The Bill Simmons Podcast - An NBA Power Poll, Plus Malcolm Gladwell Plays ‘Sports Czar’

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons gives his NBA power poll of all 30 teams through two weeks (1:41), before he is joined by Malcolm Gladwell to discuss tweaks they would make to major sports, including the NBA in-season tournament, restoring home field advantage in the NFL, improving the MLB season, reducing tanking incentives in the NBA, regulating new athletic technologies, and more (31:08)! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Malcolm Gladwell Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, an NBA power poll. Malcolm Gladwell. This podcast is an A+. Next, 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.

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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 And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey.

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It's on Monday. It's on Prime. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. If you missed it, we started, wait, that movie made how much money? Month last night on the rewatchables. We did Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, me, Chris Ryan, Van Lathan.

It was a wonderful experience for all of us. Van looked at Chris at one point and he said, everything I do, I do it all for you. Oh no, that was Brian Adams. But we had a great time. Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to do an NBA Power Poll at the top because there's no games as I'm taping this on Tuesday.

So where are we after two weeks? I tried to fly through this. I limited myself to 22 minutes. I think I went two minutes over, but I flew through it, tried to get off as many comments as I possibly could. And then our old friend,

Malcolm Gladwell, is going to come on and do some sports star stuff. There's some things that he's noticed about direction sports are going in that he doesn't like, and we're going to try to fix it.

So that's the podcast. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, I'm going to throw an NBA PowerPool at you. I'm not sure I'm going to do this every Tuesday, but I definitely want to do this some Tuesdays. I'm going to go through all 30 teams as fast as possible, and I'm going to throw things out that I feel like are important when necessary. Pot shots, important comments, things I've noticed, some fake trades. You've known me for a while. It's going to be all the typical stuff. Going backwards from 30 to one, I'll give

you the groups as we go. The first group is called the Dregs. That's Washington number 30. They are 30th in defense. And the only reason they're 30th in defense is because we only have 30 teams. I actually think there's some way they could have been 36th in defense. And the only reason they're 30th in defense is because we only have 30 teams. I actually think there's some way they could have been 36th in defense. They're the only team in the entire league that I do not want to watch on League Pass for any reason at all. They're one in five, 15.6 point differential against them. Shoot this team into the sun.

I cannot believe how I thought this team was going to go over 24 wins. They might not go over 14 wins. They're awful. I never want them on my TV. Next group, probably the lottery. I say probably, but I'm going to zip through these teams and then go back to somebody. 29 Utah, 28 Portland, 27 Detroit, 26 San Antonio, 25 Charlotte, who is way more fun than I expected they would be to watch,

and 24 Chicago. It just feels like the lotteries in the future for all these teams. I want to talk about San Antonio really quick. Three and four, kind of a sneaky, tough schedule. They played Phoenix twice, the Clippers, Dallas, that goofy Indiana team, Houston and Toronto. They're minus 8.6 point differential because they've gotten blown out a couple of times. And they're 29th on defense, which I was surprised by per 100 possessions. The thing that I wanted to point out here, because this Wemby thing is super important. This is the best teenager that's come into the league, at least since LeBron. We can debate LeBron, I think in year two,

for two months at least, was a teenager when he was putting up 27-7-7, when he started his 27-7-7 cycle. Wemby might be the best teenager I've ever seen. They're starting Jeremy Sohan at point guard. And Pop's been transparent about this. No, no, we know we're going to take some lumps. We're trying to figure this out. I went to the game when they played the Clippers. I talked about it in a previous pod, and it was just an absolute debacle watching poor Sohan try to run the offense, bring the ball up. Now we're seeing teams starting to pressure them because he's not a point guard. He's a small forward. There's crazy stats now. Trey Jones, just by being on this team and not being Jeremy Sohan, is now one of the best advanced metrics point guards of all time.

Right now, his per 100 on-off is plus 28.3 because Sohan is minus 22.7. That's how disparate the two things are, which brings me to my point. This is too important. You have the best teenager, maybe ever. You have one of the best league pass players already in the entire league in Wemby. I have no idea how long he's going to stay healthy. Knock on wood, hear me knock really loud. I just got my dog going. No, that was me, dumbass. They need one more point guard. TJ McConnell is on Indiana and they have Halliburton who's

averaging a 24-12. He's awesome. They have Nembhard who's great as a backup. McConnell's like he's 13 minutes a game. He's clearly a trade piece for them. Just go get him. I'm not saying San Antonio has to make the playoffs, but they need to be entertaining and Wemby needs to play with point guards. He clearly needs just I'm not saying San Antonio has to make the playoffs, but they need to be entertaining.

And Wemby needs to play with point guards. He clearly needs to play off people, high screens, all that stuff. They need one more point guard. TJ McConnell is my choice. They have all their own firsts. They're not going to trade those, obviously. But they have some goofy picks. They have Charlotte's top 14 protected first.

They have a pretty good Chicago first that I wouldn't give up. They have a first swap with Boston. There's ways to do this. I would just put that Charlotte pick next year on the table and just grab them because you guys hit the lottery literally with Wemba Diama. Literally hit the lottery. You hit the lottery and you hit the lottery. Get the dude two point guards. We're not asking for much here. I want to watch this guy. I want to enjoy him play basketball. All right. Next section is panic time. Number 23, Memphis. They're one in six. They finally got out the Schneid. And number 22, Sacramento, who lost twice to Houston in three days by 18 and 25. No Darren Fox for either game. Panic time in this respect. I know we're six games in the season, seven games in the season,

but the West is one of those things where you're going to look up and the car is left. The car is left the driveway and your family is gone. You're going to be basically Kevin and home alone if you don't get your shit together. And I don't even want to be two games under 500 in the West. That's how deep and good the West is. So when you're one and six, like all of a sudden two and 12, two and 13, Sacramento could all of a sudden be three and nine. I would just be nervous constantly. This is not like last year when the Lakers started out two and 10 and ended up making the playoffs. Nobody is doing that this year. The cutoff line is going to be 46 wins. Memphis, they just can't score. We talked about this in Verno last week. It's going to be really

hard for them to crawl back and be at least 11-14, something like that, by the time Ja comes back. The Sacramento thing, we predicted this when we did the over-under preview. The conference is way better, and they stayed basically the same. And now Fox is hurt. So it can take Fox going out for 10 games, and all of a sudden you're not even in the playing game. I would just be nervous, so it's both of those teams.

Again, it's early. Next group, friskier than we hoped. We have number 21, Brooklyn. Ben Simmons averaging almost 11 rebounds and seven assists a game. And yet you can't play him at crunch time. Bizarre. Number 20, Orlando. Number 19, Houston. Number 18, Indiana. And number 17, Toronto, just quickly on Houston, a delightful league past team. I had no idea. It's, it's,

um, it's like being at a buffet dinner and somebody brings like some, have you ever had a fried oyster? It's like, great. I'll try that. And then it's delicious. Um, they play hard.

I like watching them. And I did not expect, uh, Shangoon to be a potential all-star, but that's where we are. They're three and three. Again, they beat Sacramento twice. We'll see. But Orlando at number 20, I'm going to, every time I do this, I'm going to have a BS all-star of the week. And it's going to

be, I used to do this when I, when I wrote my column back in the day, I used to call them the Bill Simmons all-stars, just people that I just liked for whatever reason. I love Jalen Suggs. I don't really know fully what he is. He tries harder than everybody on every other team. He really gives a shit. He feels additive in all these different ways. And yet at the same time, he'll absolutely airball a three in one of the biggest moments of the game. But that guy cares. I watched a game where he got this hustle rebound. I can't remember who they, they lost in the buzzer. He got this hustle rebound and dribbled back out and took a three and missed it and put his jersey over his head for the next minute and a half. I actually think he might've been crying. He was so upset they lost. He is the most competitive random guy in the league. I love Jalen Suggs. Oh,

as Saruti said, it's the Laker game. I love Jalen Suggs. I don't know what he is. He might just end up being like a seventh man on a championship team at some point. He's going to have a moment on a good team. I don't know if Orlando is going to be the team, but it's going to happen for that dude. I also really like Anthony Black more than I thought, but we'll see. It's early for this team. Palo hasn't gotten going. Somehow they're 4-3. We'll see when the schedule gets harder. Toronto at number 17,

just the Lakers' Miss Schroeder. And I like what Schroeder's doing with Toronto. They're 3-4, but they easily could be 5-2. I've been watching them because I have their over-under I bet on. And I like where Toronto's at. I think they're better than they were last year. I think they're at least a playing team. Number 18, Indiana though. So they're second in offensive rating and 25th in defense. In the 25th, I was actually surprised it wasn't worse. They can't guard anybody. They're shooting 43s a game. Their top six guys

are all over 40% three-point shooting. They're kind of like the 80s Nuggets, but with threes, and they just play with a certain pace. And some days it's going to be bad. The Celtics put 155 points on them, and it probably could have been 160 if they'd made some shots. Hal Burton's special. He's a 24-12 this year. But the crazy thing about their offense is that Matherin's been terrible. And Matherin was a guy that they were like, this is going to be our guy. He's making a leap. We're going to trade Buddy Heald. We got to give the car keys to Matherin in that spot.

And he's been bad. And their offense has still been pretty good. This is a team that anytime you see them, I don't know if you bet basketball, but if they're like plus 11, plus 12, I guess they could beat anybody any night. I'm just telling you. I'm not saying they're going to win a round in the playoffs, but just night to night, that's a team that they could just go 22 for 45 from three, make some shots. And Halliburton, they actually should be five and two. Halliburton blew the last possession against Charlotte the other night, but I've enjoyed watching them

I've watched an insane amount of basketball by the way alright next group the wild cards I don't have a lot to say about these teams but we'll go in order number 16 New Orleans just seem jinxed I'll come back to them in a second number 15 Cleveland I want to see them with Garland

and just I want to watch them for a couple weeks. I like the Strews addition, but we'll see. The Knicks, they're 3-4. Nice win against the Clippers. The Randall thing continues to be nuts. Now he's taking out guys in the other team. Clippers 13, just traded for Harden. We talked about the Knicks and Clippers last week.

Look, the Clippers, they played one game and they got killed by the Knicks. They're worse. I told you that last week. Still, the Clippers, they played one game and they got killed by the Knicks. They're worse. I told you that last week. Still feel that way. Guess what they can't do now? Any transition stuff. The Knicks, 26 to 6 in fast break points last night. Rebounding. They got out-rebounded by 17 by the Knicks. Harden just brings so many things that you don't want in a starting five, but then he brings the great passing and the scoring and he can have the ball all the time.

They don't need anyone to have the ball all the time because they have all these other guys who need the ball. I just don't like the trade. I continue to not like it and I don't understand it. I actually liked the team they had before they made the trade. So congrats again, Clippers. Number 12, Miami,

28th offensively. Kind of feels worse when you watch them. They haven't had their full team for a couple of weeks. I'm not going to judge them at all until December. And I'm not going to judge Dallas either. Dallas, I have at number 11. They're six and one, fourth in offense. They've had a really easy schedule. So that's why let's see what happens. Their one loss is to Denver. Let's see what happens when they play some tough teams all in a row and have one of those four games and six nights where three on the road, one of those situations. But they are in better shape than they were last year. And you look at the Grant Williams piece, which I'm not spiteful when I watch my old players. I'm rooting for Grant Williams. It's like seeing somebody you dated that you still have a good relationship with. It was nice to see him do well for them. Derek Lively,

seems like they have something. We talked about him last week, but he's at least like a rim runner in that kind of Nick Claxton world, but maybe a little more violent alley-oop or a little young Clint Capelli. The Kyrie thing is the piece that I'm really interested in this. He finally had a good game last night,

but for the season, 24% three-point shooting, 3.8 free throws a game, which are always the two numbers to look at with Kyrie. What's he shooting threes? Is he getting in the line? And so far it's been neither, but he seems happy. Like when you watch them, they've been a surprisingly pleasant watch and he seems like in a good spot. So I don't want to jinx it because as annoying as he's been over the years, and you know my stance on Kyrie, I just don't trust him.

And I just feel like a seven-year track record of imploding kind of has to start to mean something after a while. But it is fun to watch him play basketball. And it does feel like he's got a specific spot on this team. They don't have to rely on him too much. It's very similar to where he was in 15 and 16 and 17 with the Cavs, where he could kind of float in and out like a cat with LeBron. It's like, I'm feeling it.

Oh, all right. Let's give Kyrie the ball. The shooting going down, though, it's a small sample size, but they also haven't been playing tough teams yet. And I'm just monitoring that because with guards, it can kind of sometimes go sideways pretty fast. And you don't realize it happened until after it happened. Just quickly going backwards to number 16, New Orleans, because they lost Ingram, they lost McCollum already. And they have this Hawkins who they

drafted that everybody liked coming out of the draft, but the fact that he can play right away has actually kind of saved them a little bit. I still feel like we need to do some sort of ceremony or something with them. We need the people from The Conjuring to just do something with New Orleans basketball. It just shouldn't be this bad every year. Your team shouldn't have two, three major injuries every year. You should have good luck at some point. And this goes back to the 70s. Remember, when they moved, when they became the New Orleans Jazz, their first major, major giant trade was for Gail Goodrich with the Lakers. They had to give up two first rounders. And he immediately blew out his Achilles. He played, I'm going to say,

less than a season. And one of the picks turned out to be Magic Johnson. So that's where we started with New Orleans. And it's been awful ever since. Nothing good has happened in this team other than they've won a couple of lotteries. But even the lotteries they won, they won the Anthony Davis when they were in Charlotte before they got to New Orleans. They bring him to New Orleans and he wants to leave. And then they win the Zion thing,

which seemed like the luckiest thing that ever happened to them. And meanwhile, we're still waiting for him to play two straight months. So conjuring people, something. We need something to happen with that team. All right. The top 10. We're on a good pace right now. Where are we at? Yeah. Feeling good. This is working. Young and hungry is the next thing. We got Oklahoma City at number 10 and Atlanta at number nine. If you remember, Atlanta was one of the,

these are the two teams I was going nuts for before the season for the over-unders. I love the Atlanta over-under. I love the New Orleans over. And I like what I've seen from both. OKC's four and three, Atlanta's four and three. Atlanta's sixth in offense. And that's notable because Trae Young has sucked again, shooting wise. He's 28% from three. Last year, he was 33% from three. This might not be happening, the next Steph Curry thing. What age does he have to hit where we have to go, all right, he's not the next Steph Curry?

Because I think I hit that age last year when I was age 53. I think I hit that for Trae. They killed Minnesota, which is notable. We'll talk about Minnesota in a second. But I watched that game. They really, really, really handled them. I like this Atlanta team. And I think there's a path for them to be a three or a four seed

if Trey can get going. And then OKC, trade for a big already. You're a guy short. Stop. You guys have a chance to be a 50-win team. What are you doing? I want to see what's going on with Josh Giddey in about two weeks, whether it looks different than

it has for the first couple weeks here. I don't like he's not going to the free throw line at all. 1.3 a game. 26% three point shooting, which we knew he can't shoot threes. But, um, there's also like the chat piece of it seems like it's throwing them off.

And now I've watched games where they've taken them out at crunch time. Um, it's, I just thought he would make a leap and it feels like he's gone backwards. And it's not just statistically, just eye test wise, they seem very comfortable when he's not out there. And I'm just monitoring that because they have 10 million first round picks and 100 million second round picks. And if they ever really wanted to make a move, I don't know if they'd put Giddy on the table

because I think he's like 17 years old. I know that's impossible, but I think he got drafted when he was 14. But that seems like the most expendable guy. They're J-Dub, Chet, SGA, Dort. Like this team is incredibly fun to watch. But Giddy's been the disappointment. So monitoring that. All right, top eight. The number 18 gets its own group.

The Enigma, Milwaukee. 27th in defense. And they were, I think, 29th just behind the Wizards until the last game. They're 30th in transition defense according to Cleaning the Glass. And it feels worse. They just seem slow. I'm going to continue

to say it. They seem slow. And Giannis is like shot out of a cannon. They win the game the other night against Brooklyn because of Giannis. Like he just single-handedly won the game. Cam Thomas put up 43 on them. Cam Thomas, they didn't have anybody to guard him. And this is what I was telling you all summer. And I was telling him before the season, like guards are going to kill this team. We're already seeing it. And they just look slow. And I'm just not sure they're better than they were last year. I really like if you, if they had just not made the damn trade, kept those picks and just hired Nick Nurse instead of Griffin, who, you know, Griffin loses his top assistant for the season, Red Flag. He tries this weird defense the first four games or people swarming around and they're just giving up fast break layups left and right and easy transition stuff. And now they're trying like

a drop defense, but I just wonder what, is there an alternate universe where they just hired Nick Nurse and keep Drew? They're probably the best team in the league or one of the top three. Interesting piece with them, second in free throw rate because of Dame because Dame still get in the line 10 times a game. He's not shooting that well yet, 40%, 33% from three and can't guard anybody.

But I'm not crossing them off because Giannis is out of his mind. So we'll see. We'll see how they... We'll see Dame gets comfortable and all that stuff. Not crossing them off. But it's hard for me to imagine a team that is this slow and plays defense like this is going to be heard from for four straight rounds in the playoff.

I'll just say it. Next category, too soon to say. Phoenix, they're 3-4. Lakers are 3-4. I don't have a lot to say about these guys other than we haven't seen Phoenix with their full team yet. KD's on pace for 2,900 minutes. Good luck.

I mentioned last week Davis was playing 40-plus minutes a game. We had a good laugh. Guess who hurt his groin last night? Anthony Davis. There's a too-many-guys possibility with the Lakers too. They just might assign too many dudes, and somehow they still don't have somebody better than Cam Reddish to take the biggest shot of,

uh, of the Miami game. But this team not counting him out. LeBron looks great. I mean, LeBron, I gotta say LeBron might look better than he did last year. And they have just tradable stuff like the Rui contract,

Russell, all this stuff that they can start thinking about in December. Top five. These guys get their own category. The Sleeper, Minnesota. Watched them beat my team in overtime last night. I told my dad this was probably going to happen because we didn't have Derek White. Celtics still undefeated

without Derek White, by the way. Minnesota's 4-2. They're first in defense and they've beaten Boston and Denver already. And I think it's real. I really do. I think it's real. They're just big and hard to play. And they have two guys who can defend on the wings. McDaniels was awesome last night against the Celtics, against Tatum and Brown. And when Edwards wants to play defense, which he's never bad, but I'm saying when he wants to dial it up like he did in that one possession against Tatum last night, five

fouls, still shut down Tatum. They're just an absolute bitch to play if they're getting anything from Conley. Now there's been nights like Atlanta beat them and Conley had a bad game and got beaten up by Moran Young. But I've watched a lot of them this year and I've been kind of like quietly betting them too. They're plus 8.2 point differential. I think that's real. They're only 19th offense, offensive rating. And the reason is because Towns, who has good plus minus stats, it's not like when he's out there, it's bad for them, but he's averaging 16 to nine this year, 38% shooting, 24% from three. And if you watched the Celtics game last night, he was one of the only reasons the Celtics were in the game. I mean, they were guarding Drew Holiday in the overtime. It was embarrassing for him. It seems like their

best lineup might be Gobert, Nas Reed, McDaniels, Conley, and Edwards. I don't know if they want to admit that yet, but Towns both feels expendable to me, but also feels like one of the reasons they're really good because they always have these two big guys and they just have a lot of size all over the place, but also the ability to guard wings.

This team is better than I thought they were going to be and I'm taking them seriously. I have only two West teams above them, Denver and Golden State. And it's too early to say they're definitively ahead of the Lakers and Phoenix. But they're one of the five best teams in the West.

This is where we are. This is real. Edwards, what he did last night. Now, of course, Joe Mazzulla. Celtics get a stop. 10 seconds left. And no timeout. And Jalen takes a 26-foot three that misses.

We go into overtime. Anthony Edwards, who is one of the reasons the Celtics were able to get into overtime because he was making just terrible decisions of regulation, but this is what he does. All of a sudden, he gets hot. All of a sudden, he feels it. And you know when it's happening. Well, everyone knows about Joe Mazzulla because he didn't call timeout the entire overtime as Ant is just torching us and going nuts

and feeding off the crowd. You know what helps? A timeout. Minnesota's really good. I'm signing that in pen. Minnesota is good in pen, not pencil. Top four, the contenders. I got Philly and Golden State here, number four, number three.

I love where Philly's at. They survived all the hardened stuff. They survived some possible and B drama. I didn't like the way he looked opening night. I like the way he looks now. He seems engaged. They're more fun to watch. The ball moves.

The Nick Nurse thing has been as predicted, at least early on. The number one in offensive rating, seventh in defense, and more importantly than anything else, Embiid is going. Now, they get Covington and they get Batum. They actually have some size to throw at the Celtics, and they're playing the Celtics on Wednesday night, and that's going to be an interesting matchup because White will be back. I still think the Celtics have major advantages in the backcourt, they're going to have some people to throw it and beat, but we'll see what

happens to them. Beat Porzingis. Number three, Golden State. Seventh offense, 13th defense for ratings. They're six and two. And they've had some good road wins, which they weren't having last year. Some good end of the game wins, which wasn't necessarily happened last year. And the chemistry, which they can't stop talking about. It's like enough. How bad are you going to make Jordan Poole feel? Like he did get punched in the face by Draymond

to start last season. I'm not, I refuse to believe he's the Ebola virus. Draymond, like I respect Draymond. I like Draymond. I've enjoyed watching him. And I think he's actually been a really underrated basketball player. Maybe ease up on the pool stuff. Pool's not saying anything.

He's not fighting back. We get it. We know how you feel. I just don't think you need to comment on the chemistry anymore. It just feels, it's starting to feel mean. It's like when Stephen A keeps going after Max and taking shots at Max. It's like, you won. Why are you still talking about this?

You already won. One point on Golden State. Chris Paul has been such a massive win for them. I think his assist turnover ratio is 62 and 6 right now. But Steve Kerr, all he cares about is no turnovers, protect the boards. Those are his two favorite things. The team was too sloppy the last couple years. Chris Paul comes in now.

They have no turnovers with the second unit. He just runs a professional thing. This is what he does. I think the trade has been spectacular for them. We'll see if he can stay healthy. Number two, Boston. Still undefeated with Derek White, as I mentioned. Third offensive rating, second defensive rating.

155 points against Indiana, which was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen in a random basketball game that meant nothing. There's still some Jalen Brown stuff that I'm monitoring. Like, Why are we ISOing you for the last shot of the game in Minnesota? And why didn't Joe Mazzulla call timeout so we

could set up a better play? Jalen's good. He's one of the best 30, 35 guys in the league. Do I want him taking the ISO hero ball top of the key shot on the road against a really good Minnesota team? I don't.

I don't. Does Jalen feel like he, because of the contract, he's now allowed to do that? Or can we go back to Tatum? If White's out there, maybe he has the ball in the game, but I'm just monitoring.

There's been some hero ball stuff that I haven't loved, but hard to complain when you're 6-1 and you look great. See how they do against Philly. Denver, 7-1 is my last one. The bench thing, the bench experiment worked out great. Murray's hurt. He's got the hammy thing. Monitoring that.

Don't like hammy injuries. Take your time, Jamal Murray. You got Jokic on your team. Jokic is 28-13-8. Last time he played the best game I've seen anyone play all season against New Orleans. He just completely demolished him. I had a friend text me, Burr Duncan, meaning hybrid of Burr and Duncan. I thought that was perfect. For the season, 63% shooting, 39% on threes, and 75% free throw shooting. There's a faint chance he could be in the 60, 40, 80 club this year. And that won't even be the most incredible statistical achievement.

Denver's still the best team. If they're healthy, I think they're going to win the title again. I picked Denver over Boston for the season. Nothing I have seen in the first two plus weeks has made me change that opinion. So that's my power poll. Denver's number one. And then I'm also going to have Adam Silver in the power poll. I'm just going to go thumbs up or thumbs down. He's going to close each one. This week, Adam Silver, there was a story. He took responsibility for the All-Star game now being bad. And he said it was, he's talked to the players and it's his fault because they, too much pregame stuff,

the halftime's too long, the players can't get in the flow, they're asking too much from the players the day of the game. When did Adam Silver turn into like a soccer mom?

Like, the All-Star game has sucked for the entire century. There's been no point during the 21st century where people were like, the All-Star game's awesome. And he wasn't the commissioner

for the first 12 years. So now it's your fault. The All-Star game sucks. Stop doing stuff like this, Adam Silver. Like, I gotta say, I kind of miss Stern.

I just don't feel like Stern would have been like, the All-Star game's my fault. I'm sorry, guys. I'll make the halftime shorter. The All-Star game is the player's fault because they don't give a shit about it. And it's embarrassing. And it's their fault. It's not your fault, Adam Silver. I'm going to put my Robin Williams beard on. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. Anyway, thumbs down for Adam Silver this week. Come on. Be the commissioner. Do your thing. Start worrying about

how teams have too many timeouts and the instant replay reviews are too long. Don't worry about your culpability in the all-star game being bad. All right. That's the Power, Paul. Coming back, Malcolm Gladwell. Cash in on balling out this NBA season with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, new customers get $150 of bonus bets with any winning $5 Moneyline bet. That is $150 if your team wins. I'm going to be putting up a same game parlay on my Twitter feed on Wednesday. Something with Spurs-Knicks,

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turn dimes and dollars this season. Fandle, official sportsbook partner of the NBA. First online real money wager only. $5 pregame money line wager required. First online real money wager only. $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. See terms at sportsbook.fando.com. 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.

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So why not grab some Miller Lights today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. All right, my friend Malcolm Gladwell is here. We're gonna talk audiobooks later. We're gonna talk sports star stuff to begin with. I felt like the last time you came on, we talked about all the stuff that's wrong

with high school sports and club sports. And a lot of people dug it. People were like, thank you for talking about this. I sent this to my friends. I really appreciate this. It's amazing how that topic resonates with people. And yet it's not really a major topic. Yeah, I don't know. I don't get it because like the number of people who are involved in some way with their children's sports in America is massive. Yeah, right. It's like, I mean, and I've never met anyone who didn't have a strong feeling about the way new sports are are conducted in this country. So it's like, yeah, I don't know why it's talked about so little. We did that conversation at the Y in New York with Linda Flanagan and Lauren Fleshman. And it was amazing. The response we got was the same thing you're hearing. Just kind of people were at last, someone's talking about this. I think people feel the most passionate about it because they're either involved directly

or they've heard other people talk about it, but there's kind of no outlet for it was my big takeaway. But what was interesting was nobody was like, you guys are actually wrong. Here's why the system works. Everybody who mentioned it to me was like, thank you for mentioning this. This is an absolute quagmire.

I can't believe nobody will fix this and it feels like it's getting worse. So anyway, we decided we're going to make this like a quarterly appearance, a sports art type of thing. Before we get into some of the sports ideas you have, they're doing this weird mid-season tournament, the NBA. It launched on Friday. They called it the NBA in-season tournament. For some reason, they decided not to have a good title for it.

Maybe they're going to throw a corporate sponsor on at some point. And what they did was they changed the courts for the games. They told us there was more urgency with brackets. It's all leading to this Las Vegas event that people are supposed to care about. And I both am outraged by this because there's really no stakes other than people make more money. There's two extra games for the teams to make the semifinals and then potentially the finals. At the same time, I kind of liked it.

I felt like the games were pretty competitive and it did make me think like when we get to December and it's the Final Four and it's in Vegas and it's in this event that everybody goes to Vegas for and it becomes like this kind of basketball week during this month when football normally kills them. I think there's going to be some cool aspects to it. The biggest thing for me will just be like, oh, if these teams play these like playoff games, this will be a snapshot of what we might expect in the spring. Almost like how I always wanted the All-Star game to be a snapshot

of what talent matters and it never ends up being that. But there were some pieces that I liked. You're looking at this from afar. What did you like and not like about it? Well, this actually, one of, you know, I came with my, I have three sports star ideas. This actually is linked very much to one of my three things I was going to talk about today, which is that there's way too little variation

in professional sports. And that anytime you do get some kind of variation, you get, I think you get a commensurate interest increase in span in fan interest. Like, of course they should be doing, doing more of this kind of experimentation. They can't replay the same thing 82 times a year and expect us to have an undiminished level of enthusiasm.

I love it. I think they should do more of this stuff. I'm going to talk about some other ideas I have along these very lines for making the game a little more unusual and idiosyncratic is what I want. So you're pro-idiosyncratic. And I think I'm with you because of the way society works these days where, you know, it's the ADD on steroids generation. Yeah. And to just be like, here's our six game, 82, 82 games, six months season.

And then there's a playoffs at the end. It doesn't seem like that's enough anymore. So here was my, here was the thing I was thinking about that led me to on this. I was thinking, what is the most, what was the most striking sports event of the last 25 years for me? And I think it was, this may surprise you, the 2009 British open when Watson, remember Watson bogeys the 18th on the, on Sunday and goes into a playoff with Stewart Sink and loses. So he comes within one stroke, a 59-year-old comes within one

stroke of winning one of the most important golf tournaments of the year. That is amazing. And the reason, of course, that he was able to come that close at 59 is because of the way golf, because of the nature of the sport,

but also because golf has a huge amount of variation in the four majors, right? There are courses that reward the young power guys. And then a Scottish Lynx course is set up in such a way that it's actually possible for an older golfer to win that's of enormous value to golf and i don't understand why more sports don't build in that level of variation that give that allows for those occasional every couple of year

totally weird occurrences like like watson in the mix late on Sunday. And so I was thinking, what would that be for basketball and football? Well, hold on. Wait a second. Before you do this, the Premier League is probably the best example of this, right? Like when Leicester City won that year, part of the reason they won was because the schedule is short enough that you can actually have kind of a small sample size, huge outlier. Oh my God, I can't believe this team's winning. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So I was thinking for basketball and football, it would be, there should be something

more idiosyncratic about home field. Because we know that the home field advantages has been diminishing over time for a number of reasons. And I think that's a problem. You want, I think, a robust home field advantage. And I was wondering, what if we said that you could, at the beginning of every season, you would allow every NBA team and NFL team to, if they wanted to, reduce the number of timeouts during the course of a game. So suppose I'm the Warriors and I say, all right, we're only, if you play in San Francisco, you only get two 30 second timeouts a game and none in the last two minutes of any half. So, you know, so the road, you're saying the road team. So, so if there's seven timeouts total, the road team gets four instead of seven. Yes. Well, everyone does. Both the Warriors and

the road team have a diminished... So every time you play in San Francisco, you know you're playing a different kind of game. You have to play, you have to make more decisions on the court, the coach is going to be less involved, the players have to solve problems, and the game is going to be a lot quicker at the end of every half that's a condition of warriors games so other teams will say no no we want the full compliment we want to play slow the traditional way but you know that that so you the warriors would then build a team that's constructed around exploiting that particular idiosyncrasy and other teams would be forced with it is to make a decision do we also adapt also adapt to warrior ball? Or do we try to be as different as possible and force the warriors out of their comfort zone when they come and play us? That's interesting, right? You could do that in football, too. You could say, you don't want to change, you don't want to lower or or raise the basket you don't want something dramatic

that's dumb you want to do a little another thought i i had was what if you allowed home teams to subtly redraw the three-point line you can't make it you can't make it you can't move it in so what you have is the what you have is the minimum but you can tinker you can make it you can make it further away from the basket. If you want to take away, for example, the corner three, you want to say every time you go to Boston, there's no corner three anymore, right? That's interesting.

You have to adapt, right? And Boston can build its team around no more corner threes at home. That's just the way we play in Boston. And you adapt or die if you want to come here. I think having 15 different variations on a three-point line and a couple of different variations on timeouts for NBA franchises would make the game just that much more interesting. So I've heard the three-point line idea in various forms because people compare it to baseball parks.

Every baseball park's different, right? Exactly. And we like that about baseball. We like that about baseball. And especially we've seen teams build different types of rosters compared to what their park is. So the thought would be with the three-point line, somebody could say, oh, ours is two feet out on the top of the key, but we're doing that because we have Steph Curry. And this is now an advantage for us.

We could get rid of corner threes and we can play big ball. I don't think that will ever happen, but I like the concept of it. I don't think it should happen for the playoffs, but during the regular season, I think it would be fun. I think what you stumbled

into with timeouts there, I'd never thought about that before. That's really interesting because I I'm trying to think like, how could they have better stakes for this in-season tournament? And maybe one of the stakes is when we get to the playoffs, the team that won the tournament gets one more timeout each half than anyone they play. So if there's seven timeouts on each side or whatever, now it's like the other team

only gets five. That's it. But the home team still gets seven. It's a slight competitive advantage, but you'd actually have to fight for it and help the teams during the season. I also think for the playoffs, the higher seed, lower seed stuff, because you're right. Home field advantage has been getting devalued

I think for a variety of reasons over the last few years, but we've really seen it in baseball the worst. And in baseball now, somebody like the Diamondbacks, they can win 83, 84 games, whatever they want. It just doesn't matter because they can go anywhere and win. But I think the concept of home field advantage, but then adding little gimmicks like timeouts, making it so that if you have the one seed in basketball, somebody's got to beat you five times out of seven at home in the first round.

Or you get five of the seven games at home. Stuff like that, I think, might be where we're going. Like, just little tweaks, but they're impactful, you know? What you want is have individual franchises have clear personalities, and that's what I'm getting at with this. So you could say, you know, a Popovich coach team is a team that basically

Plays without timeouts So Pop says, in our house There's no timeouts We're almost playing European World Championship style The game's just going to have a flow It's going to have a flow, and if you can't play that way You're just going to lose in San Antonio

I'm the best coach in the game I'm going to prepare my team so they can play that way I'm always going to make sure game. I'm going to prepare my team so they can play that way. I'm always going to make sure I have a point guard who's experienced, who can steady the team on his own. Like that idea that, oh, that's what San Antonio stands for. That really, you know, that raises my level of interest in San Antonio. And that's all, I mean, the more... You want variation on a franchise-by-franchise

level. More variation, if not just by franchise level. Yeah, because right now we have it a little bit with how the teams assemble. Like, the Clippers just made that James Harden trade. And now, you know, they sacrificed a lot of rebounding and some defense. But they think they're going to have more

of this harder to defend offense and threes will probably be more important why are the clippings clippers stopping with harden what i want to know is like if once you've gone as far as harden like who else who's next which why don't they start getting guys out of retirement with you know major psychological problems and then the team like at this point really you know the only thing they should do the best thing they can do to to normalize their team is to bring in someone who's more problematic than harden so harden feels normal right you don't want so he's not the biggest outlier yeah you don't want harden to feel like oh i'm the i'm the problem child

you want him to feel normal so you got to bring in someone who's even more problematic than him so harden feels i don't even know who that would be but there's got to be bring in someone who's even more problematic than him. So Harden feels, I don't even know who that would be, but there's got to be someone out there who's like a kind of more of a troublemaker. Well, he's demanded three, three trades in the last three and a half years. So I think he's probably the most problematic unless you went the Kyrie route with the, um, one other thing with the timeouts, what if the team had the right to make it like 30 seconds for a timeout instead of two and a half minutes?

So they kept the pace. I think the league would probably have a conniption if they lost TV timeouts. But this goes to one of my theories that I've been arguing forever. I think halftime should be longer. And I think halftime, just add five minutes. I actually go to basketball games. I don't just watch them. And the halftime is always too short. And it's like people, they go up, they go to the bathroom,

they go get food, drinks, whatever. And the food drink situation is getting better. They have those things where you can walk into those, the things where you don't have to pay. You just kind of put your credit card, you walk in and then you just take stuff out and somehow they know how to bill you. But I'd like more time in halftime and then more of a flow in the two halves versus like the stoppages with the timeouts and they suck in person. There's jumbotron shit. Got to listen to like blaring music. These idiots come out and shoot t-shirts at you. And it's just like, who is this for? Nobody likes this. I don't, I've never understood. I thought, I think the NBA and the NFL undermine their long-term relationship with fans, particularly younger fans, with the way they drag out the end of games.

I just think, it's never made any sense to me. I actually think as a general rule, there shouldn't be any timeouts in any sport in the last two minutes. It just should be, it should be go. That's thrilling when you actually experience a sport that just flows i had on sunday there's football but when benyama was playing my son loves when benyama go figure

everyone under 20 is like the all-time in on him so it was a close game it was crunch time and he came down to watch the end and there was like a stop and they had to review something. And then they kept reviewing it. And my son was like, dad, this sucks. Why do they do it this way? Like, I just can't finish the game. I've been here for five minutes. They haven't played yet. And I was like, I don't know.

This is my theory on this. And I don't know if I'm right, but I feel like I'm right. Is the Donahue thing like blew their brains with this stuff. It just, once Donahue happened. their brains with this stuff. It just... Once Donahue happened, and that was so catastrophic for them, and so damaging, and so traumatic, and whether he was the only

referee involved, we'll never know. But from that point on, they were just so adamant about getting stuff right and not having these moments and not having stuff that could be thrown back later that they're almost willing to sacrifice the quality of the last five minutes. But then you watch something like the world championships and the flow is just better. And it also, it goes back to what you were saying about there's more unpredictability when there's more flow,

because then you can have runs and weird momentum things. And, you know, you can't stop. I still remember being at the Olympics in 2012 when Spain was coming back and LeBron was on the bench and we couldn't get him in because the game was just going for like four straight minutes. You're not allowed to sub unless there's an actual stop. And it was just going and we couldn't call timeout. It was like, oh my God, we might not be able to get LeBron back in the game. But that was to me, like an outlier moment that we don't have. It also robs us of meltdowns. You know, meltdowns, if you, in other sports,

like golf always allows you to see the meltdown, you know, Norman falling apart in the Masters in whatever year that was. Right. And that's part of what's so compelling about golf

is that the meltdown happens in real time and it can't be stopped. Right. There's nowhere for the players There's no. There's no timeout. There's no intervention of a coach. And that's insanely interesting. And in basketball and football though, there's always an intervention the minute we see the beginnings of any kind of meltdown. Unless it's Joe Mazzulla. Joe Mazzulla is the only one. He still subscribes to the old theory of, let me just have my players go down in flames.

I'm just going to stand here. The only, remember, was it, who was the, oh, Nick Anderson missing all those free throws. Right. Remember with the Magic? Yeah. That's a rare example. It's only in that situation that we begin to,

that we see real kind of basketball meltdowns, but there should be more. Like, if you remove, if you take away some of those timeouts, we will see rookie errors will start to be really significant. And, like, fascinating. Like,

watching some, watching a 20-year-old cope with playoff basketball without the intervention of a 50-year-old coach, that's, you know, that, I'm going to watch that. Like, that's... I felt like baseball playoff basketball without the intervention of a 50-year-old coach. I'm going to watch that. I felt like baseball added some of that with some of the tweaks they did where they cut off the amount of times you can throw a pickoff throw to first base. The mound trips, the shorter 15-second pitch clock,

guys having to run in from the bullpen and they immediately are pitching with the 90 seconds. There was way more variance with the relievers this year. I don't, I don't know what the stats were, but I just know in my AL keeper league, like any reliever we had, the guy would just occasionally just get annihilated. And I always felt like,

I wonder if it's because sometimes, and then the 10th inning piece where they get, you know, they come in with the guy on second base. That was another one. So I think for the most part, baseball did a decent job of fixing some of this. But I think what they didn't fix was the totality of the season and how to break that up. I actually want to talk about that. Let's take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at

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58 answered questions, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high-intensity focused ultrasound waves, zero incisions. And that very same day, two steady hands. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special. Learn more at sunnybrook.ca slash special. So one thing I was thinking with baseball, maybe this could work with the NBA too, off your theory about kind of just making things weirder, a little more consistently, is whether these seasons need to be separated into

twos or threes with bigger stakes. Baseball is a good example of this, where it's just one long season. Basketball will have, there's always a team that gets going in the second half of the season, and maybe it's a little too late, or they were able to play in the playing game, I think, has helped that to some degree. But if they're trying to make this in-season tournament a thing, I'm wondering, do you just split the season in the twos? You still keep the overall records, but there's still some incentive for somebody in the second half. Like maybe there's two playoff spots available or one playoff spot, something like that, where it's not just like one long season that if you had some shit happen,

you know, you can go sideways. The Lakers are a good example of this last year. They had like a terrible first half and a really good second half. But what do you think of like segmenting stuff? This is interesting. This feeds into idea number two. Okay.

Which is, I wanted to revisit some NBA draft ideas. And I'll get to that in a second because you just gave me another NBA draft idea. Okay. Which is, what if we split the season in two and draft seeding was based on only half of the season's performance? In other words, at game 41,

we take the standings and that's how we... We can do the second 41 games if you want, or we can do the first 41. But so if we want to solve the tanking problem, we can solve the second 41 games if you want, or we can do the first 41. But so, if we want to solve the tanking problem, we can solve the tanking problem in half the season. Right?

Right. You just say, whenever it is, at 41, that's it. That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the draft seating.

And now we're, now it's, all bets are off. Now everyone is incentivized to play as hard as they can for the home stretch. Or you cap it at like 60. The 60th game, that's a screenshot.

We freeze it. That's the order. There's no reason why. Because now we have this ridiculous situation where an entire season is compromised by a team that's tanking. Right? Why would you compromise the entire season? If there's no way around the compromising, and I think there is, that will get to my idea,

but then just do it for some portion of the season. And then we have a second, we have what you're talking about. We have a very different feel to the balance of the season now, right? Incentives have changed. The way people play has changed.

Stakes have changed. So you really can, if you're out there and you're getting bored changed. So you really can, you know, if you're out there and you're getting bored with the 82-game slog, you perk up at the end of the first round and then, I think, probably throughout the second, all of a sudden, you're kind of,

you're re-engaged with what's going on on the court. There's two things that happened last year that support this. One is Damian Lillard, who was having a good offensive year, terrible defensive year, but a good offensive year for Portland. And they basically shut him down down the

stretch to get a better draft pick. And it paid off. They got Scoot Henderson with the third pick. The fact that you're taking somebody who is hitting his mid-30s who might only have so many years left, this happened with the Warriors with Steph a couple of years ago too. And you're just like canceling out one of the,

one of their years, you know, these guys have 12 to 15 really good years in them and you're just eliminating one of the years, but it's the right move. Yeah. And I think that one I've never been able to reconcile. It's the right move for the France franchise. It's not the right move for the player right move. Yeah. And I think that one, I've never been able to reconcile. It's the right move for the franchise.

It's not the right move for the player. Yeah. So how do you fix that? Then the second piece of this is, what was the thing that happened? Oh, Dallas. So Dallas has a chance to make the playing game and they have Luka Doncic,

who's one of the five or six best players in the world. They throw away the last 10 days of the season because they know like, our team sucks this year. We're not winning the title. We have this top 10 protected pick. If we do this now, we get to keep the pick and that's going to help us next season. I thought it was awful. I just don't think that's what sports about, especially if you have Luca who can just go to toe to toe with anybody, but there's a case for it, right?

All right. Long-term, this is smarter. So then I'm getting the 10th pick and they take Derek lively, this young kid from Duke who has been really good for them as this rim runner energy guy. He's 19. Like I,

it actually seems like they might've lucked out with the pick. So they were right. So they're right to reasons. Yeah. They're right to just throw away the lucked out with the pick. So they were right. So they're right to just throw away the last 10 days of the season. And this is kind of the league we have. And if I was the commissioner, I'd be like, we have to fix this. And that's what worries me about him. I don't feel like Adam Silver really feels like an inclination to actually fix any of this stuff. Yeah. So here's, I think it's time to bring back an idea,

which was talked about quite a lot about 10 years ago, which is the NBA Futures draft. Which if you remember, this is the idea that you can never own your own pick. That what you pick, you have two drafts. In the first of the drafts, you pick someone else's pick in order to finish.

And then the second draft, you draft a player with that pick. So if I'm, you know, if I'm the Spurs last year and I have the number one pick, I pick the Wizards pick. And then I do that at the beginning of the season.

And at the end of the season, I exercise my Wizards pick on. So I'm no longer incentivized by my own standing. I'm incentivized by the standing of my. So you're almost betting on somebody else's incompetence. Well, the funny thing is like 10 teams have somebody else's pick over the next couple of years. So you're kind of living your dream. We're already living that. So they, so what happens is 538 has a whole thing on this idea a lot of people have this idea but they write a letter to silver in 2015 and silver writes back and he says you know

thank you blah blah this has some but he says ultimately he says uh i don't like the idea because you're still incentivized to tank under that he he doesn't use the word tank, under that system because you know that by finishing last, you're going to get rewarded with the chance to pick the pick of another lousy team. So this is an empirical question, and I actually did some homework, Bill. So we have two issues here. The reason we tank now is that the number one pick is really valuable. And the reason it's valuable is that we do a really good job of predicting which player coming out of college is going to be a great pro. Like there's only really been in the last 15 years, one miss,

and that's Anthony Bennett. Everybody else has been pretty, pretty good pick. So the question is how does the predictive value of picking the best player in college compare to the predictive power or accuracy of predicting which of your fellow teams is going to suck? And the answer is, we do a really good job of predicting who's going to be good out of college and a terrible job of predicting which team is going to suck the most the following year. So I went back to last 25 years and I compared how many times has, so Vegas, as you know, does the preseason odds. How many times has the team that Vegas picked to be the worst performer in the upcoming season actually been the worst performer in the last 25 years? Give me your guess. Well,

it's going to happen this year with Washington. It looks like. So that, so that was, that would be the first time. I would say probably, probably six out of 25. It's four,

25, four. Yeah. It's terrible. It's, it's, it's a 16%. So, wow. So it's like, so we have no way we really so basically what

we're saying is we really have no idea about which the worst which team is going to be the worst in the league and so the value of finishing last and getting to to pick the worst performers take the worst performers draft pick in the next draft is actually not that great. It's nowhere near as valuable as having the number one pick yourself. So we really have diminished

the incentive to tank if we go to a futures draft. And then I looked at how many times if you look at kind of Vegas's preseason odds, how accurate are they at predicting the bottom five performers in the following year? And the answer is they get about two out of the five right over the last 25 years. It's about 40%, which again is really quite low. So what we're doing, if you go to a futures draft, what you're basically saying

is you can tank and you can get the so-called benefit of being able to pick who you think is going to have the best pick in the following draft, but it's not very valuable. And you have to really have to ask yourself whether it's worth throwing away a season and eliminating your fan base for a pick that's, I mean, it's worth something, but it's nowhere near worth the value of your own pick in the current system. So I like, I think I was surprised to read Silver's letter from that long ago because he basically says without any evidence, oh, it's, you know, the incentive to tank remains as strong as the current system.

It's just not true. There isn't the same incentive to tank with a futures draft. Also, the other thing about a futures draft, it is, from a fan's perspective, so much more interesting if no one holds their own pick. Imagine, so you're, imagine if...

I'm telling you, we're going to be there in four years. I don't think anyone's going to have their own pick four years from now. We are getting there. But imagine you're Milwaukee and you suck, and Boston owns Milwaukee's pick in the following draft. Yeah. And there's a Wemby player on the horizon.

There is no way Milwaukee is going to let Boston have the number one pick. You're going to go crazy. When we had the three Brooklyn Nets picks from the KG trade, the other fun part of this was you have this team you just get to root against. I'm watching Nets games and texting with my dad during these Nets games, rooting against them. That's an interesting one about the draft.

I feel like they still haven't figured out the right way to do it. Yeah. But wait, do you like the futures? Would you go for the futures? I think it might be too weird for me. Like, if I had my choice,

I would probably just rather the 10 teams that couldn't even make the play-in game just go into a lottery, but they all have equal odds. The four teams

that get bounced from the play-in, they're in there, but maybe they get half the odds and we just do it that way. I don't want to incentivize people to be bad. I think that's one of, and I've written about this forever. Like I just think what, cause it, what it allows people to do is be incompetent and then sell like the illusion of, Oh, we, we might be good if this pick turns out, like if you're a Washington fan right now,

why are you going to the games? You're not going to see Jordan pool and Kyle Kuzma. You're going because it's like the tickets are cheap. Cause you can get them anywhere for nothing, but you're going there and you're kind of hoping they lose. Yeah. That's six months. But I'm not sure.

So your idea would, you would rather you say, throw the bottom 10 teams in a hat and they pick out, they pick out the draft order that way. I would just make the percentages way closer to random. Because the thing they're afraid of is, let's say somebody,

like let's say OKC last year, they're 42 and 40. They actually make the plan and they lose. And then they get the number one pick and they get Wim Benyam and they add to their team and be like, oh my God, well, that's terrible. He should have gone to a bad team. It's like, shitty? Maybe it's actually good. We grew up on the 80s Celtics and Lakers and Sixers and Pistons and there was four or five good teams and it was awesome. And the league is so deep now from a talent standpoint that I don't think we need to reward incompetence anymore. I don't think the Wizards should be rewarded because they put together a

terrible team. And then that would also tie into a bunch of trades that we see all the time that are always like these sketchy trades. Somebody taking some contract that sucks if they can get a pick. And I don't know, competitively, I just don't like it. The real answer is relegation, but they'll never do it. Like relegation would be the greatest if it was just a 24 team NBA. And then you had the two expansion teams plus the six that don't make it. And they're with eight other teams and they're just in the B league. Basically the players would never go for it, but it's the best idea. It's by far the best idea. Because what you get is, what we're interested in is creating

basically laboratories of innovation, right? We want teams to try interesting, weird stuff. With relegation, you create this massive incentive to experiment. If you get relegated, the amount of money on the table, if you manage to get reinstated in Division I, is so enormous. Your patience with incompetence is now zero. Your willingness to tolerate lazy players, incompetent coaches, bad ownership, I mean, on and on and on just goes out the window. It's a much better kind of marketplace for producing quality basketball. One of the things that worries me about, I was just talking to somebody that cares about this stuff recently about this offline. One of the things that worries me about the NBA right now is they lost some influential owners and people from the 2000s and the early 2010s, or those people got old.

People like Peter Holt and Dr. Buss. These are people that really were forward thinking. They really kind of lost Cuban in some ways too. The role Cuban served in the 2000s was so important to the NBA. He was just like throwing the fucking chainsaw in the hot tub. There was this old guard and he came in and he was just like, why do we do this? Why do we do this? Why do we think like this? Why can't I spend money on my locker rooms? And just kind of jolted them out of this old way they did stuff. I don't see people like that in the same way anymore with the league. And I don't see people that really care about what the league should be or how to keep making it better. Or the stuff like James

Harden asking, you know, getting out of three trades in three years, just how damaging that is. Doesn't seem like there's some sort of, you know, like almost in The Godfather when the five families would kind of determine stuff. And it was like, all right, we're all competing with each other, but ultimately we've got to all figure this out together. I don't see that anymore with the league. Well, I know you had Balmer on the show once.

I think Balmer, I mean, I think I have nothing against him personally, but I do think it is problematic when you have a guy who's worth $103 billion owning a sports franchise. All of the, you know, the sports franchise has a set of incentives in place to govern the behavior of owners and their financial incentives. We penalize you for doing certain things that we think will create. There's no financial penalty that has even the slightest impact on Ballmer. Right. It's going to start.

So next year, there's going to be some things in there where it's like, you're going to have less flexibility with draft picks and free agent signings and being able to package players in trades, but it's still not punitive enough. I mean, he added, he's paying 128 million in luxury tax this year for his team on top of the

payroll. He could, he could pay that for hundreds of years and still have money in the bank, right? It's very destabilizing. I mean, this is not the only area of American life where extraordinary wealth is destabilizing, but it's destabilizing to have people come in and they're just not in the same, he's not operating in the same environment as somebody who's got a billion dollars in the bank. You saw that with the Warriors. You saw it with the Suns.

You've seen what the, Ishbia came in and he's just like, oh, here's an advantage. I'll just spend crazy money. Ishbia doesn't have private equity money or tech money. No, he owns his own mortgage company, but we'll find out how much money he has when his minority owners have the puts that they have to, you know, because he bought out Sarver, but there was this other piece

that the minority owners could be like, hey, that $4 billion evaluation, I'm ready to sell to you now and I demand that you have the money and we'll see if he has it. He doesn't, I mean, he does.

He's not as wealthy, wealthy as the bucks guys or the warriors guys. I'm guessing I don't, I could be wrong. My sense was that he was one step below those as terms of his, well, there's like that. I mean,

you have like the bomber Dolan kind of level of just crazy money. Bombers probably the most, but like, so he probably, you know, I don't,'s probably the most, but like, so he... Probably. You know, I don't... He's like the... I think he's like the 10th richest guy in America. Well, so one of the things he's doing,

like from a think outside the box standpoint that I actually like is he's like the Clippers, they're the second class citizen in LA. We're in the Lakers building. We get all the worst dates. There's nothing special. We're just playing in the Lakers place, basically. This is an inefficiency for me. I'm going to build my own

arena. I'm going to make it much cooler than the Lakers arena. And I'm going to turn this into a place. And he's spending real money to do it. And is that going to affect our win-loss record? Probably not. But it's at least a good way to spend your money. A bad way to spend your money is like, oh, this is the year James Harden can finally figure it out in his mid-30s. Let me throw somebody at this. But the arena piece and trying to figure out, can we have a home court advantage?

Where should the sound be? How could this whole thing move as like this state-of-the-art mechanism? I mean, the stuff Dolan, I still haven't been to the Sphere, but this was like James Dolan's greatest moment, the Sphere. Like he's completely reconfigured what a fan experience is for a music concert. And I feel like this is where stuff's going, right? Like there's going to be some sports arena that has some version of this it feels like with luck he'll go to las vegas and not come back i mean can i can i buy him a plane ticket so that he stays there like come on don't have to come back the knicks are half decent he got the sphere i know what a late bloomer that

guy is we're still subbed we're still subsidizing the Knicks lease at Madison Square Garden. Do you understand, if you lived in New York, do you understand how galling that is to residents of New York? Here's one of the richest guys in the country and New York City taxpayers are essentially paying him for the privilege of,

and blocking any kind of redevelopment of Penn Station. I mean, don't even get me started. He's the most infuriating public figure in New York. Well, possible exception of someone else who we won't get into. Yeah, I would say there's a couple other possibilities.

Well, there's an OKC situation that ties into what we're talking about where they have to, I think it's next month, where they have to, I think it's next month, where they have to vote on basically building a new downtown arena. And it's a lot of the same stuff where it's being sold as,

no, no, here's what it's going to cost. It's barely anything. But don't you want to keep the thunder? And it's that same kind of public pressure. And meanwhile, they stole the Thunder from the Sonic. They sold the Sonics from Seattle. They moved the Thunder. They probably, I don't know, paid 200 million. The floor of an NBA franchise now is probably

3 billion, 3.2, something like that. You get to amortize everything. It's like the single best investment you can make. There's a new media rights deal coming. Why aren't the Thunder paying for the arena? Why is there a tax at all? Like that, it's stuff like that where I'm just like, what the hell is going on here? But they don't want to leave because the moment they lose the Thunder,

they're just another city. That's, you know, the only pro team they have. So you're leveraging this, you know, this deep fear that people have who live there, like, oh, what happens if they leave? Then what's our identity? They should relax that rule or do one exception to that rule

that you can't own more than one NBA franchise and say, this is the bomber rule. You can't own more than one NBA franchise unless you want to buy them all. He could legit buy them all. It's got $103 billion. The WNBA does that. They took funding where they had this private equity

thing. I think they bought 15-20% of the WNBA. Just bought out a piece of it. That makes more sense to me than Oklahoma City building a new arena with taxpayer money. If somebody said, do you want, would you rather have the current structure

or Bomber owning everything? I actually, I'm down with Bomber owning everything. I think there could be some really interesting things. Him just being the owner of the NBA?

Yeah, just being the owner of the NBA. Shouldn't Bezos be the one that does that though? Jeff Bezos is like, I am your new owner of the NBA. I bought out everybody.

So the new Oklahoma City, here's a piece recently, they get to vote on this. The new arena would cost at least $900 million to build. Yeah. At least. We'll see what that price ends up being.

With $70 million plan to come from four funds, $50 million from the owners of the team. planning to come from four funds, $50 million from the owners of the team. Oh, they're chipping in $50 million. That's so nice of you guys. It's awesome, yeah. You've 15-tupled

your investment. The remaining funds would come from a 72-month one-cent sales tax on the people of Oklahoma City. Yeah, here we go again.

Oh, well, what happens if the arena costs more than $900 a bill? Oh, man. Didn't realize it was going to rain so hard this year. Now we're up to a again. Oh, well, what happens if the arena costs more than $900 a bill? Oh, man. Didn't realize it was going to rain so hard this year. Now we're up to a billion. Ah, we had another COVID-type event. Oh, man.

Now we're at 1.2. I just looked up Oklahoma City metro population. So the city itself is just under 700,000. The metro area is 1.4. I mean, you really have to ask yourself what a team is doing there, right? Well, that's why they're going to pay the tax because the other move would be for them. I mean, they're going to get expansion. I've been talking about this for two years. I was telling people it was going to be Seattle and Vegas. Fenway Sports Group is going

to be in Vegas. LeBron's going to be involved. And then the Seattle piece. The one thing that's changing is the numbers. I think it's going to be $9 billion for the two teams. I think it's going to be $5 for Seattle and $4 for Vegas, which means every owner will get a $300 million check. They don't have to share it with the players. Do you know that? The players get zero. So it's like, hey, we have these two expansion teams. The good news for the players,'s like, hey, we have these two expansion teams. The good news for the players, you guys, hey, we have 30 more jobs for you guys. Cool. But then every owner gets 300 million. That's why I don't think the only teams that I think could potentially sell over the next couple of years is probably Portland and Indiana, but neither of them are,

they're not selling before expansion because it's like, it's a free $300 million check. Put my name on it. Can you FedEx to me? I want to make sure I get it. So I really want you to have a tax expert on to explain to me the tax implications of that $300 million check. How is it capital? What is it? Is it income? Is it gains? What is it? It's an awesome question. I am sure they've structured it. I am sure they have structured it so they're paying the minimum amount of tax on it. I'm sure an entire law firm was hired

to work out the details of that. Well, Seattle and Vegas not having an NBA team, which has been nuts for... Seattle's been nuts since it left and Vegas has been nuts for the last 10 years. They should clearly have a team. So they'll fix that and then it'll be survival of the fittest.

Let's take another break. We can get to your third idea. We are supported by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV. Don't change your team when you change your town. Get NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV where it's easier to keep up with all your favorite teams on Sunday afternoons. Thanks to my new friend, MultiView. You can watch four

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build, how your wheels hug the curves, and how with the Pennzoil Platinum up to 15-year, 800,000-kilometer protection guarantee, your adventures will be many. Pennzoil, long may we drive. Available at your local Canadian tire. Enrollment required. Keep your receipts. Other conditions apply. See Pennzoil.ca slash warranty for full details. All right, third idea idea what do you got okay this is a one that's near and dear to my heart uh you may not have been aware of this bill but back in september in berlin that uh an ethiopian woman named i'm gonna mispronounce her name to jeet asafi ran 21.11 for the marathon. This is probably, if we're being fair, one of the three or four greatest athletic feats

of the last hundred years. 2.11 is insane. Insane. So she breaks the world record. Did she have wind or anything? Like what were the conditions? She breaks it by two minutes, which is an astonishing amount to break a world record by.

She's basically running as fast. In my lifetime, the men's world record was 2.11. That's how fast this was. So she, and there's, naturally, there's a couple of red flags. One is that she really, if you look at her history, she was like a half miler for a while. And then last year, she ran a half marathon

five minutes off the world record pace. So we have an incredibly small sample size of her distance running and it's not encouraging. So it's a little strange. This woman comes out of nowhere. So why does she, how is it possible that she ran that fast? Is it like Rosie Ruiz strange where she hopped on a, hopped on the MBTA halfway through the race. So the leading candidate to explain what's going on with her, it could be that she could be, she's doping, but she's doping in such a way that didn't catch her. It could be that she's the greatest, uh, distance runner maybe of all time, or it could be her shoes. Right now. So I don't know. I never know. I'm a big running, you her shoes right now so i don't know i never know i'm a big

running you know fanatic i don't know you know the super shoes that nike invented five years ago have completely revolutionized running and uh they have a carbon fiber plate and like this super dense foam and we thought super shoes we knew they were really heavily contributing to faster running times. Because you're getting, have you ever run in super shoes? No. Oh. How about have I ever run?

No, no. They are wild. I do interval workouts and race in them. They're totally wild. What does super shoes mean? Can you explain what that means? Super shoe is a shoe with a carbon fiber plate and then a special kind of lightweight, dense foam. So basically the foam is your shoe is catapulting. The spongy foam is coming up against this rigid plate and you're getting a kind of springing effect. Okay.

So when you run in them, you feel like you're flying. And so what happens if I power walked in them? Would I feel like I'm semi-flying or it just has to be running? It would feel super springy. You got to try them. They're really expensive. But so Nike invented them

about five years ago and now everyone's doing super shoes. And she was using super super shoes these adidas that are 40 lighter and even springier than nikes and we think that super shoes might be worth somewhere between could be as high as 10 to your running time now 10 is ginormous right so now you might say well, if anyone can buy a super shoe, why does it matter? The second weird thing about super shoes is that their effect is completely variable. So the same person who could benefit 6% from a super shoe could, if you have

two people who are otherwise identical, one could benefit 6% and one could be hurt 6% by super shoes. They can either really hurt you or really help you. And it's not clear who's getting helped and who's getting hurt. So you have a situation in running now where we just set the, one of the greatest marks in running history. And we have no idea whether the person who said it is any good. It could be. Do you realize how weird that is?

Like when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs, we know it's doping. We know he was a great baseball player, but we know that he hit 70. We can discount that record, right? When Lance wins a Tour de France, we know it's, well, it's Ippo. He's a great cyclist, but he, you know,

that extra increment that allows him to win his EPO. Sports can deal with that. We can set those marks aside. What you can't deal with is a situation where you have a new technology shoes coming in that could have as much of a 10% impact on times. And no one knows whether the impact is real, whether it's going on and whether it's happening in this particular instance like it's it's crazy that we saw that ross tucker who's this sports scientist did a podcast on it and he was saying you know i have just witnessed something that might be the greatest athletic accomplishment of my lifetime. But I don't know. Or it might be nothing.

It might just be an artifact. And he's like, the record is completely meaningless as a result. That's like, we're talking about the destruction of running as a sport when every performance is subject to a complete question mark as to why the individual in question ran as fast as they did.

It's like... So the three possibilities are doping, the super shoe, or she's just some crazy outlier late bloomer. Yeah. Or she's just the greatest talent we've ever seen. And we have no idea which of the three it is. And it's because the sport hasn't taken into account just how disruptive new technology is. And the reason I go on, I know that nobody, few people care about distance running, but I really think every sport's going to go through this, some version of it, not every sport, maybe. I mean, it's hard to imagine basketball in the short term being, but I mean, unless you have strict limits in place on new technologies,

the technology itself is getting so overwhelmingly disruptive that we're entering into a new era when performances aren't going to, they're going to be impossible to interpret. And that's when you can't interpret an elite performance, that's the end of your sport. It really is. Like, I don't know what we do with competitive running now. They're breaking records every week. As a fan of the sport,

no one knows what to do with it. We're just sitting there like, you watch this thrilling race and then you say, I don't know. Could have been the shoes. If it's just the shoes, why did I watch that? That's basically what happened with baseball in the late 90s, early 2000s. We didn't know what wes early 2000s we didn't know we were

watching anymore we didn't know what we were watching and they managed to recover for it but i you know there's something i really really think that this is going to be a generalized problem in sports unless people sit down and very specifically ask the question how much technology do we want in this sport and it should be fine to say we want no technology. Right now, Nike is allowed to... Well, but they regulate this in golf, right? Because there's golf balls people could use that they could add 50

yards to their drives and stuff like that. Golf is, once again, is the shining example of how to do it right. But I think tennis missed the boat and was way too permissive of new racket technologies. A lot of people, serious tennis players

make that argument, and I think there's something to it, that the game is more interesting when the racket is not this high-tech instrument that we created. I'm so glad you brought this up. Have you ever held a racket from the late 70s? Yeah, I started playing with one of those.

It's unbelievable how different it is. But yeah, if guys are serving 139 miles an hour or whatever the numbers are getting to, the technology got too good. But it seems like people like it. I think the running's a little different because if the times are just getting thrown out the window and there's no way to compare anything that's happening

in the current form to anything that's happened in history, what happens if somebody runs like a 9-0 on the 100-yard dash? Well, a soft-face marathon is essentially that. It's a time that is so fast, I mean, no one knows what to make of it. It's astonishing. And we saw some on the track this season, we also saw, we've seen in the last couple of seasons, some performances that just don't

make any sense. Like the number of people now who are running very close to the, you know, it used to be that we had two or three people in a season who would break 330 in the 1500 meters. Now we have tons of them and we don't know, is it, is it genuinely a talent explosion or is it just shoes? Like that's, I really think we have this permissive attitude towards people who develop new technologies in various areas. And we never stop to think about

whether we want it. I don't want to sound like a Luddite, but I kind of, on this question, I am a Luddite. Like, why didn't someone ask us whether we wanted these shoes

in professional running or whether we wanted the rackets in tennis? We should have been, the fan should have been asked, right? Golf, golf clubs are another one that they've feels like they've, they at least oversee that you can't have some golf club. That's a major advantage. This sounds like just a classic thing for the sports are campaign where it's like the sports are, I hold a press conference and I'm like, I've been made aware of the 211 and the Women's Marathon, and we're going to be investigating these super shoes and all their possibilities. When you get gene editing and gene whatever that allows people to reconstruct their jumping ability

and all those kinds of things. That's what we're, that's where we're headed. It's not that far away. And we need to kind of decide, do we want that? Right. Do we want people to be able to artificially,

um, enhance their athletic performance in that, in that way? I don't, I don't see any, what I don't see is like a kind of, uh, uh,

consensus among the leadership in these sports to talk about these issues. People are just sort of indifferent to it. So when Bob Beeman had that famous long jump in Mexico City, and it was just so far out of the realm of whatever we expect, and there was a lot of reasons for it.

There was higher altitude. It was the Olympics. He had a ton of adrenaline. Sometimes in the long jump, you know, you could have one great long jump in your entire life where you're just right before the line, you just catch it and you go. But I always thought that was one of the most fascinating athletic events that had ever happened. Just like that. It was so much better than anyone had ever done. Like he almost like he collapsed. He just couldn't believe right after it happened. He's like, I just can't believe I did that. It was 29, I think it was 29, two and a half, 29 feet, two and a half inches. Yeah. It was almost 30 feet.

At a time when most people were jumping high 26 feet. Yeah. They were in the 25, 26 range, but then bonds. So we know everybody, we know there's some chicanery going on with baseball really from, I would say 95, 96 on. Yeah. And yet bonds was so much better than everybody else at it. And like every once in a while,

I look at his baseball reference page. Like I have it bookmarked. I just, I just go there and I'm just like, Oh my God. Like he has on base percentage of like 550 one year and just, he hit this like, almost like the Limitless Bradley Cooper character

in the movie Limitless, where he just, for some reason, whatever he was doing, it hit him the most perfect out of all the other players. This is, but Bill, this is actually a crucial thing about technology and it goes back to the point about Asafi, which is when there is a

technological innovation like steroids or these super shoes, it does not affect all athletes equally. You have high responders and low responders and medium and there is something about steroids or whatever he was taking, Bonds was, and his particular skill set that

turned him into a super athlete a super baseball player and the same another player could have taken the exact same number of drugs and had nowhere near the same effect that's what's it's the variability of of uh of people's response to these techno technological changes that is so disruptive to performance. That's what's weird. You could put on super shoes and they could make no difference. And someone else could put them on and it could make a 10% difference. If I told you Barry Bonds got on base over 60% of the time in the 2004 season,

would you believe that? 60% of the time. I don't really understand why. He actually did. It was 61% of the time. I don't really understand why. He actually did. It was 61% of the time he got on base. 61% of the time he walked to the plate, he got on base. It's phenomenal. Was there a theory that the PEDs he was on enhanced his vision? I think there was. Yeah, so I think the big theory was that HGH or PEDs, whatever he might have been taking. Yeah.

I think we know he was up to stuff. But his vision got so good, he could just, and if you already have great vision, so it makes you think like what would Ted Williams, like Ted Williams famously had the greatest vision ever. He had like 2010 vision. Yeah. Like what like 2010 vision. What would his vision have been like if he had been on HGH?

Would it have been like 2025? 20 slash 4 vision? Would he have just been able to see all the seams in the ball as the pitcher's releasing it? You and I, when we were doing our back and forth, even when I was at Grantland, we were always obsessed with the longevity of athletes and where that might be going. And I remember in one of the things where I was telling you how Brady wanted to play till he was 45 and we were debating whether somebody could do that. He played till he was 46.

The longevity piece is the thing I'm the most interested right now. What are the reasons for that? Cause it's not just, it wasn't just Brady playing till 47. It's not just like somebody like aaron rogers blows out his achilles and still feels like he can come back in time for the end of the season or you know lebron's gonna pass 70 000 minutes soon chris paul who's a point guard who's has i think 62 assists and six turnovers right now he's 38 he was in the 06 draft

can it just be the technology? Is it the dieting? Like, wait, this is all stuff we were wondering about, I don't know, 12, 13 years ago, and I still don't know any of the answers. Do you? No, but I think, I do think, you know, so as someone who's 60 and runs regularly, I'm now, I've sort of realized a kind of obvious thing,

which is it's not that I am, it's not that my ability to run fast has, diminishes radically with my age. It's that it's the risk of injury. So I could run as... And recovery from that injury. It's all about injury. So if I could train as consistently as I did when I was 10 years younger, 51. I could run, I think, as fast as I could run when I was 51. I don't think 51 to 60 has made that much of a difference in my top-end speed, but I just can't train the same way because I don't have time to have

massages every day and do all the things, do weights three times a week. But if I did, if I was a professional athlete and I applied myself in that way, I could extend my career. I think that's what's going on. It's just that it never occurred to anyone 20 years ago that if you were rigorous about injury, you know, about recovery and injury prevention, there's no particular physical reason why you can't run as fast at 35 as you did at 28. It's just about that and desire, right? It seems like Kobe was the first one who kind of became obsessed with a lot of this stuff. Like, just the little tricks, the hyperbaric chambers, changing his blood in his knee and stuff like that.

And now there's just so many different versions. Also, the technology is just better and the way to monitor yourself and even stuff like the wristwatches where you can see how you slept the night before and how much better we are about the science of eating. I did that for a while. I can't do it.

I made my wife get rid of it. I was like, I can't take it. You wake up and you're mad that you only got five and a half hours of true sleep. I'm out. Stop. You start to get competitive with yourself in this hilarious way. You're like, you know, comparing your REM sleep over the last six days. And yeah, it gets a bit much.

Yeah, because you get mad. I thought I slept better than that. It says I only had four and a half hours of the deep sleep felt like six. It's like, what you're arguing with a wristwatch. I don't know where it goes, but I do wonder like, like how long could LeBron play for if he wanted to? And he had, and he's doing all the stuff he's doing now. Could he get to 45? Because right now, they lost last night to Miami

and he could get to the rim whenever he wanted. He could set up guys in the same way. They just missed shots. It was the only reason he lost. They were talking about how he'd be on this kind of pitch count of 29 minutes a game. They threw that out the window after one game. And he's on pace to play 2,400 minutes again,

2,500 minutes plus playoffs. And he's on pace to play, you know, 2,400 minutes again, 2,500 minutes plus playoffs. And this is just, he's in territory now that nobody's been, come close to being. I mean, I just think it's,

it's with him, it's just injury, right? Like if we had that scenario we were talking about earlier where the season was cut in half. Yeah. And you said, okay,

that LeBron's really just going to play the second half of the season. He's going to play the 41 games. Over 41 games, he's terrifying, even at his advanced age, right? Yeah, if he's playing once or twice a week. We saw this with Kyrie that year when he was just playing home games. And he only had to play once a week and he was incredible. Yeah, I was talking to somebody the other day about Curry.

What his career would look like mid-30s and on. Because I think he turns 36 this year. To me, he's like the closest to what I always thought could happen with Bird if Bird's body hadn't broken down. Curry's hand-eye coordination, his footwork is so good that I just feel like it can keep going longer than maybe we think as long as he's dedicated to you know he's the 365 days a year he's doing everything we have the tom watson event example what the tom watson example tells us is that you know he can't do that at 59 he couldn't do that in every tournament but if you give him a tournament a a course that's suited to him and you ask him to play at a world-class level for four consecutive days,

he can do that, right? It's just he can't go on the full tour anymore. So could that be LeBron like five years from now where he's just like, I'm going to play 20 regular season games a year and you're going to have me for 75% of the playoff games and you're just going to keep me in the refrigerator and I will do my stuff. I'll be ready every day.

And I'm just going to be ready for April, May, June. I'll sign you. I'll sign for $10 million. So I'm not, I'm not taking, taking up all this roster space.

I'm going to, I'm going to work out at home for the first half of the season. I'm going to show up once a week. And then in the playoffs, I'm going to go full time. Well, that it strikes me as being a perfectly logical use

of a 40-year-old basketball star. Because Curry could be that too, right? I don't think the Warriors would ever get rid of him, but he could. But yeah, I guess the problem, every, and I've talked about this before, but everyone I've ever heard

talk about this, why they couldn't keep playing was the grind of just getting ready every day. I think that's what wore Brady down ultimately, especially as his family stuff started getting weird of just the getting up at five in the morning or whatever he did and just doing that routine day after day after day

to be ready to play. He just, at some point it burns the people out. Nowitzki was one of the first ones that was talking about that. It was just like, man, it's just hard to, it's not about the games. It's about the off days that are what kill you. But at the same time, like when all this stuff is getting better and smarter, like I could see LeBron going and going because I think, I just think he likes it and he likes being in the limelight and likes competing.

And just, I don't, I just don't think I couldn't see him just shutting the switch off unless he got injured. I mean, Carl Malone would have kept going if he didn't get hurt. He got hurt in 04 and he was never the same. I quick,

weird question, random. Why do you think we have way more Achilles injuries now than we used to? Or, or are they exactly the same and they're just happening to more famous people? Well, I don't know. What I don't know, my suspicion would be if you are getting stronger and heavier in other parts of your body, you're putting more stress on- Putting too much pressure on your stuff, right?

On Achilles and on sort of ligaments that can't, I don't know. I mean, you'd have to ask. That would be my guess. And also, like, just the kind of, you've said this many times, the way the game is played now, you're putting a lot more stress on your body because you're actually playing defense, which defense was discovered in, like, you know, 2006. They didn't know about it back in the 80s and 90s. So that's going to lead to a very

different amount of stress on an athlete's body. All right, before we go, let's talk about audiobooks because Spotify is launching 15 hours of monthly listening time, more than 200,000 audiobooks alongside ad-free music and podcasts, all this stuff. It's starting November 8th and they have all these audio books. You were like the earliest person that I knew of on this space. There was something about audio books that you were like, I just feel like things are going this way. What did you see? When did you see it? What year was that? Well, we wanted to do, I started it with Talking to Strangers and then with Bomber Mafia, where we thought an audiobook is really an audio documentary and that it should,

if you interview somebody in an audiobook for an audiobook, you should hear the interview tape and it should be scored like a movie and you should use archival tape. Like in Bomber Mafia, we got all this archival tape from the Second World War. It should feel like, it shouldn't just be, because was all about budgets you know the publishing industry

would give you five thousand dollars and you would sit in a booth for three days and you would read your book and they thought that's what an audiobook was and our idea at bushkin was that's nuts like let's make an audio experience and let's make it real but that means you spend more time and money but you get what you get is something that people actually want to listen to. And how has it changed in the last few years? Do you feel like... To me, they don't really seem that much different from podcasts. My wife likes audiobooks more than podcasts,

but it's not like, oh, I'm an audiobooks person, not a podcast person. Yeah, there's been a real blurring of that line. I don't even think the line, I don't think it's meaningful even. These distinctions don't matter really to listeners. They just want to hear something interesting. And I think it's only insiders who obsess about the difference between a podcast and an audiobook. You should be able to, you know, it's just, it's interesting stuff you listen to. I mean, that's always been our perspective.

I don't, Baro Mafia appeared in one version on my podcast and then in another more complete version as a book. But I would, I mean, if you came up with another way to get it out there, I would do that as well. I think it doesn't, I think it doesn't matter. And then you excerpt, excerpted a chapter of talking to strangers on my podcast. It works perfectly well as a podcast episode.

Can we talk about the more disturbing piece of this? Cause I like audio books, but are people reading in the same way anymore? Do you happen 20 years? Does 2001 Gladwell happen in 2023 in the same way? Well, if I did, if I had a heavy... Yeah. But it would be different. I would do... There'd be a much greater

audio component. And I would do... I did a lot of live events back in the day. But I would do... If I was starting out today, I'd do even more. If I could, I would just go on the road. Actually, back when I did Blink, I went on the road for, I think, three months. Yeah, I was always jealous of you. I had two small kids and I was two weeks. You were just like, I'm out, man. I'm just going here. You were like like, I'm out, man. I'm just going here. But today. You were like an NBA team. Today, if I was doing it, I'd go on the road for six months.

If I was really ambitious and 25, I had a book. And you build an audience organically that way. You start out with, you know, my first live appearance for, live gig for Tipping Point. There were two people in the audience. Really? And you build it, right? By the time that tour ended, I had, whatever,

100 or 200. But I think that is way more important now than the live podcast thing is really. You guys have been pioneers in that. I went, I went, I was in LA once and I,

I went to a, Mallory and I think Jason Concepcion did a live thing of a rewatch. I think it was a rewatchables. It's just brilliant. It's like so good. It was, you know,

it's great as a podcast. It's even better live. It's just seeing their interaction. What was the year, what was the year we did all star weekend? We were like the keynote people at the, at the owner's summit or whatever they call it, the technological summit. And we basically did a live show, but we didn't even know it was a live show. We were just like, all right, they're going to hand us mics.

We sketched out some stuff, but now it would be, you know, we would have done that completely differently. All I wanted to do was diss Dolan. I had to bite my tongue. I think they warned us, do not say anything mean about poor. I know. You were like itching a couple of times. Yeah, I was thinking if I did the book of basketball in 09 in 2024,

like what I want to do with that book, I would have done it completely differently. It probably would have been like three books. There would have been a completely different audio thing. I would have read everything. I would have had a completely different audio thing. I would have read everything. I would have had way more interviews and I just would have,

I just would have been like a multimedia experience. If you redid that and went on the road, it would be amazing. Imagine if you went in every different city you had as a guest

a local NBA star from that city, right? It was so much fun. Are you kidding me? We'd make some money and then that could go toward my divorce. All the profits will go to Carrie Simmons

and finalization. I'll be in Seattle next week. I'm doing three shows. I am aware that my travel schedule did delay fatherhood by several decades in my case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, I mean, it is fun to get out there. All right, Gladwell.

So do you want anything to plug before you go? My six, I guess I plugged it last time. My Origins History Gun Violence six-part series is out there to be listened to. We're very proud of it. I'm going to do a mailbag over Thanksgiving.

If I get the answer to these super shoes, there's some sort of great thing I'll let you know. But it was good to see you. Thanks for coming on, Gladwell. Thanks, Bill. Alright, you. Thanks for coming out. Gladwell. Thanks. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton.

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. I will see you on this feed on Thursday. Don't forget about the rewatchables with your Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and I will see you on Thursday. Must be 21 plus in president select states. FanDuel is offering online sports wagering I don't have to. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. You can call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 in Arizona. Call 1-888-789-777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. 1-800-9WITH-IT in Indiana. 1-800-522-4700 or visit ksgamblinghelp.com in Kansas.

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