what I think a lot of guys do is they're ready to talk all sorts of shit. And then once I mean, it's not even face to face. It's on the phone. So it's not like I'm some tough guy. But if you're going to do one, I think you have to follow through and be fair to the other. I mean, Steven Jackson, who I love and got to know doing the show, the TV show with you. I remember he'd got that big extension and immediately wanted out, I think in golden

state. And I asked him in the interview, I go, do you have any, is there ever part of you that goes, you know, I, what I did was kind of shady. Like I signed the deal knowing immediately I would, I would ask, and now you do it and nobody even cares. But back then it was kind of a big deal, even though it wasn't a massive, massive contract. And he kind of did the, Hey, I can't hear you right now. And hung up. Wow. And I may have even said that i think i said it to him when we we hung out that day in la and then i saw him over at the hotel and we were talking about the business and talking about his career and the whole thing and i've since had him on a bunch of times so i probably would be likely to go hey i interviewed you once on the phone and you wouldn't remember and he was just

laughing so i i like that i've had these moments where i want to make sure that nobody thinks i'm this fraudulent guy that's ready to talk and then kisses the guy's ass just because you got him on a seven minute phoner. Well, two other things as you do, as you just get more reps and you get to the 10,000 hours. One is if somebody just sucks on your show or your pod and you can somehow like salvage it somewhat doing whatever, you know, if they have a shitty attitude. I remember ironically Durant who ended up having six great podcasts with, but in like 2014 all-star weekend or 2015, when it was like, you get guys for 10 minutes, 12 minutes and we would go, Jacoby would produce. I would,

I would tape like 10, 11 podcasts in one day. And Durant came in. He was pissed off. He was mad at me because it was three years now of me joking about the Harden trade. He hadn't slept. He had just flown in. And he was just angry the whole interview.

And at some point... Had you interviewed him before already? So was there already the relationship or is this the beginning of it? No, this was before the relationship really started. Okay, all right. I had had him... Is that what surprised me? I think I had had him on before.

He just, he didn't want to be there and he was in a shitty mood. And my attitude with all that stuff is I'm just going to do my job and you're the one who's going to look bad if you're not, you know, if you're not going to be invested at all. And then I've had a couple other ones like this too. I remember Chris Rock actually came on once and I don't think he realized, maybe he didn't realize what

kind of platform I had. And it was like in this, he'd been doing a million pods and he just kind of came on and mailed it in. And I, and so I tried to do everything I could. And then when it ended, I was just like, well, people are going to listen to that and be like, man, Chris Rock wasn't good. And I'm sure he is a good guest, but I just caught him on the wrong day. And I think I've learned over the years, just got to ride it out, do your part. If the other person's not going to be into it, just try to end it maybe a little earlier than you thought you would.

But that's really all you can do. You're not going to save a podcast if the other guy's not into it or the other women. When somebody's on the tour, you're at a massive disadvantage because it always is behind and then the PR people are always trying to catch you up.

I remember Phil Jackson, the last dance book came out and it was in Boston. This is before even I was at ESPN and we got them booked and that was a huge, huge deal for us like we had gordon eads the next day you know yeah like i'm right and no and i'm just trying to put a perspective like we would be psyched to get the red sox beat writer on but here we are getting phil jackson promote

the book and the pr person calls my producer and goes um she said you have two minutes they're behind schedule i go i can't i go i don't have i can't do two minutes. They're behind schedule. I go, I can't, I go, I don't have, I can't do two minutes with Phil Jackson. I go tell her that's insane. Like, no. And it goes back and forth and back and forth. And then I just did what you should do. And I was luckily had been around enough to figure it out at that point. I just wasn't going to say goodbye. Like he had to hang up on me and I got maybe my seven to 10 minutes. And then the PR person yelled at my producer. And it's like, I don't, you know, at that maybe my seven to 10 minutes. And then the PR person yelled at my producer. And it's like, at that point, I don't care.

So the Chris Rock one, it's probably an example of that, where he's not even looking at you. And he's just thinking, oh, here's another guy. You know what, though? I did just realize it. I don't know if it's on my Mount Rushmore of interviews, but it's up there just because of the angst leading up to it. But we had Matt Damon. I've probably told this story to you before. I think maybe even on the podcast,

so I'll make it quick. But Damon was promoting Invictus. And I said, we should do the Boston accents with Damon. And it's like, yes, do it. Let's do it.

And then right as we were about to tape with Damon, Van Pelt's like, I don't want to do it. We're going to look like losers. I'm like, who cares? I'm like, Matt Damon's not going to be our buddy. He's like, I don't want to do it. We're going to look like losers. I'm like, who cares? I'm like, Matt Damon's not going to be our buddy.

He's like, I don't want to do it. We're going to look like losers. And I go, eh, I might still do it. He's like, don't do it.

I'm like, yeah, I think I might still do it. So we're doing it. We're playing it straight. And then I look at Van Pelt because Damon was awesome. And I'm thinking,

I'm just going to do it. And I just said, like, see, does Van Pelt could be the lieutenant Sam Weinberg? Like, no, don't,

don't don't ask jessup about the two orders uh i the way damon the vibe that he had had and that was a big advantage that i don't think van pelt realized he had because dan patrick always did a great job of this like dan patrick was the face of the network for such a long time but his radio interviews i thought were better than everybody else's because he acted like he was as big of a star as any of the athletes coming on. And I don't mean that as a knock, it is a compliment. And so it, it kind of grounded every guest that he had on and Scott had that kind of juice at that point, but he didn't want to use it that way. Cause

Scott's just, you know, he's a, he's a different personality. I mean, everybody's different, all that kind of stuff. So I just was like, look, you know, the interview has gone great. It's Damon. So I just basically was trying to get away to get damon to admit something that he regretted or didn't regret and then i just was like you know what you know what maddie g it's not your fault it's not your fault and he legitimately laughed and then vampel came in over the top with his accent and uh i've always meant to you know i thought at this point living in LA a couple of years, Damon and I would be friends, but it's just, it's not going as fast

as I can't wait to share that story with him. Maybe there's some sort of a, is there a social network you guys can be on? What's the friend version of Raya? Is that what's that one called? Raya? Raya? Raya? What's that? What's just like the buddy version of that? Two guys that just want to hang out. I've been pitching this for years. Just dudes who want to meet other dudes that are successful. And it's just nothing more than like, hey, we would be friends, but let's just speed up the whole deal. Like we could go to the Soho house and have a cocktail and pretend we're working on some project. Or let's just fast forward this all a year. I think there's real money in it. Just, you know, certain,

certain caliber of guy meeting another caliber of guy. I don't see what's wrong with that. Your friendship profile would be like, I'm very comfortable around professional hockey players. It's a sweet spot for me. Really like being around those guys. I'm, I'm consistently confused For LA King Which is very very complimentary

But it's a little old for me now Yeah maybe I could just have a bunch of the Kings Put me down They could be like Yeah Do you have any recommendations By the way Quick had a fifth kid

I'm not in that group. Yeah, I don't. Quick has five kids now. I don't know. He's like early 30s. I don't know anyone who has five kids. If somebody has five kids or more at this point,

I'm shocked. Honestly, how many times have you met somebody who's like, yeah, here I have five kids. They're all at my house. Like we always joke about Phil rivers, but he's like a true anomaly. No,

the Brady bunch era does not exist in 2020. So that's a good, it was a lot. You should have a population expert on, I think your next pod, because it does. Now that I'm just running through every one of my friends, I don't know that anybody even has a third kid.

Not the three kids. Is that, but there's a couple of three. I don't know anyone with four. I don't that I'm just running through every one of my friends, I don't know that anybody even has a third kid. Not that three kids is that, but there's a couple of three. I don't know anyone with four. I don't think I'm the oldest of five. Yeah, but we were a different generation though. Totally right. And people have kids older now. You know, I, I, I would like to think I would have had more kids if, but my wife was older.

We got married when we were in our early thirties. But we're going to do the redraftables. But before we do that just quickly about, I just wanted to bring an optimistic, pessimistic bill for one second. The, uh, it seemed like the NBA seemed like this was happening. The bubble to have everything figured out, but the COVID cases are on the rise in a really disturbing way in Florida. And Silver even commented about it yesterday. And I'm becoming concerned that the Orlando bubble will actually happen. I'm not saying it won't. I'm not saying that it's an impossibility. My money would be on it happening, but I'm concerned in a way that I wasn't a week ago from the stories because

it doesn't seem like they have the ability to completely protect everyone in the bubble. And there are going to be workers because Disney has a union and they can't really, there's only so much they could tell the workers to do. People who are working in the hotels or the bars or whatever could potentially be who knows where the night before. So I don't think there's any way to guarantee

that it's 100% safe. And I really wonder how it's going to play out over the next few days. Okay, we both agree though, that despite all of this stuff, and if you read through any of the NBA's paperwork on this, it's very clear how serious they took this and how much time they put into this and trying to counter every possibility. But there's no 100% safe. There's no version of it that's 100% safe.

Well, wait, hold that thought, though. There's no version that's 100% safe. What they can control is who's in the bubble. And if they can't control the people that are working in the bubble, that are preparing food, cleaning the beds. Driving the buses, right. All that stuff. If they can't control that variable, I gotta be honest,

I would be concerned if I was a player. I wouldn't feel 100% great about going I, they have to figure that part out because I, I think it's going to unravel if they don't then tell the Disney employees, you're not going to be used. These people that are probably waiting to get back to work this whole time. So I don't even know how that conversation would start. And I certainly don't know how it would finish. Be like, well, we need to control more of these outside sources. Well, you can't tell the bus driver. You can't tell the food prep person. You can't tell the person that's just an ops for the arenas.

You can't go home because that's always been the problem. I know. This is my point, though. I don't know how solvable this is. I don't think it is. What if somebody says, what if like Yana says, I don't feel safe. I don't want to play. Well, I definitely think, and I don't know where you're at with this,

you agree or not, but it's likely that a couple big names do end up testing positive for this so the first thing you worry about is the health the safety and the health and safety of those around them but on a less important note like there's already going to be enough skepticism and you know how it works i mean whoever wins this thing people are going to go well you know it's not even a real tiger i mean it's just going to be who you're aligned with, who you're a fan of, who you can't stand as a team or a player, and then you're going to dump on it. But if it starts to lead to multiple big name guys missing out because of a positive test, then I can't even imagine what those conversations are going to be about the eventual champion. My guess is this. They're going to do an end around. The people that they need to

work within that NBA bubble will probably be incentivized financially to stick around or do whatever they need to do. There's going to have to be some sort of outside variable that has not been fully formed yet where, you know, all the chefs who might be cooking for the teams, Hey, can you stay on the property? We'll pay an extra 25,000 per person, like whatever, whatever it ends up being. I think we're going to have to see stuff like that because the, the, the COVID cases, like it's alarming how it's going up. And I don't care where you stand politically. Anyone who's listening out there, like just go look at the numbers in Florida and Arizona and Orange County and different places. Like the numbers are going up. It's a fact. Yeah. The Florida numbers

are really, really scary. And I don't know how to counter it. Usually I can find, and I'm not trying to counter it to shoot it down. I'm just talking strictly about, you know, I was reading about the, the Chaz area in Seattleattle right or now chop and i read one article and i went whoa and then i read another article and it was a completely different like you would have thought one place was being described as an absolute war zone and then the next place was disneyland you know and i just was like this is this is amazing that two different people could have this kind of experience walking through this area that i really don't know that much about other than just seeing it on the news. And when I was looking at

some of the college football stuff that's happening, Clemson having a bunch of players test positive, Kansas State, some of the stuff that's happening in Texas. And I go, okay, this looks really bad. Like, look at all these players that are testing positive for this. And then somebody else writes an article going, isn't it actually, could you argue it's better that these kids got back on a campus where healthcare is actually probably easier to access? They know that they've tested positive, where if they weren't on campus working out, they may have never even taken a test in the first place. And so you go, okay, those are some pretty good points there too. I don't really know what this means for the NBA, but I'm open to the idea of this, of it happening,

but I'm really worried about, because you remember back in March, like we'd say, what if an entire team gets wiped out and tests positive? So how do you ask that team to come back and play in the playoffs? Like that's not fair to this team.

I think ultimately what's going to happen is you've got to prepare yourself for some really unfair stuff that's going to happen. And that's just going to be what it is. I think they handled everything 95% well. I think the biggest mistake they made was the amount of teams that they brought back. I just think they should have limited the numbers as much as they possibly could have, whether it was just bringing 14 teams back. Dallas was basically the cutoff line. Dallas was the one team.

If they just said six in each conference, I don't think that's fair to Dallas. They were a seven seed, but they were like 40 and 29, something like that. They deserved a chance to be in the playoffs. So maybe you go top seven only and the one seeds don't play in round one, something like that.

I think the more teams they're bringing in, the more complicated this gets. And I wish they had rethought that. All right, we're going to do the redraftables, but we are going to take a break. Let's take a break to talk about Whoop, a fitness wearable that provides personalized data and insights on how recovered you are,

how much sleep you're getting, how much stress you're putting on your body over the course of your day, whether you're already an active person or whether you're looking to start improving your health. WHOOP delivers actionable data to help you build smarter habits, keep track of training, sleep, recovery data, given to you in real time through their app.

They have a strain coach, which gives you exertion goals. They have a sleep coach, which looks at your sleep need and suggests a target bedtime to allow your body to properly recover. I love the sleep coach. I love finding out what my sleep was. I wish it hadn't taken me 50 years to learn that I should be monitoring my sleep better, but apparently I give good REM. That's what it comes down to. I'm always two plus hours with the REM and my wife is right around 90 minutes usually. So, uh, so I have those bragging rights in my house. Whoop offering my listeners 15% off right now with the code Simmons at checkout. I really like Whoop. Whoop.com enter Simmons at checkout to save 15%

W H O O P sleep better, recover faster, train smarter, optimize your performance with whoop today. All right. 2008 redraftables. We went out of order. I did 2009 on the low post. And the reason is because Zach was asking me to do it really for the last two and a half months. He was so fired up to talk about that draft. So we jumped ahead. So if you, if you want to listen to this 08 one and then go on the low post and listen to 09 to be in sequence, we're also going to run the low post one eventually in the book of basketball. By the way, who'd you take one?

I haven't listened to it yet. In the 09? Yeah. So Zach seemed to think that was more of an argument than I did. I thought it was like Curry hands down. I didn't think about it for more than a second. And Zach agreed,

but thought there was at least we should talk about the case for Harden, which I was less lukewarm on because I just, as we've discussed many times in this pod, I just think Curry is the generational culture superstar that we've had. He's dunking for this generation. If he's on your team, you're competing. If you put him with good players, you have a chance to win the title. And he's an iconic player. so that was pretty easy for me what would you have said uh are you serious well i just just so america listening they might not 100 know how you feel i would

have taken curry one the the only argument you can make for Harden Is Games, how he holds up And I know what the raw numbers are But I would not I wouldn't spend too much time on it The playoffs thing kills him Alright, so 2008 Really, really interesting

Because when I did my Redraftables piece For Grantland in 2014 Here's what I wrote. Pound for pound, that's our best draft since 1998. Three franchise guys, two all-star assets, two borderline all-stars, 10 starters, and 10 rotation guys. If we had five straight drafts like that one, the league would have to expand to 35 teams, here's what's fascinating, except for Westbrook, who I think has gained steam as an asset since 2014, every other guy in this draft was at a higher kind of asset value in 2014 than they are now. And now I look at this draft, it's fine, but it's certainly not anywhere near as exciting as it was in 2014 what happened

what happened to this draft well rose got hurt but he was hurt he was hurt when i wrote this yeah but i just assumed he was coming back at some point in in b and he's gonna be 100 again but it never happened yeah and i know we're gonna do going to do a lot of rows, so I'm not going to use it all here. Beasley's totally washed out. Mayo has been out of the league for two years. I think there's actually been some Westbrook, some anti-Westbrook momentum that's fair since we were just like, wow, this guy's amazing.

Kevin Love isn't the same guy. So that's one of the big losses is that when I wrote in 2014, I considered him to be a franchise player because he was. He was coming off a 26-12 season and was a top 10 guy in the league and has never hit that point since. Yeah, it's a significant. It is like the equator, Kevin Love's career,

when you look at just the stats. But now I almost feel like kevin loves become underrated when you dig through kind of some of the numbers that he's putting up but this is such a weird redraftable because you go okay there's a clear one i'm pretty sure who two is and then i started doing this thing where i kept ranking them in different orders constantly and i'm like don't get so this was one of the ones where I pushed back on the stats more than other redrafts because I'm going I just would rather have this guy than that guy I know what the stats say I know what the win shares are I know all the different stuff on this because we can

just sort through it all as we have and it hasn't just been about I don't want to just go hey here's the win shares guys 1 through 14 and that's my order because that's not right but there's there's such a like grouping of tiers after kind of the one and two maybe even three guys where i just started ranking them based on hey i just like this guy better than this guy and because these have become later they're still a part of who is the guy today and then who do you expect him to be for a couple years because some of these players it's weird a couple of them actually got better recently. Well, then you had on top of having some real good guys in this draft, you had this run from 21 to 26. That was really unusual for an NBA draft where you had

Ryan Anderson, Courtney Lee, Costa Koufos, Serge Ibaka, Nick Batum, George Hill, six in a row where all of those guys were rotation guys are better. Kofus was probably the worst out of them, but, um, you know, to get, go even a Baca Batum Hill 24, 25, 26 was just wildly unusual on top of some of the other stuff. Roy Hibbert was 17. That seemed really important in 2014, uh, and became a lot less important as it went, but it was just a really deep draft. Dragic is 45, uh, Omer Ashik. He was 36. Um, 37, you know, I mean, so Mbamute played. So if you're saying like what draft had the most guys who were in an eight main rotation at some point in their career, this is probably a candidate. But let's start here for the biggest story. It didn't feel this way at the time, but I think we really have to play up how amazing that Westbrook pick was because I loved him that whole year. I watched a lot of

that UCLA team. I was still, I was writing a lot about college basketball that year in my, uh, my column and Westbrook had become my sleeper because he was such a great energy guy and he was such a good athlete, but not to the point I ever thought he would be the fourth pick in the draft. I mean, I thought it was going to be somebody like, man, if you get that guy at like 16, that guy could be a steal. Then he kind of slid into the lottery. Then there was some top 10 potential when the workouts happened. And when they took him, it was a year after Durant.

They're about to move to Oklahoma City. They're looking for somebody to compliment Durant. But Kevin Love was a way more obvious pick. And Kevin Love was a better college player. He was more hyped. It was an easier pick. And they didn't even blink. They were like, Westbrook's our guy. What do you remember about that in 2008? Collison was the guy that ran this, and it's Ben Hallin's offense too. So it's not exactly perfect for who Westbrook was because Westbrook at that point, you're going, okay, what are you

really drafting? Because he didn't feel like a point guard and in a different college offense, he probably would have shown us these things where I think he's arguably at his peak, the greatest athlete I've ever seen playing the, playing the NBA. I mean, that's just how special of an athlete that I think he is. But for Presti in the front office to see that over Kevin Love and some of the other guys, it really is one of the most, I don't know if it's underrated, but I'll just put it this way. It's probably as impressive a draft pick as I've seen

because you just, you were like, okay, is he a basketball player though? And sometimes with these athletic guys that we all fall in love with in the eye test and it's so impressive and it really was with him. And then I think he even took it to another level and his ferocity, which I don't think i quite understood certainly not until he was a pro for a bunch of years where i go this guy had it in college though yeah but like he he really

he played at a speed in college that was just exhilarating and and he had no idea what to do it's like watching somebody drive the most powerful car and have no idea how to keep it on the road and you take that guy. The scenes were there. Yeah, it was nuts. But that's why so many times when I, when I like these things and I'll kind of come back to like, weren't,

are you going to be right more often saying, Hey, is he any good at the basketball stuff? And when, when the answer is like a hesitation, usually that player is in a being somebody who's going to end up in the hall of fame. And that's, you know,

despite some of the warts that I think Westbrook's game has, and I don't know if we want to get into those, but the positive part of this is it's an unbelievable pick and it's probably even greater than they ever could have imagined. Well, they also get a Baca later in the draft too. I mean, this is one of the best nailing those two picks and the way they nailed them was, uh, probably what, probably one of the best drafts anyone had this century. Just those two picks. I wrote in my draft diary when they took him,

minor shocker, loved his potential, loved him all season. Even I can't defend that one. Quote, who would have thought last year at this time that Russell Westbrook had been the fourth pick in this draft? Jay Billis asks. And I wrote, last year? What about last week? What about five minutes ago?

Had a Seattle pass on Kevin Love there. Because to me, Kevin Love was a sure thing. At the very least, we knew he was going to be just an insane rebounder, great outlet passer, all that stuff. And I actually liked the idea of him playing with Durant. But Presti, he nails that. He nails Ibaka. And as Zach and I covered in the 09 podcast, really nailed the Harden thing in the sense of, I can bring this guy in. He's not going to want to be the man.

He's the kind of personality that will fit with these other three guys. The amount of thought they put into just those moves. And then the last piece, which they had to decline, was the Tyson Chandler trade, which was the secret

kind of sliding doors moment for that whole OKC dynasty until the Harden trade where they have Tyson Chandler they have to fail him medically and if they keep him remember Tyson Chandler

was the anchor of that 2011 Mavs team that won the title and you think like that 2011 OKC team loses to the Mavs and they lose to the Mavs partly because they're not quite ready yet. And because Dirk outplays Durant, but also because Tyson Chandler's on the Mavs. And I think if they had nailed that Tyson Chandler thing,

I'm not sure what the next decade looks like, but I think OKC would have won a couple of titles. And I also want to go back to like the westbrook thing in that when i talked to college guys after he was you know ready to leave after his sophomore year and i go you know what can you tell me about him and they go you know something with his body where you know a lot of times guys develop later like sometimes we forget about that stuff like all he's kind of reminded me of the the last dance doc where they go how does scotty pippen end up here? And then they're like, well, he grew six inches. How come Michael Jordan was cut from varsity his sophomore year?

Well, he, he grew like six inches, you know, like some of these guys that we, we ask all these questions, like, how did this happen? How did this happen? How come this guy wasn't ranked as high as a recruit? Well, cause he was five, 10, and then he was six, four, Jesus Christ. You know, like sometimes this stuff isn't as hard as how your body fills out or some kind of growth spur. And the UCLA guys apparently were saying, Westbrook was somebody who came back in that second year and was just a different cat physically. It was just different.

But was still an overachiever. So he had all the overachiever stuff, but then grew into this world-class body that, as you said, he was... Do you really think he was the greatest athlete you've seen on a basketball court? I think he's in the top eight or nine for me, but I wouldn't say number one. Yeah, I think he's the best. I really do.

Really? Yeah. I mean, there's little stuff that he does. And yeah, look, I mean, I've done it before, and it's fair. You know, I like if you're going to talk about somebody, like talk about all of it. And the rebounding numbers have been padded because for a bunch of years, if you were a big guy, you weren't allowed to go get a rebound. But what kind of counter that for a guard having these insane rebounding numbers is he would follow his own shot, which you don't always want to do in the NBA.

But he would follow his own shot because out of your hands always want to do in the NBA, but he would follow his own shot, because out of your hands you know if it's going to be a miss. The defender would go to box out the shooter, and Westbrook would run around him before the... And we're talking like NBA athlete wings, not even getting a hand on Westbrook, as

he would go get the offensive rebound and flush it. And his drives... I was watching some clip they had of him the other day because he and De'Aaron Fox were going at it about who was fastest end-to-end. And the way he can take off and just fly through all of these bodies, I do think it's physically, you know, you could say, hey, LeBron's bigger and what he does at that size. Okay, that's fine. Shaq's footwork, Hakeem, and all this different stuff.

But I just think raw ball of muscle and athletic power at that size. Okay. That's fine. Shaq's footwork, Hakeem and all this different stuff. But I just think raw ball of muscle and athletic power at his size. I really think it's the most impressive thing I've seen. And ironically, Rose is in this draft. He's the number one pick. I think, you know, through 2011 would have been inconceivable. He wouldn't have been the first pick in the redraft. But what's funny is I always felt he was on the short list of athletes for me, like the way you talked about Westbrook. And there was a couple of points in 10 and 11 and then post lock in the lockout season when Rose and Westbrook went head to head on league pass. And it was like watching two superheroes athletically, like, like battle powers. They were, I mean, the Rose thing,

if they ever have the Rose documentary, I hope they interview me because I'll never forget going to a Clipper game. I think it was the lockout season. And I was just in absolute awe of some of the shit he did. Like the way, the torque that he would put on the lower half of his body as he was driving into three guys

and just stopping on a dime when he was going 22 miles an hour and then going in the other direction. And it was like, what the fuck is going on? And he was going against Eric Bledsoe, I think. I want to say they were going head to head at one point. Or maybe it was Bledsoe-Westbrook. But Bledsoe was another guy like that

where the athleticism, you're just like, Oh my God. But, uh, but Rose versus Westbrook, that's one of the, there's so many reasons to be bummed out why Rose got hurt. And when we do the redraft, we have to factor in that. That was a fluky ACL injures, 47 seconds left in the first game of the 2012 playoffs. They were, uh, co-favorites with Miami at that point. And I think if he doesn't get hurt, I don't know why he wouldn't have had a career at least as good as Westbrook.

I honestly think he could have been just as good. I think he could have had just as much success. And I think statistically he could have been as good. I don't think he would have had the rebounds. No. But I think he would have been as good. I don't think he would have had the rebounds. No. But I think he would have been a 25-7, 28-7. And then as the league,

as we go into 2014-15 when it starts to open up and it becomes so much easier for guards to get to the basket, you know, could he have developed a three-pointer? Maybe. He's kind of done it

in the late part of his career a little bit anyway. But I think, i just think he would have been as good yeah the difference would be though you can say it's a fluky injury but clearly injuries affected rose differently than they did westbrook where westbrook i'll never i think it's that portland game where he had a dent in the side of his head and you could see it and he was like check ball like let's fucking go and rose was not like that you know the bulls thought rose was ready to go a couple times remember the playoff thing and then it was like okay now he's not and so if rose hadn't gotten hurt okay fine yeah i get what you're saying. I'm not disagreeing with you,

but I just think that they have completely different approaches to how they felt about their bodies after the fact, where Westbrook would have to be missing an arm, and then he would still just dribble left, where Rose, let's face it, I mean, injury's gotten his head a little bit here, and it derailed a career that I actually can't believe how productive he's been now.

Because at this point, like for him to be an 18 a game these last couple of years, and he's been, he was bad three-point shooter this year. He was pretty good last year for him because he was never a great shooter. But I love that Rose has had some kind of reclamation to his career here. But you're right, peak Rose. And if you go back to that battle, it was Beasley number one, most of the year. And then Rose has that run through the tournament and you start thinking about the league and the Chris Paul types. And you're going, you know, what's really important now. And this is pre obsession of shooting here, but can you get one of these guards? That's so athletic. Like it

just felt like overnight, like, look how sick these athletes are at the point guard position. And I need one that can break people down and get to the hoop. Now in college, there's a lot of small guards that are pretty athletic that can get past guys and then finish in college. But there's a whole different level of finishing at the rim is one of those smaller guards. Like Telfair is a good example.

Telfair, good handle. It wasn't the same. He wasn't an athlete like Rosa Westbrook, but even if he got by the defender once he went to the rim nothing was going to happen for him he just wasn't going to be able to finish consistently enough and get you enough buckets so then you're like a drive and kick guy and then once everybody knows you can't even finish at the rim it changes what you're doing when you're closing out on shooters Rose could get around anyone and then he could still, as people were shading towards him on a drive or just ready to make up for

something, he'd still finish all of those guys. So at his peak, I don't know that anybody was better than Rose was prime Rose of just ball in his hand, get into the hoop because you're right. The stuff that he did, it's just,

it was different. You know, it's again, it's not the only guy, but it just was different at his peak. In a, in a league where it was much harder to get to the rim you know because you just had more bodies in the paint things like that two things off of what you said zach and i talked about a little in the 09 draft 0708 on 09 the league is really starting to shift in what they value with the prime guy, right? Because Odin versus Durant, which we covered,

there was still that mindset. If I have a franchise center, that's the best thing I can have. Oh nine. Memphis doesn't want to know what to do at number two. They ended up taking to beat is still that mindset. Ah, when it, when in doubt go with the center, but at the same time, the smarter teams are looking at it and going, you know what? The league's changing. The best thing you can have is a perimeter guy.

You can build your, a contender around somebody who's an awesome perimeter guy. And I think with Rose, you saw it in that first rookie season when, when they ended up going against the 09 Celtics without KG, they have that legendary round one thing. You come out of that. You're like, oh, this guy's a future Hall of Famer. And every checkpoint he hit, he wins the MVP in year three, controversial MVP.

Yeah, he shouldn't have won it. He shouldn't have won it. But nobody's been able to tell me who should have won it is the problem. You don't think LeBron should have won it? I actually would have voted for Wade. There was such an anti-LeBron thing because it was his first year down in Miami. The numbers are better for LeBron across the board. Chicago had four

more wins. Let's face it. It was another one of those things. And I'm not knocking it because it happens, but it was the story of Chicago's own in his third season, bringing the Bulls to a one. No, there was more to that because he was really, in crunch time, it was him or bust. They had all role players. And I always thought LeBron, at least, you know, he's playing with Wade and Bosh. Here, if I had to do it over again, I picked Rose at the time. Even though his stats, when you look at it, LeBron's stats were a little bit better. But the move was Wade because Wade had an awesome year. I think Wade was the best player in the league that year.

And all the way through the finals until, you know, Dirk caught fire in the playoffs and did the whole thing. But Wade was just unbelievable that whole season. But on top of it, he does this mastermind move where he gets Bosh and LeBron to come to Miami. I feel like that should have counted as part of the MVP. I think it worked against him. Yeah. But I'm saying nine years later, it's like, we actually should think it worked against him. Yeah, but I'm saying nine years later, it's like we actually should have factored that in, like not just the statistical resume, but the fact that he convinced

the reigning two-time back-to-back MVP to come play in his team. So anyway, the Rose MVP, it's a good argument because like Zach voted for Dwight Howard that year. It was one of those years where there just wasn't a good enough choice and everybody kind of did whatever they want to do. A couple more storylines. You mentioned Michael Beasley. So Rose went first to Chicago. Miami was on the clock at number two. They had a great tank season that couldn't have worked out better. They got

rid of Shaq, all this stuff. And there were a couple of red flags with Beasley that I forgot about until I did the research. Six high schools. Well, you had all that. You had all the head case stuff that we knew about. But the reality is in college, he was 25 and 12. I mean, he was putting up numbers that if you look at what college guys have averaged, the numbers he averaged that year, it's pretty much a lock. You're going to be a good NBA player unless you like, you know, commit a felony or something. Um, Kansas state listed him at six foot 10 all year. They did the pre-draft cramps and he was six foot seven red flag. Number one. Um, I imagine that's socks, right? Six, seven socks.

The key. Yeah. Whatever. With key is 6'7 with shoes. Right. Red flag number two. Riley was still working out dudes up until like the day of the draft. I think he brought in Jared Bayless. He brought in... Who was the other guy? OJ Mayo.

Almost like he knew. And then I think the upside was just too high. But Beasley is the type of guy that over and over again sucks somebody into taking him too high. We all knew what the baggage was. The six foot seven thing was the deal breaker for me. At that point, I was like, it just seems too high, but also couldn't really...

I just would have taken Kevin Love. I don't know why they didn't. But what do you remember about that in 08? Just that it was Beasley's year. It was most of the year. You know, it's not the same thing, but it's happened other years where Jalil Okafor was, for the most part,

like, oh, he'll go one, he'll go one. And then you were like, ah, I don't know, Carl Anthony Towns is better. And then you were starting to get more reports on Jalil's defense and lack thereof. And now you're like, wait a minute, Jalil's defense and lack thereof and now you're like wait a minute Jalil's like this isn't even a one versus two like Towns is definitely going one and we don't know where Jalil's gonna go and it was Beasley won almost the entire year and I remember early on being a Rose guy but it wasn't like it was because I was off of Beasley it was

just those things you were talking about how special this kid was at getting to the hoop and breaking down a defense and going that's what the league seems like it's becoming and i had heard all sorts of stuff about beasley and none of it's awful you know it's it's not it's just a lot of little things where you still would talk yourself into it too because you go okay it was a bunch of different high schools yeah okay it was a little difficult like how the hell did he end up by the way amari had all the same stuff. Yeah, so it's not, you can't always sit there and say

because a guy's had this weird high school thing going on that it means he's a bad guy. I mean, DeAndre Jordan's an awesome example of how misleading some of this stuff can be before the draft, where, you know, we'll get to that later. But, you know, he goes in the second round

and I was going back and looking at some stuff and it was, oh, there's rumors about this and rumors about John J. Jordan. By all accounts, everybody loves that guy. Like every teammate has loved him. Have you never heard anything bad about him? So sometimes it's misleading.

Sometimes it's accurate, but doesn't mean anything. And in this case with Beasley, I had a scout who is one of my, you know, I've got a bunch of guys that I talked to who was, hey, he's like, look, if you're, if you take Rose one, I get it, but you're passing on a hall of famer in Beasley. And that's what the thought was of Beasley at that time. But for Miami, they apparently were still calling up, hoping that the Rose Beasley thing at least was close to Chicago. It was never going to be the case because he was their guy. And then it became, is Mayo a better fit than Beasley for Miami, which if you go back and read stuff, I'll say that it was,

but it was a two man race. It really was a two man race here. So even Miami, this is kind of the mock draft thing. Even if they liked a different player better, it was just hard to imagine anyone who's passing on Beasley at two at that spot. I think what's amazing is he's played over 600 games. So it's not like he had, he didn't get derailed by an injury. He wasn't like a major drug guy, anything like that. He just wasn't that good of a pro. Like his third year in Minnesota,

he averaged 19 a game, 32 minutes a game for Minnesota. It's pretty good. You know, that's his per 36 is over 20 a game. He never came close to that again and bounced around minute, Miami, Minnesota, Phoenix, back to Miami, Houston, Milwaukee, the Knicks, the Lakers, seven teams have rolled the dice with them. And he does have moments. You'll be flicking league pass and he's on and the announcers are excited because he scored 17 points in a quarter. He is one of those guys, but it just never panned out. We should talk about OJ Mayo really quickly. Heading into that college year, he was considered a potential transcendent prospect and got a lot of high school hype, was somebody that we all kind of felt like was going to be a potentially special NBA player.

I was like that. To me, he was like an overqualified 3 and D guy. He had a terrible performance in the tournament. And just everybody kind of cooled off on him. And ends up going third to Minnesota,

which doesn't seem great. Nobody wants to go to Minnesota at that point. David Kahn isn't even there yet. Minnesota flips him along with the Marco Yark and Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner contracts for the fifth pick to Memphis along with Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal, Jason Collins.

And they take Kevin Love five. That was a great trade by Minnesota and a not good trade by Memphis. Yeah, great trade. And it's funny because reading some of the mock draft grades after the fact, it's just how obsessed we get about mock drafts.

I'll never forget Neil Olshay, GM of the Trailblazers, telling me early on, he goes, mock drafts change everything. They really do. Because if it weren't for mock drafts, your owners wouldn't be reading them, all this different stuff.

The results would be different, but you become married to kind of this order and that this guy's too high there or that's too low. And it's like you talk yourself into all this stuff. And one of the draft grades is Minnesota really wanted love, but at three, he was too high. Right. It's like he went five.

Most people thought he was going to go four. Now, if you can get the asset and pull that off Memphis, who just had this awful run, then go ahead and do it. But the idea that three is too high for love when they thought he was going four and he went five. Well, the other thing is Minnesota gets Miller in that trade. Then a year later, they're able to flip him with Randy Foy for the fifth pick in the draft from Washington.

So that trade was just awesome. Two other trades. Indiana had the 11th pick. They took Jared Bayless. Then they flipped him with like Diago. Oh, for the 13th pick to Portland. Got Brandon Rush, Jared Jack, and your boy Josh McRoberts back.

So that trade happened. And then Toronto acquired Jermaine O'Neal from Indiana. And this was amazing when it happened because Jermaine O'Neal was kind of washed at this point, but Toronto didn't realize it. They traded TJ Ford,

Rosso Nesterovich, and the draft rights to 17th pick Roy Hibbert, all for the chance to have a washed up Jermaine O'Neal. So that was weird. So those are big trades. The other two fuck ups that actually affected the next two years of playoffs, Cleveland had the 19th pick,

which was pretty good coming out of almost, you know, puncher's chance of making the finals in 08. They took JJ Hickson and they missed out on that whole Lee, Courtney Lee, Ibaka, Nick Batum, really anybody who could have helped them over the next two playoffs. And then the Celtics, this made me mad at the time. FYI, 30th pick.

They took J.R. Giddens over DeAndre Jordan. And I, and I even have a joke in my draft diary when it happened. Like, why wouldn't they have just brought DeAndre Jordan in for KG camp? Just bring him in. It's like, here's your mentor, KG. KG's going to teach you how to do all the KG stuff. That actually would have been a really good pick for them.

And the J.R. Giddens thing was bad. So there you go. Yeah. Just watching DeAndre Jordan run, you're like, how are 30 guys going to go ahead of G. Andre Jordan? I just, I think whatever happened with him, I think some people may have done him wrong. I agree with you. I think there was bad buzz about him and I think he got sabotaged by it because like what you said before, I was going to the Clipper games at 09 and 10. He was like a joyful guy. And he seemed like he, I remember even writing about this. He knew everybody on every, on the other team, every, every game, whoever

the opposing team was, he knew six guys on the other team. And he just seemed like he was this beloved character. And it was like, I thought this guy was a head case. He seems like joyous. I don't understand this. understand this so everybody fucked up just to see somebody that big run the way he did and you go normally this guy like if he's deandre jordanvich he's the 11th pick like there's no doubt because what do you call it deandre jordanvich i just i just deander jordanvich i just I just threw a little bitch on there. The Hibbert part of this is great too, because there, there's a, there's a redraftable where you're trying to figure out where he's going in the lottery. And he went from teams fighting over maxing him as a restricted guy to out of the league.

It felt like overnight to wow. Miami has no answer for Roy Hibbert to, we can't play him in games. And that felt like it was a couple years, but it felt like a span of a couple weeks. Portland tried to max him, right? Yeah, Portland offered him a tender. And that's my favorite thing is getting to talk to front offices when other teams tender their guys and they get so pissed about it. And it's like, you guys do the same thing.

You did it three years ago to this other team. Yeah, but that was different. Right. A couple comedy things from the draft. Apparently, this is from my draft diary. Mayo's nickname was the juice, which is kind of hard to believe anybody

wanted to be the juice after the juice. OJ Simpson, double murderer. Okay, well, I got to jump in because he's also aka the grocery list. Oh. Which I didn't know. That didn't work either. Yeah.

Jay Billis thought Michael Beasley reminded him of a cross between Derek Coleman and Roy Tarpley. Wow, that's amazing. What a call. Yikes. No, but is that one of the greatest calls ever? So I said,

I'm setting the over under Of Beyond the Glory episodes Involving members of the 08 draft class At 4.5 We might be there Because we have Derrick Rose, Michael Beasley OJ Mayo Is there a fourth one

What's the criteria Westbrook will get one I don't know what was the criteria for Beyond the Glory I thought those were documentaries that were like had a little edge to him and the other thing too in that tournament game you mentioned mayo had 20 but he just missed a bunch of shots but he lost to beasley um the case that was the mayo yeah i lost money on that game it still bothers me so it still bothers you because remember the mayo thing too i remember when somebody described the recruiting because he was a west virginia kid and it was like oh what was the

usc thing and it was this is early branding stuff but it was he wanted to be in la because of his brand he was going to stop by for a year do his thing post batliner right and then it was all investigated and we all know they were the winds were vacated although it's not like they had that deep run but i was told that the recruitment was someone from Mayo's camp called USC and said, hey, he's coming to USC. And it was like, okay. That was...

The school was told he's coming. Well, the other thing, he... I mean, he was legitimately old. Was he... Did he shave a year off his age at one point? Are we talking?

OJ. Cause reliever here. He's 21 as a rookie, but that's what I mean. Yeah. He, he was born in November 5th, 1987. So during his freshman year in college, he was 20. Um, I don't know. He, he just, it wasn't like Kobe coming out of a high school at age 17.

The Mark Jackson did this draft at one point. He's, he said he thought the Knicks should take the best available guy. Um, not wrong, not wrong. The Clippers took Eric Gordon and I wrote in the draft diary. Here come the Clippers at number seven, ready to ruin yet another promising career. And the lucky loser is Eric Gordon. Logical pick.

I can't say a bad thing about it. Right spot for him. Right team. I look forward to watching the hope get sucked out of him over these next few years. It's exactly what happened. Super talented guy. Couldn't have been a worse team

for him and then gets thrown into the Chris Paul trade and we'll talk about him later, but that was a bummer. Yeah, but his third year, he put up pretty big numbers. Yeah, he's... Save it for the Aragorn part.

Save it for Aragorn. Charlotte took DJ Augustine over Brooke Lopez that was the thing that happened and then IndyCat said the Kings took Jason Thompson at 12 IndyCat said he was the best player they worked out

and I made the point that's always smart ignoring four years of his college games concentrate on the two workouts it's amazing that teams do this. He did have a little moment there in the beginning. And then it was all of a sudden he didn't have a position and it was like, no, it's over now, man.

That was another weird one. God, there are a lot of weird stories in this draft. He's one of those guys that would have been way better off if he came in the league in 1984. And he's just like battling Michael Cage and Buck Williams. Hey, let's take a break to talk about Roman. If you've been dealing with acne, redness, dark spots, or wrinkles,

finding treatment that works can be complicated. You need skincare that actually performs, but getting started can be overwhelming. And thankfully, there's a solution. Roman makes it convenient to get customized prescription skincare that really performs. Grab your phone or computer, complete a free online consultation, and you'll hear back from a US licensed physician within 24 hours.

If appropriate, a doctor will prescribe a custom blended treatment based on your skin type and priorities. You'll receive your custom skincare treatment with free two-day shipping. You also get free unlimited follow-ups with your doctor if you need to make a change to your treatment or have any questions. With Roman, no commitments, cancel anytime. Go to getroman.com slash bill to try out a three-month supply of Nightly Defense

for just $5. It's free to chat with the doctor. Your first order is just, again, $5. That's getroman.com slash bill. Eligibility requirements and additional terms do apply. Alright, it's time. We're redrafting. You want the first pick or the second pick? Second pick's more interesting.

Really? I think the thing is the third pick is the interesting thing. So you know what? You can have the first pick. Well, if you think the third pick's interesting, you take the first pick. No, I want to see what you're going to do. No, I want to see what you're going to do.

All right, first pick, Russell Westbrook. We already talked about him. MVP, two first-team All-NBAs, five second teams, two third teams, averaging a 25-7-8 in the playoffs. 23-7-8 for his career. And we've talked about him way too much on this podcast. I don't have a lot more to say.

I will be interested to know how much is left for him. He's already at 20,000 points. He's played 12 years, 874 games. The next five years of his career are going to be fun to see how they play out from, uh, athleticism, durability, all that stuff. I don't,

you could tell me that it's going to be a quick downturn, or you could tell me he's just a freak and he's going to just be doing this until like he's 38. I don't know the answer. I wouldn't want to bet on a bet against him finding a way to be productive just because of his intensity. I just think that's the way this guy is wired, and that's the part of him I love the most. I do think our reaction to him would be very different if it wasn't. Maybe not very different, because this is a bigger picture thing.

But the way he turned it around this year, too, in Houston after it being just abysmal the first few months, and then they get rid of the center, they open the whole thing up, and he's putting up these monster numbers again. But I just think wherever he is, I don't know that you're going to win any playoff games, but wherever he is, he's just going to care more than almost everybody else that's out there, and he's just going to find,

like he's going to get those in-between buckets. He's going to get buckets that other guys just don't have the effort level for. So I think he's always going to be kind of productive even later on as the athleticism slips. You're up on the clock number two. By the way, Russ has 7,000 more points than anyone in this class. 3,000 more assists, 3,300 more assists,

and he's third in rebounds in this entire class. Okay, I don't really think there's much debate here. I think it's Kevin Love. Love, it's a weird story for him though i mean monster numbers like exactly what you would want stretch for who is incredible from the three-point line for his career he's 37 but one year with minnesota he's 42 the next year he's 26 points a game 13 boards he's got another 20 and 15 game in there or season in there. He had like a weird year where he couldn't hit any threes for some. Oh, he was hurt that year.

He hurt his hand or his wrist. That's right. He played 18 games. He made a second team all NBA in 12 and 14, and then 13 he was hurt. That's right. Okay, so then he comes back and plays basically a full season at 25 years old. Minnesota's last year there. He's 26, 12 and a half 38 percent from

three and seven attempts but it was this constant battle like Rambis didn't want to play him they gave him the shorter year in the contract you're like is this guy you know like some of these guys in this class like hey what happened to OJ Mayo's numbers well the weird thing is is once he started shooting less the team got a little bit better there's a few guys and it's like when Beasley has those big numbers okay they didn't even win 20 games that year. So there's, you always got to look at some of these numbers

and go, what do these numbers really mean when the teams are losing all the time? Then you can see the teams get a little bit better, and then these guys take less shots.

That's not necessarily the case for Love. He goes to Cleveland. We know there's not going to be as many shots for him. He loses like six shots per game from 14 to his first year in Cleveland,

but he's still hitting threes. He's just missing time. He missed most in 18, 19. He's still only 31 years old. So I think he's oddly, like I said before, become a little underrated, but he's so lost in Cleveland and he signs the big contract. But he's a productive player who's put up maybe misleading gaudy numbers, but still puts up really good numbers.

But he was invisible in LeBron's shadow and now invisible on a bad team no one cares about. I have two Kevin Love points. First one is, I really like the early version of Kevin Love before he actually was overqualified to be doing what he was doing, and it made more sense for him to be a 26-12 Euro guy at the end of games guy.

His third season in the league, and it made more sense for him to be a 26 and 12. You're a guy at the end of games guy, his, his, uh, third season in the league, he averages 20 and 15, four and a half offensive rebounds a game, four and a half. Yeah. He led the league in rebounding.

And when you, and when you went to see him, it was so much fun watching him on the offensive boards because he really was religious a little like Rodman style he was one of the best rebounders I've ever seen and I think it's a shame

that as his career went along he drifted further and further away from the basket you take this guy when he's around the rim one of the best offensive rebounders I think of the last 20 years and then as a defensive rebound, one of the best offensive rebounders I think of the last 20 years. And then as a defensive rebounder, one of the best outlet passers.

And I just love that version of him. I, I, I really wish he didn't go to Cleveland, which is my second point. And I know it worked out. They won the title, the whole thing. But I think for the most part, it's been a waste of his talents because I think LeBron in a lot of ways was a power forward. Anyway, if you just look at his playoff stats, right? He only, he's only in the playoffs four years, his playoff stats, he's 15 and 10, 40% field goal, 40% three point 85%

free throw only 2.3 off its rebounds a game. And here's the killer 3.7 free throws a game. He's basically being used as Ryan Anderson. And I just think it's a complete waste of what that guy's good at. I want that guy in the, around the rim. He's got unbelievable hands, quick feet, some of the best instincts we've seen of anyone in the last 25 years. And you have them in the fucking corner. I know they had to do it that way, but I just think it's a shame. I wish we could do his career over again. That 25 year old season,

13 and 14. Again, he's 77 games, 26, 12 and a half, eight free throw attempts per game. And he makes his free throws. He's 83% from the floor.

I got to say he was unstoppable in the paint. Like if there was a rebound, he was usually getting it. He was great at up fake stuff. Like he was a very old school kind of the player that you and I grew up with, but navigating this modern world, but he could shoot. Like, I just think it's a bummer. He went to Cleveland. I really do. And that's not a knock on LeBron. I just kind of, I think he was overqualified to do what he did for Cleveland. JD drew rule here in effect, because if they don't come back from three, one,

do we look at his career differently? I look, I'm looking at his career as a guy who in the playoffs is 15 and 10, which is just not that special. And I gotta be, by the way, those numbers feel high because of how many times in the playoffs you were like, what's going on with him right now? Right. They're a little inflated by some of the easy series. I got to be honest.

I had him third. I had Derrick Rose second. So here's the case. You think it's not even debatable, huh? No, I think it's very debatable. I just, I had Rose second on my list because he's an MVP. I think that matters. I think the injury was a fluke. Maybe it would have happened anyway because the way he played, I certainly was afraid watching him that he was going to get hurt. And I always have felt that way about Westbrook too. Certain guys where you're, John Morant's like that.

I'm constantly worried he's going to get hurt by the way he plays. So maybe it would have happened anyway I don't know but you know you think like year 3 wins the MVP he's the best guy

in a 60 win team 25-7-4 45% 33-86 for the percentages and he's like 22 and I

the question I keep asking with some of this stuff is if you play his career 20 times, is this one of the best versions, one of the mediocre versions, or one of the worst versions? I think it's probably one of the worst versions. I think there's a world where Westbrook and Rose,

if Westbrook hurts his knee, maybe as you pointed out before, Westbrook's so tough mentally, he was going to fight through it. Rose. He has a lot of, a lot of issues, obviously maybe he's not as strong fighting through an injury and

recovering things like that, but I just think it was bad luck. And I think the upside of him was just higher than Kevin love. I think he's a better basketball player. Kevin love to me. If he's putting up huge stats, I don't know if you're winning. And it's weird because I, it's almost like the most overqualified ever version of David Lee, where it's like,

if David Lee is this involved in your team, what's ultimately happening? Cause he can't guard anybody on the other end. Now we know with the league where it's like, you don't really need a power forward who's 6'9", who's constantly in a mismatch, getting in pick and rolls, but he can't play center. So that would be my, I know what Derrick Rose is.

I know I can contend for a title if he's one of my best three players and he's healthy. I guess I just push back on the idea that because the ACL thing happened that that's fluky and then none happened, that that's fluky.

And then none of the other stuff is, is fluky because it was a real problem for him in Chicago when he came back and how long it took him to come back and what was happening. And, you know, this was some of the early signs of, of, of the pro player coverage and that it's like,

well, you know, it's his body. And if he's worried, it's like, yeah, like yeah okay but you know eventually when you're cleared and people want you back and think you're coming back and have a uniform ready for you to go in a playoff game and then you're not like that's that's screwing up everybody else on the team and the remember the next moment where he just disappeared and well i think what's going on and it it was actually like the fact that he is who he is the last two years bill is incredible and it's you know like i'm so

happy for him because i hate like you that we missed out on this awesome version but if we're doing this redraft and like what you have to your team there was some real weird moments there for rose where i guess I can't really blame him. A young kid whose career is completely derailed based on like being a hall of famer, maybe contending for titles. But there was some stuff that was really hard to explain with him for a bunch of seasons. And he basically missed like five or six years, not total, but seasons where he doesn't even come close to playing a half a year. He reminds me of a lot of guys that we grew up watching that I loved who got derailed for dumb

reasons. Whether it was Michael Ray Richardson or Walter Davis, guys like that because of cocaine or guys who just had a knee injury at the wrong time or both. But you look back at their career, what it should have been versus what it actually was. And I was looking at that and I'm like, well, why did it turn out that way with him? I think the knee injury was bad luck. I don't think he had the kind of infrastructure around him to kind of cope with the bad luck. Whereas I think of Westbrook had torn his ACL. He just would have, he would have been back in 11 months. He would have been like, I'm not letting this beat me for whatever whatever reason, Rose let it beat him. And I think he had a really hard life.

And he had a lot of issues on and off the court. And it's just a bummer. I remember in my basketball book, I wrote about I had a Hall of Fame. I wanted to have these different wings. And one of the wings was like the Comets, like these guys that they weren't hall of famers, but they had like this two year window where you're like, man, I'll never forget watching that guy. I feel like he's like that for me. He's one of those comic guys for me. I thought he was unbelievable in person those couple of years. Yeah. It's tough for me to win the argument with love over Rose though. When you talk about

winning games, because Rose was winning games. I mean, they won 58 games that year as the MVP. They were the one seed in the East. Or excuse me, they won 62 games. Miami, as I said before, won 58. And Love was almost like power forward Trey Young in a way. He was.

He was the Sharif Abdur Rahim all-stars, I used to call him. You want him on the fantasy team, but maybe not in real life as much. But, you know, I got to say, he came through huge in 2016. He stopped Curry on the biggest defensive stop of that entire season and made a couple of big plays, and that counts for something. I did have a few Warriors people reach out on the Love-Curry thing and they were quick to point out that Curry admits he just was going for the kill shot there

because I still think he could have gotten around Kevin Love. Well, that's another what if with him, right? Because it was Clay Thompson. Clay Thompson, David Lee for Love was the trade that was on the table and the Warriors were split on the table and there were the warriors were split on it and ended up, they ended up not doing it and probably a good idea because you know how it played out was how it played out. All right. You're on the clock at number four. I'm going to go with somebody who statistically is, well, he's actually a little higher up in the mix,

but I'm going Brook Lopez. Wow. Yeah. You're right. This is a fun draft. Yeah. Now, Lopez went from 20 a game,

not great Nets teams, didn't rebound enough, set up so far away from the hoop and you're like what the hell is this like why are you posting why are you posting up on a country pass like why am i you're catching a ball 18 feet away from the hoop and you're just going to take a turnaround but he got enough shots and he also got to the free throw line and he was pretty good from his free throw line but you just you went from like ah man he just doesn't because he rebounded all right um his his first couple years it just got worse and worse, ah, man, he just doesn't, because he rebounded all right. His first couple of years, it just got worse and worse. four a game, six a game, five a game.

He wasn't shooting it as well this year with Milwaukee, but he was great the previous three years from three, and he's reinvented himself. And I think as a mobile defensive big who can cover a lot of ground, I actually still think he's going to be productive for a while. So I like him better than some of the other people that statistically are looked on more favorably

from this class. Average 20 plus four times. Had some bad luck with how it worked out for him, right? He's, they put together that net super team and Darren Williams just ends up flaking.

They, the whole, he's there through the whole fall of Prokhorov era. Ends up on the 2018 Lakers for some reason. Um, and it's just, I I'm with you. I always liked him. I always thought he was kind of semi unstoppable when he, when he posted up and there was the year, one of the years the Celtics had actually had both of the years they had the nets pick and my dad and I would just be rooting

against the nets and Lopez would just like win, just win the nets, these games. And it was so fucking frustrating. It'd be like, you know, they're down one with 11 seconds left coming out of a timeout, like just double team Lopez. Can, can he not have the ball? And then he'd end up, you know, and one Brooke Lopez. And, uh, I just thought he was really good. So I'm glad it, I'm glad it worked out for him, but he's another guy like with, like same way I feel about Kevin Love. I hate that all these guys are so far from the basket. I think he's like unstoppable within six feet if he's got the right guy in his hip, you know? And now he's just like, now he's point shooter. Yeah. But now he's not even that guy. And I think that's why I actually

like him more because before I would just, it was just weird with him. He would set up so much further away than normally a guy on a post catch. Now, nobody runs post offense anyway, so it doesn't matter. But I mean, the other crazy thing about him, the last couple of years, he's basically a career-high blocks per game, which doesn't happen. You usually don't play 10 years and then start blocking more shots. But a lot of that is how smart he is. And he's also high on the teammate grade thing too. Totally.

And the defensive metrics back it up. The eye test says he's kind of better defensively than I realized he was. And then all the metrics are backing up. My fifth pick is going to be Serge Ibaka. I just love guys like this. I know, I know I can just play him in a playoff series and he's probably going to be

playing crunch time for me unless I have an awesome center. The, the, some of his numbers, like in 2012, he averaged 3.7 blocks a game. I don't remember that. That's a lot of blocks.

He averaged three blocks a game in 13. Then he just stopped. Yeah, but became for the most part a pretty good open three-point shooter eventually. Unfortunately, he didn't really learn that skill until after OKC

their window closed for the title. But in the playoffs, he did pretty well too. He played 133 games in the playoffs so far and averaged 29 minutes a game. So he was always valuable at every point in his career. In Toronto, 20.8 minutes a game

for them in the 19 run. And he came up huge for them a couple of times during that run. I just always liked him. And I think in 2014, when he gets hurt in that San Antonio series, and then he ends up coming back and whatever the fuck happened, I do think they could have beaten San Antonio that year. And I think his injury changed that.

I had him fifth. I had him fifth as well. I had Westbrook love rose thing you kind of get me a second guess the bros thing a little bit there but no i think it's a good argument yeah and then i had lopez fourth but i had surge fifth uh surge is is such an interesting player because he basically was a power forward forever and then he turned into like a two guard on offense. And he went from not taking any threes to taking three a game and he hit him. But I felt like his blocks overrated him a little defensively where I

thought that Miami series, he made some huge mistakes, just kind of not understanding the coverage on some things. So you're talking 2012. Yeah. When they lost the finals to miami yeah he's he's pretty raw i feel i felt like it took him a couple years to really be trustworthy in games like that yeah i mean he's only his third year in he wasn't even a score at that point but the blocks those next couple years like that's 3.7 so that's the third year in so that's when they were in the finals blocks can get really i mean that's a huge number so you start to go look at this defensive stopper and say okay blocking shots though like look at white side like white side block shots and i think

he's one of the worst defensive players in the league and so when i know but it's isn't it weird though when you look back and you think they just could have played him at center and durant at power forward and had two guys who were seven feet and have length and then just like why play perkins one minute because who else are you going to run that first post play for every single game start the game you can't you can't do that to big pert uh abaca you know the redemption for me because then i kind of felt like he was this lost guy because i go he's so far away from the hoop all the time like he's in love with his shot and he made it but i you you kind of hope like where you have this great defensive presence who can also be a big who can shoot threes you're

like actually you have just a big who shoots a lot of threes but he was so good in big spots against golden state when they won the title for Toronto. Like, he had some moments where he's the only other guy doing anything. Remember the Philly? The Y's going off? Yeah. Game 7 Philly, too. That was the other one.

He was big in that game. That was the other one. So he jumped up in my book as kind of just being like, eh, about him for a long time. I'm not saying he sucked or anything like that. I'm not being ridiculous. But for him to show up that way

like he did for Toronto during that, that, that championship run really showed me something with him. So, and I think if you have him for 12 years, you're going to be just happy in general with the 12 years. I forgot Zach Cram sent us a couple of stats, seven different guys from this draft made an all-star team, which is the most in any draft since Oh three, the average player from the draft has collected 24.9 win shares, most since 2003. And the total win shares for non-lottery players in 08,

which includes Ibaka, ranks third in the whole lottery era. So there you go. All right, you're in the clock at number six. I think I know who you're taking. DeAndre Jordan? Are you being ironic? No, no no i'm taking him wow i never thought you were a fan well at this point um no i i wouldn't i wouldn't say that like i think he's i think he's a classic chris paul study where it's like oh see what happens when you don't have chris paul passing you the basketball every single time like it's it's it's a little Chris Paul study where it's like, oh, see what happens when you don't have Chris Paul

passing you the basketball every single time. Like it's a little harder to get this stuff going. But the rebounding numbers are nuts. He's got like 2,500 more rebounds than anybody else in this class. He led the league 13 and a half, 15. He's basically been double figures for a really long time. Yes, there are some Dallas moments there where it's like, I don't think this guy's real locked in right now.

And that part I never quite got, but he's the whole reason why Durant's in Brooklyn. Oh, no, wait, that's Kyrie. I think DeAndre, when he's right, when he's invested, he's, I mean, it's tough because you want everybody to be able to score. So in today's game you know he might not be somebody you have to do but you still have to kind of pay attention to him and I still I don't know I was kind of at this

point like there's one other name that I would go with but I can understand I probably had more arguments for the guy that I was going to pick after DeAndre here than I had anti DeAndre arguments so I'm taking him sixth you left out the dunking with him which was really fun especially earlier in his career with the alley with no with the alley oops it was just I'm taking him sixth. You left out the dunking with him, which was really fun.

Especially earlier in his career with the alley-oops. No, with the alley-oops. He had a fun early part of his career when he wasn't a distinct potential all-star yet, but was just a fun guy to have on your team. And also a great teammate. Everybody likes him. I did not have him in that spot, though. Okay, who would you have taken?

With my seventh pick, I'm taking Eric Gordon, who I think is a really good basketball player, who is a classic. If you played this career 20 times, was this the worst scenario of it? I'm just looking at this draft, the actual draft, Chicago Rose, Miami Beasley, Minnesota Mayo trade, Seattle Westbrook, Memphis love Nick six. They take Gallinari Clipper seven, Eric Gordon eight, Milwaukee, Joe Alexander. Even if he goes to the bucks at eight and he's playing with like Andrew Bogut and whoever else on that Fear the Deer team, I think he would have had such an easier time.

Instead, he's on the fucked up Clippers. And, you know, and then all of a sudden when things finally start turning, gets traded in New Orleans. Now it's another rebuild. Then they get Drew Holiday within a year. Then a couple of years go by by he gets hurt a few times they have by all accounts one of the worst medical

staffs in the last 20 years of the NBA then eventually ends up in Houston and we kind of saw what would become with him but just he's just worst case scenario on whatever team 17 a game and he's going to make almost 40% of his threes knows where to go,

knows what to do. You can run plays from it in the games, his third year with the Clippers. He was 22.3 a game, 45% field goal. And I, I gotta say that was a really fun Clippers team. Cause that was Blake.

That was, uh, there was Baron Davis for at least a little while and then they ended up trading Baron Davis to get rid of his contract for Mo Williams. But I really like going to those games. I like Baron Davis with Eric Gordon and DeAndre

starting to come on and Blake starting to emerge and I enjoyed that team. It's a team that if they hadn't made the Chris Paul trade, still would have been really fun to watch. He was really coming on and there were some made the Chris Paul trade, still would have been really fun to watch. Yeah, he was really coming on. And there were some other numbers, too. Like, I think he might have been the number one, like, shoot-off-a-pick-and-roll guard in the league that year where you go,

okay, this guy has, like, a real weapon and something to bring. And it was always a little scary because when you watched him, for those that saw him in high school and then the year in Indiana, it was really impressive. But you were kind of like, what kind of athlete is he going to be? Is he going to be one of those guys that's like done athletically too soon? And that's kind of the case, but it hasn't really, I guess it's changed who he is as a player, but he's still incredibly productive. I know he wasn't shooting it that well

this year, but this is somebody who just lights it up from outside taking over eight threes a game. Now, I mean, he scored 18 a game over basically a full season just a couple years ago. And he's, yes, the system, it's the Houston system, and it's all these things, but you'd still want an Eric Gordon on your team. And I think because he just, he always looks a little slower. He looks like he's, he's just, he's never quite the athlete maybe you thought you were going to be when you watched him

when he was a little bit younger. But I think the part that's misleading is because he doesn't look like he's this quick twitch guy or a guy who's breaking everybody down. It takes away from the fact that he actually is good at getting to the hoop. He is good at initiating contact and because he's thick, it works to his advantage. These guys

are, all of those Rockets players are big in not height, but just how strong they all are and he fits in perfectly with all these different things because he can still handle and even though he looks like this guy's just going to take a million threes every game he's somebody that can still handle and get to the hoop and then make the right read on stuff so I've been really impressed with the second part of his career after worrying like who he was going to be after some of the injuries

and then the weird stuff with his contract and he wanted out, and then they weren't going to let him out when he wanted to go to Phoenix. I mean, he had some weird bumpy stuff there where you started worrying, like, what's this going to look like in year 10 if he's even still around? And now I think he's just going to make threes for another five years. At least. There's this one really fun game from 2011. It was right before they traded Barron.

They beat the Lakers. It was a home Clippers game. Gordon had 30 against Kobe. And for whatever reason, every time they played the Lakers, he, he, one of the things I liked about him as a young player was he kind of felt like, oh, it's me and Kobe. It's the two of us. Like he's one of those irrational guys. Yeah. But, but it was like, oh, it's time, time for me and Kobe to have a duel. But so he has 30. Griffin has 18 and 15. DeAndre has 15 rebounds.

Barron has 14 and 8. And they beat the Lakers. And I don't know. I felt like they were kind of building something there. And obviously, you have to trade for Chris Paul. That was a no-brainer. But I think he would have. I think him and Blake Griffin would have been a good combo the next couple years.

Yeah, you're right. You're up at number eight. Danilo. Hmm. That was my toughest call, was who to put at number eight. I think you can make an argument he should have gone ahead of Gordon. I don't know if you wanted me

to keep updating these, though. Just all the stuff that we have on the nicknames off of basketball reference. Because Eric Gordon's got a bunch. A.K.A. The Hobbit. A.K.A. E-Money. A.K.A. EG. A.K.A. EJ. A.K.A. Splash Gordon.

A.K.A. 3G. A.K.A. Eric Gordon. I think they make almost all of those names up. The basketball reference ones. Half of those I've never heard in my life. So Gallinari, 16 and 5, 38% from three for his career. And he's getting better, by the way.

Do you realize what he's done the last couple of years on two different stops? I enjoyed him. I liked him on the Clippers. And he's had three different runs on teams that weren't supposed to be as good as they were

where he was involved, right? That 2013 Nuggets team, the A.D. of Ty Lawson, I think they won like 57 games. That Clippers team last year, when all of a sudden they were like, what, 49 and 33 or whatever, they win a game off the Warriors. And then this OKC team this year, he was a big part of that. Him and Chris Paul and Shea Gilgis and Steven Adams. That was basically it. But he is somebody that we have seen over and over again, does stuff that helps the team. And if he's one of your six guys, you're not going to regret it. Celtics have liked him for 10 years years he's had a weird career because he had bad first impression 28 games rookie year and I think he would be he'd be like one of your friends

that has a good run and then he does something really stupid like once every year and then you're like ah this guy that's what Danilo's career is like because just when it seems like it's getting steady then he misses time he. He gets traded. Dumb injury. Yeah, he missed the entire 13-14. And then with Denver, he started to put up some pretty big numbers. Again, shorter seasons. But he's played, I don't know. I mean, geez, he hasn't played over 70 games since 12-13.

That's really his problem. The perception of him isn't inaccurate that he isn't around a lot. But he is more productive player than you realize he's 43 and 41 percent from three the last couple years he's scoring 20 and 19 clippers last year in 68 games 55 games low clemency this year he's still decent enough rebounder he can make a pass makes his free throws and he's still only 31 years old but when he's got a little he's got a little that italian in him too he's got a little That Italian in him too What does that mean? Well, I'm half Italian I'm qualified to talk about this He thinks he's a little better than he is He carries himself

Hey, fuck you Have you ever heard him say that? No In crunch time, not going to be scared Yes He's going to be like, hey, what are you looking at? And I don't know. I always, I always, as a fellow Italian, I always appreciated the way he carried himself. I think you just want to say he smoked cigarettes and drives the Vespa. I think that's

what you're trying to say. Not somebody who would be like, where is this guy going in crunch time? Like I actually think the opposite. So, all right. So I had him ranked ninth and I'm going to take with the ninth pick. The guy had eighth. I just like him. Goran Dragic. Third team all NBA in 2014. One of the weirdest careers. Just like one of the weirdest basketball reference pages you'll look at

because he's basically a bench guy for the first five years of his career. And then within a year, he's 13 mall NBA. And, uh, I, he's a guy that if I was a GM, I would have traded for at least once. I've always liked this game. I I'll never understand why Phoenix tried to put him and Isaiah Thomas together. That was fucking weird. Was valued enough that Miami gave up two unprotected first round picks for him. Like that's how much talent he had. I don't think Gallinari, Eric Gordon, a Bach, maybe a Baca would have gone for two unprotected at some point. I don't know.

But when he's good, he is a 20 and six. And he's going to make four out of every 10 threes, and you can run pick and rolls with him at the end of the game, and is a good playoff guy, and single-handedly knocked the 2010 Spurs out of the playoffs, which was unbelievable as it was happening. I'm a fan. Yeah, two years ago in a full season,

he was 17,5-4, and he shot, what was he at? I mean, he's had some big three-point shooting seasons. Yeah, he's 41% from three. I think he's healthier than people realize. Like last year, he missed a ton of time. He's coming off the bench this year, but he's still scoring 16 a game for a good Miami team

that if it weren't for the road record, maybe I think it'd make a little noise in the play. Maybe they still can, but he, you know, before that two years ago, you go back 75 games, 73 games, 78 games, 76 games, 77 games. So other than the never starting any of the games and coming off the bench and playing under like 20 minutes a game for four seasons in, or actually, excuse me. Yeah, but we got to say why though. Because he's Nash's backup. And I think he was, there came a point where he was really overqualified

to be a backup point guard in the league. I think he was better than probably 10 guys who was actually starting. Like guys like DJ Augustine were starting games when he was backing up Nash. So, you know, a little bit bad luck there. On the other hand, you could argue playing with Nash, he might have learned some stuff that became valuable going forward.

But I was just really appreciating him. He's one of my favorites. At this point, I think we've had close to the same order. It just seems to be we're one off every time where I have a guy that you take, you know, the slot behind. We can start moving faster now, by the way. Probably. have a guy that you take the slot behind. We can start moving faster now, by the way. Probably. George Hill, I'll take him 10th.

Good pick. I agree. 26 pick in the actual draft. Good enough to get traded for Kawhi Leonard. I think he's had a really nice resurgence on this Bucs team. He's leading the league in threes at 48% this year.

Yeah. There's really not much else to add. You know who he is. You know what you're going to get. I think if he's your third guard, you're feeling great. Yeah. If you're an eight-man rotation and he's playing 24 minutes a game, you did awesome. He's actually fifth in

win shares for this class, too. Interesting. I remember when Zach wrote the piece about the He did awesome. He's actually fifth in win shares for this class too. Interesting. I also, I remember when Zach wrote the piece about the Hill-Lenner trade for us for Grantland. Zach Randolph? Zach Lowe. Oh. And Zach Randolph never wrote for Grantland.

Pop was like devastated when he had to trade George Hill. He loved George Hill. It was just the right move because he had Parker and Parker was still one of the best 15 or 16 guys in the league. And at some point, they needed a wing guy and they knew it

and they love Kawhi and they made the deal. But just think, if they had traded Parker for Valanciunas, then Kawhi is never on the Spurs. True. They still have George Hill. And the Celtics could add Robert Swift.

Number 11. I'm taking a guy who has made $118 million in counting in his NBA career. No, you're not. I don't even have him in my lottery. Yeah, I'm going 3 and D. I'm taking Nick Batum. I'm doing it. It's tough to be 3 and D when you play zero minutes.

Yeah. Well, I liked him for a while. And, you know, unfortunately, he got a giant contract and it fucked him up. And so I'm using that giant contract as kind of the torn ACL of Nick Batum's career. But, you know, you're looking at from 2010 all the way through 2018, he is 13, 6, and 5, 35% from 3. Like, he's basically Wes Matthews

or whatever, and you can switch on D with him, all that stuff. I would rather have that than anyone who's left. So, you're up, 12. I'm just going to add a couple of Batum nuggets. Yeah.

The advanced metrics haven't liked him in eight years. That show team isn't loaded. They don't even play him and he's healthy. I think his playoff numbers are pretty bad as well. Not that there's a ton there, but they get even worse. He was, he was a guy that had this all-around game,

and he put it together for Portland there a little bit, and they had no problem, not Matt. Go ahead, $5, $120 million. He still is a $27 million player option next year. Probably going to pick that one up. There's more anti-Batum stuff for me, but it does get a little scarce here. So I'm not crushing the pick yet.

Hold on. Hold on. It doesn't just get a little scarce here. Here's who's left just for the people listening. This is, I'm not happy. I took Nick Batum, but here's who's left. Roy Hibbert, Nikola Pekovic, Ryan Anderson, Omer Asik, Robin Lopez, Michael Beasley, OJ Mayo, Moe Spates, Courtney Lee, Mario Chalmers, Mozgov.

Like, it's not like... Jared and Bryce debate. It's not like my grocery cart was full. What about Anthony Randolph? Different life, maybe? By the way, still haven't given up on him. You always ask me who have I't given up on him. You always ask me who have I not given up on

from this draft. Anthony Randolph. Still waiting for him to become a heat check guy off the bench. Kyle Weaver. A lot of length there. Love him.

Who are you taking at 12? I just think I have to go production, long career. It can be DJ Augustine. Wow. I did not have him on my list. Unbelievable. Hold on.

I have to do some copy pasting. DJ Augustine. Even he's bummed out that you took him wait a minute so alright I can't wait because I was saving my 14th pick for somebody you weren't going to take so now I may have jammed myself up unless I don't know because I didn't think there's any way the guy

I took last is who you were going to take in your top 14 so I may have just screwed myself what's wrong with August you see them you see when they beat the Raptors in game one of the playoffs and he was like, don't you sleep on the magic?

Look, anytime you can get a point guard with a career 10 and four, got to lock that down. There's no way to find that. He's going to be on a roster. He's on a roster really long. It gets really slim here, folks. I can't believe he's played 20,000 minutes.

Yeah. Maybe you need to brush up on your DJ Augustine Before you start killing him No I know who you're going to take Yeah I'm going to take JaVale Oh my god you're making fun of me Yeah

I'm taking JaVale Watched him play On a team that Might have been the best team ever. And he played 9.6 minutes a game. And then in the playoffs, I think he played more than that in the, for the 2017 Warriors,

he played 9.3 minutes a game. Wow. He's been in the league. He's been in the league. I know. Since 2008. No, I mean, he's, he's been in the league. He's been in the league. I know. Since 2008. No, I mean,

he's, he's been in the league for 12 years, but is still like pretty relatively relevant. He's still, he's playing 17 minutes a game right now for the best team in the league, other than Milwaukee. And I, I don't feel like he's on his way out of the league.

I think he is what he is. He can thank LeBron for that offensive production right now because everybody leaves him. Same for Dwight right now. Well, let me ask you. Is it harder to find JaVale McGee or DJ Augustine just in the league? I don't know.

What guy is harder to find? That was my mindset completely. Could he play 15 minutes a game for me Off the bench As a pick and roll rim protector guy Yes I take JaVale McGee Do you know that DJ Augustine has a PER For his career of 14.2

Is that good? Do you want to take any of it back? 14.2? That seems high Well I'm taking JaVale I liked his mom I had a good time with his mom Do you want to take any of it back? 14.2. That seems high. Well, I'm taking JaVale. I liked his mom. I had a good time with his mom at the USC when we did the doc at the party after. She was a delight.

Augustine, 38% from three in the playoffs for his career. 33 games. Not a small sample. That's pretty good. I'm just screwing with everybody right now. Maybe. No, we should do it. But I'll do on the Book of Basketball Twitter feed. Who would you take

in a redraft? JaVale or DJ Augustine? I'm going to lose because everybody likes JaVale and now he's on the Lakers and all the Lakers fans are going to go crazy. Oh yeah, you're right. They ruin everything. Lakers fans just ruin all good things. Alright, last pick. I'm not going to take him, but he probably should have gone

12 or 13 and that's Ryan Anderson. Ryan Anderson filled going to take him, but he probably should have gone 12 or 13, and that's Ryan Anderson. Ryan Anderson filled it up. Now, Ryan Anderson has a little bit of some of the other stuff that we've seen with this class. The less he started shooting, the team started winning a little bit more because it's like, well, can we give Ryan Anderson all of our shots? How many games do we expect to win? But he lit it up there for a while.

Also, you want to take a guess over, under? Well, I'm not going to give you over, under. I'll just give you the guess. You want to guess his career earnings? Oh, it's like $130 million, right? $100 million. Yeah, he's over $100 million. $100 million for Ryan Anderson. Yeah, he was the other guy I was looking at with that last

pick. Alright, my last pick though, I'm just going to take him. I'm taking Robin Lopez. Hmm. He, if you ask teams, and this was one of those things where it was like a trade deadline making the calls and it was like watch how hard it's like that veragiao thing where veragiao may not get the rebound but it's going to be annoying all night long trying to battle this guy for rebounds and he's locked in he's competitive and all that kind of stuff and i for the 14th pick here, none of the traditional stats are going to get you all

that excited about Robin Lopez, but I just think he makes things difficult on the opponent. And I like guys like that, especially if they're coming off the bench and they're the last pick in the lottery. You know what? That's a better pick than JaVale. I regret my JaVale pick now. I'm with you. I I've always liked Robin Lopez for some reason he bounces around he's been on six teams nobody ever seems totally happy with him but I've always enjoyed him that's a good pick that's a good ender

tough podcast for Roy Hibbert or Omar Ashik Roy Hibbert was you know we were writing like giant great land features about Roy hibbert and then he was out of the league two years later and there's really never been an explanation you know what that's that's that's a great way like because we've already gone over it here and everybody

knows the roy hibbert story but it ended so quickly and it was he was so relevant so fast i think that's almost canceling out like how good he was there. Like, should he have been the 13th or 14th pick in this? I, he was in the mix. But this, by the way, this was a really good draft. But you look at 2012 and 13 playoffs, 30 playoff games. He averages 15 and 10, 2.4 blocks. Prompts the Kurt Goldsberry verticality feature.

And was really ahead of his time and then the league changed and he got fucked and it happened with that Atlanta series when he just stood 25 feet from the basket and it completely fucked the Pacers up. That was it.

And then basketball changed. Can you imagine though? That's like, it's one thing when you're a guy who gets caught and you're at the end of your They fucked the Pacers up. That was it. And then basketball changed. Can you imagine that? It's one thing when you're a guy who gets cut and you're at the end of your career and you go, okay, look, in five years, I'll admit I'm just not good enough, but right now I can't do it. But to be Hibbert and go, so basically because the other guys stand so far away,

I suck now? That's it. Yeah. Well, that was fun. 2008 in the books. Who do you have? You're doing at least two podcasts this week, right? Yeah, we got a bunch of cool stuff.

We just finished up with Van Pelt and also check out the, cause I want to have this conversation. We'll have it, you know, I'll just regurgitate the same stuff, you know, cause at that point it'd be six weeks later. Nobody would remember, but just the obsession with trying to figure out like why teams that were four or five seeds are going to somehow be better now than the teams that were really good like so why are the best teams now at a disadvantage and it can't just be as simple as home court but i feel like a lot

of people are trying to get more creative with who they're picking van pelt was on with us but we have a famous movie producer on this week so we're going to tell me stories i've already been prepped up on it he's going to tell me awesome stories about producing some of the biggest movies you've ever watched. So there you go. Awesome. Well, we,

we will definitely be around when the basketball playoffs hopefully come back. We might be a little spotty the next couple of weeks, just if there's nothing to talk about, but we'll, we'll figure out something. Ryan Marcello pleasure as always. Thank you,

Bill. All right. Thanks to zip recruiter. Thanks to Ryan. Don't forget about the Bakari sellers podcast. Thank you, Bill. All right. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Thanks to Ryan. Don't forget about the Bakari Sellers podcast. The feed will be launching midweek. Very excited to have him. Keep an eye out for it and keep an eye for more announcements coming from the ringer universe over the next few days, weeks, and months. I am going to probably only do one other podcast this week, but I think there will be a rewatch. It wasn't a book of basketball podcast as well. So stay tuned.

Happy father's day. Hope you're, uh, hope you're having a good one. I don't have.