The Bill Simmons Podcast - A Harden Trade Request! Plus, the Lakers' and Warriors' Last-Dance Potentials With Logan Murdock, and Dave Chang on ‘The Bear.’

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on James Harden's decision to pick up his $35.6 million player option and reports that the 76ers are looking to trade him (1:05). Then, Bill is joined by Logan Murdock to discuss the Lakers' aspirations for the 2023-24 NBA season, their potential acquisition of Bruce Brown, and why Bill thinks they may be the second-best team in the Western Conference (13:15). They then discuss the new-look Warriors with Chris Paul, questions about who is making the critical decisions for Golden State, which of the Warriors veterans will need to take a pay cut to stay with the team, and more (35:28). Finally, Bill is joined by renowned restaurateur Dave Chang to discuss FX's 'The Bear,' how it depicted the perils of opening an ambitious new restaurant, the state of restaurants in 2023, food trends, and more (1:10:13). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Dave Chang and Logan Murdock Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, basketball, free agency, food. Next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this.

It's game day. All the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day. All the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer. Or how about when you're standing at the grill and the smell of sizzling burgers is in the air? Moments like that. Or when you want a light beer that tastes like beer,

that's delicious. You don't wanna load up on those heavier beers and then you only have two of them. Then you feel tired. Your stomach feels full. Miller Lite, it's your friend. It just accompanies whatever else you're doing. You're super happy with it.

Opening an ice cold Miller Lite can signal the beginning of Miller time. Miller Lite is the light beer with all the great beer tastes we like. 90 calories per 355 mil can. So why not grab some Miller Lights today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action.

FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good. I think Seattle's going to be good. And then trying to back what you think in those first few weeks and then zag the other

way. If you were wrong, you could bet on new and fun markets on FanDuel, like to catch a pass, same game parlays, highest scoring game across the Sunday slate, offensive TDs in the next drive. They have so much stuff, it's crazy. The app is safe and secure and easy to use.

And when you win, you'll get paid instantly. Plus, look out for FanDuel Squares this season. Here's what you have to do. Visit FanDuel.com slash BS to download America's number one sportsbook.

The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com slash BS to download America's number one sports book. The ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit RG dash help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select States gambling problem called 100 gambler or visit RG dash help.com. We're also brought to you by the ringer podcast network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night.

We did This is the End. Next week, starting on Monday, we have a special theme month I am very excited about that you will not guess. We're going to be doing six rewatchables in July. We're doing a bonus one.

There's five Mondays plus a bonus one. So be ready. And be ready for free agency too. Coming up on this podcast, we're gonna talk to Logan Murdoch from The Ringer about the last dance potential of the Warriors and the Lakers.

We'll talk a little Kyrie too, although it's a little different flavor after the news that broke after we taped the podcast, but bear with me on that. And then Dave Chang talking about the bear, especially episode 10 and how it resonated with him, what it's like to try to open a restaurant, how everything can go wrong,

where restaurants are going. Are we back post pandemic? We cover a lot of food stuff. So that is coming up just quickly at the top. I'm taping this. It is almost 830 at night. Right after we taped the majority of this podcast, I talked to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti, the producers,

and we were like, should we just get this ready? We can just put it up. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. No. No. It's a day and a half before free agency. Something weird always happens. Let's just wait.

And I think Kyle was bummed because I think Kyle was ready to start the weekend if you get my drift. I was like, Let's just wait. And I think Kyle was bummed because I think Kyle was ready to start the weekend if you get my drift. I was like, let's just wait. Like an hour later, the James Harden thing happens. Harden shocks everybody. He opts in to a $35 million, 2023, 24 salary

that everybody thought he was either going to re-up with Philly for an extension or he was going to leave and go with Philly for an extension or he was going to leave and go to another team. I think what he found out is the market wasn't exactly what he thought. And he wanted to force the hand to Philly. So he opts in and then does the whole trade me thing. I was watching SportsCenter tonight and Adrian Wojnarowski was on with Van Pelt. And he was saying that we have entered this new world of the NBA where basically free agency doesn't really matter as much as just inking the giant contract, locking down the team,

and then basically telling them, here's what I want to do a year later, two years later, whatever it is, or in Harden's case, one second later. But he was saying all the leverage now is in just getting these big deals and then figuring out what you want to do with them after. This is something Rasil and I have been talking about on this podcast for the last couple of years, but now we've moved into a whole other level of it. People are signing the deals and it's like a gateway to them getting wherever they want. This is what the Celtics are looking at right now with Jalen Brown. They're going to give him this massive extension this summer.

And what happens in a year if he just puts his jersey down and looks at them and goes, you know what? I'd like to go to another team. Over and over again, we have seen the team fold. The only real time they didn't fold was the Sixers with Ben Simmons when Ben Simmons demanded to be traded. And that was the same team, Philadelphia. Daryl Morey, the GM. Here's the thing with Daryl.

I've known him a long time. He's been on this podcast. He has talked about his philosophies on team building and his goal really dating back to the TMAC and YOW combination that he had when he was in Houston was, I always want to have two stars. This is a 30-team league. If you can have two stars, you can figure out everything else after that. For him to trade James Harden for some of the stuff that we've been reading about rumored, like, oh, the Clippers, Terrence Mann, and a couple contracts, and that's going to do it. I'm telling you, Daryl's not doing anything like that.

He's either going to blow this up completely or he's going to turn James Harden into another star. And this is why I think this drags on for a while because if you go down the list of people that make around the same salary as him, but also players that would make sense in a trade and the teams that might want to get him, man, you run out fast.

You run out of ideas. Like Miami, is Tyler Harrow and a couple first round picks? I don't think either team does that. Chicago, Zach Levine. Would you trade Zach Levine for the James Harden we just watched in the playoffs who in game six and game seven basically disappeared, who seems like he's getting a little bit gamier each year. The lift's not quite there. Post-season, he's the Karl Malone of his generation. It actually might be an insult to Karl Malone at this point.

I wouldn't do that if I was Chicago. If I was New Orleans, Ingram and Zion aren't on the table, obviously, but would you even trade C.J. McCollum and trade Murphy for Harden? That's a basketball trade that makes a ton of sense for both sides. Turn the team over to Maxie. I really like Murphy.

I don't know if I would do that if I was New Orleans. And if I'm Darryl, that ruins my two-star theory. Now I only have one star. Paul George and the Clippers. That's the deal that probably makes the most sense for both sides. But if you're Philly, you're getting back Paul George, who has had a bunch of surgeries and a bunch of banged up things happen to his body. And there's the load management piece.

I just, it's pretty risky. I don't know if you're keeping Embiid with Paul George, right? Because that's the other piece of this is Embiid is looming. What happens when he puts down the jersey and he stares them in the eye and says, you know what? I'm feeling the Knicks. I'm feeling the Lakers. Whatever he says. Two more hardened teams. Milwaukee drew Holiday.

Doesn't really make sense for either team. And then the Knicks, like R.J. Barrett, some picks. I don't know. If you're the Sixers, where are you going at that point? And Bede's going to be 30 this season. And then there's Dallas to be 30 this season. And then there's Dallas and a Kyrie exchange that we'll talk about in one second. It's funny, Kyrie has had two trade requests,

one with Brooklyn, one with Cleveland. Harden has had three trade requests with three different teams, which I did all of the research today because I did a tweet about this, the 21st century trade request standings. Harden has three, which might be the record. I think Will Chamberlain had two.

There's probably some guys in the 70s and 80s and 90s that had two. I don't think anyone's had three with three different teams. Kyrie's had two. Then, you know, it depends if you're going to count multiple trade requests to the same team. That gets tough trying to figure out

Dwight and Kevin Durant, people like that. But here are people that just had trade requests. Dwight, Kawhi, Carmelo, Kobe, Durant, Butler, Shaq, CP3, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson, Vince Carter, Tracee McGrady. I'm going to give Kevin Garnett a half because it was kind of, eh,

it was just the unhappily married couple staring at each other finally decided they needed to get divorced him in Minnesota so just in 21st century those are all the trade requests more notable is the guys who never requested a trade Paul Pierce, Giannis, LeBron

Duncan, Jokic, Dirk Curry, Wade think about the stability of those guys, right? Giannis, LeBron, Duncan, Jokic, Dirk, Curry, Wade, Paul Pierce. These are all guys that won titles. I wonder if that's a coincidence. So you look at Harden and the way we're going to remember his career, we're going to remember the MVP season,

the weird connection he had with Houston. They just love him there. The incredible offensive stuff. And the fact that he couldn't come through in the postseason really ever. And he had three trade requests in three different teams in four years. So I'm looking at this from 40,000 feet

and there is one team that is the most excited about this, and it is the New York Knicks, who have just been waiting and waiting for the moment that Embiid puts the jersey down and stares at his team and says, I'm ready to go. His agent runs the Knicks. He's got a relationship with World Wide West.

This is one of their guys. This has been one of their guys for a long, long time. Him, Devin Booker, a couple others. And they've just been waiting for the moment when it all blows up in Philly and it feels like it's blowing up. So if you're the Knicks, you're praying that there's no hardened trade out there

that can kind of salvage this and keep Embiid in Philly. You know who's not keeping Embiid in Philly? Tyrese Maxey, PJ Tucker, and 40 cents on the dollar for James Harden. I don't think that's going to do it. And maybe it's time for him to go anyway with the culture that they grew up with.

It's a culture of losing that Doc Rivers even talked about when he came on the podcast last month, trying to knock people out of the mindset of, yeah, it's okay if you don't play. Yeah, it's okay if we don't win. Yeah, roll it over. We're just trying to collect assets. Maybe it's time for him to go. So if Philly is just desperately trying to get rid of Harden here, that's going to lead to the B trade. And the candidates would be the Knicks and hold on to your seat. But the Los Angeles Lakers would be the other one

because Anthony Davis for Embiid is about as fair of a haul as you're going to get if you're just trying to get a star back. So I think it would be the Knicks. I think what's going to happen, I have two predictions. One is that I think this drags on. We've seen Darrow and Philly have an incredible amount of confidence in the fact that at some point, the deal is going to be there. We saw them wait with Simmons forever. And they're just not

going to give them away. I guess we'll just take Marcus Moritz and Terrence Baird. They're not doing that. So the ski go on all summer. And maybe one of the outcomes is Harden just ends up staying and playing under that contract unhappily, and they figured out in December, January. The other option, which I think is hilarious, Kyrie Irving, who clearly cannot drudge up any market for himself. Dallas is stuck because they traded all that stuff for him.

In February, they can't lose the asset. They have to come up with some sort of player for Luka. And really, nobody wants Kyrie except the team that's super desperate, which Dallas qualifies maybe the Lakers if they could get him for nothing. Not that the Lakers are desperate, but I don't think they would turn down

that chance to get Kyrie for mid-level exception or something. But Kyrie for Harden, a trade that makes a ton of sense. It really does. Changes scenery for Harden. He goes to Dallas, gets to play next to Luka. He can kind of be the point guard of that team. Takes some ball handling responsibility off of Luka. He can

spell them. They can stagger them during the first three quarters, et cetera, et cetera. And then Kyrie is still a star coming back for Embiid. And if you're Darrell, this is like the fuck it moment where if that doesn't work out, you're probably getting fired anyway. I think it would be hilarious. After all we've seen the last five, six years, this player empowerment gone wrong era, the trade request era, the trades for portal era, if James Harden, who has three trade requests, leading the league historically, and Kyrie, who has two, who's in second place, if they just got traded for each other, that's how this should be resolved. And honestly, those two guys deserve to get traded for each other. I have my trade value list. I had

those guys in the dishonorable mention section. And I think the destiny of this is Kyrie for James Harden, and we'll see if it happens. But I'll tell you this. If I'm a Knicks fan, I'm very interested to see what happens the next 48 hours. Do I want my team to make moves? If it feels like Embiid could become available two weeks from now, how far do you want to go in with this team, with this roster,

if there's an Embiid possibility? Man, we thought after Porzingis, there might not be another interesting thing that happened before the free agency thing. Well, a lot of interesting stuff is happening. And we haven't even talked about Towns because I think that's another guy who is very, very available right now.

And then we'll see, you know, if there's some mystery guy that we don't even know about who might pop in there too. Think about today, James Harden, out of nowhere, trade me. Didn't see it coming. The NBA.

Sometimes it's not that fantastic, but at least it's interesting. All right, coming up, Logan Murdoch, first pro jam. All right, taping this part of the podcast. It's a little past noon Pacific time, so a bunch of stuff might happen, but we're going to attempt to talk about the Warriors and the Lakers and Kyrie Irving with our friend Logan Murdoch.

You can hear him on Real Ones, on The Ringer MBS Show. You can read him on theringer.com. We actually were talking yesterday about the Warriors just on the phone, and I was like, we got to put some of this in there. I want to start with the Lakers, though. Okay.

Right now, as we're taping, the Lakers are 15-1 to win the title on FanDuel. Celtics are plus 460. Nuggets plus 470. That's stupid. Nuggets should be favored. Bucks plus 550.

Phoenix plus 650. Golden State 12-1. Lakers 15-1. I think the Lakers are the second best team in the West if they can bring all these dudes back. There's news today that they're the favorites to get Bruce Brown. We'll see if that happens.

But Bruce Brown, to me, is perfect for them. They're going to bring back Reeves. They're going to bring back Reeves. They're going to bring back Rui. And even though they got swept by Denver, those games were close. They were legitimately in all of those games in the fourth quarter.

Couple plays either way. Jokic is Jokic, and they lose. But it didn't feel like a sweep. Why aren't people taking... I can't believe I'm the one asking this question of all people. Why aren't people taking i can't believe i'm the one asking this question of all people why aren't people taking the lakers a little more seriously here is it because the injury history ad is it the fact that lebron is going to be in year 21 what is it i think people

see the record of last year and i don't think many people watched there were so many different iterations of the lakers last year and i don't feel like the the the general public has a good view of which one that they take seriously enough right because it was like it was like a 10-year season with the lakers last year it was it was it was a rust i remember i've seen i saw them in person like maybe six or seven times and each time it was a different rotation player out of the lineup, either by trade or by injury or something like that. Right. I saw him in Boston when one of Russell Westbrook's last games. And then I saw him in the in the in the postseason where they

were probably at their final form. And the team that was at their final form was a really good basketball team. Right. There was not just LeBron and AD, but you had supplementary pieces. We talk about Reeves, but you also talk about a guy like Vanderbilt, who was a really great contributor. You talk about a guy like Rui. They finally had a rotation that was not just putting pressure on AD and LeBron

to score a bunch of points. They could really supplement scoring and also supplement defensive responsibilities. It was a deeper team. And I think that's the team that we should be looking towards for next season, because I remember seeing them play against the Warriors up at Chase Center in the second round of the playoffs and thinking, wow, this team had more of a time to gel and mesh together. This is a 55-win team. And I think that they're going to be one of the best teams next year. One thing, they match up with every good team in the Western

Conference. I do still think that they have trouble with Denver and they have trouble with Jokic in particular because I thought about last year with Anthony Davis and he played really well against Joker but he still got not even marginally outplayed, got really outplayed by Joker and will go down in one

of the best single person runs of all time, I think, when it's said and done with Jokic. But I think the Lakers are right in the thick of it. I think with the moves that, even with the moves that Phoenix made, I think Golden State regressed, as we're probably going to talk about. But I think that with all that going on and the way it shakes out at this very moment, especially if they get Bruce Brown, and even if they don't get Bruce Brown, the Lakers are right into the thick of the western conference next year

yeah they started out two and ten and they finished 43 and 39 so they're 41 and 29 basically last 70 games which you know it's it's high 40s pace in real life but i i think when you think about reeves what happened to him the last two months of the season and then the playoffs, when you think about Vanderbilt being there for an extra year, LeBron maybe being healthier than he was down the stretch, I still don't know

what happened to him with the foot. He had plantar fasciitis, but he was able to play 48 minutes in Game 4. I still don't understand the full story of that. But... And did he get surgery this summer? Is he getting surgery? We don't know, right?

Like, that's something that he kind of, like, he floated out there. Like, I might have to get surgery, but then I won't tell you guys. So that's another question that's, like, in the mystery of LeBron James' health. Yeah, how healthy is he? You know, we've been down this road with LeBron before where there were injuries coming out of playoff losses that we never kind of knew how injured he was. He was definitely injured,

but I didn't understand the 48 minutes part. Anyway, if they get Bruce Brown from Denver on top of the continuity with Reeves and all the other, and Darvin Ham's second year instead of first year. Darvin Ham made some mistakes in that playoff series. He'll be better next year. I thought Bruce Brown was huge for Denver.

And you could argue he was one of their best five guys. He definitely was one of their best six, but you could even make the case for him being one of the best five. Losing him and all the stuff he did, it's not impossible to replace, but there are guys short there. They're also, you know, they won the title.

After you win a title, everybody starts like, well, wait, what about me? Like, we still got to see, is Michael Porter cool with, you know, getting the third or fourth most shots in every game for the next couple of years? He's going to be like, I got my ring. Now it's time for me.

There's just little pieces that I just want to see. I'm confident that they'll play out because Jokic is so selfless. That team has such character. And then you never know. We've seen championship teams go sideways. On the Lakers side, here's the thing, Logan. There's a little bit of a last dance

feel to this season with LeBron in a lot of different ways, right? His son's going to be at USC. We know he's going to be in LA this year. But then what happened? I personally don't think there's a chance that Bronny's going to go into the draft

after his freshman year. I think he's going to have to stay in college for a couple years, but who knows? But for LeBron, LeBron, this is the last year of his deal. After this, I don't know. Maybe he'll want to ring chase. Maybe he'll want to just play 20 minutes a game

on a better team this is the last year that we know that he'll have this really good team built around him that is pretty close to a title on top of this the second apron and the fact we're seeing stuff already Eric Gordon, Torian Prince just got waved

because teams are afraid of the tax you're going to see some fringe dudes around there that you're going to be able to grab that aren't fringe dudes. Somebody might be able to get Eric Gordon for like $3 million a year. I'm looking at all this. I'm just thinking like, man, this Lakers

team, this is a little ass dancey. What do you think of that theory? I do feel that last theory, but i do have another theory for you with the bronnie thing before i get into what the lakers are going to do like there is a world where bronnie plays one year and then just gets like a two-way slot with the lakers next year right and then they get and then lebron gets everything that he wants right and he gets depends on how good or bad bronnie is right like there is there is a world there what that happens

but i do see the last dance feel with the Lakers but it's only because I mean we all know LeBron's probably not going to retire this no I sailed right but the fact that he's bringing it up shows that he sees the end of the road whether it's next year or the year after that right and because of that I think that you're going to start you're going to see a bigger push for this season and try to win. We got one more crack at it. And the Bruce Brown thing is interesting because Bruce Brown has the opportunity to be in the Derek Fisher Hall of Fame of clutch Lakers role players. That's what I'm really excited about.

I'm excited to see that kind of manifest because the Lakers, they need maybe a third or fourth guy that you can trust to make big shots late in the game. Not necessarily a superstar, but someone that you can kick out to. And I think Bruce Brown, by and large, and not even just in Denver, there was buzz about Bruce Brown in Brooklyn about how good this guy was. And maybe he's not utilized as much as he should be. And he's going to be a good player. He showed that in denver i think that there's there's a chance where um especially with the way the the bench is rounded out and how much support that lebron and ad have i think there's a chance that they can win a title and this is one of those ones where it happens it's like now we can go on to the everybody can

kind of go on with their lives and it'll stamp the LeBron era in Los Angeles, because if they win a title this year, he'll finally have that Lakers experience of winning a title in Los Angeles that he just really craved to have during the bubble season. Right. With an actual crowd. Exactly.

With an actual crowd. And you saw staples last year, you were at the game during the postseason staples is staples was sorry, crypto, but I'm gonna call it staples. Staples was buzzing during the postseason last year you were at the game during the postseason staples staples was sorry crypto but i'm gonna call it staples staples was buzzing during the postseason last year was their first postseason outside of the bubble and i think that that that that uh the opportunity to stamp himself into laker lore for lebron is right there to win a title in los angeles and have the story book ending that he's always kind of wanted the problem problem is if you're, so this, to me, it goes one of two ways and there's no,

no middle ground. It's either what you just laid out or it actually goes really badly and there's injuries and it's all, all the bad side of stuff. Like LeBron could only make it halfway through the season for got hurt his durability really since 2018, that last Cleveland season, he's missed chunks of time every season. He's had all these injuries. He's on pace to play more minutes than anyone ever. And then Davis isn't exactly Cal Ripken Jr. So you have those two

things. That's why there's this fork in the road right now for them. I would lean toward the contender fork because I think if they can get enough stuff around him, maybe you can figure out

how to not rely on him as much. The fact that Reeves grew as much as he did as a score creator, I think is really important for them next year. Whether they bring Russell back or not,

Russell and I talked about it on Sunday. I thought he was out and a bunch of people were hitting me and saying, no, they'll be the ones that pay him the most. And then he's either trade bait or they're actually using him. He was so bad in round three.

I was like, they won't bring him back. But maybe you just bring him back as a trade asset. The Bruce Brown thing, though, is going to sound stupid this weekend if he signs with somebody else. I actually think he's worth more than the mid-level. So I do feel like he'd be giving up a little to do that. I think with the market with these swing guys, somebody else would pay him a little more.

The thing that I think is really interesting about him is his ability to handle the ball, which I didn't even really know that much about him until this year. His background as a college point guard and how frustrated he was that he was pigeonholed as this undersized five with Durant Kyrie, who just was kind of a slasher and the nuggets as the,

as the season went on, the playoffs went on. He actually was like handling the ball and initiating plays in offense. And I was thinking about him with LeBron. If you're just playing LeBron Davis Reeves and you're playing some sort of swing like Vanderbilt and Brown as like the point guard, but he's not a point guard because LeBron's the point guard. That actually made sense to me in my head. So now I'm at the point where I'm thinking like Brown might be one of the big swing guys of

this summer where he goes, right? Because if he goes to Sacramento, I think that would be huge. What if he goes to Cleveland? He brings this real thing to the table that all these contenders and fringe contenders need. Am I overreacting on Brown or no? I think that he brings something to a team. It'll be interesting to see. I don't know about

the pendulum thing, but what I do know is adding to all the things that you just said that's good about Bruce Brown, and I say this with all respect, he got some dog in him that teams really need he always has that chip on his my team my team needs it yeah and he has a perpetual you got me fucked up energy and he had that back to says brooklyn when every time something would happen he would be like no i'm better than what you think i'm always better than what what you think. And he was in Brooklyn and he was a spot up shooter and nobody except for people in that building really believed in him. And, you know, they got rid of him for whatever reason. But he has that dog in him that can bring up a franchise right where we don't know this. two-star guys. They can only do so much. They're great when they're on the floor and all these things, but you need a couple extra guys in that locker room that can also supplement the leadership

required to win a championship. LeBron can say what he can say, but you also need role players that are like, hey, man, we got to pick this shit up. We got to do these types of things. Bruce Brown is that guy. He ain't scared of nobody at all in the league. And he is one of those guys that can say, yo, pick this shit up. Let's do this. And I think that that will be vital in any locker room that he goes to, specifically your Celtics. But we'll talk about that at another time. I went to one of the two Laker Nugget games I went to. Brown, Malone pulled him with like, I don't know seven minutes left

and Brown was so upset he was coming out it wasn't like Rasheed Wallace upset he was just like no like he just wanted to stay in so badly and Malone's like calming him down and he went to the bench and he was like he just like kept hitting his knee and and he was like just this

he was just all this wire ball of energy just dying to go back in the game and I was just all this wire ball of energy just dying to go back in the game. And I was watching, I was like, I fucking love this guy. That's exactly, he didn't undermine the coach, he didn't undermine anybody, but he's just like, I don't want to come out. He really wanted it.

I think that would really help them. And I just like the guy. I really, really, really value the guys who have been through the wars and got the battle scars and actually came out with the guy. I really, really, really value the guys who have been through the wars and got the battle scars and actually came out the title. You even saw it with KCP yesterday in the playoffs. It really helps when you go through a couple of those and you hit the rock bottoms and then you hit the highs

and you get through it. And there's a comfortability you get within the league when you win a title. Even if you're a role player, not just a star thing, but there's a level of confidence you get even it. And there's a comfortability you get within the league when you win a title. Even if you're a role player, not just a star thing, but there's a level of confidence you get even as a role player when you win a title. You have a bit of a mystique

Except for Jordan Poole. Except for Jordan Poole. It could actually get punched out of you potentially. No, but that's what made the Jordan Poole thing so weird was he had it in the 2022 playoffs. He had that confidence

so you know it's not 100% sustainable but it's usually sustainable that's why Caruso is another guy right now I don't know if the Bulls are going to blow it up or not but Caruso is somebody I would really value this summer as a trade asset because you need these guys you need

the Bruce Brown Caruso you have to have one of those guys in your team if you're going to win. Eric Gordon's another one. Eric Gordon got waived. That dude could end up being the sixth best guy in a title team. I saw him in Phoenix when they were playing the Kawhi game in Phoenix during the postseason in the first round. Eric Gordon was a comfortability where you know he's going to hit a big shot.

And that's really all you need, man, because at this stage that the Nuggets are playing and the Lakers are playing and some of these other teams in the upper echelon of the NBA, they need guys that they're going to know that are going to be down in the postseason that are going to hit big shots in the postseason. Because let's be honest, when you get to a level of the Lakers or the Celtics or or the Nuggets, you're not playing for the regular season. You could give a fuck about the regular season. As long as you get a good seed, you are playing for a chance during the postseason. And you guys like Bruce Brown, you need just a Caruso. You need guys like Eric Gordon who are just the guys that are always there and that are not afraid of the moment. And

that's that's what he can provide for you. Well, and that's the big lesson of the season we just had. The regular season has never mattered less between the playing game and the fact that home court advantage just doesn't seem to matter like it used to. And if you're a 6, 7, 8, 9 seed, you can still make the finals. So if I'm the Lakers, I don't want LeBron to play more than 65 games. I don't want Davis to play more than 65. I think a lot of that,

what has to do with that is we have a lot of, our stars are older now. Like our big time stars are a lot older. Our American stars. Our American stars, excuse me. It's the foreign stars that are young and hungry. The ones we have left. But the ones that are doing it right, like hungry the ones we have left but the ones that

are that are doing it right like with lebron the lakers are a perfect case study in this right where they just they have enough guys around there to be able to make a run you just need to get them there right and then you see them play against the memphis grizzlies team with a young while they are a more talented team they have a lot of young guys and they aren't as strong of the mind and been through those wars and you see those older teams go through those younger teams because they haven't had that necessary experience yet we don't have the 2012 oklahoma city thunder anymore right where they're just like we don't give a fuck about who is in front of us we're kind of those stars now the 2012 oklahoma city stars they are like 30 something year old james harden now they're older guys now and i think you that affects the postseason because

now you have guys that have been there before they just don't need the regular season to get to that moment now and it's it's kind of had a bit of a reverse uh it's fucked up all of the standings for the postseason and how we look at how that goes in home court advantage but i think a reason why we don't we don't need it anymore is because those stars those established all-time greats are getting older into this generation well but and to the lakers defense or if you're going to make a case for them their size and their the way they overpowered the warriors to me is a real thing. And when you start climbing up the ladder of who actually has a chance to win the title,

ultimately it comes down to what's your thing. Denver's thing was Jokic and this unselfishness and the way Jokic and Murray played together. And that was their thing. The Lakers had that size that until they went against Jokic was working against everybody. It was the issue that Boston had.

It was like, ultimately, Boston, what's your thing this year? Because in 2022, it was defense and three-point shooting, but really the defense. 2023, the defense went sideways. Now it's just the team jacking up threes. It's like, what's your thing? You know, Milwaukee, as they get older, what's your thing? Is it going to be

just Giannis has the ball all the time and he can't make a shot outside of three feet? What, what are you going to be up to Philly? It's hardening and bead. It's this two man game. It's like, all right, well, during a series over the course of two weeks, I can figure out your two man game. Um, the Lakers having the size that they have and their ability to overpower. It's, it's a, that's why I have them as number two. Like Nick Wright had this, I saw this tweet, Nick Wright, shout out to Nick. Um, he was like, I like the Lakers big three better than the sun's big three. And I was like, first of all, amazing take. Like I give that like a nine and a half out of like just the art of the take.

And then the other part of me was like, I kind of agree you could tell me lebron and davis are healthy like i like the way those three complement each other better than the beal durant booker threesome because you don't have any defense in that other threesome well it's interesting because when you think about the suns like it's a small big three it's just it's smaller and we're always going to take size over that right like duran is seven feet tall but he is he is a seven foot tall wing yeah essentially right he does it if you need him to like you looked at the sun's um the sun's nugget series if you needed him to guard yokens that's not something he's going to do right right and so the the biggest advantage for the for the uh for the for the Lakers is their size and the fact that LeBron can play four and five in your small ball lineup.

That's one of the things. And that was one of the reasons I think the Warriors got really lucky last year because they just had the right side of the bracket. I think if they if any time during that they run that they played the Lakers, the Lakers give them the most trouble. The Lakers give them the most trouble because they have that size. And I think that that's going to be something to keep looking at, especially if the – say if the Lakers next year and they go into the postseason and they don't have to face Denver, I think that they're a shoo-in to go into the NBA Finals because they have that – just the way their roster is constructed. They're just a really, really good team, and now they're a deep team.

Now they can get guys off the bench like Rui can if he if he comes back next year and he can get you I don't know about Rui you don't like you're not you're not a fan of Rui Rui might be a let's pay him by the year guy well the point I'm positive I want to give Rui a long contract the point I'm making Bill is that he can get you 28 points on seven of 7 shooting on a given night. And that's what the Lakers have. One of the pieces that they have, right? That they can have guys that they can go into their two box to get them scoring and also play defense.

And that's something that's really going to help them out is their depth. I think it's pretty funny. The Rui thing where he was like a 29% shooter three-point-wise during the season. Then it got hot in the playoffs. I just don't trust it. It wasn't a big enough sample size for me. I thought if you're going to be in favor of it, it's the fact that

he got to play with LeBron. And sometimes when you're playing with an all-time great player, it just brings something different out of somebody. And maybe that's what happened on this i just worried like how do you explain the four years in washington then where he's just like you know basically a nobody well you didn't need him to be but he's playing in the role that he's always meant to play right like he's i get it to be a superstar he's a rope i'm older than you i've seen a lot of like playoff you know little rope-a-dopes teams that this

happens every year with a couple of guys. And then it's like, Oh my God, he's making three for 40. Wait a second. And then within six months, they're trying to trade them. Let's, uh, let's take a break. And I want to talk about the Warriors. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey.

And it's on Prime. All season long, watch Prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays, the biggest goals, can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on Prime. Prime Monday Night Hockey. It's on Monday. It's on Prime. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember.

You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you can still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event,

or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. Whether in the game or in life, the right coverage can make all the difference. Securian Canada gives you that coverage. For more than 65 years, Securian Canada has been helping Canadians build secure tomorrows. Their insurance solutions are designed to help protect you and your loved ones financially, giving you the peace of mind to focus on what truly matters. Find their products through banks, credit unions, and associations, or visit SecurianCanada.ca.

Securian Canada, insurance designed for life. All right, the team that you have spent the most time around, really, for the majority of the Steph Draymond-Clay era as the Golden State Warriors? My whole life. They traded for Chris Paul. They traded Jordan Poole. It was a straight up trade basically.

And there's been a lot of thought about what does this mean? What does this mean for Draymond? We're about to find that out this weekend. Is Chris Paul a stopgap? Somebody they're going to test out and then if it doesn't really work out, you can flip them in January, February.

How much did they want this? Did they just want to get rid of Jordan Poole's contract and this was the easiest way to get out of it and also have a good team right now? People have mentioned, well, now that whole two timelines thing, they're throwing that out. There's some stuff behind the scenes.

Who's actually calling the shots? Bob Myers left. Mike Dunleavy Jr. is in there. Lake of Sun is in there. Steve Kerr might have more of a voice. Nobody's really sure who's in charge of this stuff. But I think my overwhelming takeaway of it, Logan, is it feels like they're tossing the two timelines Nobody's really sure who's in charge of this stuff. But I think my overwhelming takeaway of it, Logan, is

it feels like they're tossing the two timelines and they're realizing this step thing is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. And we didn't take it seriously enough last year and we got too cute. And now let's try to win the fucking title this year. That's my take. You sound like Joe Lacob because that's his take every sound like joe lakum because that's his take oh god that was very much that was were you in the boardroom with joe lakum just i might have been

okay but yeah no i i think all those things are true right i mean one they felt it was need there they could not go stay in the road of staying with jordanoole for the foreseeable future, which was a rare thing. I don't remember the last time somebody got traded before their rookie extension kicks in. I mean, you've been around longer than I have, so you probably have a better idea. Logan, you were a kid when Andre Blatch got extended and then amnestied as the extension was kicking in. That was the all-time. We peaked as a league when that happened. It was such a mistake.

They were in this thing before it even kicked in. I saw Andre Blatt's play in Sacramento when you're here, like 19 and one half. It was great. But anyway, but it's just they wanted to get under that under that contract. And it's interesting just the timing. Right. Because Mike Dunleavy talked about how Jordan Mike Dunleavy, who had a real voice in bringing Jordan Poole in, was talking about how he wanted to build with Jordan Poole, how he wanted him to be in there all four years. And Jordan on his end was thinking, I'm going to be

playing. I'm going to be a warrior next year. Even when he was working out, he was working out overseas in Europe in Warriors gear. And then this trade happens, right? And I think that there was a blindsiding on that front. But Chris Paul is interesting because, like you said, he doesn't have guarantees in his deal next year. And there is an easy out for him to to to leave if it doesn't work out. I'm not I'm kind of a pessimist on if it will work out just for the health reasons and just just his fit on the overall roster. So I am curious to see what it what is happening the biggest thing that they need to figure out right now is in that front office and

who does have that voice right because if you're saying that steve kerr has the voice well how long is steve kerr going to be there because there are a lot of whispers um within the front office and otherwise league-wide and i'm sure you've heard this this might be steve kerr's last year with the wars he doesn't have an extension yet. He doesn't have that security. And, you know, it's this title. This sounds great. Come to the ringer, Steve Kerr.

We have a home for you. You don't need to coach anymore. Come work with us. Multi-time, real ones guest, Steve Kerr, could pull up and be a guest anytime. But the thing is that is a question if he will be back after this season. And then you have

Dunleavy, who is the new GM, and it was interesting, I was talking to you about this yesterday, when Joe Laker was on the podium with Mike Dunleavy during his hiring press conference. He said he made sure to tell us that.

Kirk Lakoff has the same has the same title and he will be doing the same job he does, and Mike Dunleavy is in charge. And within like 30 seconds of that says, well, you know, I don't really believe in titles. That's the only for compensation. So we really don't know who is going to have the final call on this we what we do know though is that joe lake of us had a big hand behind the scenes in building this roster and what do i mean by that he was the reason why the warriors picked uh james wiseman when a lot of the coaches were like we don't we don't know if we really want

him but joe lake of saw one workout and was like wis Wiseman's our guy, right? And then you have these moves that are coming up on this offseason that Joe Lacob is having a big hand in. And so we'll see what happens and how this manifests, but there are a lot of question marks with the Golden State Warriors, man. It's not as clean cut as it has been in recent years that this team could win a title. It's going to be really interesting to see what they do next year. I wonder if it's a little last dancey.

It's definitely last dancey. It's definitely, it's definitely last dancey. They've been, they've been flirting with the last dancing thing for the last, for, I guess the last two years. Cause you could, if they didn't win the title last year,

it would have been the last, I think it would have been the last year for sure. So the, the last dance people would be Curry, Clay and Draymond and Steve Kerr. Right. If we're filming the documentary, those are our four subjects

and then maybe whatever's going on with iguodala is like a pseudo coach kind of playing not really yeah um i'd probably have the camera crews following around those five are we doing a quick question quick question are we doing the ringer films like like documentary there are we going to do like the winning times docu-series for the Warriors? Have we decided yet? Oh, man. I don't know how an actor could play Steph. How do you recreate the shoot? I guess with CGI,

you could recreate some of the shooting. It would be so hard to... I would like the Winning Time version more because then if you get to the Draymond KD fight, it would be so much more fun fictionally. In my head, it was so much more exciting. A lot more creative license on the winning time. Anyway, yes, go ahead. What were you going to say?

Well, the last dance piece of it, if I had to rank it, Curry is going to be a warrior for his whole career. Draymond, we'll find out this weekend. I think we all think he might go to the Warriors. I just, I'm not going to be a warrior for his whole career. Draymond, we'll find out this weekend. I think we all think he might go to the Warriors. I just, I'm not going to rule out Clutch going out and getting him some crazy contract to at least make the Warriors sweat

and make the price go up, right? Whether it's like four for 140 from Sacramento, something crazy. I'm just not ruling anything out yet with that. But I think he ends up in Golden State. Clay is the one that I just don't think, unless he has an awesome season this year, I don't think he's anywhere near that number with the next contract. He's going to make $43 million this season. I don't see a world where he's over 20, because at some point with the way the cap is

and all this new tax stuff we have and guys like Eric Gordon are just on the open market. And at some point you just got to look at it. Like the Clippers looked at Eric Gordon. They were like, well, if we keep them, it's $110 million of extra luxury tax or we get rid of them. Well, you know what? We'll try to figure out a better version of Eric Gordon that's cheaper and maybe not as good. The words are going to have to do that with one of these guys. And it's probably going to be clay. And then clay is going to have to decide, do I want to stay or not?

Yeah. It's like, if you would ask me this shit, even a year ago, I would say you're crazy. I would think that clay is the number two behind, behind Steph in regards to staying longterm. But the fact that he's like the third one on that totem pole is kind of wild.

But he wasn't good in stretches of that postseason last year. He has an injury history. The end of the Lakers series is awful. The last three games were really bad, really bad. And another thing, this isn't necessarily a talking point, but he came into camp out of shape last year, right? Like you said that he needed to, you know, cleanse his mind after, you know, the, the rigorous,

the rigorous rehabilitation of those two injuries. And he didn't come into shape, come into camp in shape last year. And that's going to be a recurring thing. Like that's going to be something that they're going to have to figure out with him. Now, I think for, I think Clay's one of those guys for the good of the team. And if he wants to be a warrior for life and that's something that he said that he wants to be, he has to take that discount. He's made a lot of money playing with the Warriors.

He's he's lived a great life out here in the Bay Area. But I do think that he is probably going to have to take that pay cut. And so is Draymond, for instance. Right. Like he's it's not going to be I mean, maybe Clutch will drive that price up, but it can't be too much, right? It can't be, it can't be an arm and a leg for doing that because time and time again, Joe Lacob has said, I mean, we got to cut costs somewhere, right?

We have to. Now they did, they did draw their line in the sand and say, hey, we're trading away Jordan Poole. So that means they picked, they picked Draymond in the Jordan Poole-Draymond scenario. But it's going to be interesting to see what they get on that number. And the same thing going for next summer with Klay. I think Kerr picked Draymond over Poole in that scenario.

I thought it was interesting that Kerr went on his podcast during the finals. That was when I was like, oh, Draymond's coming back. They have such a weird relationship. Steve and Draymond have such a weird relationship because at times they have hated each other right and even during the times where even the last year the down year

when the 1920 year I mean Steve was pissed that Draymond was like giving up on the season and was the only one left and wasn't interested in basketball. So he would he would take pot shots. And we all know that Draymond will always have some ear towards Kerr, like whatever it is they just have. But they at the core of it, they love each other to death.

They are there. And at the end of the day, you know, Steve is going to ride with the people that got him there. And the people that got him there was Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala. Those are the guys.

And by extension, every time, and I wrote about this in May, any time that the Warriors find themselves in a jam, they go to their pillars. And that's what they're going to do until the wheels fall off.

And so we'll see how that goes. We'll see if that leads to more championships, which I don't necessarily believe so, but we'll see. we'll see how that goes. We'll see if that leads to more championships, which I don't necessarily believe so, but we'll see. We'll see how that works out. Kerr's been in the game this whole life and it's really important to think about

the experiences he's had as a player and a coach, right? Like he was on the freaking Jailblazers team, one of the craziest teams. And he's talked about it. He's like, this is one of my favorite years of my career like i i've like never seen anything like that but the personalities we had was really interesting to me some of the guys we had he was on those crazy last dance teams he watched he he watched pippen basically check out during their last title season he was on the spurs team he got to to see the whole Duncan side. He's just had a lot of

life experience and player experience and coach experience. So I think he looks at Draymond the same way Phil Jackson looked at Rodman and some of the characters that he had, even Pippen. And where he's like, ah, it's just part of the package, right? I'm used to this. I know this guy. I know in his heart this guy cares about winning and he's still one of the best defensive players in the league. Kerr thought he should win defensive player of the year last year. Genuinely, not like I'm defending my guy. He's like, look at all the shit Draymond does for us.

This guy's defensive player of the year. And I just feel like if he's forgiven him on punching LeBron in the balls in 2016, on lighting up that whole 2019 season with that Durant thing, and then last year punching Poole, and they've gotten through all that shit. What else could Draymond do at this point? So three major, major things, and they got through all of them. It's pretty amazing. It was funny i remember i talked to steve after the 2019 western conference finals it was one of those like old school i gotta

get a sidebar in one of those thousand sidebars you just gotta get in you need like three quotes from three different people and i remember him saying it was it was after they were going to their finals and i'm like so how the hell paraphrasing what i asked him when i was like how the hell do you guys like continue to to do this and he says we've had our share of knock down and drag out fights but under that is just respect you know because of that we've gotten the gotten respect and honestly they're the last one standing after all of this right and i and there is a respect and love for them. And you know, like that, that's just their dynamic. And it's not dissimilar to a lot of dynamics throughout the league.

I mean, I'm sure we're going to talk about this, but like even the fact that like Kyrie Irving is planning to meet with the sons after all the shit that him and Kevin have gone through, that's still happening. This is, this is a, it's at the end of the day,

it's a fraternity and this is not unusual uh for a league like this um yeah i mean it's like when tate frazier came back to the ringer you know anything that happened in one shining moment now here i was reading i've been buying a lot of uh basketball books i'm trying to figure out if I can get basically every NBA book, which I have most of them anyway. But I was reading this book about the Utah Jazz in the late 90s. Somebody wrote. And it was talking about the history of the franchise, which I didn't really know a lot of the history,

that they ended up in Utah because the NBA teams wanted to save all the lucrative expansion spots for their expansion money. So New Orleans was like, we're going to move to Utah. They're like, cool. Utah's never going to be an expansion city for us. And the guy that bought the team hired this guy, Dave Checketts, who ended up running the Knicks. I know this is a long story, but I'm going to land the plane. And he had this whole study on what makes a successful organization.

So this guy, Dave Checketts, studied the the Celtics because the Celtics to that point were the most successful team in the first 40 years. And did this whole study and he basically came out of it and he said, it's just continuity in front office. And that's really, those are the secrets. It's just continuity. Having the same people there year after year is the biggest advantage you can have in sports, right?

And over the last five, six years, we've watched the league completely throw this away in all these different ways, right? And for the Warriors, it's a huge advantage because they have the continuity. Denver now has the Jokic, Murray, Porter, just that whole whatever they have, if they can just keep that together, they're going to have the same advantage. It's what the Celtics risked with the Marcus Smart trade. They had the advantage of Tatum and

Brown. It's why the Spurs were a dynasty. It's why the Spurs were a dynasty. I think Kerr gets that. That's where I'm landing the plane on. That's why he puts up with the Draymond stuff because he's like, ultimately I know what I have. And Curry and Clay

and Draymond, they know how to play together. And if we could just put the right guys around him, we're always going to be in the mix. And that's why I think they're going to overpay Draymond. I think he's going to get more than people realize. I really do. I think it's I told Rossella, I thought it was going to be three years and it's going to be over a hundred.

And I might be wrong, but I don't think I'm going to be wrong. Well, I mean, the Sacramento Kings and the Detroit Pistons are doing a great job of driving the price up, whatever that price was going to be. They should. By the way, this is how the league should work. If nobody on July 1st offers Austin Reeves $98.7 million, I'm going to be fucking pissed. Why do you want the Lakers to get a discount on Austin Reeves 98.7 million, I'm fucking pissed.

Why do you want the Lakers to get a discount on Austin Reeves? Make them pay for them. You're all competing against each other. Make them work for it. Yeah. And so it's, it's going to be interesting to see. I like,

I'm going into free agency, not even thinking about it. Like, Oh, we're going to see a blip that Draymond has resigned with the warriors. And that's going to be that there's just, I can't see a world where, you know, and that's going to be that. I can't see a world where, even

reference the Steve Kerr interview, all the moves that he's made and all the moves that the Warriors have made basically make this a done deal in my eyes. I just can't see. I mean, I would want to see. I said this on Real Ones today. I would want to see Draymond on Sacramento.

That would be really fun. We've been talking about that. I would want to see Draymond on Sacramento. That would be, that would be really fun. I've been, we've been talking about that. That would be more fun for the league. Yeah. Like him on Detroit. I'm not as excited about,

but, but him on Sacramento and the same, this same division will like a fuck you Draymond season. And he has those guys like the Aaron and he can like toughen up Sabonis. That's a great story. Right. Malik Monk. There'll be like a four seed. Who knows?

But like, other than that, he's going to go to the warriors. That's a great story, right? Malik Monk, there'll be like a four seed, who knows? But other than that, he's going to go to the Warriors. That seems what it's destined to be. So you got to know Jordan Poole a little bit. It still sucks for the Warriors that this is how it played out with that, where they had this asset that it went so sideways. And I remember I was telling you, and I think I talked about it in the podcast when I went to those last two Warriors-Laker games, you could tell he was in a dark place. It was beyond just not playing well in basketball, like watching him on the bench, need a towel over his head, or he had his hoodie over his head. He just looked like he was going through something. And I wonder, ultimately the Warriors just looked at that and thought, to me, it went beyond salary cap, luxury tax, second apron stuff,

and was like, there might've been too much damage here. And this guy might need a fresh start, was my takeaway just even going to those two games. Well, that was like a concern with a lot of the coaches, right? Where even from, this is not even during the postseason, this is right after the punch happened,

that damn, like he has, Jordan has no one to trust in this building because the consequence you make or the consequence that comes with siding with Draymond and not even suspending him, like I feel like if they would have suspended him, it would have been,

the season would have been a lot better. Like say if you just suspend them for a week or two games or whatever they should have they didn't want to mess with the championship ring celebration and it was a huge mistake i think they should have suspended him for a couple games for a couple of games and so that eroded trust with jordan and the organization for a lot of the time he was just isolated from the group, right? And he had allies on the team. Andrew Wiggins is an ally on the team. Looney, who they both went to, they're both from Milwaukee,

was a guy that liked Jordan. But of all of the- But Wiggins was gone for, what, a month and a half? Exactly. But all the established guys, the guys that we did, had some at some version of problem with jordan pool whether it was clay ironically saying that jordan doesn't pass the ball enough and shoots too much and then you have uh you know draymond who is who sees jordan as this guy is like yeah i i did punch him i did do all these things but now i don't have a voice

within the locker room because of what happened just now and he's spoken about that on his podcast and then you have steph who was like trying to bring all this together and is like man i'm behind you jordan can you just get right so we can win right right i remember i talked to i talked to um and i had this in the story that's in uh in may but i talked to uh forgot game it was, but it was after one of those games against the Lakers or in the second round. And I asked Steph, how are you guys going to bridge the gap

between old guys, the established group and the younger guys? And Steph immediately goes, he turns around and he points towards Jordan Poole's locker and it says he is the key to this. And so that really shows like Steph really wanted this to work with Jordan. But after a certain point, it was too far gone. Like there was a lot of noise in the front offices like, man, this is probably just too far gone. to make this decision now to make this trade because whether we pay him or whatever whether he's a great fit for us it's just it is too far gone for him to go on anymore with this roster and because it was a split decision just like that because going out of exit meetings jordan

fully expected to be on the warriors next season and it was just it took them completely by surprise that this happened it's funny like dumbasses like, we're on podcasts trying to guess what's going on with teams and we're using little inside information and stories we hear and connections, whatever. We're usually right when there's this much smoke, right? With the pool thing

and the KD Draymond thing in 2019 was another good example where the Warriors are trying to do the damage control no no that's fine we're working it out and pretty much everyone's like this is not worked out this is bad durant has completely retreated from the team and then you go durant's on all the smoke like two years later and he's like yeah that was so fucked up when that happened i just completely retreated i just kept to myself and it was like we're gonna be we're

usually when there's this much smoke we usually kind of know these things both of those things by and large happened on camera right like the disagreement between draymond and and kevin was was right in front of our eyes as basically was getting reported on what we would whatever draymond called uh, it was on television. And then a few weeks later, we're supposed to just, we saw, it wasn't like something that just happened in the locker room. Like we literally saw these with our own eyes. Yeah, when there are witnesses, it's a little different.

Like my dad watched Marcus Smart put himself into a game and not even check with Joe Mazzola. And he's like, this is fucking crazy. What's going on with this team? These guys are coaching in the huddle. Like something's got to be fixed. And then, you know,

it's different now, like with the league pass and what we have now. And like, everybody is having their own interpretations of what we see on television. And it's not like the old days where it was like, Oh, if we don't see this game and we didn't tape it, we're not going to see all this bullshit that happened.

So it's, it's what the, in the Warriors case, the Warriors try to act like they do have a great culture and they do have all these things. They are winners, but they do try to sweep a lot of stuff under the rug and that bites them in the ass a lot.

Well, and they pull on Kaminga were two young guys that really wanted to play. And you're asking these dudes to just kind of stay in the sidelines and just kind of wait their turn and some guys don't want to wait their turn. Kaminga was definitely another one. I think you could argue the Kaminga piece was the one Kerr probably screwed up a little bit.

That's kind of complicated though. No, I get it. There's practice stuff we're not seeing, but I just felt like they needed a bet on his athleticism in that lakers series regardless of what had happened in the past they just needed him they needed like a big physical dude in that series they were so late well the reason you let kurt tell it at least publicly the reason why like kaminga stopped playing it was because andrew wiggins took all

those minutes back when he left right when left, Kaminga was balling. I think he averaged like 14-3 during that stretch that Andrew Wiggins was there and kept the Warriors afloat. And then he wasn't rewarded for that. And that's the reason. And we talked about this offline and just about how Kaminga was just downtrodden just like Jordan was in those games in L.A. Bad body language, yeah.

And the reason why he just wasn't, he wasn't rewarded for the stuff that he did during the regular season, which is what young players are told. You do good in the regular season, you will be rewarded. And he, they just weren't rewarded for what they did. Well,

you watch this shit when you're at games. Like you can always tell each team has like their older kind of veteran leader glue guy or two of them. And if you're at those Warriors games and you could watch Looney and Iguodala during the timeouts, just trying to rein those guys in, pull them back. They'd be like, hey man, you're in an arena with 20,000 people. Fucking dial it back, dude. And putting the arms around their shoulders and stuff. And it was like, man, this team, there's some real dysfunction with this team. So there was a rumor that I think it was reported that they were going to

trade coming up potentially for the number seven pick to Indiana. And then that didn't happen, but I wouldn't be shocked if coming to got traded either. And that's, I still feel like there's the warrior stuff is not going to be as simple as we've brought Draymond back and we have Chris Paul and we're ready to go. I still feel there's still other stuff happening. Deep Vincenzo was weirdly important for them in the playoffs last year and

they just don't have that. So unless their first round pick can actually play, who knows the kids 20 before we go Kyrie Irving, who I would mute all references from him on my Twitter feed, especially during times around free agency. But he's trying to make it seem like there's a market and they're saying he might go in for a meeting and all this. I just think there's zero market for him.

I don't think the teams with cap space, they're all younger, they're not going to want him. I don't think he's going to play for the minimum anywhere. And I just think him and Dallas are going to do this dance. And Dallas probably doesn't want to give him more than two years. Maybe the third year has some triggers to it. But how do you see it playing out? If you had to make a prediction,

is Kyrie the one guy who's crazy enough to be like, yeah, I'm going to play with the Lakers for $12 million a year. I'm just going to do it. Fuck you guys. Well, you know, he had the opportunity to do that last year and picked up his gargantuan option to play. Right. That's right. So I don't believe that he is a guy that is saying, fuck you. And it's not like this capitalist like everybody else is. I think that he has made some mistakes and to cover up said mistakes. He he talks in in the way that he's enlightened, right? Like he knows more than everyone does, right? And I think that's just what it is right now.

And I think that he's going to end up in Dallas. I think that's what's going to end up happening if I had to guess right now. Because I mean, the Suns thing just doesn't make sense because me and Roger were talking about this on the podcast. They already have Bradley Bill. They just don't have room for him on that roster, right? And then what would you have to do?

I don't know what you would have to do to get him on the Suns, but it would have to probably be like getting rid of Aiden. And then you have like four guys in a wing. And then I don't know how that roster competes with the Lakers and the Nuggets. And I just don't see the defensive value of that team. It's a fake story. Just say what it is. It's a fake story. He's not going to the Suns.

He's not going to the Suns. He's not going to the Suns. It's not happening. It's not going to happen. That's what it is, that he's not going to go to the Suns. But the funny thing is, and I think this is the biggest thing that I took away from it, is just the relationship between him and Kevin and the fact that he would even have a meeting of this sort with the team that is occupied by Kevin Durant after all the stuff that happened in the trade

deadline in last season, how that could, that dynamic could even still work. And I'm, I'm, I'm honestly asking, I've been talking to Kevin. I ain't talked to Kyrie. I'm honestly asking. I haven't talked to Kevin. I haven't talked to Kyrie. I'm honestly asking how that could continue to work after all the things that transpired. I just, I don't get it. Not only do I not get it, I'm not even positive how true it is. It's, well, it's funny because before, like, this story came out, I was hearing, like, I would hear people say periodically during the playoffs, like, hey man, don't sleep on the Suns. And I was like, get out of here.

That doesn't make any sense. But this was also prior to Bradley Beal getting traded to go to the Suns. So you could take that with a grain of salt. But at this stage, it just doesn't seem like it's happening. Well, I think I googled it to make sure yeah isaiah thomas

detroit isaiah thomas who's now the shadow gm of the uh the phoenix suns he's a big kairi guy you could go google like there's stuff from him over you could see why they have similar like they have similar games you could see why isaiah would like Kyrie. Yeah, so part of me wonders, you know, is he working that? I just don't see how it works. No, there was, back in the day, there was a guy by the name of Bob Myers and another guy by the name of DeAndre Jordan.

This is way back where the Warriors extended an offer to DeAndre Jordan. I remember this. The Clippers match set offer. Now, I don't think there was ever a world where DeAndre Jordan was going to go to the Warriors, but he needed a thing called leverage. And that's what Kyrie needs at this point. He needs leverage. He needs to figure out how he can get the best deal out of Dallas Mavericks.

And what do you do? You say you're going to go have a meeting with schedule a meeting with the sons. Well, and if you're Phoenix and maybe they're getting Intel from KD and it's like, man, we gotta, we gotta get Dallas to pony up for Kyrie so we can ruin the next couple of years for Luca.

So let's, let's pretend we're going to sign up. We're going to drive his price up. Oh yeah. I have a theory though, real quick. Just aside from this, I just thinking about Kevin,

as far as legacies, it feels like Kevin Durant is like the Snoop Dogg of NBA history. Think about it. Snoop Dogg of NBA history. This is interesting. So he is a Snoop Dogg of NBA history. He has Snoop. He has a few labels.

He's in different little ecosystems. He's in the death row ecosystem. He's in the no limit ecosystem. He is in the pharrell ecosystem he is in the charlie wilson ecosystem and by extension he is in the p-funk ecosystem because he's a g-funk artist how many ecosystems when it's all said and done will kevin durant be it he will be in the warriors ecosystem he will be in the oklahoma city ecosystem that the dog pound. OK, so he was the dog pound. Exactly right. And then he has been on all these different things. And he's in this nomad that fits, seems to fit in in every single team that he's in.

And the similar way that Snoop fits into every single song that he is in. And plus, they both smoke a lot of weed. It aren't ashamed to talk about it exactly I think Kevin that career 30 years from now we're still going to be trying to figure out man if you played that

10 times was this like the weirdest outcome of the 10 we could have possibly had like just when he became a free agent if it's a year before or year after 2016, Golden State's impossible. He goes to like the Wizards, right? Or he goes, I don't know, somewhere else.

But just this black swan event of this 2016 cap thing ends up at the Warriors. And now it's like he can't win no matter what happens. Because it's like, now he gets like, it's actually unfair to him how little credit he gets for how awesome he was in 2017 and 18. He's fucking awesome. But even before that, he was those three years. Even before that, like he had won an MVP in like 13, 14.

Kevin Durant was amazing. He was amazing. He was amazing he was amazing he was amazing and then like this 15 16 kd who damn near could have who almost beat the greatest one of the greatest teams of all time by many sucked in the last couple games yeah yeah he didn't that series is tough for him because that that is probably his fork in the road series right where that and the milwaukee net series where his foot was on the line those are like kind of the two moments. But then he beats LeBron, and he was clearly the best player on the floor there. And that goes back to the Snoop argument, right?

Because you can always make an argument that Snoop is the greatest of all time. And I think it's a tough argument, but you can make an argument that Kevin Durant is a top 10 player. You for sure can do that. He beat LeBron James twice. argument that you know kevin durant is a top 10 player you for sure can do that he fucking beat he beat lebron james twice and i know you could say he had such and such on his team but me and you saw them those so series bill yeah that was katie's team and that was katie was the best player on the floor for those series and but then he has this this weird it's based on the decisions that he makes man i feel like if he makes different decisions social media though if he if he just we never he was like leo dicaprio we just kind of saw him when

he played basketball and that was it or he's like kawaii yeah but he's still kind of like that though i i'm curious to see how he's gonna be when he ends his career what kind of like is he gonna just be this nomad that just pops up at places i'm curious to see because i i think he's gonna be one of those like he's just gonna pop up different places that you wouldn't even expect i i but i am curious i don't know what that looks like but i'm curious to see how that how that manifests you know one thing with the snoop kd analogy the in-person experience really helps how people feel about both guys because when you see see KD in person, it's like, man, this guy's fucking amazing. Like he is a top five.

You're like, oh my God, he's seven feet. I can't believe this person exists. And Snoop was always like a way better in-person performer than I think he got credit for. He's fucking awesome with a crowd. Like he's just about the, like that's why I love old school. Like that really taps into just how Snoop can connect with like a bunch of people at once well it's interesting man

because snoop and katie is like this as well they're they feel like they're two people you feel like you can touch right there are two people that feel of the community right where i remember like there were stories where katie would just pop up at like liquor stores in east oakland just or gas stations. It's just, you know, I'm picking up gas. I'm in the middle of like a seminary, but I'm going to pick up some gas on the way to my house. Right. And I'm with you. And even when he goes to the Rucker, he's always around, you know, the Drew League. He would always pull up to just random events around the Bay Area. And same with Snoop. Snoop is just you always know someone that knows Snoop if you're around the Bay Area. And same with Snoop. Snoop is just you always know someone that

knows Snoop if you're around here, right? Like Snoop goes to even when he comes up to the Bay, he goes to the dope baristore of Mr. Fab. Like he is a guy that is of the community and you feel like you can touch him. And people that know KD and who know Snoop say that they're just great people to be around when you are around them. Now, obviously, everyone's moody and like KD says, but they feel like people you sense, but they feel like people you can touch and they feel like people that you know. That's one of the things that makes stars stars. I think

that's why they connect so well. I like it. Logan Murdoch, you can hear him on The Real Ones. You writing for TheRinger.com this week? Maybe next week? Maybe. I got some stuff coming up that I'm writing right now. Some non-NBA stuff coming up soon, actually. I'll put that out there.

Non-NBA stuff. Yeah, that's going to be nice. And I got some NBA stuff coming with some non-NBA stuff that I'm really excited about. So stay tuned for that. All right. Good to see you. Thank you. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend that powers your scale with no preset spending limit. More cash on hand to grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days. And the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions

apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Alright, Dave Chang is here. You can hear him on The Ringer on a podcast that we creatively named The Dave Chang Show. We were texting about the bear. I know we talked about the bear on Tuesday, but what was

really interesting, and Chang just binged it this week, that we started your podcast with the pre-opening restaurant diaries for Majordomo. And what did you text me after you watched episode 10 of season two of the bear? It's the best, most accurate portrayal of what it is like to work in a kitchen, an ambitious kitchen with things on the line. And I was really impressed. It was awesome. So we did Chef for the Rewatchables a month ago. We've talked about kitchen movies and TV shows a bunch.

And you're like me when, if it's like some basketball movie or something, I just fly off the handle if like anything's not accurate, anything's wrong. You're basically like, chef came the closest, right, for you? For nailing stuff until this show, The Bear. But then, so are you finally happy with how somebody did it?

Yeah, I texted Courtney Storer, Chris St so there is, are you finally happy with how somebody did it? Yeah. I texted Courtney store, uh, Chris store's brother, uh, who I know and I'm friends with. Um, and I told her that I said, thank you for like being able to communicate the things in the kitchen that are sort of ineffable, right. But work visually and for whatever reason, over all these years of the TV shows and many films trying to portray what it's like to be in a kitchen, they finally got it right. And the highs and lows of how every person in that kitchen can contribute to what could be a great service or a terrible service. And being in the weeds, I thought episode 10 really, really did a great job. I mean, you can never capture exactly what it's like, just like anything in a sports movie. But it's the first time where I feel like the

pulse of the kitchen was accurately depicted. All right. So go into that. So what did they depict? What did you see? The feeling of drowning. And again, it's friends and family. And we talked about this on the pre-opening diaries that you want the bad things to happen then. And instead of seeing all the positives, you only look at the mistakes. And if you watch the season you see the character development of cuz find his voice and being able to expedite is not an easy job it's very similar to what i imagine to be an air traffic controller you said you have to have like a specific mindset and it was interesting that sid was also reading the coach k book about you about that last second game with Christian Leitner. And I think these are all the elements that make cooking one of the greatest things in the world when you can pull it off.

It's not like anything else. It's team sport. It's individual. And when you're in the weeds, all it takes is one person not doing their job. Somebody smoking crack in the back. All of these things and anything can happen. And sometimes it could be something small, like someone misheard the expediter, the person that's calling up the tickets. And if you mishear it, one little thing can have a butterfly effect that changes the entire course of your service. Right. And in five minutes, they got that, that moment in time, because it's something that they capture really well in the first season of the bear is looking at the clock and how slow

time can move when you're in the weeds. And, uh, Carm described it as it's in the shits, right? So that's the next level. It's like DEF CON five for being in the weeds is being in the shits, right? So that's the next level. It's like DEFCON 5 for being in the weeds is being in the shits. And when you say that, then you're like, okay, like we're spinning out of control a little bit like Tom Cruise and Goose in Top Gun, right?

You literally feel like you're spinning out of control. And that's why Sid just had to step aside because she couldn't do it. And then Cuz coming in. In five minutes, that can feel like an eternity. And they translated it that beautifully.

So you have friends and family night because you're trying to figure out 90 different things about what the day-to-day life of running the restaurant is going to be. How many people can you actually handle? How many dishes can you actually keep going at the same time? What is the hierarchy of the kitchen? What other things are you looking at for what could go wrong as you're trying to figure that out? You want to see that the people are happy, right?

And you want to be able to see if the service staff can connect, that they're able to identify the mistakes quickly. That's an important thing. And there was a very small scene in the last episode where the sister gets notified that the bathroom is broken. And there's two people that knew that the bathroom was broken. That was like a great sign of a good team. It wasn't one person trying to explain to other people like, hey, we got a fucked up bathroom. It's toilets overflowing because that happens all the time. When two people are trying to fix the problem themselves

without being told, that was like a really good sign to me. Matty Matheson is a chef in Toronto and he's an amazing actor. I mean, he's a great chef, but he might be a better actor. He was doing it independently. So I thought that was super interesting.

And just to be able to communicate without making it seem like things are going down, right? When you're working in front of the house, whether it's friends and family or you're 10 years in, that's like being an actor and a Broadway play.

You have to have your composure. And I've seen so many times, I used to work for Danielle Balloud and there used to be total chaos in the kitchen. A lot of yelling, screaming, all positive things, it's normal. Then once he leaves the kitchen, it's all smiles. It's like he's running for office. And you try to separate what happens in the front of the house versus the back of the house. And I think you want to identify who's going to fix the problems. You want problem fixers.

So yeah, they identified all these things. I thought it was awesome. What about when the noise and the music they were using when they were in the kitchen, and then once they went through the door to go into the restaurant, the sound completely changed, and it was like, I don't know,

classical music or whatever music they were playing. I mean, and that's another thing that's real the i think the soundtrack that they composed for both seasons are really great and they played uh exile in guyville by liz fair i think during that main sequence during um that like almost like one track shot uh from like start to finish and i thought that was like perfect um because it's again to me emphasizes the timing of everything you know it all of that sort of happened in like 30 minutes so um and not only the music i think if you have a small kitchen like that the size of that restaurant to me was very similar to say um why Dufresne's great restaurant, 71 Clinton.

Fresh food in the Lower East Side of New York. Yes, this takes place in Chicago, but if you speak too loudly, everyone in the kitchen, everyone in the dining room can hear. And yeah, you have to be very careful

about that. One of the things that happened was they didn't realize they had, or they didn't have enough forks. That's the real shit. And I'm watching that and I'm going, that's ridiculous. How did they not know that they don't have enough forks?

But that was totally believable to you? 1000%. It's, oh, fuck. Beg, borrow, or steal. Get as many fucking things as you can. You know? Whose fault is that when you realize I don't have enough forks, or we didn't

buy enough of these napkins? Who's ultimately doing that? It's probably the general manager or the executive chef, and there's probably a checklist, but there's so many elements to opening up a restaurant. And when I say ambitious restaurant, I'm not trying to belittle like a, you know, a small sandwich shop, but, uh, there's so many elements all across the board. If you're opening up any kind of restaurant, but you might have like 25, 30 different plates and

you might need different forks and knives for each of those plates. Things can get lost. And it's quite possible that someone did buy it, but it got misplaced in a box in the basement or something like that. So it's total chaos. Organized anarchy is how I like to describe an opening day. What was your

worst friends and family opening day that you were the most traumatized by? Um... worst friends and family opening day that you were the most traumatized by? We probably talked about this when we did the pre-opening things, but wasn't there a story? Didn't you have one that just went terrible? Many of them do because I intentionally tried to make it painful for everybody. If you come to a friends and family, I don't want you to have a good time. I want you, they're there to stress test it.

And I'd rather have it on them than a paying customer. So I've done a lot of crazy things. Not tell the kitchen or the front of the house that every table is showing up at 730, not five o'clock, not 530. Because we try to, it's like the preseason. It's just not realistic. That's just not how it's going to unfold. So why would you practice something that is not going to happen theoretically, right? It is more realistic on a Friday night. If you have a restaurant, almost anybody that has a five o'clock reservation, most people don't show up at five o'clock, right? They show up later, six o'clock, 630. And

that starts to cascade every five minutes, 10 minutes. So next thing you know, you're backed up. Your entire restaurant is backed up by say, if you have a 40 seat restaurant, you might be backed up by 50 people by seven 30. Right. And the tickets are coming in. Um, and just hearing that printer in, in episode 10, I talk about that a lot, that, that sound. And you see Sid just looking like blank, blank face at that printer, because that sound is traumatic. For anybody that has worked in kitchens like that, you're like, yeah, that's the realest shit. You know, I remember in my restaurant days when one of the places I was working at, when it opened, it was that week and it was the same kind of drowning thing.

And you can kind of tell from the reactions of people who are normally calm, like by the faces. We had this one chef who was like this good nature Canadian guy. And if he was stressed out, I knew like we were in a rough spot that this is about to absolutely suck

for the next 45 minutes. The funniest thing, and I hope people realize this, the character, the actor, Cuz, who I think is just phenomenal, you might look at him from season one or early in the season and say,

oh, there's no way this guy is going to be cool, calm, and collected when shit hits the fan. Nothing would lead you to believe that Richie is going to navigate everybody through the hardest shit possible. And that's sort of the truth. The people that are able to, um, you know, be cool under pressure, aren't the people that are always full of confidence or, um, you know, you would pick to be sort of class president. You know what I mean?

Right. Well, it's almost like being a quarterback or something where part of succeeding at that job is you have to learn how to calm down when there's the most stress. And that's the hardest thing. Being in the weeds and when things are spiraling out of control your natural default setting is to move faster right what he did is exactly how you get out of the weeds you stop right if he had five minutes he didn't start to move to like four you know 15 seconds in each second can feel like an eternity it really can and he just got reorganized and that's that's a difficult thing to learn. It's what you want cooks to be able to develop is the ability to realize they're in the shits

or in the weeds and not to freak out. The really great cooks intentionally get in the weeds because they're so bored. It's almost when Larry Bird played left-handed, Bill. He's so bored. You know what I mean? You're just like, wow. And you see this throughout culture

right like i i don't surf but i friends that are surfers if you're you know get pulled under the water in a riptide you're supposed to be calm right if you're in an avalanche you're supposed to be calm um and that's not the easiest thing to do. So I think it's not an exact parallel, but there are a lot of parallels to being able to be the leader of your kitchen and get people out. And it doesn't always have to be the chef, as you can see from episode 10, without too many spoilers. Does this show kind of prove... I don't care about the spoilers. It's been out for a week. Does this show inadvertently prove that this is why chefs can do this for 12, 15 years? They're like special teams gunners. And then at some point, it's just not sustainable.

Yeah. I mean, working in a service every night, it's just high intensity and pressure. And everybody has their way to do it. You know, again, if you look at how Sid was doing it, very cool, very calm,

please. And thank yous, but she lost the steering wheel. Yeah. Doesn't mean that she won't be great. And it also could be that Richie next service could, you know, fall off the bandwagon and just be a dead weight too.

So you never know who's going to carry the day for the team. And that's what makes this job so thrilling is the development of every single person. It's like an up and down series. I watched a five-year engagement with my daughter two nights ago, which was 2012. And Jason Segel plays a chef and Chris Pratt is like his brother-in-law basically.

And there's a lot of chef stuff, but it's kind of the early stages of when it was cool to put a chef in a TV show or a movie. He ends up opening his own food truck at the end. Then Chef with Favreau comes out two years later. The Bradley Cooper movie, and we just kind of keep going.

Plus all the documentary stuff, all the reality TV shows. This feels, The Bear feels like the culmination of an entire era of pop culture about chefs that they increasingly got correct through trial and error, right? I don't know where we go from here.

You know, I've certainly been offered a lot of, how? I don't know where we go from here. You know, I've certainly been offered a lot of, how should I say, please, we want you to write a scripted series. There's a lot. A lot. And I guarantee you're going to see several cooking

shows, dramatic scripted series come out soon. But I don't know if they're going to be better than the bear because what makes the bear great is, you know, I'm not close with Chris Dorb like I am with the sister, but he's been following the industry for a long time and he's friends with a lot of chefs and his sister was one of a great chef.

So they've been able to tell these stories over the, you know, that, that have happened in kitchens over the past 15, 20 years. And it's good because these are stories that they've held closely, right? And I think it took a lot of courage for them to try to do this. And I think a lot of people will try, but I say good luck. It's not as easy as it seems because there's been a ton of money and a ton of talented people that tried to tackle this project but it's always been from somebody that was uh i mean i think they wanted to be cool right by looking like they they they were part of the business these i think

a lot of these people are in the business maddie matheson is a real chef with great restaurants in toronto i think david zilber was a consulting chef and he used to be the head of fermentation for noma so they they are they have the real deal advisors uh helping them make it better than at least the storylines better and just the littlest things like karm being sitting in a walk-in if you're the chef is so real because it's the only place you have quiet solitude when everything is going to hell. And, you know, uh, I used to see the chefs that I work for sitting in like a milk carton in the, a milk box in the walk-in. It's something that I tended to do a lot of. And I thought that what Carm was saying, um, in the walk-in is something I probably want to revisit because it was very truthful,

right? He feels like he's letting people down in general, you know, yet, you know, five seconds later, his ego is so out of control. He's like, I am the best, you know, it's crazy, right? It's being in that kind of kitchen. What they were able to do is capture the paradoxes of the highs and lows of the people that live in that world better than any other, other, other series or film that I've seen. And,

you know, just those little things that, uh, an average viewer may not pick up on, but when he's looking at the, the Lexans and those are the plastic boxes that you keep food in and, uh, it's labeled right with, painter's tape.

And that triggers him to sort of start spiraling out of control. Something small and something so insignificant can really create an avalanche emotionally because he sees that the letters or the tape has been uncut, like cut improper, like it's been ripped apart. In top kitchens, you want it to be like cut with an even edge. That was it. That was it. It was sloppily placed. I've had total freak outs doing stuff like that too.

So I just thought it was, it really resonated with me and I'm sure it's going to with anybody that worked in the restaurant business. I mean, I, I once saw Thomas Keller, the great Thomas Keller of the French laundry, give a 45 minute speech,

45 fucking minutes about cutting tape properly. You know, this is like a serious thing in the business. That's crazy. Um um while i have you how we feeling about restaurants in june 2023 feels like they're they're back to some degree the doom and gloom stuff we're all worried about during the peak of the pandemic are we on the road back it feels better is that that fair? Better? I'm happy that restaurants seem to be busier than ever. But again, I'm always a little pessimistic about what's around the corner. So I'm a little concerned, but I don't want to bring the listener

down. Why are you concerned? Tell us. I think we're headed towards where we're at the rest of culture, where if you are doing something in the middle, what I mean by the middle is if you're not doing something cheap, something that's delivered, something that's fast food, something that is commoditized like McDonald's, and you're not doing something that's crazy experiential restaurant by one of the greatest fictional young talents in the world. Or if you're trying to go to a destination place in Napa Valley or say Northern Spain or something like that, where you are traveling to eat, those restaurants are busier than ever. If you try to get a table at say, this restaurant El Cano in Spain, you're not going to be able to get it for several months. I think the premium we're going to put on something that's experiential.

And experiential doesn't have to be super fancy. It could be something like Bianco's Pizza that you have to have because it doesn't deliver that well. You have to go there. You have to eat it because that's what makes it so special. Sushi is another one. So what happens with everything in between? And I think a lot of those restaurants in between have to sort of figure out what they want to be and what they want to do.

And I'm also a little concerned that there's so much money being poured into restaurants right now that it's a little bit of a bubble to me. I hope to be wrong. Why is there so much money to be important in restaurants now? Because people feel like they're back and there's business opportunities? I don't know. People seem to have so much money. People are dropping coin. I talked to my friends in the industry and their restaurants, and they're just

sort of in awe at how much people are spending on wine and things like this. I heard something recently that people are trying to open up restaurants, at least in New York City, are signing leases without having the money raised. That's scary to me. Jesus. Because signing the lease will help them raise the money. That's something that I just would not do. And I understand why they would do it. But to me, there's some factors that, again,

I'd rather be cautiously pessimistic than blindly hopeful. What food advancement or trend are you the most excited about? I'm not sure, Bill. I want to see what's the next kind of foods that can get delivered. I know you do order delivered food a lot. I think what I'm waiting for is

what are all the dishes that you want to get delivered, but you can't get delivered. Um, and I, I think what the biggest trend you're going to see is more sushi and more barbecue restaurants and things like that. More steak houses,

more comfort things. I mean, we just are, you know, knocking wood coming out of this pandemic. I think you've seen people embrace comfort and elevated comfort. And I think that comes at the cost of people trying to do avant-garde, vanguard pushing stuff. And that's the stuff that always gets me excited. As much as I love barbecue, I want to see

restaurants that open up that are changing the game. And I think that's going to be harder than ever to do. Or it's only in the two big cities and the other cities kind of go by the wayside. That actually, Bill, is a good point. And I will say that that is extremely optimistic. And that is the trend, is secondary cities. I'm sure if you live in a secondary city, I'm not trying to offend you. But if you live in, say, like Cleveland

or anywhere else, like Iowa City, there are a lot of talented chefs that are leaving the cities like LA, San Francisco, New York and opening up restaurants in places that they might not normally have. Oh, so it's the other way. Yeah, because it's cheaper to live there. That's interesting.

And you're seeing less risk-taking. Very conservative restaurants being opened up, um, in New York. Listen, at the same time as a diner, it's better than ever right now. It's fucking amazing. Um, but I think that if you're living in, say, Charlotte, North Carolina, there's great restaurants there and you're going to get talented chefs leaving the bigger cities opening up. So if you're if you're living in one of these cities, I guarantee you, that's a positive. You're going to have more options from really talented chefs than ever before. Well, nothing's going to beat the Momofuku noodles that you can

just buy in a store that my son makes and doctors up with all your stuff. It's the number one thing in our house. We ran into it today. I was screaming at my wife. She was like the sous chef who didn't come through. We ran out of forks in the house, basically. Where are the noodles? We got to replay that ad that he did for us. That's the best thing we've ever done. We've got to do another one. He's up to, because he's been eating all this food for football because he's trying, you

know, he's at 180 now, but he needs a lot of like protein and all kinds of different things. So he's going to eat the and all kinds of different things. So he's going to eat the 11 p.m. noodles. It's going to happen. Awesome. Chang, we can listen to your podcast. You have a bunch of other good stuff coming, too, on the multimedia front.

Yeah. We're doing a lot of stuff with The Ringer. We just launched Secret Chef on Hulu today. So check that out. That is a different style TV show. And we have a lot of foods coming out to your local grocery stores very soon. There you go. All right.

I'll see you soon. Thanks, Chang. Thanks, Bill. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Logan Murdoch and David Chang. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton as well for producing. I'm going to be back on this feed on Sunday

with Rosillo reacting to whatever the hell happens in free agency this weekend. Can't wait. I have this deep, deep hope that the Celtics are going to sign Eric Gordon. I know it's not going to happen, but that's what I'm going to hope for all weekend. All right. I will see you on Sunday.

Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe. I don't have a few years with him on the wayside on the first of November I don't have a few years