The Bill Simmons Podcast - Chuck Klosterman on Chris Cornell, Superteams, an NFL Rule Change, and Michael Jordan (Ep. 218)

Episode Date: May 26, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by author Chuck Klosterman to discuss the recent passing of Chris Cornell (03:00), the importance of film soundtracks (10:00), if super-teams hurt the NBA overall (26:00), LeBron's legacy (40:00), the NFL's rule change on celebrations (57:00), and the conspiracy theory on Michael Jordan's first retirement (65:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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do everything you need to do to help those out. There are two good podcasts. And if you missed a BS podcast, we had Bill Burr on Wednesday and talked about a whole bunch of stuff with him. We also did a podcast on Monday with my dad and Hasan Minhaj. And right now, BS Podcast Hall of Famer, Chuck Klosterman, he's written, have you written 10 books now? Is that why this new one's called Chuck Klosterman 10?

It is. It's called 10, although everyone thinks it's just called X, which was pretty stupid of me to put X on the cover and think people were that familiar with Roman numerals. You should have called it Triple X, The Return of Chuck Klosterman like the Vin Diesel movie. You've done 10 books and I'm going to say

54 appearances on this podcast over the last 10 years. I don't know. I feel like... 34? When did you actually start doing the pod? Because remember we used to do those email exchanges. No, I feel like... 34? When did you actually start doing the pod? So exactly... Because remember we used to do those email exchanges. That was like the pre-pod era.

Yeah. So I started the pod in May 2007. It's been exactly 10 years. I'm going to say you've been on an average of... Maybe it's less than 40. I'm going to say it's like three and a half per year. So I'm going to say around 35, somewhere in there.

Yeah. We did a couple of email exchanges. Remember those days, pre-podcasts, people just exchanged emails for all day. I think we did like four of those. I remember one being about when the Olympic team lost. We were like,

what do we do about this? I think that was the first one. Yeah. It was 04. Yeah, we argued about the Olympic team and the future of basketball. And then I think we argued about reality bites versus singles.

That seems like something we would do. Which one was the more defining Gen X movie? It was hard not to think about singles last week with Chris Cornell passing away. Yeah. Were you a Soundgarden fan? I was a fan

of the whole genre and, you know, they were one of the icons. The whole genre of grunge or the whole genre of rock? No, the whole, well, the irony of them

was they really were a rock band but they happened to ascend during the grunge era, so they became a grunge band. But I don't know. They're one of the OGs, you know? And I think when, I always felt like Singles was kind of the defining movie of that generation, just because, just what Gen X was like. Have you watched it recently, though?

Those people are much older in the film than they seemed when it came out like you know and they're working as city planners and stuff and in fact if you watch that movie now it's almost as though like it seems like a satire of the technology of that period because the plot continually hinges on technology that no longer exists. It's crazy. Early on, there's a guy who's bragging about his watch that can store 10 phone numbers in it. And then there's a huge plot point based on the audio tape

breaking in an answering machine. He's making calls from phone booths constantly. Video dating is this new idea. It's bizarre. If you tried to make a movie now with the hope that the technology references would be that dated in the future, I don't think it would be possible.

I agree. And it's funny, like, it's dated, but it's dated in a really nice way because that's exactly what life was like in 1992. I mean, you left out the part where he gets recognized in the grocery store for being like a college DJ. Like that was one of the only ways to stand out in 1992. If you're in college, if you wrote a column or you had a thing on the radio station, now you could stand out if you're in college, you know, a hundred different ways.

But back then it was only one or two things. You're right though. Everybody was too old, especially Campbell Scott was the lead. And he felt like he was like 35. I watched that in college and because there was rock music in it, it seemed like a young person's film.

And then when Reality Bites came out and the people were actually college age, it seemed like a much more, like a closer thing. But the Cornell death, though, definitely one of the most surprising suicides, celebrity-wise, I can think of. I would not have ever...

I mean, if someone would have said, people from that period who I thought, you know, this could happen to, he would be pretty... I think he wouldn't have been the top guy in his own band. Right. I was shocked. It's just very strange, you know? He seemed like such a normal person.

I interviewed him when, when they, when like Audioslave was being introduced. And, you know, when you consider what his job was and how good looking he was and sort of the way, you know, he was, he was a musician and he was also a model and all these things. He seemed very normal for somebody in that situation, but maybe that was the problem. Maybe you can't be a normal person and have that life. I don't know. I mean, that whole era now, Pearl Jam has become kind of the last band standing and they have the, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, all that stuff.

They would not have been my pick in 1994 to be like, who's going to be the band still touring 25 years from now? Because it seemed like that was the band that felt like it was going to, other than Nirvana, that was the band that felt like it was going to split up.

And Eddie resented fame so much. It's hard to believe 25 years later they're still cranking it. Well, they were also able to change more than other bands. True. I mean, or that they sort of consciously did that, that may have helped as well. Because at the end here, Soundgarden was back out

essentially playing a Greatest Hits collection of Soundgarden songs. They had stopped making music, a greatest hits collection of Soundgarden songs. You know, it was, they have, not that they were Ted Stop making music, but that every, you know, Pearl Jam, I guess, I haven't seen them live in a while, but I don't know if they essentially put on a greatest hits show or if they play the music they're making. Yeah, they mix it.

It did make me think, I hadn't thought about the whole, the quote-unquote grunge era in a while. I still don't love that it was a grunge era, but it was definitely a sound and it was definitely, it felt like it was coming from one area of the country and I think that's kind of what made it resonate. But the voices of the different bands there was really, you know, you think about it, so distinct.

Like Cornell had just one of the best voices. I thought Rob Harvilla did a great job on The Ring of Writing about like, his voice would have worked no matter what decade it was, you know? It was just like this, almost one of the perfect leading rock singer voices you could have had. It just happened. He just happened to come up in the early 90s. But, you know, you go Cobain and Eddie Vedder,

and just you go down the line, very distinct, you know. These were all people that probably would have succeeded. I don't think the decade would have mattered, right? Well, that music, when you look at the period it came out of, the thing that was sort of unifying it was, besides the geographic location, was the fashion they were wearing, like the kind of the aesthetics of how they looked. But also the idea that fame, particularly the conventional idea of how rock stars were supposed to act, was like no longer a desirable thing.

Yeah. So they had sort of, I think those bands saw what happened in Los Angeles during the last half of the 80s, and it was going to happen again in Seattle, so they tried to basically be as big as they could without ever embracing the idea that this is something that was driving them. And there was also something, you know, when you look at not just all these vocalists who have died, but Elliot Smith and the bass player from Hole and all these things. There was some just entrenched connection between the Pacific Northwest, depression, and heroin and opiates. I was so involved in so much of the music from that period,

and it was just kind of bad timing for those guys because if you're a depressed person who's rich and you have access to heroin, it's probably going to become part of your life. Yeah. The, you know, I went on a whole singles. I was actually on an airplane when the Cornell thing, when the news came out. And I went on a whole, I was on go, go in flight, just searching, uh, reading stories. And there was a bunch of stories about singles that I hadn't realized that even happened. Cause

like Cameron Crowe had done the, uh, 25th anniversary Blu-ray and it just led me in all these things. It's really crazy how he was working on that movie as that whole genre was basically taking off. And then the studio didn't realize what they had and they didn't release the movie and they, they kind of buried it. They didn't know what to do with it. And they, they kept, they changed the title. They went, they wondered if they should just scrap it completely. They, they just, they were kind of clueless with it.

And then the music started to take off and then they kind of bum rushed it. And I remember I had just graduated college and it was like fall of 92, I think. And, uh, and that movie came out and it, you know, part of me, I remember thinking, oh, they're just trying to capitalize on this music that has become so popular with everybody my age. But then on the other hand, Cameron Crowe was involved and he really did have cachet after say anything. So, you know, that I remember going on Friday night, I remember thinking this is, this is a huge movie for my generation, you know, but meanwhile, they'd had it in a can for a year. It really would have been interesting

if it had come out, I don't know, nine months earlier, like even as, as this music was starting to take off because, you know, Eddie was on the cover. I forget what year it was when Eddie was on the cover of Time Magazine, but it couldn't have been later than 92. And that was insane. Even Nirvana playing on SNL, all these things that didn't make sense because this was basically college music that mushroomed into something else. It was very weird to experience in real time is my point. Yeah, I feel lucky that I was in college during that period

because that's when you're most sort of in touch with that world of things and it was interesting to see all these kind of significant things change at the same time. Singles now does sort of feel like it's somehow like a rock movie because there's an Alice in Chains performance in it and there's a Soundgarden performance in it and these musicians, you know, Pearl Jam is in the movie. Narrative-wise, though, it is

a pretty conventional romantic comedy from that time. It's a rom-com with unbelievable music. The soundtrack did become the biggest part of it. I suppose to some degree that kind of happened with a movie like American Graffiti and stuff

where the memory of what's actually happening in the story becomes less important. People sort of remember the feel of it because of the music. I don't know. You also had Smashing Pumpkins was in there. Paul Westerberg was in there.

Basically as he was starting to break away from the replacements. And you added everything up. The whole concept of the soundtrack hadn't really become a thing yet. I'm sure there was a movie soundtrack that hit that was kind of marketed. Like here's the soundtrack of the movie and here are these songs. But in 1992, I don't really feel like that was as much of a thing and i remember it happened i know what it happened like you know like like the the animated film heavy metal like the the the soundtrack that came with that was

somewhere like almost like on par with the film itself i mean mean, you know, like, uh, the graduate, the music with that was important part of it. I mean, uh, I kind of think of other things. Rocky was like that too. I'm saying, I don't remember, I don't remember the soundtrack being marketed as one of the hooks to, to go see the movie. Does that make sense? It was like, here's this movie, but also here's this soundtrack you should get. And I remember going to the movie and then buying the soundtrack. And then it was like...

Footloose, that was the case too. I remember Footloose, the soundtrack of that being really aggressively marketed along with the film. Yeah, and Dirty Dancing too. Remember that one? Everyone had the Dirty Dancing one. I remember having the Rocky soundtrack way, way back when. But yeah, it was 92 to 95 was when the soundtrack became a thing for the movie. Because then it was like, I remember Above the Rim. Remember Dangerous Minds had that Coolio?

It was basically the whole marketing campaign was the Coolio song. Yeah. I remember Tori Amos, I think, covered an R.E.M. song on that. And the Dazed and Confused soundtrack was a very big deal, too. Yeah. I remember they even made a second Dazed and Confused soundtrack. Right. Because it seemed like that was getting...

Because that movie didn't really have that wider release, but... That was a simpler time for music just because you couldn't cherry-pick all the songs and just put them on an iTunes playlist. So if there was a good soundtrack that had like, you know, five or six songs that you really wanted to hear, that was, that was a, it was totally worth 16 bucks. It was like, wow, I got five songs that, you know, that I like, this is great. You know, versus. Isn't now the simpler time?

You had to consciously put these songs together in a way that made sort of narrative sense. Yeah, you're right. You know, like, oh, there was the Crow soundtrack, for example. The Crow soundtrack was a big, like, a lot of people bought that. There's a lot of, like, heavy alternative music on there that was seen maybe at the time just, like, one step beyond the heavy alternative music you'd hear on the radio now when you see like the twilight soundtrack which actually had very credible artists on it i remember like i think camille orc had a song on the twilight soundtrack but the relationship between the songs

was not as essential because people don't think that way anymore right now they just they think the you know if since you don't have the, like, when people had less money and they had to buy a record, and that might be all the music they would buy for a month, the relationship of the bands mattered more. And now it's not like that at all. I think now it's simpler. I think it's fun when soundtracks capture A specific moment in musical time Because one of the ones This is totally random And I'm like one of the only people who defend this movie

And I actually liked it Was The Saint with Val Kilmer And it captures that weird Mid 90's time when everybody was Convinced that electronic club music Was going to take over everything Remember that? And the Saint has a lot of those bands on the same soundtrack. And it's kind of a snapshot of

where we were in, uh, in 1996 or 97, wherever that was with prodigy and all those bands. Um, and then the moment was gone, but you see that happen. And what's weird is i don't feel like there's an early 2000s movie that captured all that music that you know basically the new york rock music from that point but it was more than new york but you know the strokes white stripes there was no movie in 010203 that was kind of like oh there's the snapshot of that era just nobody made it kind of a bummer. Maybe somebody can retroactively make it. I wouldn't have to be like that.

Did you see, speaking of Dazed and Confused, did you see Everybody Wants Some? Yes. I thought it was fantastic. It's on the cable rotation on Epix, my favorite channel

that just has like 10 movies and reruns them all the time. I really thought it was good. I liked it. It was kind of a sequel that's not a sequel, but feels a tiny bit sequel-y. What did you think? I like all his movies, I guess.

I'm kind of in the tank for him. I remember I saw it the day Prince died. That was the movie I was going in to see when I found out Prince died. That's one thing I remember about it. There are a few scenes in it that I could understand possibly having removed them. There's a scene where a guy is talking to the girl

on a river or something late in the movie. Yeah, I got rom-commy. I'm with you. Well, it wasn't even rom-commy. What it seemed to me is Richard Linklater was a potential college baseball player. I think that this is sort of a movie he made that was going through the memory of that time for him, and he also truncated it because every night they go to some wildly different party, which doesn't really happen that much in life that you go to such diametrically opposed events. But over time, you did.

And I think that in his life, he was probably this guy who was a good athlete, who, for whatever reason, sort of fell in with a crowd of people who were not sport guys very much. So he was kind of seeing both worlds. And I think that that's probably an incredibly personal movie for him. The other thing that's interesting about that movie is, I guess, his main objective when casting was the ability of the guys to play baseball. Because, like a lot of people, he knows that if you have a, you know, like if you remember that, oh, the Basketball Diaries movie, how you feel about that movie when you see Leonardo DiCaprio

trying to play basketball, it's so awful. He can't play at all, and it immediately sort of destroys any kind of reality-based emotional response you're having to the movie. So in this movie, he really looked for baseball players first,

and he's got like a submarine relief guy, like the guy you wouldn't normally find in a movie. Very specific roles, like a middle reliever who's a submarine pitcher. Yeah, he's got the guy who's kind of the best player in the team, who's got this Burt Reynolds mustache. You don't know how good he is for most of the movie. And then near the end, he goes up up against the the our basically our hero of the movie if there is a hero and he just has the greatest baseball he just totally looks like a

baseball player it looks like he should be on the dodgers they did the other interesting thing about that traditionally in a movie like that that character the great athlete who was introduced in his first scene is kind of being a jerk and inevitably gets his comeuppance at the end of the movie. He fails. He's embarrassed. Not in this movie. This movie is like life. It's like the guy who's the best baseball player gets to be the best baseball player

because baseball's a skill. It doesn't matter whether or not we're supposed to like him as a person. The most talented person succeeds in any world that's actually measured objectively. I had something I haven't told you about yet. My son got really into baseball this year. You used to always say you didn't want him playing baseball because you think it's the worst sport for little kids because it's standing around and all that.

Believe me. And let me tell you something. It's an even worse sport for parents. You're just sitting on these metal benches for two hours and your kid bats like three times and maybe two balls get hit to them. Especially he's nine. So it's a lot of like wild pitches and strikeouts and just people stealing second and third base and all the dads like over parenting.

And it's a lot of stuff I hate, but he loves it. And, and, uh, so we've been banging out baseball movies and, uh, when was the last time you watched the natural Robert Redford's like 50, he's like 55 in that movie. It's Hey, it's one of my favorite sports movies ever. I hadn't seen it in a while and I was just blown away by how old he is and how they try to hide it with some of the lighting. Like there's scenes where he's supposed to be 18, but it's Robert Redford.

He's like, it's a flaw. But it's still a great one. And he loved it. He loved that one. He loved Bad News Bears and Breaking Training is probably his number one right now. That one shockingly holds up well after 40 years of kids stealing a van and driving to the Astrodome. For some reason, still. Yeah, that's what I remember.

The crowd demands that they play. Yeah, yeah. The crowd wants the kids to keep playing at the end, yeah. It's a good snapshot of late 70s stadiums and baseball and the Astrodome, which was this state-of-the-art awesome place in the late 70s. Now it looks ridiculous. But yeah, he's somehow into baseball. We went to the Dodger game last night.

He brought his glove. He's involved in every pitch. I didn't know it was possible for somebody under 13 to love baseball. So I've been watching this almost like it's like watching an alien. Baseball goes against every sort of habit that people under 10 are developing right now, which is like on demand, quick attention. I want to do this. I'm going to go over here. I'm going to do this now.

In baseball, you just kind of have to sit there and wait for stuff to happen. So it's bizarre. I don't know what to make of it. Yeah, it is. It is interesting that that's certainly the like the cliche. Now it's like young people hate baseball. They will never watch baseball.

It's not true. Baseball is basically a sport for older white guys. But I guess it's not true. You know, it just, there's a lot of these sweeping statements that are now made. And then the statement is debated as if it's already accepted as true, which actually brings me to something I wanted to talk to you about. So I'm on this book tour, right? accepted as true, which actually brings me to something I wanted to talk to you about. So I'm on this book tour, right?

So I'm going to Madison, Wisconsin, then Milwaukee, and then Nashville, and Atlanta, and Denver right now. But the way it's working out is, especially if I'm in the central time zone, when I get done with the book event, when I get done with the reading, and I get done with the signing, I tend to get back to the hotel exactly when the playoff game is ending. I'll turn the TV on, and it will have the final score with kind of like that frozen shot of like Kevin Love

embracing Iman Shubert or something. It's like I'm always seeing the very end of it. So I'm following these playoffs totally through people analyzing events that have just happened. And boy, is it giving me an unclear picture

of what's actually happening. So you're following it through tweets and GIFs and stupid memes and all that stuff. No, not so much that. I don't care about that as much.

Almost like traditional analysis. Like for example, game two of the Celtics and the Cavs. Now I, outside of game seven, I always think game two is the best game in the series. That's the one I'm always most interested in. It seems like the most,

like, like what will happen in the series, most hinges on what happens in game two. So I'm in Milwaukee, and I'm trying to go through this signing as fast as I can. I'm just signing my name, just putting lines down, trying to get it done

because I want to get back into the second half of this. So I turn my phone on just to see what the score is, and it's something insane. It was like 81-36 or something. It was like a women's basketball game where yukon is involved this score made no sense okay so then i'm like well i can take my time i guess who cares you know i go back there and i get back and the game is basically over i see maybe four

minutes of the fourth quarter of that and then you know i watch the analysis of it, which is, of course, conceding that this series is completely over and that, like, almost as if to suggest, do we need to blow up the Celtics? Right. Like, will they be so devastated by this that there'll be problems going forward? Like, it would have been better if they'd have lost to Washington almost. So I was like, well, OK, maybe that's just the case. Maybe this is just how it's going to be. So then game three happens.

In that game, I see, like, the last 36 seconds of the game. I see the last two possessions. I see Kyrie Irving score, and then I see Avery Bradley score. And then the discussion after that game seems to be, like, will this damage LeBron's legacy? And now the next game he scored 34 again. I know we all say, oh, it's crazy, this is all crazy. But it really is if you're not watching the game.

At least if you're watching the game, all those sort of hyperbolic things, you can at least sort of attach them to moments you saw in the game. But if you don't see the game, these guys seem like they are just total maniacs. And then on the Boston side after game three was they got traded Isaiah Thomas. They're better without him. Are they better without him? What do you think? Are they better?

And then it turns into that for two days. You're right. It's insane. But that's when you have 24-7 everything. That's what you do. You just overreact and try to make noise. I think that's one of the reasons people have started to resent ESPN again is just that cycle. I mean, that's like, sure, anytime you have more people talking about something, but there's some other aspect of it here. I think that it more

has to do with the idea that it's now ingrained in this situation that you have to sort of make a point that is one step beyond reasonable for it to be interesting. You can't actually talk about what's going on, even if the game itself was fascinating. That's not enough now. You kind of consciously have to say something that I think even the speaker suspects is something they disagree with if someone else said it. I guess that's maybe the best way to say it. I feel as though people are saying things that if they weren't saying them, they would

out of hand disagree. Another thing I'm seeing a lot is after the Golden State Spurs games, there would be this discussion. It's like, is Golden State this good, or is the competition this bad? Like, what is the imbalance here? Well, Golden State won 72 games last year, and then added the third best player in the league. I know. Why wouldn't it?

It would be if next year, if the Cavs lost Tristan Thompson but got Kawhi Leonard, and it'd be like, well, boy, there's Cleveland great, or is everybody else terrible? It doesn't seem pretty obvious what has happened here, that if we move these teams toward the concept of building super teams, it does make the league more interesting, particularly during the regular season. But in the playoffs, there's really only going to be one meaningful series. That's just going to happen.

For the Cavs, it would be like if they replaced Tristan Thompson with Anthony Davis. Well, whatever. That would be a straight up. But you're right. Adding an elite player to a team that's already the best team, it doesn't seem like this is something that needs to be kind of batted around and debated. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you take the best team in the league and give them somebody who was the MVP, what, two years ago, three years ago? Well, of course

they're going to be unstoppable. We all knew this in July. This is before the playoffs. I was on a pod and I was saying, it would be interesting to see if the Warriors can go 16-0. And some people thought I was doing the

hyperbole thing. And it was like, it's not a hyperbole thing. They won 72 games last year and they turned Harrison Barnes into Kevin Durant. So yeah, that this is in play that like the, the Lakers went 15, 14 and one or 15 and one in 2001 when they had Shaq and Kobe at their absolute peaks. And you know, if Iverson took game one of the finals to overtime, otherwise they would have gone undefeated in the playoffs. That's what happens when you have two of the best players in the league on the same team.

So, I don't know. I think they could sweep Cleveland. I think they could go 16-0. I think it's possible. It makes sense. They have four of the best 20 players in the league. Quick break to talk about Hotel Tonight. If you're like me and you're not so great at planning ahead,

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You go on the iTunes app or wherever you get your apps. You search. You type in Hotel Tonight. the app comes up, you download it, there two things, and I want you to tell me if everyone is saying, because I have a suspicion these things I'm going to say are going to be the things everyone is saying. Here's the first thing. So these playoff games, it seems like the margin of victory is really big a lot. There's been, outside of the Celtics, the Wizards series, and there was even some blowouts there. It seems like this is how most of these games are going.

It's surprising when the games are closed almost. Now, to me, this must be the manifestation of how the game has changed. That for the regular season, it is better that teams really spread the floor and it's more offense-based and everyone shoots threes constantly and it's like a more wide-open game. But when you get in these playoff games, very often the score will be like 58-52, and then the team in the lead in a matter of three possessions will suddenly have a 9-0 run and the game will be over.

And unlike the regular season where it's very common to see a team go up 20, then the other team comes all the way back and then loses at the end, in the playoffs it doesn't happen as much. So like when Cleveland gets way ahead of Boston, they kind of just, I guess in Game 3 this happened, they came back. But generally, it seems as though when the Warriors for example get way ahead of somebody they just kind of step on their throat so is this is what's happening in the playoffs sort of the the logical manifestation of how the game has changed that it's going to

be very difficult for there to be tight playoff games outside of the occasional game seven at the occasional game one I would argue it's easier to come back because teams can make threes. Right? Because like you saw in game three of the Celtics series, they're down 21 and Marcus Smart starts making threes and then Jarebko makes a couple and then all of a sudden they're able to climb back. And then Cleveland in

game four, they're down 16. Kyrie starts getting hot. But I also think it's easier for teams to keep the lead if they make a couple threes too. With the basketball. Definitely in the regular season it's easier to come back because it seems as though that there's always that space in like the second, third quarter where the team with the lead kind of relaxes,

kind of goes to the rotation players. And if the other team starts making threes, it's going to get tight. But it doesn't seem like that happens as much now. Because that's a bench thing. Because during the regular season, you've got to play your bench and rely on them more. But in the playoffs, you can really cut it down to your best seven or your best eight. And then it becomes harder to flip the game a little bit. So 30 years ago, my favorite Celtics team was the 87 Celtics team.

The year everybody was hurt and they gritted their way to the finals. But in game seven in Milwaukee in round two, which was Boston was home. I think they were down by seven with six minutes left. And it felt like almost insurmountable, you know, because we didn't shoot threes back then. It's like, wow, seven points. We really have to scrape back into this. But now seven points is like two threes, and you're back in the game.

Back then it was like, we got to score, we got to get two, we got to get a stop, we got to get two, we got to get a stop. You really have to scrape back. So I think what seems to be easier now is we're down nine. Oh, now we're down one. And it can happen in five seconds. Yeah, I feel like I see the opposite happen, though. Like, we're down nine, now we're down 16.

Well, that's true. It flips the other way, too. It's just odd to have that these games are so rarely close when during the regular season, the league seems so much better than it has been for a while. The game seemed more watchable. You didn't sort of, you know, kind of fade out in the middle of the game the way that

traditionally happened. But now it's strange. Do you now have any regrets about voting for Harden over Westbrook now, seeing what has happened in the playoffs? You know, a couple people have asked me that. I don't because we're just supposed to vote on the regular season. It's like the playoffs don't matter.

If we were going to incorporate the playoffs, I would have voted for LeBron because it's clear that LeBron ups their gear. Sure, but your argument from the last time we spoke was that the Rockets are a superior team. Well, they barely beat the Thunder and then sort of got

in the second round. They should have swept the Thunder. But it was six games or seven games? No, that was five. How many games did that go? That was a five game. Five? Yeah. They could have swept that one. Here's the thing. The Rockets looked like

they were finishing off game five and were going to go back home and beat the Spurs in game six. And then they collapsed and I will never really know what happened. But, you know, I still think they would have had a better chance the next round. Kawhi or no Kawhi against against the Warriors just because of all the threes in the math. But I do think like you like this because you've seen all these different crazy. You love college football, these crazy offenses that they have in college. Sometimes I do think that what the Rockets were doing and what some of these other gimmick teams, you know, do it, do that works during the regular season. Sometimes it's harder to make it work in

the playoffs and the Rockets to me, the more I looked at, I wish I'd thought of this before the playoffs, but you know, it's like a run and shoot war and moon type thing, you know, where it's like, this is, this is great for 82 games. If you see it, you know, you'll, the other team only sees it two, three times, four times a year. And they're, you know, and then they're playing somebody else and it's hard to adjust to. But over the course of a series, when all you're doing is doing threes and layups and you're passing up all the other shots, it seemed like the Spurs just slowly figured out how to adjust to it. It made me think like it was the basketball equivalent of one of those football offenses

that, you know, oh, they're 12 and four in the regular season, but watch in January, they'll fall apart. That's kind of what happened. Does that make sense? Well, in that first game against the Spurs, when they just leveled them, and I think they shot 53s, and I think they made 23 or 24,

and it was almost like this is more dominating than they need to be. Like, if we assume that over time time what they're going to shoot from three is going to kind of bounce out or return to the norm or the mean or whatever, the fact that they made so many threes in that game, they were, like, gratuitous. They had such a huge lead, they didn't need to do it. It would have served them more if they could have saved some of those makes for later. I know you can't do that, but when you have an offense like that,

you can score so many points. Sometimes you're kind of running up points to the benefit of no one, you know? Right. And, you know, I think what you see, what you also see with the way teams game plan now is like Cleveland's looking at the Celtics without Isaiah and it's like Marcus Smart's not a good three-point shooter.

Jay Crowder's an average three-point shooter. You know, Olenek is slightly above average. And they're just, either their defense is terrible or they're just willing to let the Celtics take those shots because the math is in Cleveland's favor. So then every once in a while, like in game three, Marcus makes a bunch of them. He goes seven for 10 10 and it backfires.

But for the most part, it's going to end up somewhere between, you know, way closer to how Marcus played in game four, where he missed everything. And then Cleveland's like, well, see, there you go. That's what, that's what we were kind of, we were hoping that he would miss and Roger. So they're playing the math. The problem is when you start, you can't play the math against a team like the Warriors. Quick break to talk about stamps.com. Convenient, easy, reliable, flexible.

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of this podcast, stamps.com. Back to Chuck. Okay. Here's the other thing that I'm wondering that I've been thinking that I don't know if this is completely the conventional wisdom or if you will immediately dispute this, you know, I don't know.

We talked about how many podcasts we've had and I don't know how many of them we've done, but I bet if we went through, there are probably four or five times where we'd be the directly said or sort of implied that it's going to be almost impossible for any player to supplant Jordan as the best player of all time. But when I look at the Warriors and I sort of look at the Cavs now, if Cleveland were to beat Golden State again, I feel like that would make LeBron and Jordan equal and LeBron would have a chance

to advance past him in the coming years. Is there anyone saying this? Is there any belief that this is true? Because it seems as though he is having a second peak in his career that has never happened to anyone. Kobe. Kobe is the only other one. Kobe had this peak from basically 08. But who's peaking higher?

But the peaks are higher. Yeah, the peaks are higher. I feel like LeBron's early peak was higher and his second peak is higher. He peaked. He's basically been the best player in the league since the 08, 09 season. So he's been the best player in the league for eight years. Now, you could say, well, in 2000, his first Miami season, he wasn't the best player. But I think he probably, I still feel like he was.

Derrick Rose won the MVP. He was the most valuable player. I think if we all took a straw poll at the end of the year, we would have said LeBron is, even if he's melting down in the finals, he's still the most talented player. This has been the case for a long time. There's a difference between who's the MVP and who's actually the player people would select.

He was always the guy people would select. Even the year Durant won, there was that little weird period where it was like, I don't know, maybe Curry's better. Maybe Curry's better. Now that doesn't seem close. Now it seems like you would never take Curry over James. So it's been eight years. What?

He's had the throne for eight years, which is really... Jordan had it for the 90s, but he disappeared for 20 months. He never had it continuously. So that's one way lebron can get him um lebron beating the warriors which is a clearly more talented team i think it becomes a conversation i feel like it started to become a conversation last year i was ready to at least think about it because of the uh the totality of lebron's career and the fact that he just put up 13 straight seasons without getting hurt, playing at a really high level. He had this extended prime.

His stats are unassailable. Durability is unassailable. Three rings, four MVPs. Like it was beginning to be a conversation. I had a reader. I'm sorry I can't remember the reader's name off the top of my head, but I'd save it for a mailbag. But I'm going to can't remember the reader's name off the top of my head, but I'd save it for a mailbag, but I'm going to do it anyway. Asked if, should it be part of the LeBron versus Jordan conversation that a team of five LeBrons would probably beat a team of five Jordans?

Which I had never thought about before. I was like, wow, that's really interesting. Five LeBrons versus five Jordans. I think five LeBrons would be favored, right? It is an interesting sort of scenario because you would have one team which would be the best passing team ever, probably. Right. From all five possessions, one through five.

And then you'd have the other team that would be, for a possession, the best defensive team ever. Yes. It would seem like when jordan had one possession to stop a guy he could just you know that would that would be an interesting game it's also odd because you know lebron now has sort of added three-point shooting to his game in a way jordan never really did because it would have been superfluous for jordan to do that like it was it wasn't an important it was more important important for Jordan to add a post game

and become this dominating post player when they were running the triangle than it was for him to be a great three-point shooter. I mean, it's a good question, although can you just keep extending it? Would 12 LeBrons be better than 12 Jordans? Well, 12 Jordans I think would be better than 12 LeBrons because they'd kill each other in practice. Jordan, I think, was a more aggressive practice player. The person who sent that email was Cooper from Geelong, Australia.

So thank you, Cooper, for that one. I think the five Jordans would definitely do more trash talking. And that's one of the things, like, when you compare the two of them, which I think it's fair to compare them now because LeBron's been, this is now year 14 and he has a chance to win the title again. And he's the game. I saw him playing game one in the Eastern finals in person was one of the best games I've ever seen anyone play in my life. So it's a conversation, but like the, you know, game three, he's just out of it. Maybe Jordan had games and he was just out of it. But my dad, who still has Jordan ahead of him and watched both of their careers and was going to the games, was like, I still have Jordan ahead of him.

I don't think he never had games like that where he just disappeared. And Jordan, in a playoff game, I can't imagine Marcus Smart going seven for 10 against a team that had Jordan. Just from watching his entire career, at some point during that, Jordan gets mad and says, I'm taking him, and Marcus Smart doesn't score again. But I also don't want to sound like the old guy on the porch who's like, Jordan, back in my day,

Jordan wouldn't shut him down. I just know what I saw. For the longest time, my argument was always that as long as we're asking whether or not LeBron is as great as Jordan, that means Jordan is greater. I think this goes with a lot of arguments. If you're trying to ask, is this new version of something better than the old version? As long as you're still making the comparison to the old version, it's sort of showing the old version's dominance. It's when you start talking about, is some new guy equal to LeBron that LeBron really surpasses him, you know? But I have this

growing sense that just sort of the way culture is now, that we're not going to stop talking about Jordan and the way we basically stopped talking about Bill Russell or these guys. I don't think it's going to happen. I was talking with some guys, I was texting about this, that I have a friend in Fargo. He coaches Babe Ruth baseball. Okay, now Babe Ruth is

like now, when I played, it was like the Pee Wees and Babe Ruth was like 7th and 8th grade. Now I guess Babe Ruth is this whole thing that kind of competes with Legion baseball. But here's what's interesting. Babe Ruth was like seventh and eighth grade. Now I guess Babe Ruth is this whole thing that kind of competes with Legion baseball. But here's what's interesting. Babe Ruth was playing in 1917. He was an active Major League Baseball player. So here's 100 years later, his name is still associated with youth baseball. think the familiarity with the name Michael Jordan will be in the year, you know, um,

you know, a hundred years post his, the middle of his career. Like, do you think that Michael Jordan will like, will, I mean, I guess the shoes play a role in this. If the shoes are still something people are wearing. I think the biggest mistake he's made is not figuring out a way to be relevant to a generation that doesn't remember seeing him play. Because you're talking about a lot of people now, right? His last great game was 1998, the steal and the shot, all that stuff. Basically, you have to be 27, 28 years old or older to even have any recollection of that game.

Like Tate, who's not here today but produces my podcast, he's 24, reveres Jordan, but never actually saw him play when Jordan was Jordan. He's seen the YouTube clips and all that stuff, but it actually saw him play in when Jordan was Jordan, you know, he's seen the YouTube clips and all that stuff, but it's not the same. So this is part of what my, was part of what my book was about was how do you compare players from different eras and what happens to greatness once the guy stops doing it? You know, cause like John Havlicek, when I wrote my book, John Havlicek was like the

13th best player ever. There's no John Havlicek conversations when I wrote my book, John Havlicek was like the 13th best player ever. There's no John Havlicek conversations happening. Nobody's talking about him. So I think Jordan's biggest... I have two. Wait, hold on, one more thing. I think Jordan's biggest mistake has been not figuring out a really smart way to keep his legacy going with the under 25 people,

which should have been this documentary film that apparently has, has fallen through, but he needs something. He needs something for, remember when, when we were Kings came out for Ali, like 20 years after the Ali and it just kind of revived the Ali a little bit. Jordan needs something like that.

After peak Ali, but I would, for the first thing I would say is I, I kind of disagree with your fundamental point here. I think it would be kind of pathetic of him to really demand or chase relevance with young people. Like if Neil Young put out a song right now with the hope that 15-year-old kids would like it and did everything he could to make that happen, you're not supposed to do that. But I'm not saying you should chase it. Why should you chase the idea of being relevant to people who are less than half your age? I'm not saying chase it as much as he's not doing anything.

And the part that doesn't make sense to me is that he's a businessman and the Jordan brand, all that stuff. Like it's actually good for his brand and his business and his company for him to court those people. Like, why is Adidas the coolest shoe company right now? Because, you know, I mean, we could talk about that for 20 minutes, but they, Adidas has made all these strategic decisions and they just seem cool now. And my point is... He is a brand. Jordan is a person. No, but Jordan's also a brand though

because he's a Jordan brand. Literally, he's a brand. It's one thing for us to say he's a brand. It's very different for him to call himself a brand. When a person says they are a brand, that's basically the end of my relationship with them.

Like other people can say that. But if you're going to look at yourself. He has a company called Jordan Brand. So I think you have to end your relationship with him. But what we're talking about is him as a basketball player. You know, it's like when I think of Magic Johnson, I'm not going to factor in his fucking movie theaters when I talk about what a basketball player he was. I don't think that that should be a factor. Like, I think a person should view themselves as a person.

And the example with this Babe Ruth thing is, I don't know how many little kids on my friend's team could, what they would know about Babe Ruth, but they would know he was a baseball player. And they would know that, you know, so that to me is, when you get 100 years away from when you played, that is what success is, that your name is synonymous with whatever is the main thing that you do. So if Jordan is famous in 100 years because of his shoes

and his business operations and all that, that would be a failure to me. He needs to be famous for having been, at one time, indisputably, the best basketball player who ever lived. And my question is, will that happen organically just about the game of basketball? Here's the problem with that, though. So Ruth retired, what, like 1935, somewhere in there, 1936. And at that point, people really only cared about baseball.

Baseball. Well, and horse racing and boxing. Right. Those were the three big sports. Like Seabiscuit was a legend. So people, it was almost like if you combine baseball, football, and basketball the way we talk about it now, that was baseball in 1935. So Ruth, you know, guys like Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, these guys were all larger than life.

You almost can't compare anybody to that now. Because, you know, it's like, oh, the NBA playoffs. Oh, LeBron's great. Move on to the next one. There's so much grabbing our attention these days. So you're basically saying Michael Jordan should take over AAU and call it Michael Jordan's AAU. And then he'll live on 100 years from now.

No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that I wonder if Michael Jordan's greatness as a basketball player is enough to keep him as, I don't even know if relevant is the right word, to become like a casual historical figure. Do you think that's happened with Bill Russell? Because it feels like Bill Russell is now fading, especially the advanced metrics communities.

Oh, look at his offense. It has not. They're picking it apart. And a great example is you don't hear any more discussions over who's greater between Jordan and Russell. That doesn't happen anymore. That's gone. But yet all the testimonies from Russell's era are all the other players saying Bill Russell was the greatest.

Absolutely. That's so funny that that just fades away. I don't get that. It is. And this is sort of like, you know, is that happening with Jim Brown? Universally seen as the best football player of that period by everyone who played against him. Now, I feel as though people still, like,

in some ways it's almost the simplicity of his name, and he was Jim Brown who played for the Browns. It's like, I feel as though he is still a known figure in a way that, like, not many – I can't really think of any other football players from that period have – are. But there's just that – the NFL prior now to 1980, it's hard to find guys who are still whose name immediately rings a bell or is

immediately associated with something else. There's definitely recency bias. What? There's recency bias because I'm sure a lot of people under 20 would think that Adrian Peterson was as good as Jim Brown. They don They don't, they don't know. They just know what they've seen. They don't, you'd have to go really dig on.

What I'm saying is this, is you, there has been, um, at this point I, and we're, and actually Bill, like you and I are part of this problem. There has been an amplification of how important the eighties were to the NBA and that when you watch the TNT guys, I guess, because you know, an amplification of how important the 80s were to the NBA. And that when you watch the TNT guys, I guess because they kind of came out of that period, they are still constantly referencing things from the 1980s. That still happens all the time.

The 80s now in the NBA have become far more meaningful, and maybe justifiably so, than the 90s, who seem to only be remembered as the period Jordan played. That's the totality of the 90s. You just explain why that happened. Because we don't have the guys on TV from the 90s glorifying the 90s. I guess Barkley's the 90s, technically, right? Barkley's more of a 90s player, really. Chris Webber played during that period, but Chris Webber talks about the 90s technically, right? Barkley's more of a 90s player, really. Chris Webber played during that period, but Chris Webber talks about the 80s.

It's just that that has become something that's going to last longer than it logically should. Okay. You know, when you look at baseball, baseball is the most traditionally based sport, okay? But people, as far as I can tell, don't talk about Mike Schmidt and George Brett. They still talk about players from the 50s and 60s. That is the period that has been frozen forever,

that we will talk about that period of baseball going forward. So I just wonder how this is going to work for someone like Jordan. Basketball seemingly is going to be the, or it's not, I could be wrong about this, but it seems like the most popular sport among young people now. Would you agree? That basketball is among people under the age of 25, the sport they seem to talk about the most seems to be basketball,

even though football is technically the most popular sport still. I think football is more popular, but basketball has better personalities. The personalities win in basketball. Yeah, that's kind of what you talk about. Yeah. They'd rather watch a football game,

but they'd rather talk about basketball. Yeah, basketball has become individual planets orbiting around this larger system, and people love the planets. You saw it with this MVP thing, which Westbrook-Hardin, the Westbrook-Durant feud, the football just doesn't have that. And football doesn't really want to have that either. I think football likes to have these guys in helmets as relatively anonymous guys.

What do you think about this rule change? What do you think about this idea that they're going to let these guys celebrate and almost seem to be now prompting them to do so? It's bizarre. Everything the NFL does to me is bizarre. Do you like it?

I like it it but I I don't like the way as usual the way it was presented was just creepy you know the NFL's like we have talked it over we talked it over with 12 70 year old white owners and we've decided

to let the football players celebrate again and here are the ground rules it's like what is this what are we talking about? This is sports. Sports are supposed to be fun. This straightforward idea that like younger people

want this. This is what young people want from sports. Yeah, no kidding. And they want individuality. Yeah, they want individuality.

But also it's like it the way I felt the way it was delivered was like a concession and in some ways a criticism of young people, because it does seem preposterous that in order to make a 19 year old person like a game, you need to add something beyond the game. But that said, I wonder now, because this is sanctioned by the NFL, will it seem less provocative when guys do this? Now it almost has an XFL feel. Because the NFL is saying, okay, we used to not let guys do anything. Now we want you to do things. Do routines,

play with the ball, jump on each other and all these things. Now it seems almost like they're trying to convince them to do this, which in the past, like when Butch Johnson or somebody would do a touchdown dance, it was sort of adversarial to the tradition of the game.

Like, look at me. This is a team game, but look at me. And now it's almost though end zone celebrations are what the NFL wants. So I think a different kind of person will do them. I think it came out of a series of focus groups wondering why NFL personalities didn't matter as much as NBA personalities. That was my takeaway from it. Just a concession that we're doing this wrong. Now, the NBA is still doing it so much smarter than the NFL.

I think that literally the smartest thing the NBA did the last 10 years was to make all of their stuff just available, you know? And it's like, oh, you're watching a game and you know, you wanted to cut that Blake Griffin dunk and just put it on YouTube. Go ahead, knock yourself out. You wanted to cut montages of all the threes, the Rockets hit the season, knock yourself out. They allow people to use their footage because they feel like it's the best marketing they could have. All these young people carving their footage in different ways and pushing it and promoting it promotes the league. It's the best marketing they could have. All these young people carving their footage in different ways and pushing it and promoting it promotes the league. It's free advertising. The NFL is the opposite.

The NFL makes you pay for every second of their footage. And if you put stuff up, they take it down. They don't want their players to be individuals. It's one of the reasons that people don't really feel a connection with the NFL. They connect with their teams, but they don't like the league. It's interesting. The way you describe that, it actually reminds me of when Napster happened. Yeah.

When Napster was happening and file sharing was this thing and you could download music for free and exchange it for free, there were some artists who were like, this is awesome. Let's do this. This can only help me. People hearing my music can only help me because right now, like, I'm barely making it. But artists like Metallica was like, this is fucking crazy. Our material has value.

Why are you taking something that we have that has value and making it valueless? I think the NFL viewed itself more like Metallica. Yeah. Like, this product we have is really worth something. So we've got to make sure that people just don't kind of take it and throw it around. Whereas the NBA was more like the streets. They were like Mike

Skinner of the streets and they were like, I don't care if people take this and do whatever they want with it. It's like, it's collaborative between us and them or whatever. Well, I remember Adam told me once, before he was commissioner, that I think it was a podcast you and I did where we were super critical of something that the NBA did. It was either me and you or me and Gladwell, but I'm pretty sure it was me and you.

And he said to me, like, you know, I didn't agree with what you guys said, but I love that you're having the conversation. And you did it respectfully. I disagreed, but you know, it's, it's great. Like we want people having conversations about our league and they, they have felt that way really since Stern, since Silver started to grab a little control from Stern and kind of nudge him in the right directions. Cause Stern was so really operated like Adele for a long period of time. And then gradually the, the,

the league became a lot more fan friendly at the end of last decade. And I think that's really interesting. I don't think Roger Goodell would ever say in a million years, I'm really glad you had that conversation, even though it wasn't favorable for us. You'd never say that. That's the difference in those two leagues right there. This is kind of a side note,

but okay, we were talking about sending emails back and forth in 2004. During that period of time, if someone would have said to you, in the future, when you do things like this, you're going to mention the NBA commissioner

by his first name without even saying his last name because he's kind of become a friend of yours. Would you have said to yourself, well, maybe that's the predictable extension of what we're doing? Would that have seemed impossible to you? So I would say you mentioned Adam Silver like he's some guy like we're both supposed to be friends with. I mean, I guess it's a weird thing to me because you started your career as such like I am the outsider. I'm not even in the press box. And I was like, Adam Silver

calls me after I do podcasts to say, good job. I didn't say he called me. He emailed you. He texted you. No, I don't have his text. No, he just called him Adam. Like, Goodell's Goodell. Adam's Adam. Stern's Stern. Isn't that crazy, though?

Isn't it crazy that the NBA commissioner emails you now to respond to things that you do anecdotally? No, but that was years ago. That was like five, six years ago. I think it's weird to call him Silver. He doesn't seem like a Silver to me. He seems like an Adam. Stern was a Stern. Goodell was a Goodell.

Don't you call a public figure Adam Silver? I don't know. I don't know. I can't imagine calling someone by their first name. I mean, I guess we were calling LeBron LeBron, though. Yeah. I wasn't calling him LeBron James. I think some people are first namers.

Some people are last namers. Tom Brady's Brady. A lot of people call Peyton Manning Peyton. Ben Roethlisberger's Ben. I was just shortening it. I usually call him Adam Silver. There are some people who always go by their full name. That's interesting.

I knew a guy in college named Eric Scott, and nobody ever called him Eric or Scott. They only called him Eric Scott all the time. My buddy in college was Nick Aida. He was never Nick. It usually just merges into one name. Let's wrap up the LeBron Jordan thing. Cause I know you have to go. Yeah. I think if LeBron beats the Warriors, then we all have to be prepared to really have the conversation.

But we also with the caveat should be, as I've mentioned a million times on this podcast and in columns, things like that, that he just has benefits now that are era specific that make it possible for him to play 20 years that like Jordan just doesn't have. He doesn't like, I was reading, somebody sent me this story about Larry Bird before the 87, 88 season when it was like Larry Bird serious this year, he cut out beer and cheeseburgers

and he started riding an exercise bike and he used Nautilus a couple of times. He's in great shape. He lost 20 pounds. This was only 29 years ago. It was like, whoa, Larry Bird's in great shape. He's on an exercise bike. Now LeBron, you saw that article two weeks ago, and he was peeing about the VersaClimber.

All the calves using the VersaClimber, this $12,000 machine, whatever it is. And he's on it. And LeBron goes to these games three hours before the game. He works out. Okay, but isn't this a little bit like the PED argument that people say the problem with PEDs is not that they're necessarily making these guys better, but they're creating an unbalanced field. Some guys are using them.

Some guys are not. Everything you're saying about LeBron, everyone has access to. Right. Like, he's playing against better competition than Jordan played against as well. And yes, he will play longer, but when you think about it, Jordan played pretty late into his life. Like, when he was with the Wizards, he was, how old was he then? So that's interesting, because in 98, Jordan was 35. And it seems like they're at the same points of their career, but you know,

the fact that LeBron came into the league right out of high school, he's at the same point of his career that Jordan was in 98, but he's three years younger. So he's got that too. And that was why the Kobe thing was a little bit of an optical illusion too. And KG too, where these guys that come in in high school, they get these three extra years of stats and reps and all these different things that you would think it would make them flame out sooner.

But now with the technology and stuff, the 20-year career is conceivable. LeBron's going to score the most points of anyone ever. That's true. But in this discussion that we have about the greatest of all time, I don't feel like longevity plays a massive role. I mean, like Kareem was probably, not many guys played longer at that level than he did. But then we also kind of remember the end of his career, that last year where he kind of felt bad for him being out there. But when we talk about this, I feel it's rare that the argument comes down to, well,

you know, let's compare these guys when they were both 36. It always seems like the comparison is when they were both at their best. For me, it's Apex first, which is why I had Bill Walton rank so high in my book. But then just how long your prime was. The reason I put Kareem third was his the first 13 years of his career were unbelievable he had you know he basically only got injured once because he punched somebody and was just at a ridiculously high level year after year after year which is what lebron's been i think at some point if lebron keeps doing this we're gonna have to look back at

jordan leaving the nba for 20 months in his prime and that're going to have to look back at Jordan leaving the NBA for 20 months in his prime. And that's going to be a huge check Mark on his, on his legacy that he had, he, that he got so worn down as the story goes from being at the top and having everyone coming at him that he quit. He quit for 20 months.

Or, or will the, the retrospective concession be that Jordan left the game voluntarily if he had stayed? He is a dominant player for eight consecutive seasons as opposed to three and then three. The other thing I would say in LeBron's favor is Jordan won six titles. Were there any of those years where you feel the Bulls were not the best team

in the league? Because if LeBron wins again this year, you can definitely say there were at least two times that he essentially willed his team to win a championship when they had the weaker team. But there was never a year where Jordan didn't. That's the bummer is that when he left, that was when it really would have been a great test for him was 94 and 95. But I think people would make the case that the best team he probably beat other than the 93 Suns, which I think was a really, really good team and that either team could have won that series,

was he basically killed the 96 Magic. That team had Shaq and Penny on it. And I know it's like, oh, egos and whatever. But that team beat the Bulls in 95, and then Jordan came back 172 and just demolished them in the playoffs, and then they broke up. So I don't know. I feel like that goes on his resume. He ended a potential.

Jordan would end potential rivals. I don't feel like LeBron's totally doing that, but who knows? He has more rivals now than he did in the past. There are more guys now where it seems you could probably list six

or seven guys who when playing the Cavs it's like, oh, I want to see these guys go at it. I don't know if that was the case for Jordan in the 90s. That was the tragedy of Jordan's career. If you're going to make the case that he retired voluntarily, I think that the fact that he didn't feel like he had a rival was the number one reason.

He didn't have his version of the guy that he could measure himself against. You really don't believe he retired voluntarily. You believe he was forced out. I have trouble believing that somebody that we all agree was the most competitive athlete we ever saw just decided to quit for 20 months. It's never going to sit a hundred percent right with me. I understand the reasons we did a 30 for 30 about it. That explained why I get it. I understand it.

Yeah, but he also, he's a competitive person, but he's the kind of competitive person who loses his mind playing cards. He had other ways to be competitive. Playing a sport you're not as good at, you could argue, is more of a competitive impulse than continuing to play a sport you're dominating.

Is it okay if it doesn't totally sit right with me? It just doesn't totally sit right with me? It just doesn't totally sit right. I don't understand why somebody who loved beating people that much and loved being the best at something walked away from it. I've never totally been able to figure it out. I've understood all the reasons. I've digested them. I just don't really, it just doesn't totally make sense. Okay.

It doesn't necessarily make sense, but you have to argue it makes more logical sense than all the other explanations. Yes. If you were to, if we were putting gambling odds on them. It's like Oswald acting alone. Like you can, maybe it doesn't make sense. Well, it's true. Like it doesn't make rational sense that Oswald would try to kill the president on his own volition, but like, it makes more

sense than every other possibility. And the universe is not, uh, under an obligation to make sense to us. Like we want logical things to be how the world is, but the world is inherently illogical. We see it every day. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, the, uh, and the Oswald version of like the, uh, the CIA and all the and all the stuff that people thought they were second shooter. The version here is that he was high stakes gambling with just a bunch of seedy people.

And all of this stuff was starting to come out. And that's when he disappeared and had to leave basketball for 20 months. That's the argument. It's like, well, wow, the timing is amazing. I know what the argument is. The timing's amazing. That's the argument. It's like, well, wow, the timing is amazing. I know what the argument is. The timing's amazing. You have to admit, like, he's losing million dollars in golf to these scumbags and then just retires.

So you believe that Stern said to him, look, you're putting the league in jeopardy, so you have to step away. Why would Jordan's gambling problem impact his ability to continue playing basketball? In fact, it would seem as though if you had huge gambling debts, you would want to continue playing basketball unless you're suggesting that Stern feared he would then start shaving points or something, that he would be indebted to these gamblers, and he would have to do something to compensate i guess that is like kind of seems like a don de lilo plot but it could

happen maybe i guess that would be interesting wait a second i'm not saying i believe this i'm just saying it's like the oswald thing you're saying the obvious thing doesn't make sense so you must be kind of siding with the less obvious thing. No, I think the obvious thing is it doesn't make sense, but it's like the Oswald thing. You want another explanation to make more sense, and you keep coming back to Oswald as one shooter makes the most sense. In this case, it would make sense to me that his gambling became bad enough that Stern warned him about it

and warned him about it a second time and then something else happened and Stern's like look we can do this one of two ways either I'm suspending you for 18 months or we're going to say you retired but you pick your choice but to suspend him for 18 months

that would almost mean that there would have had to have been some kind of gambling involvement with the game of basketball. I mean, you know, like... So wait a second, though. It's not like an Alex Karras-Paul Hornick situation where these guys like to

gamble or whatever, so we're going to make him stay out of here. For the NBA in the 90s to suspend their most popular player for 18 months, what you'd be suggesting would have to be so dangerous that it would actually put the league in jeopardy, which could only mean that you're suggesting that they thought Jordan was going to fix games. I mean, that's a pretty dramatic leap.

It could have just been they warned him not to do it. What would be so dangerous to the NBA that they would suspend their most valuable asset for a year and a half? It would have to be something so dramatic that's bigger than him. What was bigger than him at the time? The only thing that was bigger than Jordan in the 90s was the sport of basketball as a whole. And that means that that would have to be what was in jeopardy. How could basketball be in jeopardy only if games were being fixed? This is why it comes back to what happened probably happened.

I would say that's the safest bet. It's just weird. I'll never be able to understand why the most competitive athlete of my lifetime walked away for 20 months. It is weird. I'll never wrap my head understand why the most competitive athlete of my lifetime walked away for 20 months. It is weird. I'll never wrap my head about it. But you know what? Oswald tried to shoot somebody else before he shot Kennedy. They always leave that part out of the discussion.

At ESPN, what did we do? Like two hours on JFK and we batted around 170 theories and then both decided Oswald acted alone. The same thing. Well, that's what I mean. A young person believes it was a conspiracy.

A mature person believes Oswald acted alone. Maybe a young Bill Simmons believes that Jordan was forced out of the league. But I have to assume the mature Bill Simmons thinks that he just made a weird decision. I think I do. I mean, if I had to... Jordan grew a Hitler mustache for a while. That's pretty weird. That doesn't make a lot of sense, but he did it.

It's like, you know, people do strange things. Yeah, I think what the Ron Shelton theory in the 30 for 30, I think was probably the safest bet for all the possible options, that he was going through a lot. His father died, um, the scrutiny, he didn't have a natural arrival and all of this stuff collided.

And he just was like, screw it. I don't want to play anymore. If the press conference is straight, have you ever watched the press conference? At one point, it's very tense. And it doesn't seem like somebody who's never playing basketball again

and at one point he says and if David Stern ever lets me back in the league I swear he says that it's on the clip and if or he might have called him Mr. Stern or Commissioner Stern did he say it as a joke because if you actually reported that you wouldn't

make that joke didn't feel like a joke it's kind of thrown in there I don't know mature Bill thinks it doesn't mean anything but immature Bill thinks that maybe there's a little something maybe there's a little Easter egg in this speech alright

I'm already late for this other interview okay thanks for having me bye bye alright Chuck's book is called Chuck Klosterman 10 a highly specific defiantly incomplete history of the early 21st century. A bunch of things that he's written from the past, including a couple of things he wrote for Grantland. What's upon a time, but you can check that out, get that wherever Amazon has sold. And what's the website called Jim?

Chuck Klosterman author.com. If you want to go see him on tour at any of the places where he's talking or doing readings. Thanks so much to Hotel Tonight. Remember, Hotel Tonight helps hotels sell their unsold rooms and pass those deals along to you. Not for last resort places. Cool, top rated hotels. You can book up to a week in advance. All it takes is 10 seconds.

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And that is it for the BS podcast. Memorial Day weekend is upon us. Go back. Go through the archives, listen to some of your favorites. I think we're coming back on Tuesday with the new BS podcast and possibly a finals preview. I'm going to guess the Warriors and Cavs are involved.

We're taping this on a Thursday. My guess is that the Celtics have not won game five and we're headed for a Cavs Warriors series. Enjoy the weekend. On the wayside I'm a fruit seller I never are I don't have