The Bill Simmons Podcast - Biden Drops Out, a USA Hoops Six-Pack, and ‘Heat 2’ Ideas With Bryan Curtis, Tara Palmeri, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Bryan Curtis and Puck’s Tara Palmeri to discuss President Joe Biden’s sudden announcement that he’s no longer running for reelection (02:11). They dive into what’s next for the Democratic party, whether Vice President Kamala Harris will become the next candidate, Biden’s crumbling inner circle, how Donald Trump’s campaign could shift, and so much more. Next, Bill does a six-pack NBA observation that includes his thoughts on Team USA, Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown, and more (42:43). Also, Bill is joined by The Ringer's own Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan to discuss some of their ideas for ‘Heat 2’ (01:11:04). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Bryan Curtis, Tara Palmeri, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan Producers: Steve Ceruti and Jessie Lopez  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Must be legal drinking age. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I hope you're listening to all of our awesome podcasts about sports and culture. I hope you're listening to the rewatchables. We've been slamming them up all through the month of July. We did True Lies last week. We have No Way Out this week.

You can watch all of the new videos in the episodes that we've been recording on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. And we've been putting up old episodes too that we found, some video stuff that we never put up. Like we put up Hoosiers with me and Ryan Rosillo. We put up the YouTube video of that last week. You can also find videos from this podcast on my YouTube channel, Bill Simmons. Just search for me. You'll find it. I'm right there. I took last week off. I'd always been planning on doing a podcast this week. I want to talk Olympic basketball, which we're going to do later. I wanted to talk about Heat 2 with Fennessey and Chris Ryan. We're going to do that later.

But it's a pretty big day, month, four-week stretch here at American History, and President Biden dropped out today. So at the very top, we're going to talk to Tara Palmieri from Puck News, as well as the Somebody's Got to Win podcast that's with Puck and The Ringer. We collaborate on that one. And Brian Curtis from The Press Box, who I've been working with since the Greenland days, and he's been with us at The Ringer from the beginning. So the three of us are going to talk about what happened today with Joe Biden, where things are going, and just try to put in perspective the last four weeks, which are about as crazy of a stretch that I can remember in American politics.

After that, we'll talk USA basketball basketball and we'll talk some heat too. So an action-packed podcast here on a Sunday. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this Sunday noon PT. I swear we were going to do some version of this, but now Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race for 2024. Brian Curtis is here from the Press Box. We've been working together forever. Tara Paul Mary is here. She hosts the Somebody's Gotta Win podcast for us.

She also writes for Puck News. She's been doing a great job covering the election. I'm going to start here. Curtis, craziest four-week stretch of politics since you've been alive? Yes. I think I'm pretty good on saying that. I mean, it's been three and a half, right, since Biden tanked the debate. Maybe the wrong word to use on the Bill Simmons podcast, but Biden had a bad debate.

Right. Then we have the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. And now here we sit that Joe Biden has dropping out of the race in such sudden fashion that the news anchors didn't even have somebody ready to talk about it. I think Tara and I were both on the list of people they were about to call if the backup to the backup to the backup didn't pick up the phone. I think Bakari was ready. He was just in a suit all day just in case. I saw him on CNN really fast. In that four-week stretch, you left out. So the debates on June 27th, complete chaos. Biden goes on the hot seat. That's the next few days.

The Democrats start turning on each other, which Tara's been covering nonstop. Then Trump, the assassination attempt, which is eight days ago and feels like it was 17 weeks ago. We get all the conspiracy theories, all the worst of the internet immediately pops out. We get, is Biden now in or out? Was he going to be out or not? We get Trump picking a VP and all of a sudden the convention,

we get the speech, we get the in or out stuff with Biden. And then today we get Biden dropping out. Were you surprised Tara? I just knew it was a matter of time. Like it was, I was warned by my sources. Like if this is a war between Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, she will win. She is a true knife fighter. And this may be death by a thousand cuts, but he will end up falling. And I was talking with a senior health source who kept me really up to date on the highest levels. And they were like, it just became unbearable, too many straws on him. And as in the last straw, it was just too many and he's, he had to. And so it was more delay tactics. And I would never say that COVID was a delay,

but it gave him a few more days. And then, you know, he wanted to meet with Netanyahu, who was coming to Washington this week, because he really does believe in his heart that he is one of the strongest leaders on foreign policy. So this would give him another opportunity. His wife is going to, the first lady, Jill Biden is going to Paris for the opening of the strongest leaders on foreign policy. So this would give him another opportunity. His wife is going to, the first lady, Jill Biden, is going to Paris for the opening of the Olympics. It just felt like they were choosing one event after another to keep this going.

And you had Chuck Schumer go to Delaware about a week ago and tell him like, hey, it's time to get out. And I was told that if he didn't drop out soon, it was going to get increasingly uglier this week. And I'm talking about electeds on the Hill continuing to come out against him. He had 10 in just the past weekend. Senators like Sherrod Brown, John Tester of Montana.

It was just going to become a flood because Nancy Pelosi was not there anymore to stop the leaks. And neither was Schumer. They were just like, do what you must. Go for it. And Biden was under siege. And he doesn't make decisions very quickly. He had his back up against the wall. He was in his bunker.

He was furious, thinking that this was all orchestrated by Obama and Pelosi. May not be completely off on that one. But eventually, I think he realized the damage was done. If you can clip so many ads off of the members of his own party saying he shouldn't run. And actually, I really think though, this morning, that poll in Michigan, that public poll showed him 10 points down, sorry, seven points down from Trump in a head to head race. I mean, I don't think that's recoverable. And you need to win Michigan like you need to win or Pennsylvania. You need the blue wall as a Democrat to win.

If you've lost that, it's almost impossible. So I do think that that Michigan poll may have been exactly the data he was looking for. I had the same reaction. That was the first thing I woke up to today, West Coast time. And it was one of the first things I saw. And I was like, ooh, seven points. That's a lot. Brian, Tara had on her podcast a few days ago, one of the points raised was that the recourse the Democrats had if they wanted to get Biden out was just to leak everything. And we already had somebody videotape the Zoom, which somebody had got the actual video recording thing. And it was

just, it hits the point where any conversation he has with basically anybody outside his very tight inner circle is just going to get leaked because they all want him out. Can you ever remember, because for us, you span sports, you span culture, you span politics. Can you ever remember a situation like that where somebody was in charge, literally everyone around him was a leak threat? It's been pretty amazing. I mean, look, politics is terribly the first to tell you.

There's a lot of sources that are on background and necessarily on background. But what's been so interesting is the Schumer meeting that she mentioned, right? It doesn't really get the job done face-to-face. So then a couple of days later, we hear about the Schumer meeting and that is the way to get the job done, right? It's not just the leak, but it's the strategic leak

because the face-to-face encounter with the very stubborn and reluctant commander-in-chief isn't working. And that just particular element, again, I know that's happened in Washington a lot, but to happen at this level and to happen with Joe Biden, who has that famously, you know, tight lipped, we hear over and over again, inner circle has been really, really amazing to watch. It feels like all these little mini chapters that normally would come out in the book at

the end of the election have just been spooling out in real time. And this may be the last time we have to read the, you know, phrase, the mood in the book at the end of the election have just been spooling out in real time uh and this may be the last time we have to read the you know phrase the mood in the white house was grim or the mood in the delaware beach house was grim yeah uh because we feel like we've been reading that now for three weeks in a row and also just to go on to what brian was saying his inner circle too is fraying you start like in my latest piece, a source close to the inner circle says, Anita Dunn is no longer a part of the inner circle because she's taken a lot of flack for being a part of his inner circle. You notice that there's just breaking apart. Actually, it reminds me of covering the Trump White House because when I

covered the Trump White House, there were leaks all the time during every moment because it was pure chaos. Everyone wondering if he was going to hang out from moment to moment to moment. And the weird thing is, is that on this campaign, there are really not that many leaks coming out of Trump's campaign. It's a much more professional, loyal, tight operation. And it's been this weird shift to see Biden world leaking like a sieve. And everyone in Biden world, you would see the interpersonal clashes in Trump world. There was always people fighting. He had two chiefs of staff basically at the beginning with Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. They were constantly warring the factions. And now Biden world has factions. And that's when you know it's

bad. Right. Well, and you had Tim Alberta on a couple podcasts ago, but he wrote that great piece about the Trump campaign, the one he's running this time versus what it was eight years ago and four two people he's listening to. And then it comes down to this, something that you see over and over again with people as they're trying to hold on their last pieces of power. And they're just turning to voices who are personally invested in them keeping that power, right? So for him, his wife wants to stay the first lady. It's great to be the first lady, right? The son who has some legal issues coming probably wants them to be president for all the obvious reasons, but they're just saying, no, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. Don't listen. They're trying to bring you down. And this ties into Brian, this whole kind of underdog thing that Biden's had forever, where he's always been the one counted out. He's always been rallying back. And you can see like, even if he's a little bit diminished these days, which I think we can all agree that he is like,

he's still kind of sliding into that underdog role. It's almost like a WWE wrestler. Oh, this is my gimmick. This is my shtick. I'm the underdog who nobody believes in me. I'm going to fight back. I did it in South Carolina in 2020. And it's just, he's not that guy anymore.

It's totally right. Shoemaker texted me the other day and he said, Biden's trying to run a nobody believed in us campaign. Right. The problem was it included no Democrats either. Yeah. None of the kind of, you know, liberal media people that Democrats count on, at least in the Trump era, you know, supporting the party. Right. And sort of being opinion leaders in that phrase. Yeah. I think that the Hunter Biden part of this is

fascinating because, you know, we read a little bit of last, you know, 24, 48 hours, like here's somebody who has needless to say, a very complicated relationship with his father. And suddenly here he is at his father's elbow when his father is facing the ultimate political crisis, when they're trying to push him off the ticket, them being the Democrats. And he's the one going, no, dad, don't do it. Right. Let's stick tough. Let's stay here. I mean, that is an absolutely fascinating human story outside of all of the things that are happening in American politics right now. Tara, one of the things I heard was that Biden, especially with these three, four days off, as he's trying to figure out, am I going to stay in? Am I going to leave? What should be my strategy?

And people that he trusts, he be my strategy? And people that he trusts, he probably is running out of people that he trusts at this point, but they're telling him, if you're going to stay in, you've got to go all out. You've got to do a media blitz. You almost have to be like somebody who's like Tom Cruise promoting the new Mission Impossible movie. You've got to be absolutely everywhere, constantly trying to prove to people that you actually are super competent, that you actually are sharp on your feet, that this is all like people just trying to,

you know, they're misinterpreting stuff. Like you can actually do this. You've got to get out there and really do it. And obviously he can't. But that was, I think, the only way he could have stayed in because all the polls, all the evidence of Democrats turning against him, there was really no other way to make up ground unless he proved that people were wrong about him. And I don't think they were. What do you think of that theory? The thing is that every time he did do another interview, Lester Holt last Monday, it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was literally just six days ago. It was not a strong performance.

You know, he went on, I think he went on BET the next night, another time, not a strong performance. Like it's not like he was coming out there and hitting it out of the gate. I know he does well on teleprompter and he had a few good rallies and he had people literally chanting like,

stick it out, stick it in, like stay in there, stay with us. And, and I'm sure that sort of gave him some hope and morale. But like, at the end of the day, no one was feeling different. And, and I know from my sourcing that they were feeling like, oh, you know, not enough people watch the George Stephanopoulos interview, it's not stemming the bleeding, what do we do? What do we do? And at one point, they even consider doing a national address, because they needed to force the cameras on Biden so that he could get enough

eyeballs. I think the point is, is that everyone watched that debate, and you're not going to get that visual out of your mind. You're not going to get what happened. You know, you can't convince the voters at that point to think differently about him. And I don't think a blitz would have changed it. He basically prolonged the inevitable for about a month. I don't know that it did the party much good either. And now they're in this situation where they've got to figure it all out. I mean, he endorsed Kamala Harris. What does that mean though? I mean, he did a statement first and then he did the endorsement of her afterwards, almost like either it was left out intentionally or he forgot to do it. I don't

know what the other reason, why wouldn't that have been in the statement? And it doesn't have the same gravity being in a statement versus being in a tweet. It's also just very weird to see him putting out a white paper at 2 p.m. Eastern time, I know earlier for you, announcing his withdrawal. I mean, to me, it seemed a bit odd i would think that there would be you know you would have gone like a youtube youtube channel selfie like him just doing like a power walk with the phone out i don't know i think maybe doing like a national address which i guess he's going to do later but i don't know it just seemed and on a sunday i thought maybe would i agree i thought it was weird too Why not just leak out that he's dropping out

and then do the statement after? How would you handle it, Brian? Well, I do wonder if this whole speaks to just how many, how few people are around him right now. You know, that to me looked like the best we could do with five people around us, not wanting, you know, the larger part of the White House apparatus

or the Democratic Party apparatus to know before we announced it. You know, very short. Some of those sentences in there were kind of written like Biden talks. They were not written in, well, shall we say, formal presidential English.

Yeah. It was just like a very interesting letter. And, you know, I don't know if the, sort of the twofer of, I'm out, I'm endorsing Kamala, if that was him thinking that these are two separate decisions that he just wanted to just...

Yeah, maybe he just assumed. Yeah, because she's my VP and we got all the delegates and the money together, that naturally, but oh wait, maybe I should actually just say that? Well, I don't think he forgot. I just think he probably thinks of this as two different things, right? This is a huge decision for me to leave the presidential race in late July.

It's also a huge decision for me to do this and maybe I'll just put them in two different statements. Why that makes sense, I don't know. I think we would have maybe advised them against that one. Yeah, I think you just add a line in there saying, and I endorse my vice president who I believe in. Yeah, the party in the election is in great hands.

And one more thing. Yeah. P.S. Isn't it weird? Brian and I are big like history buffs and it's weird, you know, growing up, especially when I was in my biggest political science history phase, like in college and after college,

and you would read about some of the stuff that happened before you were alive, right? You'd read about like the Kennedy-Nixon debate and just what a transformative, important moment that was for everybody, like in the moment, how something shifted. And then just people write about that and talk about it.

The TV candidate. Yeah, and you see the video and Nixon looks sweaty and you're like, oh man, that must've been crazy. And some of the awful stuff that happened in the 60s, like, oh Jesus, can you imagine being there for that? And then you just think of all the stuff that happened in the 60s, like, oh, Jesus, can you imagine being there for that? And then you just think of all the stuff that happened in the last four weeks. And it's this big consequential stuff that people will be teaching in history classes and they'll be writing about in books.

And all of it was just happening in a row. And it was like in this content cycle that Brian and I are in with sports and culture and everything else where it's like, you know, where's DeMar DeRozan going? And then, oh yeah, and this is also happening. And I don't know, I just feel like I, Brian, I feel like I couldn't wrap my head around it. Like just like the wittiness of some of this stuff. Oh my God, absolutely. I mean, it all felt, and again, and this is an election, you know, that we were told was going to be kind of boring, you know, for a couple months. Right. At least was very baked in, right?

Here are two very familiar candidates. And then as you say, that whole thing starts three and a half weeks ago. But yeah, that, you know, and it's also been, Bill, we should add, for political reporters, this is what they have been lusting after the entire time I've been in journalism. Right? Like an open convention. We got to do it like Jack Germain did back in the day. It's like sports writers where you just feel you just missed the golden age of sports writing. Riding on the plane with Muhammad Ali and drinking with Mickey Mantle at the bar after the game.

Flying coach with, you know, John Havlicek. Totally. Yeah, this is like heroin. This is what it is. I mean, I've never done heroin, but this is as high as I've ever fallen. Thank you for that political clarification. I've never done heroin, but yeah, I mean,

compared to the other- I imagine. Compared to the other elections, because it's not like 2016 was like the most normal election, but this, I mean, this went from like kind of cruising along at its own pace and everybody thought they knew who the two candidates were, but then what were the last six weeks like just to cover this Tara? It's just been wild. I mean, I think we spoke while I was trying to take a vacation,

but I just couldn't. I mean, I was just, I had to work. My phone died because I was using it so much and it was hard to resuscitate, but I, you know, I coming out of nowhere, just people that are on the campaign being like, can we please talk? You know, people who would reluctantly keep the company line, you know, and just this feeling of like, at any moment, Biden is going to step down.

And then just last week on Sunday, it's like whiplash. Trump is attempted. There's an attempted assassination attempt on a Sunday. Same time as right now, by the way, maybe a few hours earlier. And again, it's like, wow, you really have to just be ready for anything at any moment. And who's to say that the full, you know, bench of the Democratic Party, you know, Westmore, Kamala Harris, right? Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly, they don't all come out there right now saying, I'm running against Kamala. Like, that's a huge story, too.

And you've got the entire Democratic Party figuring out, I mean, I'm texting with donors. They're like, we don't really know what's next. We're trying to figure it out. I don't think that they're all settled on Kamala Harris. There's more drama to come. Um, and, and I, I don't, I'm afraid to sleep. I don't know what's going to happen next. Let's take a quick break. And then I want to talk about, uh, looking forward, what's going to happen. This episode is brought to you by Movember.

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But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. So before the break, Tara mentioned how, yeah, Harris got the approval from Biden, but does that necessarily mean she's going to be the candidate? I would assume she is. And I think there are own dangers of putting somebody who hasn't really been in this kind of spotlight, just throwing them in a couple months before the election. But one of the things that people have talked about Brian with Harris is just like, people don't like her that much. She hasn't done that well in big elections. What

makes people think she's going to win? And then there's that other camp like, no, no, the last four years, she's learned a lot. She's been the spotlight. She's been a good vice president. What do the next six weeks look like for her in your mind? Well, it's fascinating. I mean, we're really in an interesting situation where, you know, you're right. We don't know her as a national politician. And that's partly the doing of the Biden administration, which did not exactly want her to become a national politician after picking her as his running mate back in 2020. We do know she can be a good debater. She won her debate with Mike Pence in 2020. Obviously, the bar for that seems like an if at this point and everything seems like an if uh she would obviously have a chance to fare much better than Biden did

but you know like the next couple of days are going to be so interesting because and Tara will be much more plugged in less than me but you have to I would think have one of those big name Democrats actually step up and not just say I want to be president but I want to run against the person, the vice president of the United States that Joe Biden just endorsed on his way out the door, which feels like a huge step. And then state why they'd have to attack her at the same time in order to make that happen. Well, I don't even really, because they talk about an open convention. I feel like I'm a relatively smart guy. I don't even 100% understand what that means.

Like in my head, it's like, you know, season seven of the West Wing where it's like, oh, it's Sorkin's writing an open convention and weird shit's going to happen. But what does this mean in practical terms in real life, Tara? You know, I'm not, I think the rule book will be rewritten in some ways, but right now Biden has, yeah, Biden has 3,886 delegates that are his. So about 4,000 Democratic delegates are out there because there were others who, randoms that picked up some delegates. And there are 700 super delegates too. I'm not entirely sure the difference, but I think that it will come down to a vote. And in the meantime, if they are numerous candidates, they're going to have to run campaigns. They're going to have to lobby the delegates. There might be some deals and trades done on the floor of the convention

to get them to vote one way or another. But how does that help if they're trying to beat Trump? How does having one giant long cat fight to try to get the nomination and just chewing up time? I don't know how that helps. I agree with you. I think there's also another thinking that if you anoint Kamala Harris doesn't seem democratic enough.

Some people might argue that, that he's like passing it down to her. And so that will be the argument against her. The argument for her will be that, she is his vice president. I think the other argument, obviously, is that she represents a core constituency of the Democratic Party. She's an African-American woman. They consistently come out for Democrats. And to pass her over as the historic first vice president, the first African-American female vice president would be seen as a severe, you know,

diss or slight against this huge core constituency. But, you know, people say she's got to earn it. And if she earns it, she'll come out an even stronger candidate. I think ultimately, and I'm an optimist on this, I do think that people will be excited, more excited than they were before about the idea of Biden and Trump running against each other. At least the Democratic base might be excited to have a candidate, or just Democratic voters in general, a candidate that's under 81 years old. And will come out of this convention. Yeah, and maybe they'll come out of this convention with a shiny new toy, someone we didn't we know of or didn't think of. And they market that person one way or another. These people haven't really been vetted, though. Some of them probably Kamala has

been vetted the most. Yeah, you think about it. But like Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, you know, J.B. Pritzker, they're governors, popular governors. But I think the thinking right now is that if you really want to be strategic, like truly strategic, you should add a battleground state governor to the ticket either with Kamala. That's someone like Gretchen Whitmer, who's of Michigan or Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, the two states you really have to win as a Democrat to win this election. Either or. But usually if you get one, you get the other. Arizona is a possibility too, right? Yeah. Mark Kelly is very popular. He's a combat veteran. Very, very popular. He's being talked about or have one at the top of

the ticket. I think the thinking of like, I know, you know, Gavin Newsom is a star in the party and he's obviously ambitious, but having two West coasters on the ballot doesn't really make sense. And really we're down to the point where it really only matters in seven, eight states right now. And if you want to win this, you got to win the battleground states. So why not pick a popular battleground governor? Brian, if you were the czar of this, what decision would you hand down? The GM of common sense of the Democratic Party right now? I mean, the Midwest argument to me is really the most compelling one.

I just like that you need to win those states, right? Like if you lose Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania, you probably lose the election. And so I would say, whether it's in the VP slot, whether it's Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, whether it's at the top of the ticket, that to me is the absolute must, the one thing I would look for in a Democratic candidate, other than somebody, as we say, who is vetted enough to run a national

election now at hyperspeed. Yeah. The thing that scares me about Kamala is that her campaign four years ago was so bad. I remember who wrote the giant feature about how bad it was after it was at Politico. Somebody wrote like the, now they tell us feature about everything that went wrong with the, and it was just like one of the worst campaigns anyone's run in the last 20 years. So that, that part,

I can't, you know, maybe everybody gets better. Everybody grows. That's always, yeah. But yeah, that's always used against her.

That's like, she was the main head against her. Right. The thing, the last five weeks though, the thing that, you know, yeah that's always used against her that's like she was the main hit against her um right the thing the last five weeks though the thing that you know i always like to look at things from what is what does the other side want to happen right and it just felt and everybody's made this point but it just felt like trump really wanted biden to stay in the in the race and publicly he was doing that you know, he did some stuff on True Social, but that's such like

a, you know, some, he was, that's kind of where he's like Trump unleashed, but in public, he was just kind of laying back. And even during the debate, you could see there were a couple times where he could have really gone for the kill and he's just like, I'm just going to let this guy hang himself here. So the fact that he so badly

wanted Biden to stay in the race and then Tim O'Byrne and that piece that they basically revealed, that's our big strategy is we basically just want Biden to stay in. So now that he's out, what are we prepared for with Trump? Because it feels like he's been intentionally calm. Now what happens? It depends on who the candidate is. We read in the New York Times today that they're ready for Kamala Harris as you'd expect them to be ready.

That's oppo research that's right at their fingertips. They've had talking points on her about the border task Biden assigned her to early in her term. Another data point for what the Biden administration thought of Kamala Harris

and how visible they wanted her to be. That stuff is all ready to me. But like it's I would think and Tara will have a better read on this, that there's just a lot of uncertainty in Trump headquarters today because Biden was a great known for them. Right. He had a terrible weakness that he had no way of reversing that he could do nothing about. It was exactly the game plan they ran against Biden on in 2020. By the way, they were calling him old and running a basement campaign. Then he was four years older. He had the terrible debate. He had that moment Americans could not erase. So, you know, to me, that's just like when you inject unknown into a political campaign in July,

that you're winning the ticket, not in the vice presidential slot like we're used to. Yeah. And you're ahead. You've just had this convention that you feel pretty good about other than Trump's speech, which was as long as Oppenheimer. I would think that they would be at least a little rattled right now. Yeah, the fear in football, and a few people have made this point, but in football, we see this with quarterbacks sometimes where the starting quarterback's not quite good enough and there becomes the groundswell for the backup. And a lot of times the backup's either worse or it's just, you know, you're just chewing up time, but you're going nowhere anyway. But this is like one of the great kind of football things over the years.

It's like, I don't really like this guy. This guy, if we could only put in this guy, it'll be great. And now we're actually seeing this in real time happen in politics, which I can't. The last time somebody dropped out when they were an incumbent was OBJ in 1968. That was before I was alive. I've just never seen this. I don't know how this plays out.

We don't really have anything to compare it to because it's stupid to compare it to like Polk and Buchanan and all these people from you know, it's a completely different atmosphere. If you had to make any predictions Tara for the next four weeks, give me like two. Two things

that you feel confident will happen. I mean there's going to be like real serious discussions about money and how does it get to Harris and her campaign? Because, you know, Biden, even before the debate was coming in at a deficit, okay, $30 million cash on hand deficit to Trump. He does have the biggest war chest. How do they move it over to Biden? There's gonna be lots of lawsuits coming from the RNC saying you can't just roll that money over to her. You can't put it in a super PAC. There are going to be tons of lawsuits going on. I think I'm going to be watching to see movements from the other camps. How quickly does

the party consolidate around Harris? I mean, to be honest, when I was speaking with senior Hill sources, it was like they really hadn't made up their mind on how this should go forward. They really did not know if it should just be Kamala and the whole party rallies around and anoints her, or if they allow this open primary and this open process, as they called it. And, you know, I'm going to be looking for smoke signals from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to see what they tell the party to do, because I think the voices that you're going to hear from the electeds, whether they come out and say, we want an open process versus like, we believe Kamala is our

choice. It might create another sort of war between the congressional black caucus, maybe frontliners, uh, democratic frontliners, uh, those, those people that come from battleground states, swing districts. Um, and, uh, districts. And you're going to see polling, like how is she really doing up against Trump? Because the New York Times had a poll last week that showed her really only up one point against Trump, pretty much at the same levels that Biden was at, you know, in the margin of error, give or take. So you're going to see leaking polls come out in the next week or so about how Kamala really fares. You're going to see a lot of polls about how Gretchen does, about how Josh Shapiro does, Wes Moore. There's going to be a

lot of leaking and fighting. And I wish I could predict exactly what's going to happen, but I think the knives are still out. Yeah. What happens if there's a poll that Whitmer and Shapiro are by far the best combo to actually defeat Trump. Like, here's what all the data says. If we do this, this is how we win. Or you could stay down the road you're going. Yeah. Brian, you read that? There's already a Kamala campaign happening. So, you know. Do you think the knives will stay out, Brian? Oh, it is. And, you know, look, the people that maneuvered Biden off the ticket

now have to, A, help pick a Democrat to replace him, and B, try to carry that Democrat over the finish line. Because, you know, for Nancy Pelosi, for Chuck Schumer, for George Clooney, right, for this whole constellation of people that got together and said, we have to do this unprecedented thing. Now they're going to be looked at, okay, we did it. Now what do we do? Now how do we win? You got us to this place. Now how do we win? And that to me is going to be fascinating because these are the people who, again, pulled off this switch in midstream that we've never seen before, never in the modern age anyway. And now they have to figure out what the next move is. Well, and then the other piece of that, look, I mean, there's always distrust with politics,

right? But if you're on the Democratic side and you're just looking at how they've handled not just the last couple of weeks and months, but really the last year and a half, two years where they had the scenario that the new is coming in 2024. And they're doing stuff to, they're kind of hiding Biden. To borrow a sports analogy, it's like the quarterback where you're only having him make the throws that he can make. And they're just, some of the stuff that even has come out in the past three, four months about how he's had less cabinet meetings than just about anybody. And it just feels like they've been very carefully shielding him from being out there too much. And now it seems like with reason. So to me, just watching from afar, it feels like there's real distrust now with the whole party. How do they win that back?

How do they make people feel like, well, wait, you guys just did this for the last 18 months. Why should we trust you now? What are the steps to fix that? It's a really, really good question because a lot of people argue that they've lost the moral argument against Trump because of this. Because they've for so long told everyone, it's okay, it's okay. But privately, they've've been like let's just get him over the finish line just just get our 81 year old candidate amble him over whatever it takes so it's that's hard and that's why that's another argument for having a primary and not making it seem like the party poobahs picked her because that's exactly what the republicans are already saying yeah that they cheated this was rigged they were always going to say it was rigged. Doesn't matter. We know that. But they're going to say if Kamala Harris is picked that this is just, you know, the Democrats trying to, you know, I think they're actually democracy? Well, look at them just picking a candidate that the delegates didn't even vote for. And so that's the narrative that they have to fight against. And that's another argument for having an open process. Now, the Republicans were always going

to say that the election was rigged. That's what they do, as we saw in 2020. But I don't know. I mean, like, I spoke to Trump's political director last week, and he claims, oh, we're ready for any generic D, essentially any generic Democrat. But I don't believe that. It's really hard to change a campaign, especially with only four months left. Like you said, the entire thing has been predicated around Biden. I really think that I really think Kamala could beat him as well. I think basically a lot of,

pretty much like any Democratic candidate, not any, but he's not, that may have been their victory party at the RNC. Let me just say that. Yeah. He's in for something and they know that. And I wonder, I wonder what they're thinking right now.

I know they've already started attacking Kamala Harris and they started attacking Gretchen Whitmer, but they're thinking right now. I know they've already started attacking Kamala Harris and they started attacking Gretchen Whitmer, but they're- Yeah, they're probably, the list is going to get out of it. They need to get strategic. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian, what happens if it's the reverse? If Trump names Don Jr. as his vice president and he's going down the road, he gets all this money, he gets delegates, and then last minute it's like, I'm actually not running. I'm going to gets all this money. He gets delegates. And then last minute, it's like, I'm actually not running.

I'm going to hand all this stuff over to Don Jr. People probably would have been like, you're cheating. Right? Yeah. I'm not sure Don Jr. was going to win

an electoral college majority. Don Jr. may have some unvetted things in his past that we haven't quite explored as a nation. No, and just a terrorist one, I would think, you know, there are a lot of anti-Trump elements in the universe that desperately want to beat Donald Trump in November and have had a hard time getting

excited because they've got the wrong guy at the head of the ticket. So I think the Democrats hope will be that whoever they pick, whether it's Kamala, whether it's somebody else, that there is an immediate galvanizing moment that says, okay, finally, somebody, the money comes in quickly, the enthusiasm goes up. Now, again, the Biden camp's losing argument was anybody but Trump was gonna get it done, right? Door number one, Trump, door number two, somebody else.

It didn't work. But for the Democrats, we'll hope that just having somebody else, Donald Trump's never won the popular vote. Just having somebody else on the ballot will help them win in November. I think it could be a unifying moment. I personally do. I think it could be good for the Democrats.

You're a glass half full person. Look at you. It's definitely going to be something. Yeah, it's either going to be a unifying moment or it's going to be a disaster. I feel like those are the only options yet. Yeah, how bad was the last three weeks for the Democrats? I mean, it could not possibly be. We don't think, anyway.

You say that. Well, they'll be fighting and then they will rise up again, I think. Or maybe not. They have to get their shit together, though, soon. The more this drags out, the worse it is for the party. And that's why a floor fight in Chicago, not great. One of the many parallels with sports and politics is we talk about legacy a lot.

The legacy of this, the legacy of that, legacy of this guy's career. And with Biden, that was a word that got thrown around a bunch the last three and a half weeks, right? You have a chance to be a hero. You have a chance to do the right thing. Just the reverse psychology of this whole last three weeks was hilarious because we don't want to pressure Biden. We don't say, sir, you must stand aside. We want to, and this was included a lot of people who worked for Obama and other administrations, say, sir, you have a chance to do something great here. You just step aside and let somebody else try to win the race.

Yeah, because if you're just talking about career moves, there's three options, right? He steps aside and Democrats win and everybody goes, awesome, Joe Biden, man, a true patriot till the end. The second version is he does that and they lose anyway, but they would have lost with him. And then the third version is he stays in, gets trounced by Trump, and that becomes the first thing mentioned in any sentence about him, is that he stayed too long. But it is like, I do think one of the things about this,

and you think about other aspects of life, is the whole concept of people not wanting to give up power and people not knowing when to leave. And you see this, I saw this happen with David Stern in the NBA, where he probably stayed two, three years too long. And the last couple of years, Adam Silver was ready to take over and he just didn't want to leave. And there was some really rocky... I remember writing a really semi-scathing column about him at one point during that, because it was just clear, like it was time for him to go. It was time for him to pass the lead to somebody else. And you see that with Ginsburg. You see it with Lorne Michaels right now in SNL. Is it time for him to go? Is it not time? Should he stay until he's 90? When do you leave? And I think for a lot of people, it's the part of life that we don't maybe spend enough time talking about,

is when is your exit? It's always better to be a year too early than two years too late, right? It feels like with Biden, the move in retrospect should have been a year ago to be like, well, wait a second. I can't be the president when I'm 86. I'm already not the same guy I was in 2020. I should start thinking about the party now. Who am I passing this to? We got to set this up. We got to do this correctly. But he didn't do it. And I think win or lose, that's going to be a huge part of his legacy after this. Correct, Tara, or you disagree? Yeah, no, I agree with you. I mean, his whole argument the entire time was I was the only one who could beat Trump, right?

I beat him in 2020. Which is something Trump would say. I beat him once before. He sounded like Trump, especially towards the end in his defiance from that leaked video that my colleague Julia Yaffe had with the House Democrats. He was like, I'm the best leader on foreign policy. Name me one other leader who was as good on NATO as I am. It was like the defiance, the way he thought of himself. It was showing this level of like egomania that I think is personally distasteful and showed, you know, his colleagues, his Democratic colleagues, they were furious about it. They thought, who is this monster? And it's like, really, I think people are going to look back on it and think he should have gotten out of this race weeks ago. And his indecision was a drag on the party because now they've got a lot to do. Any last thoughts, Brian? Well, yeah, you go back to October 2022, which is when Donald Trump announced he was going to run for president again, right? So then that activates the Trump stopper urges in Biden.

Ah, he's running. So I got to run again. The Democrats do a little bit better than they thought during the midterms. And so all of a sudden he's in. And then he has to face this terrible choice. What if me, the guy who stopped Trump, whose entire political identity is that,

is the guy who's going to let Trump back into the White House? And that's certainly what's been rattling around his mind the last three weeks. And here we are. What a stretch. All right, Brian, you'll be covering this on the press box, obviously, as we head through the summer entire year. Somebody's got to win. When did we name that did we name that? When did we name that podcast back in like January? Exactly a year ago. Yeah, exactly a year ago. Yeah, well, it was an apt title. So listen to both of those podcasts

as we continue to cover this on TheRinger.com. Thanks for stopping by on a Sunday. I appreciate it. RBC Avion Visa lets you get there your way. Whether you want to... Suit up for peak ski season. Or... Spring break with a whole fam and a whole lot of sunblock.

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only 95 calories. Order yourself an ultra six pack while we unpack six major things going on in the world of basketball right now. Five of them for me involve Team USA. Okay, here we go. The big thing I love with the Olympics, and we get this every four years, and you basically get to go back. You can go back to the games they played in 08 and 12 and 16 and 21 and now this year. The hierarchy of the team.

You know I love this stuff. This is my jam. There's usually three indispensables on the team that emerge and one pivotal proven bench guy, which is basically you think of it as the mellow wade spot and it was Tatum in 21. talk all they want, 10 guys, 12 guys, everybody's going to play, everybody's playing 20 minutes, but there's always a game when all of a sudden, holy shit, we need to win this. And then the minutes start to resemble an actual structure of an NBA game. When you think about there's 200 minutes total in an international game, you can only play five guys. The most anybody could play is 40 minutes. So if you go back, the four biggest games they've played since 08, which was the 08 gold medal game, USA 118, Spain 107, and LeBron, Wade, Kobe, CP3, and Bosh are all in the 20s for minutes. Melo, Howard, and Darren Williams are the first three. Kid plays 11. Prince plays eight. Boozer and Red get DMPs

So already two guys are just out When it really comes to nut crunch time Two or three guys are getting pushed out 2012 gold medal USA 107 Spain 100 KD plays 38 minutes Which was an amazing year for KD It's 2012 finals

He feels like he's going to be an MVP at some point really soon Even though LeBron's the best guy in the league KD plays 38 of the 40 minutes They basically can't keep him out of this game Uh, he feels like he's going to be an MVP at some point really soon, even though LeBron's the best guy in the league. Katie plays 38 of the 40 minutes. They basically can't keep him out of this game. CP3 29, LeBron 29 and gotten a little foul trouble. And I was at this game and we were just sitting there in the fourth quarter. LeBron's at the bench. They can't stop the game.

And we're sitting there having a heart attack because they can't get LeBron back in the game. And then Kobe, who was like kind of like old man, Kobe at that point, it was like, ah, we're going to lean on him when we need him. And he ends up playing 26, the fourth most minutes. Melo plays 21. Kevin Love plays 18 and plays crunch time against the Gasols down the stretch. And then for the bench, it was Williams. Westbrook played nine minutes. Chandler played eight. Iguodala, Harden, Davis barely played. So they really went nine guys, but really it was six. 2016 semifinal game was the big game that year, USA 82, Spain 76. Who played the most minutes that game? Klay Thompson, 35 minutes out of the 40. KD played 30. And then DeAndre Jordan,

I bet you didn't have him in your bingo card. He played 27. Melo, 25. Kyrie, 24. And then George, Lowry, Butler, and Cousins were the bench. Draymond Green and DeRozan basically got bumped. So that was that. And then 21 was the most recent one three years ago. USA, 87. France, 82 in the gold medal game.

KD, once again, the greatest Olympic player we've had. 35 minutes, plays the most. Drew Holiday was the again, the greatest Olympic player we've had. 35 minutes plays the most. Drew Holiday was the second best player that year. He played 29. They had kind of a hodgepodge that year because Dame, Bam, Booker, Tatum, they never knew what they were expecting from these guys. So Dame, Bam, Booker, and Tatum were all in the 20s. Green, Zach Levine, Middleton, 16, 14, and 10 minutes. And then JaVale McGee, Jeremy Grant, Keldon Johnson did not play. So the point is, you have the indispensable. The indispensable is an 08. Kobe, LeBron, Melo, Wade off the bench. 2012, KD, LeBron, CP3,

Melo off the bench. 2016, KD, Klay, DeAndre Jordan, Melo off the bench. 2021, KD, Klay, DeAndre, Jordan, Mello off the bench. 2021, KD and Drew are the only indispensables, Tatum off the bench, and then HodgePodge, depending on who looked good. This brings me to 2024. Who are the indispensables? LeBron, Curry, and Anthony Davis. I think that's our three. LeBron, Curry, and Anthony Davis. I think that's our three.

And Tatum in that mellow Wade bench spot. And then probably Drew Holiday as the glue guy, defensive guard, shutdown person, just kind of do everything. I think those are the five guys that get the most minutes. So the most interesting thing about that to me is the LeBron piece. Because heading into the Olympics, I didn't know if it was going is the LeBron piece because heading into the Olympics I didn't know if it was going to be LeBron we're so happy for you to be here you and Curry are the faces of the team maybe we'll bring you off the bench as a six-man maybe you'll start you'll play 20 minutes a little like Kobe in 2012 it's not like that at all they've given

him the car keys he's the point forward of this team. You can see it against South Sudan. He's the point forward. Curry's playing off him. Steve Kerr basically is using LeBron in this crazy 19.0 version of Draymond Green, where he's using him a little like how he uses Draymond, but with the added bonus that LeBron can shoot. And he's one of the three greatest players of all time.

And he's the leading scorer in points in NBA history. So you have that, but you also have all the stuff you can still do with Curry and Draymond, but you just do it through LeBron. And Davis has been the other indispensable guy because they don't have anyone else like him on the team with his size, his defense, his shot blocking, his rebounding, his energy, his ability to jump out on shooters, and you watch him compared to Embiid, who's not totally in shape, who's too slow to get out on shooters, and you could basically use him as your overpowering 2006

Shaq guy in spurts, but if you're actually trying to lock teams down, you need Davis, not Embiid, which brings me to the second part of the six-pack. Anthony Davis versus Embiid. Embiid won an MVP. the second part of the six pack Anthony Davis versus Embiid Embiid won an MVP, Anthony Davis has never won an MVP Davis won the 2020 title

and was in the mix there for finals MVP but LeBron had an awesome finals he made the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals as well Embiid has lost 6 of his last nine playoff series. Embiid has never played 12 playoff games in a postseason. Embiid has never played 70 games in a season. Embiid has played 433 games in the last 10 years. Davis has missed the playoffs six times.

Davis has either been, I'm having an awesome year, or you probably forgot what happened to me this year. Davis, for his career in the playoffs, is averaging 25 and 10 in 50-plus playoff games, which puts him in the company of these guys since the merger. Giannis, Dirk, Jokic, Hakim, Anthony Davis, that's it. So he's been a really good playoff guy. He's been averaging 26 and 12, 54% field goal for the last few years. But then you look like from 2013 to 24, he's 83rd in playoff games. This century, he's 169th in playoff games played. So he's had this career that's both been really good, but at the same time, I'm not sure it shouldn't have been better. And then you have Embiid,

who you go through his last seven playoff years, loses to Boston in round two, had an orbital fracture and concussion that year, loses to Toronto in game seven in 2019, the Kawhi shot, had knee tendonitis that year, swept by to Toronto in game seven in 2019. The Kawhi shot had knee tendonitis that year. Swept by Boston in 2020. Nothing wrong with him other than Ben Simmons was in exit stage right. 2021, loses to Atlanta in seven. They're up 3-1. He has a torn meniscus in that series. 2022, lost to Miami in six. Was tied 2-2 and then they lost the last two. He had a torn thumb ligament, orbital fracture, and a concussion, that series. 2023 was the worst one, round two.

Up 3-2 in the series. They end up losing to Boston in 70 and a sprained knee that year. And then 2024, round one, loses to the Knicks in six, torn meniscus. I bring this up because he gave this New York Times interview where they talked about greatest player of all time stuff.

And the interviewer said, is the implication that you think you would be in the greatest player of all time conversation about the injury problems? And Beat said, I think so. I think I'm that talented. I obviously need to win championships and to win championships, you need other guys.

You can't do it by yourself. I want to win so bad, but if you don't, you just got to understand that as long as you care about the right stuff, if it doesn't happen, maybe it wasn't meant to be. Which brings me to my third piece of the six pack. With Embiid, it's all about the injuries. So he's self-aware enough to say like, yeah, this could have gone better. I had some bad luck. It's too bad. At the same time, Joel Embiid, there's bad luck.

And then there's the question, is your body totally meant to play basketball? Which is a question we wonder about a lot, especially with big guys. We wondered about it with Yao Ming. We wondered about it with Bill Walton. Embiid is talking about himself as like, without the injuries, I'd be in the greatest player of all time conversation.

Bill Walton actually did have the injuries and would have been in the greatest player of all time conversation. And we saw when he was healthy, he actually ran through the league and won the title and probably would have had a dynasty. When you're talking about greatest player of all time, first of all, that's ludicrous because if you're not durable, you can't be in the conversation. And he's never been durable even before he had all these injuries the last seven years ago. So the better question is, could he have been in the greatest center of all time conversation? Which again, now you're competing against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who wasn't just one of

the three best players of all time, who didn't just have one of the great start to finish high school to college to NBA careers we've ever seen, who won all kinds of MVPs, who won, I think, six titles by the time it was said and done, but was also astoundingly durable. And over and over again, if you look at the greatest of all time,

durability is a big piece of it. It's a big piece of the LeBron case right now. LeBron might not be able to beat the ceiling of Michael Jordan. He might not have as many MVPs and rings as Kareem, but his case would be the career case. It would be just for 20 plus years, the durability that he had, the reliability. He was just always there over and over again and really was a little bit indestructible. And Embiid was the opposite. So Embiid said in this interview, you think about it, the thing that stopped me all these years is just freak injuries. Every single playoffs, regular season, people falling on my knee or breaking my face twice. It's always freak injuries at the wrong time. That's a piece of it. It doesn't explain what happened in 14 and 15 and

why he only played 31 games in the first three seasons of his career. And I do have sympathy for him because it sucks when an athlete doesn't reach his potential, but all you have to do is watch him. All you have to do is look at pictures of him when he was at Kansas for that one year before he entered the lottery, what he looked like when he was even working out for teams versus what he looked like last season, what he looks like at the Olympics now, where he's just not in the same shape. And if you talk about big guys, one of the ways to not get injured is to be in awesome shape. And I don't think anybody's watched Embiid the last couple of years and said, wow, that guy's in amazing shape. He's always carrying too much

weight. And that's one of the ways you get hurt if you're a big guy. We have so much evidence of this. We saw this happen with Shaquille O'Neal in the second half of his career, where you can get through with athletic talent and overpowering people and all that stuff. But once you hit your 30s and you're carrying all that weight, that weight's not going away. And now some stuff starts happening. And this goes back to the self-awareness piece. What I would have wanted to hear Embiid say is, I could have been one of the best players ever. I had some bad luck.

And I also feel like there's some things I would do over again. I would be in better shape. I would try to condition my body better so I could absorb some of this stuff. And it just doesn't seem like he gets it. He had some quote later about continuity. On the one hand, I love that we have candid athletes. On the other hand, his career made more sense after I read the interview. Then he says later, and this became a big story this week where he says, he's talking about Team USA and he says, you got to understand most of those guys are older.

The LeBron now is not the LeBron that was a couple of years ago. So it's a big difference. Everyone would also tell you, and you can see for yourself, the athletic LeBron, dominant that he was a couple of years ago is not the same that he is now. I think people get fooled by the names on paper, but those names have been built throughout their career and now they're older. They're not what they used to be. That's a crazy thing to say about somebody you're about to play in the Olympics with. And conversely, if reporters went to LeBron and said, hey, what'd you think about what Embiid said to you about how you're not the same guy? And LeBron said, he's probably right to some degree.

I'm 40 years old. I've been in the NBA forever, but you know, I feel like I can get 95% there. But if I was Joel, I would be worried about trying to stay in. I wouldn't be worrying about other players. I'd be worried about me. We wish Joel was in shape. He's only playing 14 to 16 minutes a game for us at Team USA. I wish he was in better shape. I'm sure if you talk to anybody in the Sixers and gave them true serum, like in true lies. I'm sure if you talk to anybody in the Sixers and gave them true serum, like in true lies, I'm sure all of them would say, we wish Embiid was in better shape. So I guess I'm pushing back on that could have been the greatest player ever thing because we've just never seen the off the court work discipline from him that

all the other great guys had, that Jordan had, that Kareem had, that LeBron had, that Bill, even Bill Russell in the 60s, 50s and 60s when nobody had any of this stuff and he was still out there all the time. The only time he got hurt was the 1958 finals. So just wish Joel Embiid was a little more self-aware. The fourth thing on the six pack, the 12th Olympic spot and the concept of this, which is going to dive into Jalen Brown in one second. But when you're picking a team, as we talked about earlier at the minutes, you know, you're going to have that one game where only nine guys, maybe 10 are going to play. So they're picking this team.

They know they're building around AD and Bam and KD and Tatum and LeBron and Curry and Edwards and Drew is the glue guy. So they know they have eight guys. Then Embiid decides he's going to play. And there's some benefits to that because there's going to be moments like against France, you're going to need him in the Gobert or Wemba Nyama matchup. You're going to need the size. There's going to be moments, especially if you put them out there against the right teams, like a team like Canada that doesn't have a lot of size, you can bring him out against second units and Embiid just becomes unguardable for four or five minutes.

So there's a case that he should be on the team. Would you be better off just putting Chad Holmgren on here and he doesn't care if he plays or not, but when he plays, he can at least stretch four? Maybe, but I'm not going to argue with having Embiid. There's Halliburton versus Brunson was a big argument. And I think the reason they didn't have Brunson ultimately, even though he's a better player than Halliburton, is because they wanted somebody who would have been fine not playing. And if you read the tea leaves, the South Sudan

game, Halliburton didn't really play. And I think he's going to be one of the odd men out. Jalen Brunson, would he be good with that? I have Jalen Brunson as the sixth best guy in the league. Is he good with just getting shoved to the side? Probably not. Derek White is in that kind of shutdown defender, backup guard defense spot that you have to have because all these teams have

these fast guards. Teams can go small. You just need guards and you need defense so White gets that spot over Jalen Suggs, Alex Crusoe, whoever you want to talk about there. So White gets that spot over Jalen Suggs, Alex Crusoe, whoever you want to talk about there. And then that last spot, Jalen Brown, you're basically talking about him versus Devin Booker versus Donovan Mitchell, in my opinion. And Mitchell was never really in the mix for this. So it was always Booker and Booker was on the 21 team, played a lot of minutes. They picked Booker. Booker was in there early and Booker is a very

good international player. But once you do that, now you have KD, you have Tatum, you have LeBron, you have Curry, you have Edwards, you have Drew, and you have Booker. You don't really have minutes for Jalen Brown, who just won the finals MVP, who's just on a title team. And now you're going to add him to this team last minute because Kawhi gets shut down and he's not going to play and that's going to go good from a chemistry standpoint. It's not. The white pick was a chemistry pick. That's it.

White's not going to care if he doesn't play or not. Jalen Brown now playing is a little bit of a different. It's a little bit embarrassing. He probably thinks he's on the same level as KD and Tatum and LeBron at this point, and he might not be wrong. But to me, it made sense not to have him because it brings up all the chemistry stuff that you want to avoid. Which brings me to the fifth thing I want to talk about. Everyone knew Derek White was going to get the Kawhi spot for a couple months. I knew in May, if Kawhi somehow wasn't ready to go, by the way, tough blow for the Clippers, it wasn't going to be Jalen, it was going to be Derek White.

And I think Jalen knew this too, but yet he said something anyway. And it was, the Celtics have had a couple of moments during this summer, right? Everything goes right in the playoffs, they win the title. What happens right after? All of a sudden, the owner is selling the team WIC with Grosbeck. That makes me nervous. Now we have a little instability at the top. The Porzingis injury, which he played on in game five, and then it comes out. He's out for six

months. Oof. Well, he's not back until December. Well, to me, that means February. I'm just assuming we're not seeing Porzingis until February. That would to me, that means February. I'm just assuming we're not seeing Porzingis until February. That would be the safe bet to me. So you have that. So now the Celtics, it's already hard enough to repeat. Now you have two major things going against you. And then you have this Jalen thing, which I don't want to throw a tantrum about it, but I didn't love it. A lot of people are asking me over the last couple of weeks, what'd you think of Jalen saying what he said about how he basically insinuated he should have made it overweight, who's his teammate. And my answer was I didn't

like it because it wasn't the kind of thing that would have happened before they won the title. Before they won the title, there was a selflessness to that team. That was one of the things that made it special. And even though Jalen's right, and he should be one of the 12 guys in this team, if we were just picking a team of the 12 best guys, he should be on the team if we're doing that. But that's not what the team was. They're trying to do all these different things

with the team and White made more sense for it. So if he's going to express displeasure, if he's going to blame Nike or whatever, you have to do it through the prism of Derek White's an awesome player and he was a great choice. It's upsetting to me that I wasn't given a chance to compete for one of the forward spots. Some way to frame it that doesn't make it seem like you're kind of shitting on your teammate because he got picked over you. That's not the kind of stuff that was happening before they won the title. So as you know, I love The Secret, which Isaiah Thomas revealed in 1989. I based it as a big premise around my basketball book.

When we did the book of basketball stuff, I brought it back. And this was something he talked about during the 89 finals when he was in a press conference. And Isaiah said, I looked at Seattle who won one year and Houston who got to the finals one year. They both self-destructed the next year. How come? I read Pat Riley's book Showtime.

He talks about the disease of more. A team wins it one year and the next year, every player wants more minutes, more money, more shots and it kills them. Our team has been up at the championship level four years now. We could have easily self-destructed. So I read what Riley was saying, and I learned. I didn't want what happened to Seattle and his snap on us, but it's hard not to be selfish. The art of winning is complicated by statistics, which for us becomes money.

But you've got to fight that, find a way around it. And I think we have, right? So you've heard me read that. And then the other thing he said was lots of times on our team, you can't tell who the best player in the game was because everybody did something good. That's what makes us so good. The other team has to worry about stopping eight or nine people instead of two or three. It's the only way to win. The only way to win. It's the way the game was invented. There's more to that. You've got to create an environment that won't accept losing. I would argue that described what the Celtics were last year. There was selflessness to them. They didn't care who scored. They just wanted to win. They didn't care who got the attention. They just wanted to win. They wanted to show up, play for each other. And it was one of my favorite Celtics teams ever. And then a month and a half later, we have stuff like this. And it just makes me nervous because I think it's really

hard to repeat. Once you win, you got what you wanted. Now people start veering toward what's best for them. And that's what the Jalen thing felt to me. I hope I'm wrong. And I hope this team's able to snap out of it. But if you're talking about disease and more champs, 67 Sixers, 71 Bucks, 75 Warriors, 77 Blazers, 79 Sonics, 80 Lakers, 92 Bulls, they ended up winning. 00 Lakers, they ended up winning. 04 Pistons, 06 Heat, 2010 Lakers, 16 Cavs, 18 Warriors, and really the 22 Warriors, I have to count because the Jordan Poole-Draymond thing happened right after, which was another one of those moments where you're like, eh, that's a bad sign. I'm just pointing this out.

I'm not panicking yet about the Celtics. I think they're fine. They have everybody coming back. Hopefully Porzingis will come back before the All-Star break. But I do wonder if next June, if they don't win and we're looking back, we're like, man, remember June and July when that happened and that happened, that happened.

And it does feel a little piece of that. I wish Jalen didn't say that. And I love Jalen Brown. And he's one of my favorite Celtics of the last 20 years. And I just think it was a bad moment. I don't think he should have done it. Last thing on the six pack, I'm gonna make this my superior take

and it plays off what we just talked about with Boston. Just some little red flags. The Milwaukee Bucks are 15 to one on FanDuel and Giannis is six to one on it for MVP. And they had the year from hell last year, right? Name it, it went wrong. Nobody has beaten a healthy Giannis since the 2022 Celtics beat them in seven, thanks to an insane game six performance by Jason Tatum. And if you go look at that box score, there's no Chris Middleton in that series. Giannis had 46 and 20 in that game it's not like he wasn't doing anything

and Tatum ends up just leaving his body, wins go to game 7, Grant Williams hits a bunch of threes, all of a sudden the Bucs are out and the next two years a bunch of dumb shit happens and Giannis isn't healthy in either playoffs and now he's 30 years old

Dame's 33, Middleton's 33 and yet I kind of like where the Bucs are and now he's 30 years old. Dame's 33. Middleton's 33. And yet, I kind of like where the Bucs are because they're under the radar now. Nobody's talking about them, right? Even think about the Olympics. The Bucs are irrelevant in the Olympics basketball discussion. The two teams that in the summer got the most attention

for moves in the East were Philly and the New York Knicks. You have Orlando got better and Milwaukee is just kind of like, yeah, yeah, they won in 21 but now they're old. So you have Dame coming back from a year from hell. No question. This is probably the biggest season of his career because

if it doesn't happen this year, I don't know if it happens for him as a top two guy. They got a couple breaks. Porzingis being out for half the year. Embiid's out of shape. The Knicks never got a center. The Knicks, by the way, I agree with that. They could probably get a center in January or February.

The big thing that I think slipped under the radar, they signed a bunch of guys who can play in a game seven for minimum contracts over the summer. They signed DeLon Wright, who I've always liked, who can absolutely play in a big game. Gary Trent, who was just sitting there for somebody to steal. A 3 and D guy who hasn't really played with a point guard for the last couple of years. And it's just been on these weird Toronto teams that keep changing their identities. But that guy's unafraid. I don't mind Gary Trent. And then Prince on the Lakers, who I didn't think had a great year, but

guys have a tendency to not have awesome years sometimes in that LeBron AD infrastructure. As a ninth guy, he's going to be better than Jay Crowder and whoever. They're going to have Conant and coming back. They still have Portis. And I kind of like their nine. And the big thing for me, Giannis, who in the last six years for MVP finished first,

first, fourth, third, third, and fourth. For the last six years, he's 30, 12, and six, just every season. And from a perception standpoint, Jokic passed him, Luka passed him, Wemby's coming, the Celtics have the best team. And he's just kind of over here. And he hasn't really played since March. And I just am expecting some insane Giannis, I'm taking back my turf territory. So, you know, people think, sometimes when I talk about the Celtics, people think I'm doing like reverse jinxes,

like people in my life. They're like, oh, you're just saying this because you're trying to jinx whoever. I'm the most worried about the Bucs in the East. That's where I've landed. That's where, as I've had a little bit of a vacation in the last few weeks. The Bucs are the scariest team to me. I'm not that worried about Philly.

I think that's going to be, they have two of their top three are injury potential guys. They're throwing a whole bunch of dudes together. I still have some questions about Paul George and Philly, how that's going to play out over an eight-month span. The Knicks, there's going to be some weird minute stuff with them

with bringing Randall back, with who's going to finish games. They don't have enough size. I think they're really going to miss Hartenstein. Are they going to get the same healthy season for Brunson? And then you have Milwaukee, which is going to be stable. You would dock Adam and coaching staff like Missoula did over last summer. And 15-1 on FanDuel.

Normally, you don't get good odds on teams, but to me, that should be 10-1. And that was one that jumped out to me. And then the Celtics over under for wins on FanDuel is 58 and a half, which just seems too high to me if they're not going to have Porzingis for at least half the season. That feels like to me that should be maybe in the 54 range. Anyway, watch out for the Bucs. I said last year, don't watch out for the Bucs. I'm not buying it. This year, I'm a little more intrigued. Anyway, that was today's six major things. And remember, get yourself a six-pack of Michelob Ultra, a superior light beer,

an official beer sponsor of Team USA. It's refreshing, crisp, only 95 calories. And here's another reason to like it. Michelob Ultra is giving you the chance to take home the gold with superior access. You can win signed merch, a Visa gift card, and more. Head to MichelobUlttra.com slash Superior Access. Enjoy responsibly. 2024 Anheuser-Busch, Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri, Michelob Ultra, Superior Access, Olympic Games,

Paris 2024, sweepstakes, no purchase necessary. Open to US residents, 21 plus, begins June 10th, 2024, ends August 11th, 2024. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com slash rules for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. Message and data rates may apply. Void where prohibited. Coming back, we're going to talk to Fantasy NCR about Heat 2. We'll be right back. Cash doesn't make any noise, but it's awesome. Get into the game with Monopoly Double Play at McDonald's. While supplies last, one in five chances to win game piece prizes at outset. Chances to win double play prizes based on time of code entry and draw prizes based on number of entries in each draw.

See rules in app. So I first came to Edward Jones with a great deal of trepidation when I first met with my advisor. And I really was feeling vulnerable about what I would have to share. I was, of course, pleasantly surprised to find that there was absolutely no judgment and a lot of support. And when it was time to get serious, he really took my hand and helped me to do that. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. What's up, everybody?

Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessy, Bill Simmons. We had to get it on. We are here at BJ's on Alvarado at 2 a.m. to talk about the distinct possibility that we might be getting heat to. It's July 18th when we're recording this on July 16th. Michael Mann talked

to the LA Times. He premiered this whole crazy website. His archives. His archives, which is like his own film school, his own, like it's an incredible database. When am I going to be at this point in my career

where I'm just unleashing giant massive archives? Uncut page two columns? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's do that right now. And anyway, he said to the LA Times that he hopes to be shooting Heat 2

by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. He basically said, I had to get it on. Yeah. There's been strong rumors that this is like Austin Butler is in this movie.

So this is becoming like increasingly a reality. Catching Austin Butler at this moment Austin Butler's having. Yes. And that he would be playing Chris Chiharalos.

He would be playing the Val Kilmer part. So the lead would be Chris. That is half of the Heat 2 novel. So this is going to be based on the novelization of this idea. It was Meg Gardner and Michael Mann co-wrote this novel, Heat 2.

Part of it is a prequel to Heat and it's Neil and Vince in Chicago and in the west kind of taking down scores and stopping guys you take down scores and then half of it is chris in south america after heat so after heat yeah is it going to be young neil and and and vince in chicago and around there and then it's going to be split in half. So it's one or the other or it could be both and Godfather 2 parallel universe.

Yes. See, I intentionally was trying not to read about any of this because you want to go in fresh. I'm worried. I was wondering about you guys are the counterweights to my enthusiasm for this. How dare you?

Well, you're worried. I think that you've expressed some cynicism about late period Michael Mann. I'm worried the same way I'd be worried if Larry Bird was like, I'm thinking about playing again. I shot in the backyard yesterday and it felt great and I think I could be a stretch four.

So you were not— That would make me worried. You were not a fan of Ferrari. I don't know how strongly I could say that I wasn't a fan of Ferrari. Wow. It was exceptionally, exquisitely well done, and I almost went into a coma. Okay. I don't think you would have that problem with heat, too.

I would have said I wouldn't have that problem With Ferrari How are you feeling about this? Very torn Michael Mann Does he share a birthday with Joe Biden? They're roughly the same age That's not ideal

It's tough, it's hard to make movies When you get in your 80s So Michael Mann's not allowed to make movies But Ridley Scott and Francis LeBron are michael mann's not allowed to make movies but ridley scott and francis you know not allowed it's like this is sacred ip this is like coppola's like godfather 4 is happening it's very similar to gladiator 2 and the jury's out on gladiator 2 i'm very excited for gladiator 2 if he too is happening i would be their opening day i like let's all say we're all gonna be there like. I'm in. I'm in. But what does it do? Thanks, guys. Thanks for going to Heat 2. What else am I doing?

What does it do to not just Heat's legacy. It's dangerous. But the 5 Heat, the 6 Heat, the 7 Heat. Like all the plans that you guys have. And also, why aren't we involved? That's the bigger question for me. If you're going to do Heat 2, I'm right fucking here,

and CR is right fucking there. We should be involved some way. Is there a whole backstory of Dennis Haysbert, the chef character, pre-prison or maybe in prison, and he's just like, there's a whole prison basketball gambling scene? Is that what you came out of Heat wondering?

No, I'm just going backwards. I'm let's let's fucking go backwards let's go back for one second so because you have podcasted about heat three times you think you should be creatively involved four times in the execution of heat too yes you know what it brings up a good idea though i yeah frankly yes would you be more or less excited if this was executive produced, maybe even written by Michael Mann, but directed by someone else? No. No, because I think the directing

is the one thing he's still really good at. That's what he's... The race sequences in Ferrari are sick. He still has that. There's no question about it. He still has that. Is this... I've read the book.

It's okay. Yeah yeah it's not it's it's okay is it good enough but is it do you are you saying that because of the story or because of the writing i don't because i think the story is actually pretty cool like you could just i look i we have to accept the fact that no matter what, something else about Heat will get made while we're alive. This will become IP. They will be like, someone out there is going to make a Heat adjacent story or Heat sequel or Heat prequel. There's just no chance this is not being sold off at some point. So I would just as soon have Michael Mann do it.

Even if it's Black Hat level. Let me pose a hypothetical to you hypothetical so do you think bird could play 10 minutes for the pacers let's say you open up the holiday reporter tomorrow morning there's a story in development cruising to starring al pacino cruising to current current Pacino or de-aged Pacino? Looking back on his career. Cruising 2. And then we're recasting someone into Pacino in the 80s, but we're making a new story. He's now really experimenting with both murder and his sexuality.

Right. Are you like, hell yeah, we need more cruising? No, I'm not. And to me, the better analogy is Godfather 4, where Coppola's like, let's go back one more time. He's just at dinner with somebody, and they say... I'll make you whole for

Megalopolis. I'm gonna pay you all back. The right party guest is just going, you ever think about what would happen to Corleones now? You know, I haven't. And then all of a sudden he's sketching out and now we have Godfather 4. Like,

sometimes it's okay for IP to just end. I agree with you, but it's, since it's never going to or it won't at least in this era, I'd rather Michael Mann do it,

I think. Listen, we support the Michael Mann franchise. I think we've done all of his movies on the rewatchables except for like four. And if he's going to do it, we're going to support it.

It just makes me nervous. There's like five directors out there that I'd be like, I'm kind of curious what you would do with this. Like Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, people who have been obviously very influenced by it. Yeah, now if it's like Michael Mann is working with Nolan and they're figuring out he too. Now my nipples are hard.

Interesting. Rock hard. Is that like a new scale we can create? Like a hardness scale of Bill's nipples? No, but it's, you know, that part's really interesting to me of Mann working with a younger, like really peaking great filmmaker and collaborating with them. But also, like, it doesn't sound like Michael Mann's that much fun to collaborate with.

I don't know. He's kind of a one-man force. That's not the barometer. That's not the test we use for whether or not directors are great, though. I just think some people are solo acts that do their own shit. I can't see him taking a younger approach. Oh, I see what you mean. You know what I mean?

Like working with a partner and yeah. Yeah, he kind of does his own thing. Your best quality, and you have many great qualities, but your best quality is your loyalty. And this is a true show of your loyalty. His worst quality is real estate. His best quality. Just all things real estate? Just real estate.

No, he's just been trying to get trying to buy a house for years doesn't get it but he doesn't understand i need in 30 seconds i may need to drop everything if i feel the heat around the corner and in this case it would be a barstool con when you're barstool chris where's chris he's in chicago Chicago. Oh, no. Why is he there? Here's another thing. Okay. How popular do we actually think Heat is? It's insanely popular. Because it's certainly the foundation of this podcast,

and we love it. And in our universe, it's one of the great movies ever made. But does everyone feel that way? Like, if Heat 2 comes out, is it... Is it as big as Barbie? No. I'm just...

But I do think think sean what what is you're a little more rational with heat what is heat 2 in the theaters when is it released what month does it come out what's the best marketing plan for it i think it's an october movie that might get some awards consideration but is mostly just a like a crowd-pleasing play it's a movie for adults it's probably going to cost north of $200 million to get all of the talent on board and the scope of the story.

Is there another bank robbery? I mean, he... There are robberies in Heat 2, yes. He has to. I think just to live up to the billing of the movie. I think it's like simultaneously a big hit and a cult movie

at the same time. The cult aspect of it makes it feel bigger than it is because the people who love it live by it. Talk about it a lot. The stakes are frightening to me. I, the most,

one of the most disappointing experiences of my life, not movies, but just life. Well, that's, that's probably a little overboard, but another 48 hours. I was so upset after. I understand.'s probably a little overboard, but another 48 hours. I was so upset after.

I understand. And I was just like, Oh, we're doing this. We're bringing back Reggie and Jack. I would not want my favorite movie ever. And then it just was like, if they Irishman De Niro and Pacino,

I would not want it. I would point to the underperformance of Furiosa and say, careful what you wish for. A lot of people love Furiosa. You know, I was not as high on it as some people were. But the appetite for that movie was not as big as some people thought there was. Which is the fare with heat.

I'm surprised as a content lord that you're turning down the opportunity to dream cast this movie for the next three months on your podcast. No, I mean, the suggested cast of Driver, Adam Driver,

Austin Butler, and Ana de Armas is a home run. That's a home run. That's three people I love seeing in movies that I think are great. And Oscar Isaac.

Adam Driver, he's red hot. And Oscar Isaac. He's what? He's red hot. Gotta grab him before somebody else snaps him up. It's not a hot streak.

People love coming out for him. Did you see white noise? Listen. Austin Butler's exciting. I don't know. Maybe the Adam Driver partnership maybe should have ended after Ferrari. You can't possibly be more excited

about Austin Butler and Heat than you are Adam Driver and Heat. No, I like Adam Driver partnership maybe should end after Ferrari. You can't possibly be more excited about Austin Butler and Heat than you are Adam Driver and Heat. No, I like Adam Driver. It's fine. He's well-suited to Heat. Yes. He's a little too big to be either of those guys. Certainly.

They'll have to put him in a hole in the ground half the time. Yeah. He's just too tall. Do we want this set in the future or the past? I would prefer it, actually. If you're asking me right now, this would be my number one suggestion is just do the Christopher Hurlis thing.

And just, with all due respect to Val Kilmer, just be like, it's Austin Butler is Val Kilmer the day he leaves Los Angeles. Yeah, see, I'm fine with that because I think TV shows and movies are always afraid to do that and to pick up something with a different actor.

And I don't think they should be. That show is way closer to Black Hat than it is Heat. Because that story in the novel is closer to international crime syndicates. That kind of... And we think that's a good idea for Heat too. Bill and I love Black Hat. I tried again.

It took me like seven years to like Black Cat. Did you watch it thinking of my cut while you were watching it? No, I watched the director's cut. What happened when we did the Black Cat pod? Like, top five least successful pod we've ever released? It didn't do well. On the feed? It didn't do well.

It didn't succeed. People don't like that movie. Yeah. Because it doesn't work. But the dudes who like it, like, swear by it. Because it doesn't work. But the dudes who like it, like, swear by it. Would you rather Heat was like this awesome, super well done version of a Michael Mann movie or closer to

the Den of Thieves type of cuisine? No, I want it. I need it to stay in the Mann spiritual. I like that question though. Which is like, is the better outcome being the Bee movie? Yeah. That's an question though. Which is like, is the better outcome

being the B movie? That's an interesting idea. That's where I've landed. Heat 2 with Gerard Butler? Because this would be a movie that would be prestigious. It would have a big fancy premiere. I don't want that from Heat 2. It didn't come in that way.

I want Chris being unable to give up the lifestyle and we're robbing banks again. Yeah. And that's it. The other thing, you know, when Michael calls me, I'm happy to talk to him about him. We'll see. Maybe we'll go to Dantanas and talk about some ideas. Not after this conversation, you won't.

Fair. I really like setting this in the future. And I like this model that Beverly Hills cop tapped into. We're just like, we're now here in 2020 characters and IP that I like, and we're just going forward. And it would seem like the move to me is like, think of the original crew.

Like what if a couple of them stayed together? The, the sons and daughters. Oh, like, like Chris's son. Sizemore's kid. Chris's son is now 34,

and Sizemore's kid is in there. Maybe they're just buddies, or they're at some 35th, 30th. They're TikToking from a Hollywood Hills home. Yeah, they're just like my dad, or they're being part. I'll give Michael this idea but I'll give this guy's

to you now and to you too somebody's doing a documentary about the heat crew right like a nine-parter on Netflix yeah

Jason's here and the two and Sizemore's kid and Chris's kid are both scheduled for interviews at like the the four seasons

of Beverly Hills and they're like one's at 1 one's at 2.30 Alex Gibney kind of run into each other and then they decide to go get coffee

and it's like fuck it let's keep the legacy going do you think that'll have the same weight as Al Pacino and Robert De Niro sharing a scene for the first time

in their careers Austin Butler and Adam Driver the sons of the original crew. Fantasy's in. Sounds good. I'm in.

I'm in. Heat 2, but we also get to parody the documentary world. the thing is... That's definitely a high on my priority list. Let's slam prune documentaries

in Heat 2. If Heat 2 was a complete fucking fiasco D-movie that lost $180 million, I still would be like, I'm pretty pumped to see Heat 2 was a complete fucking fiasco D-movie that lost $180 million, I still would be like, I'm pretty pumped to see Heat 2. So the conversation is kind of moot.

Can we give you percentages, Seesaw? I'm offering you 20% chance Heat 2 is really good. 80% chance it's a fucking disaster. I'll take it. I'll take it if it's going to happen either way. I would too. Would you?

What about 1090? I would take it. And I am Will and I don't want him to be done. I have nothing to lose. I don't want him to be done and I think it's just like

it's obviously something he's still very passionate about. Are you talking about Joe Biden or Michael Mann? I'm just trying to keep track. The industry part of my brain is very dubious that a studio is going to give him $250 million. I think after Ferrari, that's no way that's happening.

I don't think he is going to be able to get that. I hope it happens. No, I agree with you. Regardless of this conversation, but I don't think that's going to happen. He's not going to be able to make this cheaply. That's not even a prediction. There's no way after Ferrari,

he's getting $ hundred plus million dollars to do another giant movie like that. Yeah. I don't, I don't, just don't see it happening. Oh, this made me feel better.

Well, but I'll say what, what I think part of the reasoning behind all this stuff this week is he's doing the, Absolutely. He's fishing. Yeah.

Absolutely. And his archives is a cool idea and a good thing. And people should check it out. I looked at it. I looked at all the Ferrari stuff. He's fishing. Yeah. Absolutely. And his archives is a cool idea and a good thing. And people should check it out. I looked at it. I looked at all the Ferrari stuff and it's fascinating. So that stuff is great.

We should celebrate that. I think it's going to be Heat 2 set in Abu Dhabi funded by whatever and that's how he gets the money. That's inspiring stuff.

Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey. God, CR just got bummed out there. Well, because it's like if you're going to take my favorite movie ever made and just be like,

let's just carve it up among Petro states, yeah, I'm going to be a little bit bummed out about that. Do you want to hear what you want to hear or do you want to

have your friends be realistic with you? What do you want? Maybe it shouldn't get made then if that's the alternative. I'm sorry, Chris. I'm sorry. I would vote

tread carefully with Sacred IP. I know, but they're fucking making Gladiator 2 and there's five Alien movies and six Terminator movies.

I have a news flash for you guys. Gladiator 2 is probably going to be bad. My hopes are not high. Ridley Scott's 87. Well, you know what?

Until we see it, we can have hope. You know what I am excited for? Devil Wears Prada 2. I think that's going to be good. Thank you for watching us. Please subscribe to Ringer Movies. What happened to Miranda?

All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Tara Palmieri. Thanks to Brian Curtis. Thanks to Jesse Lopez for producing. Thanks to Steve Cerruti as well. And thanks to Sean Fantasy and Chris Ryan. Don't forget, new rewatchables coming tomorrow.

We're doing No Way Out. That will be on Monday night. And you can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch some of the clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. I might see you later this week. I might be doing another podcast on Thursday. So stay tuned for that and enjoy the next few days.