The Bill Simmons Podcast - Chuck Klosterman on NBA MVP, Kobe's 'Musecage,' and March Madness (Ep. 193)

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on author Chuck Klosterman to discuss Kobe's storytelling in 'Musecage' (5:00), the Westbrook-Harden MVP race (15:00), Oklahoma City's talent disparity (22:00), the obsession with the triple-double (28:00), Devin Booker's 70-point outing (32:00), Carmelo's legacy (48:00), Gonzaga's mid-major dominance (1:00:00), the Final Four (1:12:00), and Kentucky's perfected recruiting pitch (1:16:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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mailbag that included a lot of love for Lonzo ball, who then went out that night and got his butt kicked by Darren Fox. I apologize for that. We're going to talk March madness in a little bit with Chuck Klosterman. But if you wanted to catch up on the teed up podcasts on the ringer university podcast feed with Tate and Titus, how many did you do this week? You did one every night? One every night.

One every night. Yeah, there's lots of podcasts for you to listen to. And also the Ringer NFL show, GM Street with Mike Lombardi has launched on the Ringer NFL show. So catch up with that if you want. Right now we're going to have my old friend Chuck Klosterman come on and talk about March Madness and a whole bunch of other stuff. But first, our old friends from pearl jam all right as promised for i think the, maybe like the 17th or 18th straight year,

Chuck Klosterman, March Madness. This is his time. I think of March Madness. I think about buzzer beaters. I think about my own friend, Gus Johnson. And I think about the NBA draft and mock drafts. And I think about Chuck Klosterman because I know he loves this stuff.

How are you? I'm good. I'm sitting here in my dark muse cage. Oh, you're in the muse cage? I didn't, I should get mine. All right, hold on. I'm going to get it. Oh, I'm in my muse cage now.

Wow. What are you surrounded by? I don't know. What? So I didn't think we were talking about that right away, but let's do it. Kobe Bryant was on ABC's NBA ABC's NBA countdown last night, premiered his new storytelling venture,

the muse cage, which had puppets and was kind of like Sesame street crossed with basketball reference.com. Yeah. It was, it was kind of like a Bjork video in some part, like every so often it was, I,

you know, I, I gotta say, I didn't expect this. It was an unexpected move. It seemed like he had slaved over it for months and months, almost like it was a Wes Anderson movie or something. And I could picture him, like, even until the night before,

until two in the morning, tinkering, like, being like, no, no, that puppet doesn't work. Bring in the other puppet. What do you think of the message, though? until two in the morning tinkering, like being like, no, no, that puppet doesn't work. Bring in the other puppet. And he's just all in. What do you think of the message, though? That to me is the kind of, in some ways predictable, but certainly the most, I don't know, I would say the most fascinating part,

but definitely an interesting aspect of this. So he was on the show, the SportsCenter, with Jamel and Michael Smith on Friday night. And the only reason I know this was, this was on my Twitter feed. There was this whole thing about Kobe. He had this story and it was almost like a talk show where they have the rehearsed story that they're going to tell. And he was basically like, you know, I was working out recently and I went to put a basketball game and I realized I didn't even have the package. And they all laugh.

And his point was like, he'd fallen kind of out of the nba season and had it wasn't really watching a ton of games and then all of a sudden he's doing the muse cage two days later and breaking down the uh the harden versus westbrook and then he's on the countdown show and they're like who do you think should win the mvp and i'm thinking like two days ago this guy told me he didn't have the league pass. Why do I care about his MVP thoughts? Well, I don't know if Kobe needs to watch every single game to have an opinion on that, does he? He might have to have league pass.

I'd like you to have league pass to care about your MVP opinion. So you're the perfect person to answer this question. Kobe Bryant I think is a very, very smart guy, but I also think he likes to push the mystique that he's a smart guy. So for him, the muse cage is kind of confusing and it's highbrow and it's way, way out there. But is he intentionally trying to do this, or is he really an artist and this is the way his brain works? Well, I don't know if this is an attempt to push how smart he is, but he definitely seems

to be pushing the mythology that he sort of adopted over the last part of his career. I mean, maybe I misinterpreted this little animated thing, but isn't it sort of like the most positive spin on being Darth Vader or something? I mean, because the whole thing is like you've got to have a dark muse, right? You need to use your with things that inspire you, but to really go to the apex level, you need to surround yourself with unhappiness. Or did I misinterpret this? I only watched it once. I have to admit, you sent it to me, and I was was getting coffee and I was looking at it in the coffee place.

And I was like, is this sort of the argument he's making? I think it is. I think it is, but I think it was more important to him that we're arguing about what he was trying to say. Does that make sense? Well, but it's not really tricky what he's trying to say. I don't think, I mean, unless I'm, it seems as though what he he is there was like there's a that image of like the people who are here have no idea we're talking about i guess you can easily find this on the internet he starts out it's like him and a muppet snake yep and the muppet snake is real kind of

upbeat and kobe seems upbeat and he's sort of explaining what muses are and then there goes this animated bitch where like there's like a like a like a lucifer figure in a tree or on a mountain or something and that this is what you need to to tap into to pursue these dreams and i guess this is his i know or is this is was that video is that the storytelling i could i guess here's what i don't. If he's explaining how he's going to do storytelling or if this is the story. I just want to say just so there's no ambiguity at all.

I love the fact that he's doing this. I really enjoy it. I don't understand it. I feel like he was trying to make a larger point and I do think what you're saying is something that I've heard him say before which is you can't ever let yourself get comfortable as a great athlete you have to tap into all the darkness around you and feed off that and it's something that worked for

him i think the difference between him and other athletes is that i don't know if the same set of experiences would affect other people the way they've affected him. Like he's a pretty unique guy, right? He's somebody that never really had a lot of friends, wasn't close to his teammates. Like even like the last year with the Lakers, like he had his own dressing room. I don't think he was really a team first guy, whereas somebody like Harden really seems to relish being part of a team and he has a great relationship with his coach. So I don't know what the parallels are between him and James Harden. It seems like it's almost like Drake trying to find parallels with Kendrick Lamar or something like that. Just

because they both do music doesn't mean they're the same person. Well, he mentioned Westbrook in the thing, too. I mean, that to me sort of seemed as though, OK, just so you remember, it's like, I played basketball. These are some basketball guys. If you came here thinking I'm going to talk about basketball, I kind of am. But I mean, this is going to be like, the word he keeps using is a venture, right? This is a storytelling venture. So is this going to be like a film production company? And is it only going to do dark films? There are the things that are sort of inspired by hate i mean i don't know i would i would be here again i'd really support this if he does it but it just it's a it's a new attempt at entrepreneurship i guess he seems so i know for

a fact dating way back even before okc made the finals. He loved Westbrook. He really identified with Westbrook. And I think to whatever degree he's ever mentored anybody, which is pretty cloudy, I think Westbrook is somebody he has had conversations with. And I'm sure he identifies with the situation Westbrook's in now, right? Because Shaq left the Lakers and now it's Kobe's team and Kobe's going to shine. And Kobe struggled a lot more in the first year

than I think Westbrook did. But he probably identifies with the situation Westbrook's in where it's like, I'm going to prove to everybody that this is my time now and I'm going to feed off. Durant left me and I'm going to feed off that hatred. I don't really, the Harden thing, I don't know what he would really identify with. Harden is this really generous, amazing basketball teammate

who not only is scoring but is also really trying to look to set people up, everything flows through him. He's a distributor. That's not perfect. Despite the fact that, I mean, I guess the one knock against him would be he did kind of briefly get into celebrity dating, which seemed outside of his character.

Because for the most part, he does seem surprisingly humble. He just... I mean, even back with the Thunder, it was like he didn't want to start. I don't think he wanted to start when he played for Arizona, if I recall. There was a story where he preferred coming off the bench. This kind of leads into something I want to ask you about, though, because this is a pretty great MVP race. There aren't a lot of postseason awards I care about.

Really just pretty much the Heisman, I think, is the one that matters. And then the MVP in basketball and the Cy Young was the only three I really care about. So I'm following this race, you know, and it's the closest that, boy, it's been a long time. That one year, Bird and Magic, the first year Magic won, that was kind of close like that. But this is different because neither guy has won one before. Whereas with Bird and Magic, Magic had the real advantage. He hadn't won one yet.

Seemed like it was, he'd kind of do. Yes. Now, I'm getting a sense from the people who are talking a lot about this that there seems to be like the Westbrook people and the Harden people, but I think that ultimately Harden is going to win because of the way people are talking about this. Like the undecided voters are going to be impacted by the way people are talking about this race. It seems like the people who are in Westbrook's corner basically say it's obvious. There's no reason he should not be the MVP. The triple-double thing is just too astonishing.

Why are we even having this argument? It just seems completely obvious. And the people who are behind Hardin seem to be going, that's complicated. Yeah, it's like they're both great. I wish we could vote for both. It's just so there's all these things we have to factor in. So if you're an undecided voter and you're listening to the two sides, well, obviously you already think it's complicated. So I think that your natural inclination will be to drift toward the hardened people who are saying this is not straightforward. Also, the people

in Westbrook's corner, and I hope Westbrook wins, but only because he's my favorite player. I like both of these guys, but Westbrook's my favorite player. I'm just kind of hoping he wins for emotional reasons. But I'm definitely pushed away by the people who support him the most because they seem to be really kind of abrasive about it like you're an idiot for not supporting this guy and that really pushes me away from them I'm fascinated that you have a favorite anything because you're a sports Vulcan

so that Westbrook has tapped into your muse cage, I think is really exciting. I always have a favorite player. There's always, you know, it was like when I was a kid, I was only Bird, of course, and then we kind of moved to the 90s and then it became like,

oh, Allen Iverson was my favorite player for a while. Ben Steve Nash was. Rondo was my favorite player for a while. Now Westbrook is clearly my favorite player. He's like the one guy who I will pretty much watch at any opportunity. And it's not just because of his production. It really is the way he plays. It is not like the other players. Well, hold on. That list you just rattled off is a way he plays. It is not like the other players. Well, hold on.

That list you just rattled off is a pretty interesting list. I think that says more about you than the players. Probably. It doesn't say much about the players besides I like them. You like iconoclasts who stand out in a very stark way to everyone else who's in the league at the time they're in the league. And they're almost always point guard.

Yeah, and you like people who have the ball. And so that's what I would gather from that list. You were going to ask me a question, though, about the MVP race. Or you're saying basically these two camps, you don't understand. Well, my question was sort of, do you agree with what I'm saying, which is kind of a Chris Matthews way of asking a question. But also, I kind of want you to go on record. You're voting for Harden, right?

You haven't said this officially, but everything that I have read or heard you say, the subtext seems to be that you're going to vote for Harden. And I have a feeling you'll say you still don't know, but I think you're voting for Harden. All I know is I'm not voting for Westbrook. But I'm waiting until the final week. The thing I don't understand... So what? So you're not voting... So Westbrook is completely out.

So then what would be your possible argument for not voting for Harden if he's eliminated from the pool? I'm still looking at the Kawhi and LeBron candidacies. I want to see how these next two weeks play out. And I think this is a topic that we can talk about after this, but this rush, I think because of the internet sports

cycle and just this rush to have a take and this rush to jumpstart a discussion, people are writing about the MVP and there's 22 games left and there's 25 games left. What would have to happen for you to vote for LeBron or Kawhi at this point over Hart? Just tell me what we would have to. I don't know. I want to see if everyone's healthy.

I want to make sure every like there was a point after the Taj Gibson trade. LeBron's the best player, you know,-em-on-the-school-yard. Everyone knows that, but he's rested five games. That's too many. Harden doesn't rest at all. And that is a really good case for Harden and Westbrook. I love the fact that they play every game. And I don't mean to sound like old school, back in my day,

everybody played all the time, but I think that matters when you just show up for 82 games and well it is i mean i realize it's a hard taxing physical thing but it's supposed to be i mean this would be like this this rest thing i i it was a little different when it was only popovich doing it and the you know duncan was pretty old but now it like uh it's odd because you hear people when you hear people supporting the players and the rest in that they're talking about this like it's a labor dispute as if this is a normal job and this is not a normal job i mean it is tough on your body to play basketball all season long and all through the playoffs that's why there's only like 240 guys who do this, you know?

Yeah, and I wrote on Friday, like, I just think the sport is a lot more complicated and it's a lot more physically taxing than it used to be. And it is so much harder to play basketball now than it was 30 years ago. And the hardwood classics or whatever you want to watch, well, you know, the old tapes from the 80s and 90s will back it up. Like the guys on defense, they didn't have to move around as much they didn't have to run out on the corners and try to block threes and it just they didn't have the same kind of social media magnifying glass on them and it was so much easier to hide back then that when I see somebody like

Wes Birkenhardt and playing all 82 games like the only way they can do that is if they take a little bit off on the defensive end. And like somebody, I mean, you have to calibrate how much energy you're spending, but the answer should not be to play fewer games. I mean, my point with this always is that,

that, you know, everybody involved with pro basketball is making all this money and there's all this interest in, and it kind of runs all these secondary industries, sports media industry and all these things. And that's because this is fundamentally entertainment. Now, granted, if you're a coach, you're not worried about that.

You're trying to figure out how to win championships. But the league should sort of find a way, basically, to get these guys to play as many games as they can. And I actually think what Silver did, like his idea of going to the owners probably is the only way to do it. Because you can't really make a rule that forces them to play. But if the owner says to the GM and the coach, look, no more of this.

If a guy's not hurt, he's playing. But they need to go back to 76 games, or go backwards, I should say, because this is something you and i have talked about a lot in the podcast on the past when something becomes the entrenched reality year after year for reasons that just come down to well that's the way we we've always done it and nobody actually goes back to well how did you come to the decision that this was the way you're going to do it? 82 games just fundamentally doesn't make sense. They moved up to 82 games, I think, the year they expanded to 12 teams almost 50 years ago. And the math just added up for 82.

They're trying to make as much money as possible. They don't have a big lucrative TV deal back then. Attendance was how they made most of their money. So they went to 82. Now you could argue 82 is just this arbitrary number. They have 30 teams. The math doesn't even work with the divisions. 76 is the number that it could work.

You get rid of one game a month, and that gets rid of the four games and five nights. You're basically playing three games a week at that point, and the product's better. Guys aren't resting. It really sucks when Cleveland comes to L.A. once a year and these people are like, this is my one chance to see LeBron James and then he doesn't play. That's not good. So they've got to fix that.

That's true. The idea of them going back in games, though, that just seems like that will never happen in any sport. I do not see there ever being a reduction in the schedule. You think they're too greedy? How much money can this league make? I mean, their salary caps could be over $100 million. They're raking in so much cash

from the streaming and all their media deals and the attendance and luxury suites and courtsides. How much money can you make? Well, sure. And in the abstract, everyone would agree with that. But you go to every individual person who is drawing money from the NBA,

they will say, well, I agree. The NBA is making more money than it needs to, but I don't want to take less. Nobody wants to take less, ever. No one's going to volunteer to take less. That's never going to happen. Well, you take less if people are so mad about your product that it actually starts to affect it. And I think if these guys are all going to play 70 games instead of 82, if that's the new

trend, that's a problem. But to go back to your MVP question for a second. Actually, let's do a quick hit to talk about Cabbage. If you are wondering how to get the funding needed to run a small business today, Cabbage has the answer. Cabbage has small business owners able to access simple, flexible funding right away without the headaches that come with applying for a traditional loan. Apply online or from your phone by securely linking your business information to get an automatic decision. No waiting in line, no scanning documents,

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That is cabbage with a K. K-A-B-B-A-G-E dot com slash BS. And since we're here, very quickly, the Masked Man Show, our wrestling podcast, is going to be celebrating WrestleMania all week. So download that feed if you love wrestling. Hosted by David Shoemaker. I am going to make an appearance on that podcast this week. Back to Chuck Klosterman.

All right, so your MVP question. You said there's two camps. The people that not only think that Westbrook's the MVP, but think everybody else is an idiot, that they don't think that. Then you have the people that think Harden is the MVP because they're not as impressed by the triple doubles and Houston's team is better and Harden is the MVP because they're not as impressed by the triple doubles and Houston's team is better and Harden arguably does just as much for them in a slightly in a more efficient

way like by any advanced metric I think there's a third camp and I'm more in this camp and it has more to do with the history of the award in general I think. I think the MVP should come from a team that has a very good chance to win the NBA title, unless it's a season like the year that Kobe averaged 35 a game. I thought he was the MVP that year, mostly because I didn't have another candidate and I didn't feel good about my other choices. So at that point, I was just like, I'm just picking the guys having the best season. This year, you have guys having great seasons on contenders. And to me, that trumps anything Westbrook's doing. They're going to win like 46, 47, 48 games, something like that. Just the history of the award, nobody has won this award that wasn't on a contender.

Dating back to whatever year you want to look at. It's just never happened. So we'd have to completely change the mindset of the award. And now the baseball people would say, well, that's, it should just be the best season. That's it. Because in baseball, it works that way. Mike Trout, it's not his fault if the other 24 guys on his team suck, you know, he's going to do the best he can can he can win the MVP on a 74 win team but in basketball you only play five guys the best guy in your team has has the biggest impact on your success over really any other sport except maybe football quarterbacks and you know the fact that Harden's team is going to have 12 more wins than Westbrook's team when the supporting casts are relatively even, I think that to me would be the deal breaker between those two.

Now, Kawhi and LeBron, those are other candidacies. Here's my counter to that. I would agree with you in a situation when there was a bunch of candidates, and one candidate is on clearly the best team. For example, if the Spurs were going to win on pace to win 70 games, and they were the absolute favorite going into the finals, there was no question that San Antonio had the best team. Then you can say, like, well, he's the best player on what clearly is the best team. That's the Steph Curry case from two years ago.

Yes, yeah, okay. So the Thunder will probably get beat in the first round of the playoffs, but the Rockets will probably get beat in the second round of the playoffs. I mean, they could go further. I disagree. But that was probably what will happen, I think. And the difference in those teams is not... I mean, it would be one thing if Westbrook was doing this

for a team that was going to win 32 games or 26 games or something. But there's still a very competitive team who without him would be worse know worse than the Sixers worse than anyone you know I'm not I don't I'm not positive I believe that I actually think they do have talent and one of the issues with him and one of the reasons I wrote that piece about Westbrook a few weeks ago is he doesn't make anybody on his team better lately he's been making a better effort to do that. But you can't watch the Thunder all season and go,

wow, thanks to Westbrook, Stephen Adams has really made the leap. Or, oh, thank God for Victor Oladipo. He's a one-man show. Okay, Westbrook deserves credit for playing every game. I think his MVP candidacy might be slightly stronger if he missed a game. Because I think it's possible the Thunder would score 67 points. And it would be like, this is just, that he is essentially the entire team. He's the entire team on a relatively competitive team.

Now, here again, I don't, like, like I say, I'm a very mixed mind on this. I want Westbrook to win. Here again, I don't know if he should. Like, it does seem as though, like, Harden may be better, you know? Well, let me flip this around though. But you're saying he does everything for the team. That also doesn't allow anyone else to do anything. So when you're saying, like, Westbrook would miss a game, the team would fall apart, yeah, because that's the way basketball works.

If you're not getting the reps to do different things during a game and somebody's just doing everything and you're just expected to stand there and kind of, you know, not really be that involved. But when you get the ball, you've got to do something. And then that guy's out for a game, and it's like, all right, now it's your guy's turn, and you're not getting the reps to do that. That doesn't work either.

That's why I've been impressed by him the last three weeks. He's at least made more of an effort to kind of take a step back. He's not taking as many shots. He's a little bit more of a facilitator. He took six shots, right? He scored like 18 points on six shots. Yeah, because I think he's starting... They were playing a terrible team, though.

They were playing it. Right, but I think he's starting to understand that he can't win unless the other guys are doing better. And for two-thirds of the season, the other guys were just kind of like his supporting cast, like his backup singers, and that doesn't work in basketball. Okay, well, tell me this, though.

This is one thing I felt that maybe you did not totally address in the piece you wrote about him. Okay, you look at his scoring and his passing and the amount that he sort of occupies the ball. You look at Harden, he's kind of like an Archibald-type season, where he's second scoring and first assist. The rebounding that Westbrook does, though, is pretty meaningful and kind of underrated. I mean, to average 10 rebounds a game at his size, let's say he was averaging just like

22 points and seven assists a game, but 10 rebounds. People would be like, that's a lot for a point guard. I feel like that. And that's, there's no, I mean, or I saw some people arguing that he selfishly takes rebounds from big guys or whatever. And I don't really buy that. You can't be a selfish rebounder. I just don't believe that.

The rebound is available to anyone. The person who wants it most should get it. You know, and he does and I think that's the meaning I'm going to interrupt you on that one because that's 90% true but there's 10% that's not true about that if you have two guys on the same team there's always an

alpha dog for the rebound in traffic because if both guys are just like I'm getting this they're going to knock the ball out of bounds so every team has the one guy it was interesting when OKC traded for Taj Gibson and Westbrook would go for rebounds that Taj Gibson was going for. Taj Gibson was just like, I'm getting this.

Sorry. This is my rebound. Whereas Adams and those other guys were always like, Russ is a maniac. Let's give him the rebound. I don't think you could be a selfish rebounder, but I do think that at some point, somebody kind of becomes the rebounder. Does that make sense?

To me, there's only one way. The only sign of a selfish rebounder is somebody whose ratio of offensive rebounds to defensive rebounds is way off. If they seem to be getting more offensive rebounds than defensive rebounds, that does, to me, suggest a kind of selfishness. Basically, if a guy's getting defensive rebounds, unless he's getting cheap rebounds off missed free throws, which Westbrook does not because he does not occupy the lower section of the lane

when opposing teams shoot free throws, I mean, that's where you see guys who get the cheap rebounds, the guys who get the free throw ones because nobody cares. He has the advantage of the way the game has changed. There are more long rebounds now. And less big people. But less big people too. I will say though, Rodman, the big rap on Rodman in the mid-90s

when he started chasing his rebounding stats, and he did, was that defensively, instead of just making the right defensive move all the time, he always had kind of the mindset of, all right, I also want to keep my options open in case there's a rebound. So he'd kind of slide back, and there are little tricks he would do that he was actually taking a ton of shit for at the time.

So that's really the only way you could be selfless defensively. That's true, but his game obviously was unlike almost anyone else. True. And I am of the belief, this is maybe an old belief, I guess, maybe this will make me seem archaic. I am of the belief that defensive rebounding is part of your defensive performance. Yeah, that's fair. Because if you, you know, it's, I mean, the whole idea of defensive possession is to get the ball back and become on offense.

And if the best way of doing that is to sort of drop off your guy with the expectation that someone else is going to shoot, you're going to get the rebound, that's part of your defensive sort of philosophy. You know what's interesting about this? This Westbrook issue, it's like the two sides of things that you love and hate. You love Westbrook because he's so unique and he's just in that Rondo Iverson. There's just nobody like him. I love him too.

The energy and the intensity that he plays with night to night is just the passion he he plays with in these random nights like these Tuesdays in Orlando and these places. It's incredible. On the flip side, though, you have two separate things that you don't like. One is people telling you you're an idiot unless you don't believe what they believe. And then let's be honest, like the triple doubles a stupid stat. I don't really understand how it became important. I feel like it happened during my lifetime at some point during the magic, the tail end of the 80s where people started getting excited

when magic would get a triple-double. But if somebody has 38 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists, and somebody has 19 points, 10 assists, and 11 rebounds? Why is the triple-double a better game? That's the part I don't get. This is like, you know, it's our numeric system. Like, you know, a 98-yard rushing game is not that different than a 101-yard rushing game.

But a 100-yard rusher is just sort of, you know, like in a fantasy, you get a bonus forward or whatever. There's just certainly, we have 10 fingers and we use those things. I don't think you're right. It would be if Westbrook finished the year with, you know, 9.8 rebounds. Yeah, that's a bad year. Yeah, you know. And then it would be sort of like, for some reason reason i feel like he would be out of this conversation like i feel like harden would then be a lock

as weird as that is but these are the numbers we use you know this is just like the numbers that we use the fact that like um you know devin booker got 70 the other night that was much more eye-popping than 68. And that's only one more basket in a game that didn't matter. But when I saw, I wasn't watching the game. I was just, I don't know what I was at. Probably the NCAAs on the net. I think I was watching college basketball.

And I just sort of looked at my phone, and it said he had 70. And I was like, that's crazy. I don't know if I would have thought that at 68. So what does that mean? It just means that we're affected by round numbers. But in some sports, I don't know if I would have thought that at 68 so what does that mean it just means that we're affected by round numbers but in some sports we don't care as much right like 20 the whole concept of a 20 game winner in baseball for pitching nobody cares anymore it's not we don't even value wins we're being told wins don't matter it just matters these other these advanced stats and like you know win is a product of your bullpen all that stuff but like all right so 1982 magic johnson and i don't even think people really fully realize this

18.6 points a game 9.6 rebounds a game 9.5 assists a game on the 82 lakers if we cared about triple doubles back then and we didn't and i don't even think we knew what one was magic easily could have gotten one more rebound a game and probably pushed himself to get one more assist but he didn't care westbrook is clearly chasing stats and i mean that both in an affectionate way and a critical way because i do think he knows what his stats are at all times, but also that's what makes him great. And I think Kobe did, and I think a lot of these guys, that's what drives them.

But my point is... The thing about triple-doubles, that was invented in the 80s. I feel kind of that CBS Sports invented that because they were essentially only showing three teams, and two of them had guys who could get triple-doubles with some regularity. I mean, I also remember during a time when it was like the idea of a triple-double was mostly associated briefly with Fat Lever. Yeah.

Lafayette Lever had a ton. I'm sure he led the league in triple-doubles a couple of those years. So it was almost like an oddity stat. It was like this. And then, okay, here's another point I would make, though. Do you remember those two years when Jordan took off? Do you remember Scottie Pippen claiming he was going to average a triple-double? It's really hard.

Before the season. Yes. He was like, I'm going to do this. And he didn't really come close. And that made me think at the time that maybe this is just undoable. Let me ask you this. LeBron, when he was at the height of his athletic powers

in 2009 and 2010, when he was just... And what's crazy is he's still one of the greatest athletes now. But I'm saying eight years ago, this guy was unlike anything. If he had just said to himself before the year, I'm getting a triple-double every night, I don't think there's any question

he could have done it. I think he would have. But I don't think he cared. I feel like he could do that now. There was that one little window when LeBron just got obsessed with field goal percentage. He'd look in the paper and he'd be like 9 of 14 every night. I would guess that if LeBron decided, I don't mind if Kyrie Irving is the leading scorer on

this team. I'm going to make sure that I have this well-rounded game. He could feasibly get a triple-double every game. It's like they played him at point forward. Yeah, he's at nine assists right now. Yeah, and I don't know what his rebound is. I'm guessing, what, seven and a half rebounds? Yeah, and that's the thing. Something like that.

So me saying that I don't think Westbrook should win the MVP doesn't mean that I don't think he's having an MVP-caliber season. I just think this is a fluke year. You're talking about somebody like Kawhi, who's not only one of the seven best offensive players in the league, but is one of the three best defensive players in the league and is probably one of the two best perimeter defenders of all time. And he's on a team that's going to win 62 games.

And he's having a great season by any statistical measure, is not even really getting considered. We are in this period. When we talk about the past, we always talk about the period where rebounds were too easy to come by. It's possible that we will talk about this period in the same way in some different context, but it does seem seem like many many nights there are several players having insane statistical performances with a regularity i do not remember ever it's it's the

steroids era and i don't really know what to make of it other than i do think the sport has evolved now where you need to have that one guy and that guy has the ball so much. And so like 10 years ago, it was pretty similar, but the mindset was totally different because it was still the children of Jordan. And it was like the Jerry Stackhouse, Gilbert Arenas, Allen Iverson, all these guys who were like, guys, clear out. I got this. I'm going to create stuff.

And now the pace of the game is faster. Everybody's spread out. I think it's a little easier And now the pace of the game is faster. Everybody's spread out. I think it's a little easier to get assists because of the spacing and because the three point shooting is better. And you see like LeBron and Draymond Green in particular, probably get like an assist or an assist and a half game more than they should just because they have so many good three point shooters around them. But,

but I just think the mentality now is like if you look at isaiah thomas the celtics version not the version we grew up with he's kind of quietly having one of the 12 or 13 greatest offensive statistical advanced seasons ever and well i just he's not even in the conversation for mvp no because he doesn't seem on the same level, but I don't know. I feel like he warrants first-team All-NBA. I don't know if he'll make it, but I would say that he's had one of the five best seasons

in the league this year for sure. It's just that with positions, it's tough because it's like they're all kind of three, two, and one. He might not even get second team on NBA. He's also, I mean Listen, I love the guy and he plays for my favorite team. He's a defensive liability. Like there's just no

question. And Harden and Westbrook are not good defensively but they're not they don't murder your team. Isaiah's in a situation where like if they play Washington in round two, he has nobody to guard. It's like he can't guard John Wall.

He can't guard Bradley Beal. You'd have to put him on Otto Porter. Then Otto Porter can shoot over him. Like, that's a problem. And they're just, like, Bradley Beal is much better than I thought he was. Yeah, who knew? I hadn't really watched the Wizards much. That's a pretty good team.

Here's another question I want to ask you about the Devin Booker thing. Okay, so in the second half, he scores 51 points. He did all this stuff at the end of the game to sort of rig this to happen. He still scored 51. Yeah, he still scored 51.5. But because of what they had to do, for him to have the ability to score 51.5 as well as he had to shoot, does that increase or decrease your belief that anyone will ever score 100 points in a game again?

I would say it slightly decreases my belief, and I was pretty sure it would never happen before. But if they had to do all that to get him to 51, I don't think it can be done. So Shea wrote about this on The Ringer about six six weeks ago and I've been thinking about it ever since like he was like who would be the best candidate to do this yeah well I saw that and I was like I thought to myself

some of the guys he's mentioning there's just no way like Porzingis is not going to score a hundred points in a game like it just seemed so out there I thought it was like a thought experiment but then after this game I was like well I don't know that's a lot of points

but go ahead so I think Clay is the best candidate because of the threes. I think you would have to hit 15 threes to have a realistic chance. But Booker only hit four threes. Four for 11? I think he didn't even take that many. But he got to the line a lot, which stops the clock, which fouls people out. The two things you would need are three-pointers and free throws

because the free throws foul guys out, and now you have inferior people out there. The threes just give you an automatic 15 extra. So if you took the Devin Booker performance and he took 47 shots instead of 38 or whatever he ended up with, and he made 10 more threes than he did. That gets you to 100. And he's also, I think he took 26 free throws.

To me, you have to make 15 threes and get to 25 free throws for it to happen, which is where the Klay Thompson case falls apart. Booker's the one, it should be somebody like him. Somebody that can get to the line and shoot threes and the other thing is the fouling at the end of the game is a real thing that's how larry bird got to 60 that game larry bird had like i think he had like 49 with a minute and a half left and got to 60 because they started fouling so it's not just a 48 minute game it's when you start the fouling

stop in the clock it's like a 53-minute game. It makes more sense. But I think you would have to have at least 40 in the first half, right? Yeah, I mean, the only way I can imagine it would be, Clay Thompson's a very good candidate, but to me the candidate would be Steph Curry in a game when Durant and Thompson are not playing for whatever reason, and he is unbelievably hot and makes more than 15 threes, 21 threes or something like that, because the advantage he has is that the range, that you couldn't take him out of the game even if you wanted to.

You can't pick a guy up 44 feet from the basket or whatever like you just that you know and yet yet he can he doesn't need to get much closer to launch one it doesn't seem possible even this case i just you know uh somebody i was talking with was like well i think maybe this even had something to do with your conversation with luke walton about Shaq. Okay. Like, you know, Shaq still be a factor. Well, let's say we put Shaq, like the best of Shaq, into the NBA now.

There would be some nights where the opponent literally has no one to guard him. And it seems like he could just roll the basket, run to the basket, dunk. But he could never have made enough free throws to score that many points. So that was the David Robinson. David Robinson had 71 against the Clippers, I think. Yeah, last game of the year. And that was the thing.

They just kept throwing it to him, but he was making his free throws. I'm looking at Kobe when he had 81. 46 shots. He only made 7 threes only. And he went 18 for 20 from free throws. So if he went 24 for 26 for free throws, that's six extra points that gets you to 87.

And then he'd have to make 20 threes. That would get to 100. It's not inconceivable. What was Chamberlain's second biggest game? Was he ever in the 90s? Or is the second biggest game Elgin Baylor at like 81? No, so it was 78 for Wilt. And that's why Booker...

That was his second biggest game. Yeah, Booker getting a 70 I felt like was a real thing because there's only six people that ever – that's why I'm always for these guys chasing it. I think Carmelo could have had – there was a game when Carmelo easily could have had 70 and they took him out with four minutes left. My thing is like just go for it. It's one night.

Who cares? Just go for it. Try to – you're going to live on forever. Devin Booker forever is going to be on that list now. Yeah. live on forever. Devin Booker forever is going to be on that list now. Yeah, I mean, a guy like Carmelo, I suppose, he could, or his coach could make the argument, it's like, your reputation is already kind of problematic about your selfishness. Like, do we want to, you know, amplify that by letting you do this? I mean, I, because, you know, Carmelo, to me, seems like a pretty smart person.

I used to not really think that about him. I didn't think he was dumb, but I didn't think much of it. But his response to Phil Jackson makes me think he's a pretty mature guy, and the fact that he goes on the Olympic team and they all love him makes me think that maybe he's a different person

than I used to imagine, or that George Carl seems to describe him as. Hold on, I have thoughts on this, but we got to talk about texture first. This is a good one. How do we keep this podcast fresh? I read a ton of stuff every day, including a bunch of magazines on the texture app. Texture gives me access to hundreds of magazines and good ones like the Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, SI, ESPN, the magazine, whatever you want, all in one place,

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Download the Texture app. Go to texture.com slash BS for your 14-day free trial. Once again, that is texture.com slash BS. Back to my friend Chuck. All right, so here's the thing about Carmelo. I agree with you. He does seem like a smart guy. I think he's also one of the most confusing athletes I've ever followed in my life because

I'm not positive he cares about winning, and yet he also respects the game. So he had a chance to go for 70 plus in that in that next game and they took him out he's like i don't want to disgrace the game that way and yet every chance this guy has had to put himself in a winning situation or a situation where he'd have to sacrifice some part of his game to for the betterment of the team, he's just said no. It's just a fact. Remove all the Denver up and downs aside. If the Knicks traded for him,

they could have just waited until the summer to sign him. He would have made more money if the Knicks traded for him before the summer. So they basically get rid of a whole bunch of assets to get him, right? Linsanity happens. Carmelo doesn't like Linsanity and they just basically shove Linsanity out.

D'Antoni's there. D'Antoni wants to play a certain pace. Carmelo doesn't like it. Then you go to 2014. Carmelo had a chance to get out of the Knicks and really go and try to win or take a lesser contract to give them flexibility or whatever. He just takes the most money possible, doesn't really care about the repercussions.

Now he has a chance to get out this year. He's only going to go to two teams. Has there ever been a sign from Carmelo that he cares about anything other than just playing in a big city and getting paid? Well, yeah. I mean, it's complicated, though. Okay, so when I go to the gym, I always watch the replay of the Knicks game. The MSG network either shows the whole game in 60 minutes or they show the whole thing.

So I've watched the Knicks a lot this year. You watch the team, and your natural inclination is to be like, if Porzingis is the center of this offense, and Carmelo is the second option, they suddenly become a really good team. And yet, I also realize that when they're in practice, or when they're together, Carmelo knows he's the better player. If someone said Porzingis should be the center of the team, he would be like, let me play him. I'd beat him. All the other players seem to concede that Carmelo is this impossible guy to guard and this super skilled person and this big frame.

So in his mind, you say, like, he never wants to sacrifice anything, but maybe his logic and his rationale is, I have never been on a team where I wasn't the best player, and all the other guys agree. Everyone on my team can see them the best player. So how does it make sense for me to change when all the people who are actively involved understand who's best? Now, in a way, maybe I'm just trying to, to like spin what selfishness is, but I don't know. I don't know what you do. That brings me to my question though, is, is it even selfish? Like the guy gets paid a ton of money. He loves playing basketball. He likes playing basketball his way,

which doesn't really make him any different than Kobe Bryant or a bunch of other stars. He's not comfortable in another system where it's like free-flowing or he doesn't get to get the ball on the side and think about what he's going to do. He just doesn't enjoy it. So he's happy. I'm not even positive he cares if he doesn't win the title. I think he probably feels like his life has been a huge success, and he's right. He's probably made $250 million playing basketball. He's good.

Oh, I also think that he believes it's not going to happen. Like, I think that even right now, his mindset, I mean, this is bizarre that we're trying to get inside this guy's brain that we know nothing about, but let's say I'm going to try this. Like, if I'm inside his skull, I suspect that his thinking is, well, the only way I'll ever win a title is if late in my career, if I become, you know, the eighth man on a team, hard to imagine going to the Spurs, but something like that. I think he's almost surrendered the dream of being the best player on a championship team. And you say, like, how much does he care?

I mean, maybe in his mind he's like, I was on the Olympic team. That's the best team possible, and I kind of ran the show. So what do I have to prove? I mean, we – Well, I was going to say, and he was the star of the Olympics last year, and he's, you know, a really socially conscious guy who said a lot of good things at a time when we kind of needed an athlete to say some of them and that that's the thing like i do

think he's a smart guy that's why i think i i think he's smart and i think he's very self-aware and i think he's aware of big picture stuff and i really do think he just looked at this and said, I'd rather just make the most money possible. And if it also works out that we're going to have a really good contender, that's great too. But I like being in New York City. I like making a lot of money. So sign me up for that. And then I'll figure out other ways to make an impact.

But I do think for me, just as a basketball fan, stripping out all the other stuff aside, I think it's a shame that we never got to see this guy in the finals and that he never had his 2011 Dirk moment where he just was on the right kind of team, surrounded by the right kind of guys, and in the last five minutes of the game, he could go head-to-head with LeBron or Harden or Westbrook

or whoever you want to say. Because I think head-to-head with LeBron or Harden or Westbrook or whoever you want to say. Because I think head-to-head, toe-to-toe, your basket, my basket, he's one of the best. He's one of the best we've seen in the last 20 years, and yet he's going to have this kind of Dominique Wilkins type of legacy as a basketball player, which I think is kind of a bummer. Do you know Dominique didn't even make the NBA's top 50? Although I will say this, it's like that legacy of Wilkins, though, as we get further and further away from it, I feel like is improving.

Yeah, because of YouTube. This idea that you have to win a title to be, you know, an elite person, that really only sticks with Barkley because he's on TV always talking about it and talking about other guys and stuff. For everybody else, it seems to have less meaning as they grow older. I was thinking, you know, what if you said Dirk? Like, okay, let's say Dallas had lost that title. Would the reputation of Nowitzki be significantly different?

I think it would be slightly different. Well, I don't know. I think it would be slightly different. Well, I don't know. I think it would be slightly different now, but I think in 20 years, he would still be considered the greatest international player ever. I think that the main thing he'll be remembered for is in this championship anyways.

What you're bringing up is the John Elway, the John Elway kind of corollary, right? Where John Elway wins those two Super Bowls at the tail end of his career, and it completely changes what people thought of his career. It definitely moved him past Marino, and I would say for most of their career, Marino was a better quarterback.

I would still say that. But it doesn't seem that way now. I think any kind of historical ranking would put Elway above him. Yeah, and I think even the Brady one kind of played out a little more organically, the Brady versus Manning. He lasted longer, and he's still kind of peaking in his late prime, and that one is kind of an unassailable argument.

Elway-Marino will never be solved. The two football arguments pre-internet that I had the most, and I'm sure you did too in the Midwest, wherever you were, were Elway versus Marino and Emmitt versus Barry. We'd spend nights arguing about that. The first one, yes. I feel that you're in the real minority thinking Emmitt Smith was better than Barry Sanders. I think that's actually of the things that you're in the real minority thinking Emmett Smith was better than Barry Sanders. I think that's actually of the things that you say that is among the least conventional.

And I don't think many people would agree with you. I'm not even sure Emmett Smith would totally agree with you. Oh, Emmett Smith would totally agree with me. Emmett Smith would love that. That's what he would say. But when you break a record and you admit that actually it's another guy's record, you know, it's like he was conscious of the fact that he is not perceived as being the best running back of his generation. The person who I think gets the short shrift is Walter Payton. Seems like he is, he has somehow been moved slightly down this pantheon. And in truth,

he was probably after Jim Brown, the second best running back ever. There's a very good Walter Payton case to be made. My whole thing with Emmett versus Barry, and I do think the video games helped them a little bit too. And just the era that they played in, Payton kind of missed. Like if they had had Tecmo Bowl or Madden or whatever was going on in the 81 to 84 range, Walter Payton would have been one of the all-time video game gods. Whereas the flip side is Bo Jackson barely played in football. Most people probably think Bo Jackson was as good as Walter Payton

and they had similar careers. They didn't. It's interesting. I guess that's kind of an underrated factor. I wonder how much video games do influence the kid who plays them and then becomes a media member, how much that really does sort of inform their memory of these things. I still feel like...

Because I know that I was heavily, in fact, I was heavily impacted by NFL films. I just remember during the summer, when there was nothing else going on, I would watch any NFL summer when there was nothing else going on, I would watch any NFL film show that was on. And as a consequence, I have more memory of the Super Bowls I never saw than the ones I did because I watched, you know, so that really makes me, it pushes my thinking back. It makes me support guys who clearly could not play, you know, not just today, but like couldn't have played in the 80s.

I still, I guess I value running backs a little differently. I get the whole Sanders argument. I could see why people thought he was better because he was spectacular. But I just, if I'm trying to win a Super Bowl, I'd want Emmitt Smith. The guy moved the line. The guy was one of the most durable running backs we've ever seen. He won the NFC title game for them. He had a separated shoulder against the Niners, and he had like 25 carries.

The guy was just a beast. He was. As spectacular as Sanders was, I still feel like it's a little like how I feel about Le'Veon Bell now, where if you plan the defense the right way, you can figure out how to contain them a little like how I feel about Le'Veon Bell now where if you plan the defense the right way you can figure out how to contain them a little bit. They're always trying to break the 80 yard run and that was with Sanders. It was like he was always

trying to run for an 80 yard touchdown versus Emmitt was just like I'm just getting us to second and four. How do I get there? Zeke Elliott actually reminds me the most to Emmitt of anyone I've watched. That's a good argument. You know what I mean?

That's a good argument. I also feel like there was a period, a succession of years, where the Denver Broncos really changed my perception of the value of running backs. True. Like, they would just sort of plug anybody, and there was that one guy who'd, like, he'd been in the Army. I can't remember his name. He'd been in the Army, and he came back and, back and like rushed for a tiny yard with a great fantasy player and he was like this person i'd never heard of it did you know and the way that running backs are

treated in the draft now obviously i'm not the only person who thinks this it's like that's true it's you know when you were we on the 70s or whatever running backs were more famous than quarterbacks like almost but now it's not even close. Hey, you know, we haven't even talked about the NCAA tournament at all. We probably could. We've got to talk about, quick break to talk about Proper Cloth. We've been talking about these guys for a while. Every guy knows that it's hard

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Once again, propercloth.com slash BS. Gift code BS. Back to Chuck. NCAA tournament, we did never talk about it. Do you? Yeah, okay, here's the first thing. Here's what my friends and I have been debating. Okay.

What's been a greater program over the last 30 years? Okay. In Zaga in basketball or Boise State in football? What has been the most successful mid-major program? Has Boise State ever had a legitimate chance to win the NCAA title? Well, the year that they beat Oklahoma, they weren't given an opportunity to play in a game where they could have. But that's sort of when the corner changed.

And since then, they have never, ever been in a situation at the end of the year where they could have won the title. They got beat by, I believe it was Nevada when Kaepernick was there. You know, they would have went undefeated that year, and maybe they would have been in the conversation. The difference being, though, of course, in basketball, being a mid-major almost helps if you have an elite program, because most of your schedule, then, you can just kind of pound, and you need less guys.

The fact that Boise State's competitive with their limitations, me and three guys were texting about this, and they all seemed to argue that it was definitely Boise State. However, if Gonzaga wins the title, then it probably swings back the other way. Was Weinreb one of those three guys? He was one of them. Of course he was. This sounds like only Weinreb could be on that text. I'm

of that camp. I think it's harder to do what Boise State did because you need more scholarships and it's just harder to put together a 53-person football team than it is to just get three basketball recruits every year or four or whatever the number is. But for Gonzaga to win the title is amazing.

I remember maybe 10 years ago, I used to have a running joke about who was going to make the final four first, Gonzaga or the first black bachelor contestant. Because they would always have like the two token black bachelor contestants who would get voted off within the first or second show. And now we've seen a black bachelor contestant

get to the final four and we have Gonzaga in the final four on top of all the other crazy shit that's happened with sports and life and all this stuff. And all signs are pointing toward Gonzaga winning the title. And sorry, Tate. Tate just had the shakes. Because it just seems like whatever the craziest outcome is, is going to be the craziest outcome.

Like if you were going to pick any year that Gonzaga would win the title, wouldn't it have to be 2017? It just fits in. I feel all the signs point to Gonzaga would win the title. Wouldn't it have to be 2017? It just fits in. Yeah, I feel all the signs point to Gonzaga losing a heartbreaker to North Carolina much in the way that Butler lost to Duke that year. Yeah, it just seems like that often happens. You know, speaking of all these crazy things, there was a story even in The New Yorker,

because of the World Series and the election and the Super Bowl and all these things. People are like, maybe we are in a simulation. This is proving the simulation theory. We're actually in this computer simulation, and someone is messing around. Although I would say all of those outcomes, in retrospect, don't seem so crazy to me, take individually. However, I was thinking on the first day of the NCAA tournament, on Thursday and Friday, if every lower seed wins, I will totally believe we're in a simulation. I will quit thinking I'm a real person. Because if that were to happen to me, the only way that could happen is if it was someone manipulating a computer program.

So I was like, I'm going to watch this, and if this happens, we're not real. But we're real, I guess. I think of all the crazy things that happened, all of them, at least if I really think about it, and be like, all right, how the hell did that happen? They make sense. I still don't understand how the Patriots beat the Falcons.

I've watched the second half like eight times. The Falcons had to do so many different things to help the Patriots in the second half that it's almost inconceivable when you add them up. Yet you have seen other football games where there was less at stake where that has happened. Not like that. I mean there was less at stake, where that has happened. Not like that. I mean... 28-3? Oh, come on.

Like when the... You know, there was that game where, like, oh, where Frank Wright came in and played. They were down 30. Like, that happened, and, you know,

and if you look at... I don't know. I feel like that comeback was astounding because it was the Super Bowl, but it wasn't completely off the board. To me, the craziest thing was the teams playing in the World Series, the two teams who played in the World Series, going to a seventh game, and there being a rain delay after the ninth inning. That, to me, was the craziest thing. That's pretty good.

You must be right. That was the strangest moment. I was like, I can't believe. And there was somebody who had texted something or tweeted years ago or was like, this is going to happen and the world's going to end. I was like, I don't know, man. I've got to see what happens here. I totally forgot about that. And on top of it, it was the Indians and the Cubs,

which were like the two baseball franchises we had. It was too bizarre that that was happening. It was, like they often say, something I would not have believed in a movie. If I had been watching a movie and the Indians were playing the Cubs in the seventh game of the World Series and it went to extra innings and there was a rain delay, I would be like, this is kind of like in the second Bad News Bears movie where the fans in the Astrodome want the kids to play. This would never actually happen.

There's no event that this would occur. There's no rain delay. The Cubs absolutely lose the World Series. They were so traumatized by the ninth inning. There's just no way they rally. And if you read the stories about it, like they go in a locker room, they get fired up,

they kind of regather themselves, couple good speeches, and then they go out and they shake it off. You don't shake off stuff in baseball usually because the momentum of it sitting in the dugout. Baseball is the strangest of the sports, though, because there is no time limit. So if you're the sports, though, because there is no time limit.

So if you're the ultimate optimist, you can always say to yourself, we just need to get a hit here. We need to get somebody on. And who knows? Where in any other sport, it's impossible not to glance at the clock and start doing the math in your head and what needs to happen. Unless you're playing the Clippers. If you're playing the Clippers, you just never you're oh we're down 18 with a minute and a half left we can do this they'll throw the ball away seven times clippers i've never seen a team blow games

like this but i still feel like you got to watch the pats falcons again i i think if a computer played that second half from the moment it was 28-3 like 10,000 times, I don't see how the Pats win any of the outcomes unless Atlanta does all the dumb stuff that they did in that game. As time passes, Atlanta's going to— The Edelman catch is weird. I mean, if the Edelman catch doesn't happen, they don't win. I mean, I, like everybody else in the world,

did think after Julio Jones made that catch on the sidelines, like, it must. Yeah, I mean, but if you're the Falcons, what, you could kneel on the ball and make a field goal? Of course they ran plays. And then, you know, that cost them the game. I mean, it was a great Super Bowl. Do you know Matt Ryan in the fourth quarter,

for whatever reason, wasn't milking the clock on every play? Because Atlanta was just like, go, go, go. That's who we are. We got to keep attacking, keep attacking. He gave the Pats an extra minute in the last couple drives of that game because he didn't run the clock down to one before he snapped the ball. Okay. But in all the years you've watched sports, what has happened more? A team blew a lead because they got conservative or a team blew a lead because they kept attacking? Certainly the second category sometimes happens, but I feel I've seen the first scenario a thousand times. Couldn't you keep attacking but also milk the clock to one second? Why? The clock is your buddy. That's crazy.

Well, I know, but it's all like – He's hiking the ball 20 seconds left. Chip Kelly always talked about this, that when you're talking about tempo, it's the philosophy. It's not like a thing where it's like – the whole idea is that the attack is intrinsic to who we are, that this is how we do things. Now, obviously, that killed them in this game, but on balance, it's probably a better way to be in this modern world in which we live. Well, it also usually leads to great comebacks. And Dan Quinn said it, if you watch the sound of the games,

he's like, come on, this is who we are, keep attacking, keep attacking. That's usually what sets up for disaster. So we got to go. What do you think of Oregon's basketball team? So Titus has this theory that he said on this podcast before the tournament started that he loves the team that plays defense and has the one point guard who can do stuff. And what's interesting is South Carolina seems to be the team that fits that profile as well as just about anything we've seen. If I had to bet on anybody, I think I would bet on South Carolina,

just from watching games, knowing nothing other than the games I've seen these last few weeks. But I like having that defense because I think you're playing in these football stadiums, which is a whole—Jason Gay wrote a good piece about this. Why the F do we play the Final Four in football stadiums other than people are greedy? It is. It's too bad. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So you already have a disadvantage because you're in this giant stadium

that makes it hard to shoot anyway and then on top of it you have a really good defensive team it would seem like that would favor South Carolina but also Oregon because of their shot blocking so I don't know if it turns out that the single most important factor

in college basketball is the intensity of your head coach. South Carolina is well positioned to win this championship. He is the most intense coach there is. I saw a story today. I didn't even know why this was a story, but I'll admit, I just kind of looked at it, didn't read it real closely, but it was like, he asked his current wife out seven times before she said yes. And this is supposed to be sort of an illustration of his greatness, I guess, that he's real persistent. He would just keep asking this woman out over and over and over again.

Okay. Yeah. Wow. Have you ever asked a woman out seven times? No. Without them all being yes or six being yes. I mean, that's – I remember when he was coaching Beasley, and I was watching a lot of college hoops that year,

and I remember thinking, like, this guy's too crazy. Like, this guy's going to be the next Bobby Knight. He's going to end up, like, punching one of his players in the sidelines. It does seem like he's channeled it a tiny bit. Plus, that was a real interesting collision of high intensity with arguably the most stoned guy in the Midwest at that time. True. So it was the highest, most chilled out dude who was great with this guy. It's like, how?

I want to know what happened. How did he convince him to go there? When he was recruiting him, was Beasley like, I relate to this dude.. How did he convince him to go there? When he was recruiting him, was Beasley like, I relate to this dude. How could that have happened? Or did he just say, you can just come here.

Don't worry. Don't worry. Just play. Don't worry about anything else. You're going to be here one year. Just don't worry. Maybe he said that. But that doesn't seem like the kind of guy he is.

Tate's yelling that he hired his coach. Who do you think is going to win March Madness? I fear it's going to be North Carolina. Of the four teams, I'm rooting for them least, but I think that's who it's going to be. They do seem to be a resourceful team, which I think is a good thing to have come tournament time. But here's the thing. These guys are all kids.

Oh, it's true. I texted, I can't remember if it was Titus or Tate or who I texted after Friday night when Kansas was awesome on Friday night. Everybody's like, oh, Kansas. Whoa, could they beat an NBA team? All that stuff. And it's like, that's like the worst thing

that could happen to the tournament when you have an awesome game and then you have to play 36 hours later you know and it's like wait i thought we were the i thought we were awesome and unbeatable oh my shot just didn't go in for two straight minutes and you fall apart and that's the thing it's like i think it's so hard to say oh here's what i think is going to happen because these are all 19 and 20 year olds and i guess i often feel like in the tournament, to win the title, what needs to happen is somewhere along the line, you need to win a game you really shouldn't win.

And I feel like it shouldn't have been Kentucky. That game should have went to overtime. If it had went to overtime, I think Kentucky beats them. I do too. That happened. Yeah. All right, last question. You're the number one high school recruit. beats him. I did too. So, you know, that happened, you know? Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Last question. You're the number one high school recruit. You're going to college. You're like a 6'2", 6'2 1⁄2 Westbrook type, like a Markel Fultz type. They just give you the car keys, you could do your thing. Everyone's recruiting you. Where do you go? Well, I mean, so the assumption is,

am I also the kind of guy who's like, my life is in the NBA, I'm playing one year, because there's just, when's the last time the best player in the country hasn't been that way? I don't know. Wait, hold on. But this is you. So you might want to stay for three years or two years. You might want to stay two years, get two years of college classes in,

and then go back and finish after. Well, yeah, although if I'm the best player in the country, it's probably been a long time since I didn't think I was going to play in the NBA. It's probably been sixth grade. So if that was the case, and I'm not going to have a real collegiate experience, the relationship, it's kind of like an understudy program. I mean, I would go to Kentucky. I would know that if I'm the starter on that team, that I will probably be a lottery pick. Particularly unless I'm a guy who the whole thing is like I'm a volume

scorer. Yeah. Like if I'm somebody who's like my thing is that, you know, like if I was a small, like more of a Durant type guy, then I might, then possibly going to someplace like Gonzaga or something would make sense where I would feel like I want to, I don't want to worry about getting beaten out before the season starts. Like I want to make sure I play and get shots.

So I think your instinct is right. You would definitely have to think like a one and done person because it's just be stupid not to. You're looking at, if you're the number one guy, that means you're going to be one of the top three picks, which means you have a guaranteed $7 million a year contract coming in a year. I think that if you're, if you come into the country, you know, coming to the season as the number one freshman in the country and you stayed for three years, I think your stock would drop. I think the NBA would look at you and wonder, what's this kid's problem? What's he afraid of? His priorities aren't right.

It seems as though staying in college, certainly like Grayson Allen's a fascinating case. Grayson Allen would have probably been what, if he went out after the previous year he'd have been like somewhere between the 15th and 25th pick and now he didn't even start for duke at the end of the year now in a sense maybe that the fact that he got sort of you know sanctioned by his own coach maybe some nba guys will be like well this is a good lesson for him he needed to learn this lesson but i I wonder if he's going to, you know, struggle to make it now. And he, to me, seems like a better pro than J.J. Riddick. He seems to have a lot of Riddick skills, except much more physically impressive.

Like, he can really run and really jump. He just seems like he's a better version of that. I would rather come out early out too early than too late. I think once you've kind of established what your draft range is, to go back for another year is too risky. If it's going to be your professional career and you have a short window to make money. And the other thing is, if you go into the draft after your first year,

then you're able to get the max contract a year earlier too, which is, I think, the biggest reason why these guys come out. My answer is I would also go to Kentucky because even though Coach Cal, his last four minutes of the game coaching has just proven to be pretty shoddy, just look at the track record of the NBA guys that they've put in. Whatever he's doing there, when they go from Kentucky to the pros,

they seem pretty well-suited to kind of adjust and thrive at the next level. And I would look at that. I would look at a 10-year track record of John Wall and Devin Booker and Anthony Davis and on down the line. There's just a high awareness, I think, in the world of the NBA that, like, Calipari is just like a finishing school for NBA players. Yeah, he's preparing them correctly. There's a little bit about that with, yeah, that is, that, I don't know, but my assumption

is that one of the, because when you've seen, like um in other years like you know they'll uh in late in the final four if your team advances that far there'll be an interview where it'll be like the coach and his two best players and i remember there being one where calipari was sitting with like anthony davis and their relationship was so unlike any other coach playerplayer relationship I'd seen at that level. It did not seem as though there was much of a chasm between the person. Cal Perry was an authority, but he didn't talk to him. He just treats him differently. It's a different thing. It's antithetical to college basketball.

He's like their buddy. Yeah, he's like... He is. He's not like Coach K. More like their like their buddy. Yeah, he's like... He is. He's not like Coach K. More like their AAU coach. Yeah, yeah. UA, AAU coach slash business partner. Whereas Coach K is kind of like, I'm going to be your father figure your whole life.

I'm going to cry in front of you at least five times over the next 20 years. And we're going to have a lot of hugs. He sort of seems to recognize that that like the idea of like screaming kids down that just that doesn't really exist anymore like i'm not saying it like players don't seem to respond to it they're just not used to it they're not they're not to you know uh i think you can live a long time in life now having never been yelled at once. I think there are a lot of kids who, it takes a long time before any situation happens where they get yelled at.

And that's just a totally different world where he's like, you need to be very different. I don't mean by a coach. I mean by anyone. Like, I think it's very possible for when I see other kids, you know, at the playground and stuff, I'm like that parent is never going to yell at that kid no matter what he does like that kid will be 16 he'll blow the house up he's not going to get in trouble that much just that doesn't

happen anymore well that's why i yell at my kids all the time it's one of many reasons there you go uh chuck we have to go as always a pleasure when's your uh when's well you got to come back this was far too long since the last time you were on, but when is your next book coming out? Well, okay, here's the deal.

In next month, the soft cover of But What If We're Wrong comes out, like, late in April. Okay. And then weirdly,

in May, like in the middle of May, I think May 14th or 16th, there's an anthology of like my journalism of the last 10 years. Oh, cool. And then I'll come out in hardcover in May. So there's an anthology of like my journalism of the last 10 years oh cool that will come out

in hardcover in May so there's like I have a the last book the softcover comes out next month and then the new book

it's just well the new quote unquote new book I'm just putting it out in May it's just why wait just put it out

excellent I look forward to it Chuck as always a pleasure and talk to you down the road alright see ya bye bye alright thanks so much to SeatGeek our presenting sponsor don't forget to Excellent. I look forward to it. Chuck, as always, a pleasure. And talk to you later. All right. See you. Bye-bye.

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Check that out. Download it if you love wrestling. WrestleMania is coming up soon. I am going to be on that podcast this week. I'm looking forward to it. And teed up the Ringer University podcast. I don't know what the plan is. What are you going to do?

You're probably going to the Final Four, right, Tate? Yeah. How are you going to do a podcast? Preview the Final Four on Wednesday. Preview pod. All right. They're going to preview the final four on Wednesday. And then, uh, if UNC wins next week, we'll never see Tate again. So we'll have a farewell goodbye to a tape podcast. After that, we have two more podcasts coming up this week. Um, and I'm excited about both of them. I don't want to tip. I don't want to tip them off, but

they're two famous people. So yeah, look forward to that on the BS Podcast. Enjoy the rest of your month. We'll see you next time.