The Bill Simmons Podcast - Dame vs. Russ, Harden vs. KD, The Boston Slam, Surly Press Conferences and Throne Game with Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the best NBA player matchups in the playoffs so far, the Thunder’s loss to the Trailblazers, Russell Westbrook's impact on Oklahoma City, 76ers-Nets, changing up the postgame locker room press model, round two playoff hopes, and more (4:15). Then Bill and Ryen answer some mailbag questions about Tiger Woods, NBA conspiracies among others (1:32:32), followed by Gym Corner (1:42:15) and a [SPOILERS] 'Game of Thrones' recap of season 8, episode 2 (1:50:24). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you, as always, by DAZN. Their next big fight is Canelo Alvarez versus Daniel Jacobs. Champion versus champion, live from Las Vegas. I can't miss. The story of this fight is actually incredible. Daniel Jacobs diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2011, an aggressive cancer in the form of a tumor around his spine. It damaged his nerves, caused paralysis in his legs. He miraculously returned to boxing, fought through the boxing ranks to the top of the middleweight class. He's fought the toughest opponents along the way.

Nobody tougher than Canelo, the prodigy. He's held belts, super middleweight, middleweight, and welterweight. He'll look to unify the middleweight belts against IBF champ Daniel Jacobs. This coming May, can't wait to watch this one. Three world titles on the line. Who's going to take it all? Check it out on DAZN. Subscribe now if you have not subscribed already.

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We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com and The Ringer Podcast Network, the world's greatest website, the world's greatest website the world's greatest podcast network you can hear Dual Threat with Ryan Rosillo the backup QB series

getting praise from none other than one of my best friends Steve Bishop Amherst quarterback late 80s he loves nothing more

than the QB deep dives and he and he tried to order a hundred episodes of this series I was like you don't you don't, you don't work here,

bish. You can't do that. But I really appreciated his. No, that was really nice. He was in his wheelhouse. He wants the Ronald Curry episode. Now we've got a hometown Ronald Curry.

I think we could do that. I think he wants Ken Burns to take this thing over though. He might, he might, but what? 200 hours. Also awards. I don't want to say,

I don't want to say award season, but yeah, maybe Peabody, who knows? And if you love game of Thrones, as always, 200 hours. Awards. I don't want to say awards season, but. Yeah, maybe Peabody. Who knows? And if you love Game of Thrones, as always, we did the After the Throne show right after Game of Thrones ended with Mallory and Jason. That was on Twitter. You can go watch the replay right now at Ringer or hashtag Talk the Thrones. Listen to Binge Mode.

It's going up overnight Wednesday night. So when you wake up Thursday morning, it will be there waiting for you. Hundreds of thousands of people listened to last week's episode. We're going to talk about, Rassel and I, we put at the tail end, we do the Game of Thrones recap for people who don't have the highest Game of Thrones IQ. Yeah, we're perfect then. I just called it Game of Thrones just to show you what you're in store for. But people really liked it last week. We're doing again. Controversial episode this week. We have a lot of thoughts. We're going to talk basketball though

coming up. I think my dad called it throne games. He goes, you and Bill did the throne game thing. Throne game. That sounds like something a dad would say. I don't have the quote perfectly, but I'm not far off. That would be a great title for Showtime if they just launched a drama called throne game just to confuse everybody yeah just what's wrong i mean look at it what what do you what some of the dragon crossover like it happened

during the red sox game on neson they just had a dragon flying around a right field and you go it'd be great come on throne who's in it not enough. Who's in it? Not enough dragons. Who's in it? I think it's a bunch of B and C listers. Yeah, Bane is the head of it. He was great in Dirty John. He gets decapitated. Basketball coming up first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Ryan Rosales here, as always, Sunday nights.

This is a little mini tradition for us here. Ryan comes over, we feed him, we watch basketball, we watch Game of Thrones, We actually plan the show. No real... We always do a lot of save it for the pod. We did a lot of that today. A lot of that. We have a lot to discuss. I played with your kid. Yeah, you played some hoops. Your jumper looks great.

I like the high release. It's a little Tatum-esque release. Yeah, I was feeling it today. I might go play pick-up after this. Big agenda. First of all, we're going to today. All right, I have a big agenda. I might go play pickup after this. All right, yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah, big agenda. First of all, we're going to start with a mailbag question from Ryan in Seattle who emailed this after game three.

Is it fair to call Dame versus Russ the best pound for pound and most entertaining rivalry in the NBA right now? We just watched game four of OKC Portland. OKC talked an incredible amount of shit during and right after that game three when they pulled it to 2-1. And there was some real manhood stuff going on.

Like it really felt like they felt they could intimidate and break the Blazers the more aggro they acted. And it backfired on them in game four and the Blazers completely annihilated them. And there's a lot to discuss. What's the big thing that jumps out? First of all, Dame versus Russ, is this your favorite one or do you have another rivalry? I was really thinking about this because you sent me the note hours ahead of time.

And I didn't want to get too caught up in the moment and think, well, this is the only thing we have. So then I started thinking back and there was fun when everyone hated the Clippers, everybody hated Chris Paul, everybody. it felt like the clippers were the hate most hated team of like four or five it was blake versus like nine different teams hated them golden state hated them portland hated those guys so it's basically everybody that was any good in the west i think utah hated him for a bit so then i started trying to think like what kind of real rivalries do we have and the only one that I could really think of is Westbrook Durant, because there's so much that goes into that,

but then that's just including Westbrook again, who's just, as we know, he's a, he's a guy that's going to be going at dudes. Well, now that they're never going to meet in a playoff series again, it looks like not after what we saw tonight.

So, which, which will be part two of this whole discussion, but yeah, especially if Durant goes to the East after the season, then they would only meet in whole discussion. But yeah, especially if Durant goes to the East after this season, then they would only meet in the finals. And I think unless Westbrook pushes for a trade or something,

he's not making the finals with this OKC team. Yeah, it doesn't feel like that. So yeah, Dane versus Russ. I think this was old school for me for a lot of reasons because when you talk about what makes a basketball rivalry first, like fundamentally, it's got to be each guy is pissed off that other people think the other person's better than him.

So it starts there. Like you have a lot of, you don't talk about it a lot, but you have a lot of media rivalries and it's all from the fundamental, I'm better than that person. Fuck that. How dare you? I'm making this up by the way.

But you're nodding seriously. You're like, yeah, absolutely. You just even start listing people. But I think it starts there where both guys are like, how dare you? Really? You think that guy's better than me? I guarantee the MVP in 17 pisses off Lillard.

Lillard's been pissed about this. This isn't new. Everything you're saying is totally right. But Lillard has always done this kind of like, oh, here we're doing this again. Because he thinks he's the best, and all these guys think they're the best. He has that underappreciated, nobody, I'm in Portland, nobody realizes how good I am.

The fans do it too. Where's Dame? Dame never gets mentioned. I mean, he's been, by the end of this award season, he'll have a first, two seconds, and a third for the last four LNBAs. He is appreciated. He is. It's just, you got Steph, you had the Westbrook triple-double thing, which I think is worn off here. Harden, who was really a two, but you can't say he's not a point guard now because the whole thing runs through him. So you're behind two incredible players, but no one

has ever said any other name as the first name on the second team all NBA that I've heard from. I picked both of them for second team. Westbrook and Lillard? And Lillard, which I think, I'm not sure Westbrook's going to make it. I think Kyrie will. But I couldn't do it. I remember seeing this with, like, John Wall would have games. And as much as everybody hates John Wall now, he had a season a couple of seasons ago

where he was really good. Oh, he's 17. Yeah, he was great. And you can say like, oh, what is he? And then he had the same thing. Like, wait a minute, you're naming all these point guards? None of these guys are ever going to go,

man, Curry's ridiculous and Harden's insane. Yeah, I'm not as good as Curry, but the other guys. John Wall's not going to go, I'm probably five or six, depending on the month. He's just not going to do that. So Wall used to do this thing based on exactly what you're saying.

Like Dame's going, he thinks he's better than me. People think he's better than me. And Westbrook's like, this little dude thinks he can do what I can do. And people are like, are you kidding me? And now granted, Dame has far more of a chip on his shoulder because more people have approved of Westbrook. But I remember certain games when Wall would have Kyrie and he'd be like, oh, I want to murder this guy.

Right. And when Wall was good. I think Westbrook has a bigger chip. Kyrie and he'd be like, oh, I want to murder this guy. Right. It's funny. I think Westbrook has a bigger chip because I think Portland won those first two games. You're talking right now? Just to interrupt, there's no way Westbrook has been behind Lillard in the national landscape

of point guards over the last couple years. I think Westbrook just travels with a chip. Lillard's quiet about it. I think Westbrook's travels with a chip. Lillard's quiet about it. I think Westbrook's constantly looking for things to get pissed off about, which is the third part of this that we're going to talk about him versus the media. But I think after those first two games, oh my God, Dame Lillard. Wow. I forgot how great he was. I think he sees all that stuff. And I think he was like, really? Watch this. I'm going to physically overpower this guy.

Like I have 30 pounds on him. I'm two inches taller and he can't stop me. And game three was really interesting because it was a very aggro old school performance by Westbrook where when you watch it, you go, oh yeah, you are actually pretty physically imposing. And then Lillard was able to fight back and they went at it and it got really, really nasty. Game four was not as nasty. And I thought Westbrook had one of his stranger games we've ever seen,

considering that this series is now over, I think. So what do we have with Westbrook now in his last how many playoff games? Because you put out this stat going into- Four and 14 in his last 18. So if you start up 3-1 against Golden State from that moment on, he's lost 14 of his last 18.

More importantly, they're not going to get out of round one for the third straight year. He's 30. They have no way to make this team better. And I got to be honest, I think they have more talent than Portland. The biggest reason Portland has outplayed them is because Dame Lillard has been really great.

And I think he's just a better leader. And I think he's more reliable. And I think he's more consistent. I think he's a better player than Westbrook is. When you watch these games start to finish the way we do, you can see these different things. Whereas Lillard had that insane third quarter in game three and then you still lose lose yeah then he hadn't hit a bucket until about a minute to go in the first half right and what did he end up with that he was still over 20 right um yeah he had during the biggest most important stretch of the game he showed up right he ended up 7 of 19 4 at 8 from

3 and also at 24 points McCollum at. This was a really good Aminu game, by the way. But when you looked at this and you go, okay, OKC swept in the regular season. They just lost Nurkic. The Kanter thing, even though it was good in game one, you knew at times it was going to show itself to be a big problem. And even with Paul George's shoulder thing, we know it's not debilitating. We've seen stretches from him in this series where you're like, okay, this looks right now. This is one of my favorite Rosillo corners the you don't seem that injured to me corner i love i love when you do this i think we've done this thing now where every star and even some of the the secondary stars in this league whenever they have bad playoff games oh you know he's actually you know

he's hurt or he's tired like all we do is talk about rest guys have never been more well rested we've never had more time in between games we've never had better technology or equipment or training expertise if they're not you can't just be like oh missed a ton of shots that time of the year man tired everyone mails it in the last month of this regular season these guys are tired and they're flying first class and they're getting rubbed down during game three of the first round three games in the last four weeks come on exhausted i think the westbrook thing is a really and i try not to repeat myself because i feel like it's the same stuff over and over but how many more years of evidence do we need to see that his approach and this whole thing if i were

presti i wouldn't make it known but i would kick the tire because I think you'd get a dollar on a dollar for Westbrook right now. This is unbelievable. I love this. What's the point? What's the point of bringing everybody back and having Westbrook be the ring leader? I understand what he means to Thunder fans. I've been over this. I know that he's the guy that, you know, you lost two MVPs and this MVP took your money and wanted to stay home. And I don't mean took your money in a bad way. Like he decided to stay. So you, you rep him, you defend him. And guess what? You're going to lose in the first round again to an inferior team. You lost to one rookie scorer last year. And as much as I can respect his

passion, Oklahoma city is held hostage by Westbrook in a way that I haven't seen since Iverson was with the Sixers. And the only real difference is- Oh, that's a good analogy. The only real difference is that Westbrook has far more maturity and work ethic about him. But it's almost the same thing from a basketball sense, is that whatever it is that he is, this great talent, this son that the world the okc orbits around you're held hostage by it and i don't see anything that's going to change you're just a westbrook hater i'm not i'm not i'm just i'm imitating your twitter feed i know what's i know what's gonna happen but i mean honestly the thunder fans should be the ones that realize this the most well so

obviously i agree with you and i have a lot of issues with Westbrook as a basketball player. We're also admiring like his talent and how unique he is. Right. It was fun game three. There's three versions of Westbrook in a playoff series and we saw two of them in game three and game four. Game three is the, I'm feeling it tonight.

I am one of the great physical specimens we've ever had in the league and I'm going to dominate this game. And you know that Westbrook pretty early you can see it. The flip side is what we saw today in this Portland game. He didn't have it. And we were calling it out. I wish we had cameras in my living room.

Maybe that would have been a bad idea. It was a great show. We had a great show. But we noticed that with about 11 minutes left, we were like, he's intentionally deferring. Because you looked it up. He was five for 19. And you asked me,

how many shots do you think he'll take the rest of this game? And I was like, I actually don't think he's going to shoot that much. I think he's in this mode now. He took only two more shots. He was 521. Yeah, he was basically like,

I don't want to go six for 30 in this game, I'm guessing, but was just passing, passing, passing, deferring. Entire possessions where you would have thought Dennis Schroeder was the best guy in the team. He's in the corner. And it was weird too, because it wasn't just,

hey, look, we get every possession. There's different things. So you're not trying to like point out stuff to make a point, but there'd be times where the ball handler on the strong side would get caught and Westbrook wasn't even coming to the top of the key. He wasn't cutting. He just wasn't moving. And I think the difference between him and Kyrie and Lillard and Curry, Curry can disappear. But I think when the bacon is being, being made on the, on the grill, which is today you're down

two, one, you can't go back to Portland down 3-1. Now you have to play two games in Portland that are do or die, basically. All of those guys would have been like, I'm not going down like this. Or if we're going down like this, we're going down with me. The third version of Westbrook is when he says that and just is out of control like he was in that Utah game six last year when he took the 40 shots. If we're going down in flames, I'm doing everything.

He can never find that balance of oh shit, these next 10 minutes, they're going to decide the series. I'm going to do this. I don't know if he can figure it out on the fly. And we've seen it now. Three straight rounds. 2017, they had an inferior team.

I can't really hang that on them. Last year against Utah, what was the excuse there? What's the excuse this year? They have more talent than Portland. What's the excuse? Especially when Portland had to kind of figure out their big-man rotation here. Fucking eat his canter and defending pick-and-rolls. This Zach

Collins thing, this is why they wanted him so bad before the draft and you know they're just little minutes in there and you don't really know what it means you know going the rest of the way but i thought even down oh two i thought okay see we're going home and i'm like you know what there can't be that much of a gap between these two teams like they'll probably play harder they'll probably be up you know excuse me they'll probably even this thing up to two but i still feel the same way i feel about about westbrook because it's like what else am i supposed to wait on and and the problem for it is that that's just the way coming out of high school the doubt at ucla what

is this guy is he really a point guard all this stuff like you're asking somebody it's almost like you're asking your really creative friend and i'm gonna even talk i'm like talking like really special creative that sees the world in a different way to be normal at a cocktail party you know what i mean well think about this i voted paul george for first team all nba and i think fifth mvp westbrook was the mvp ago. Just from there, from a star power standpoint, those two versus CJ McCollum and Dame Lillard, they should have an advantage. Then you go down the rest of the way, coach is even, role player is pretty even. So you're basically talking about

a two V two and whoever's two guys play better, that side's going to win. George, whatever's wrong with him, he doesn't look the same they did in the first 50 games. Or maybe this is just who he is in the playoffs? That was my game one thing because I go, maybe it's the shoulder. Look, he's clearly hurt enough that this is a maintenance thing. But I don't know, maybe. I don't know.

I don't really know. I think I've already said everything I was going to say. I know, but I look at this like longterm, if you're okay, see what do you do now? Because you're going to lose for the third straight first round. And now you have two of the best 12 to 14 guys in the league.

They make a ton of money. You got Adams for 20 million plus you've Schroeder for 15, 60 million plus you have Grant for eight you have no room really at all so to go back to your Westbrook point I don't think there's a chance in hell they'd trade him but that's probably like Belichick would trade him Belichick right now would be like

what can I get for Westbrook here's what I would do I could trade him to the Lakers for Lonzo and Kyle Kuzma and have the cap space, done let's start calling now. LeBron and Westbrook. Good.

Let's go. I think you would get the full price for them. Where every other star in this league that is traded, you're always trading them at a discount.

You're always losing that trade as the team that's getting rid of one of these perceived top 10 guys. I don't think you'd get full price. I disagree. I think it's, you're talking

$200 million for the next four years or something. Or $180 million, something like that. For a guy who gets his knee scoped every, what, October? He always has some weird knee procedure. He's taken a lot of hits. He's played a really physical style of basketball. And he's been in the league longer than you realize.

He's going to be year 12 next year. Yeah, but it's not like disgruntled i'm out of here i'm only going to this place i'm all these different things if anything he'll want to stay there but my question is let me double check no i mean westbrook i don't think anyone has one right now right active in the nba for what you think was that no one has a no trade now after no westbrook does not have a no trade um Because they'd never trade him. Paul George is the other one. So here's what I think. We're going to read a lot over the next week or so

about what's OKC going to do, what's their plan, all that stuff. The guy they're going to have to trade is Adams, who has been really, really disappointing, not only in this series, but down the stretch too. And this is a series where he's by far the best big man in this series, but down the stretch too. And he, you know, this is a series where he's by far the best big man in this series and he's not really having an impact on it. He makes a big price and that's somebody who would be really valuable to somebody else. I think,

I don't know what kind of physical shape he's in, but I think that's how they have to think is like Adams is probably the fall guy coming out of this. because they're not going to break up Westbrook and Paul George. No, you wouldn't because that was the whole point of doing this thing. And you're right. I just double check it. He hadn't had enough time in for the no trade. Adams is a big number. That's pretty much it.

It's like, isn't it like 22, 23 million, something like that? You could argue maybe on a different team or a different style or, you know, change the scenery or something. That'd be good for him. Great chemistry guy. Yeah. Adams will be next year.

He'll be 25, eight and then 27, five. That's a catastrophe. Yeah. And that's all. I don't have to bump him out of the top 55 trade value. I don't think he's in there anymore.

It feels like you've just turned on Steven Adams. I've seen nothing from him this series. I think he's in a really bad spot because you're going to come all the way up to try to deal with these guards. So that's ridiculous. When I watch where they try to initiate some of this stuff, it's crazy how far out they'll extend. Do you need Steven Adams anymore?

Maybe just that type of center once you get to the playoffs and you have all these shooters. I think Horford becomes the type of center you need unless you're going against somebody like Embiid. If they're playing Philly in a series, you need Steven Adams. Yeah, right.

And you saw with Brooklyn, it's basically just Jared Allen and cross your fingers when Embiid was out there. And they finally, too. They put Jared Dudley on them. Yeah, to great hire Kenny Atkinson's credit. We always call him great hire Kenny at the ringer. Because when he got hired, everybody was like, great hire. He had a lot of media friends.

Yeah, it seemed like he was just a source all the time in Atlanta. Great hire. Great hire. Nobody knows defense better than Kenny Atkinson. But I think they eventually realized, yeah, we should just go small. We can't stop and beat anyway. I couldn't believe it took him

three games to start Karis LeVert. That was just weird. Oh, we're doing this? Did we already switch? No, we're going to go back. Let's save that for later. Yeah, I don't know what OKC does and you know the legacy of Westbrook where

he's made one finals I don't think he makes another one unless something dramatic happens and I think he's going to move into that like from a career retrospective you know the way we look at certain guys like from George Girvin

I'm trying to think of some other ones from like a Kevin retrospective, you know, the way we look at certain guys like the, from George Girvin, I'm trying to think of some other ones from like a Kevin Johnson. He's better than Kevin Johnson, obviously, but like certain guys who just kind of never had their moment on a big stage and he never did. 2012 was probably the closest. 2016, it could have happened, but it's turned into a little bit of a what-if career, which I think is going to be the legacy of this OKC team, where you head into the decade there, the de facto, no question, number one choice for who's going to be the team of the decade.

And then win one finals game, they have some bad luck mixed with a catastrophic trade. I always felt like that was close. Like that series in five, the loss to Miami. First four games were incredible. Yeah, it was kicking out of five points. And there was little things. If you go back, I've watched it.

Like Ibaka not realizing what to do defensively. Just simple little things that younger guys screw up. Durant got fouled in game one or game two, and they didn't call it. And I remember that on the baseline because it was right where I was sitting, and he clearly got fouled. Yeah, so you're going, oh my gosh, this is going to be a run.

You mentioned the Harden thing. It feels like if they had won in 16 that, I don't know. Your worst case scenario if you're an OKC fan is Houston wins the title with James Harden on top of your third straight first round exit and a roster that you can't do anything with. And then if I'm Presti, who is really well respected and for the most part, I think is at least a B plus, the Harden trade's the worst thing he did. But for the most part, has been really good drafted really good, and was able to reboot something that seemed unrebootable.

Well, think about what he's done. Presti's up there. No, but does Presti look at this and go, maybe this is the time to go? There's some good jobs. Looks like that Lakers job is never going to be open, huh? Well, I think they're waiting for somebody. I don't think it's even a secret at this point. One of the GMs of a current playoff team is going to get that job.

Well, I already tweeted about it. Who do you think it is? Well, I don't know. I'm not saying it as definitively as you are, so maybe I shouldn't say anything. I said somebody they should go after. I think they're waiting. Oh, all right. I think they should just go after Bob Myers.

He is a current playoff GM. He is. He was eligible for the quiz. My money would be on Bob Myers. This isn't an important enough bet for anyone to bet on, because I don't even know if sportsbook.com or the DraftKings app or whatever would even have this as a bet, but i would bet on bob myers because he's from here it feels like that golden state thing is reaching the end of some finish line and i think that lakers drives a great job because you're following just a of cadre of morons yeah i don't never understand why like the gm still is as important you know some of the gms like i'll look around

and it's all over the place it's a really i don't want to say underreported thing it just i don't think anybody really cares but there's some gms making less than half a grain uh half a mil all right like under 500 000 there's a couple and you go what the hell is that and then you're hearing like on the high end that some of these guys are getting closer to eight figures and it's only a few of them but if i'm the lakers and the thing i closer to eight figures and it's only a few of them but if i'm the lakers and the thing i always think about bob is it's not that he's the best gm it's that he is the perfect personality he's the antidote to what this lakers bullshit has been for however many years one of the most well-liked nba people period it's impossible and he's also

done a fucking awesome job yeah right I mean really from day one so I barely know him I'm not like good buddies with him he's not on my cell phone any of that shit

I just have always respected the job he's done and it seems like it's time for him to go yeah see like the thing with the Warriors like there'd be stuff

where like Jerry West would be getting credit for it Bob was doing all the stuff man right and Bob didn't care Bob never cared like he didn't it never bothered him and i'm like you know what like the first time i had this story related to me i go there's not many gms that would be like ah fuck it i don't care i'm not worried about it while he's maybe the best in his profession

putting together this absurd roster that's not a one swing at a thing. That's a planning for that Durant summer way ahead. Yeah. So, I don't know if it's going to happen or not, but I can't imagine think of some of the players that you'll spend $10 million a year on that suck, that'll never do anything, that are maybe a 7th or 8th guy. I'm surprised

that NBA owners... I've been saying this. Why don't NBA owners go... Because they're morons. The owners are just as bad. They're morons. This is like the Knicks thing. When the Knicks finally said, hey, let's spend some money on the problem,

they go and they get Phil Jackson who's going to work 32 hours a week. How predictable was that? Was it that many? Yeah, I'm sorry. I apologize to Phil. It was 18 hours a week.

That's one of the things with Dolan that I think kind of sucked though. It's like, hey, everybody's been telling me for years I'm just supposed to pay a guy to be the front and face this whole thing and i'll just back off it just well you picked and you picked the guy that was going to mail it in seriously what was that thing was it you guys that had that i forget it might have been one of those videos that was going around that 29 scouts went to go see yannis 29 teams excuse excuse me.

Giannis, I mean, the revisionist history was something that's just been incredible. If I was a GM, you know what? The job that I actually think is the best job is Washington. Here's why. I have a three-year grace period. It's almost like the Sean Marks-Brooklyn thing.

Yeah, I'm just like, this job's hopeless. We have John Wall's contract. We're operating with a salary cap that's 60% what everybody else's is. And I have Bradley Beal and I'm going to have a top five lottery pick and an extraordinarily patient franchise who is so fired up

they don't know Bernie Grunfeld is their GM anymore. And a really great basketball city. Like a really And a really great basketball city, like a really underrated, great basketball city that really wants a winner again. I would want that job because I have a building block. I have a second building block with that pick and it's a long game.

I'm not going to be judged right away. Lakers, you're walking in. I mean, who the fuck knows with that job? I don't even know if I have a blue chipper on that team right now other than LeBron, and LeBron could break down at any time. I would offer up Beal and you just tell somebody you're going to

take Wall. Yeah, you said that before. I'm keeping Beal. I think he's a top 20 guy. It's a 30-team league. You just write out that Wall contract? Well, House laid this out a few weeks ago. They can write off almost all of it for insurance next year and then you hope he's you know with science that we bring him back

yeah there's always there's always the thing too that you could the counter to what i just said would be well you got to pay somebody you know you got to pay 90 of the cap anyway why not just keep him instead of getting rid of arguably, you didn't put Beal on your third team NBA, but he was in the conversation. Only because I stuck with the whole only guys on winning teams thing. But I thought just from an individual standpoint,

I thought he was one of the best six guards. Hey, can I tell you about Bud Light? They're keeping it real. That's great. They're putting an ingredients label on their packaging, brewed with hops, barley, water, and rice, no corn syrup,

no preservatives, no artificial flavors. You know who else is keeping it real? Nephew Kyle. Hey, thanks. He stopped jeweling during the podcast. I really appreciated it. Did it bother you?

It never bothered me it always made me a little light headed also I'm just looking out for him

I want Niffy Kyle to have a long productive awesome career dueling's not even bad for you

reds are so much better you don't want to be judged I don't want Kyle to be

judged at his next job after I get hit by a bus I'll give you a

recommendation and I'll let you duel if Bill gets killed. File that one away. Thanks.

Meanwhile, cheers to Bud Light. Reminding you to enjoy responsibility and keep it real. Second part of this Russ discussion. This is something that popped up Friday night. Russ has this awesome game, and he's doing his next question bullshit to Barry Trammell, the OKC paper that he has. Is it Trammell? Barry Trammell, the OKC paper that he has. Is it Trammell? Barry Trammell, whatever his name is.

Sorry, Barry. Wait a minute, which he's from the Leon Gazette. The Daily Oklahoman or whatever. And people are like, well, you know, there's all this Russ Apology stuff on the internet. And it's like, well, you know, he's feuding with that guy. That guy was a dick to him. We ran a piece about this on Grantland four years ago,

written by the great Brian Curtis, which I mailed to you. And a big part of that piece was about how Barry Trammell. Trammell. Barry Trammell. I've never heard this French version of it. Sorry. Barry. Barry.

It's still in your head right now. Didn't know why Russ was mad at him? Yeah, I didn't know. Had no idea. He just knew that Russ didn't know. Had no idea. He just knew that Russ didn't like him and something happened and it was maybe

this headline of this piece he'd written that he didn't even write the headline. And it was just the way it was. Mr. Unreliable, but it was about Durant.

It was after that playoff thing. And even Trammell said when he saw the web edition of his article, he was like, ugh. And then he's like,

well, whatever, it'll just be the web. So I was still at Grantland when we wrote that piece. It's awesome, by the way. Yeah, it, well, whatever. It'll just be the web. So I was still at Grantland when we wrote that piece. It's awesome, by the way. Yeah, it's a great piece. It's a great reread. I did it on my, I tweeted it this weekend

if you want to check it out out there. But one of the reasons we did it was because I was just so fascinated by how OKC controlled not only the media, but who got to talk to their players, how their players acted. And this had been really like a four-year problem with them. So we sent Curtis down there to kind of investigate and he wrote this awesome piece.

He's so good, by the way. Yeah, he's amazing. So the point of the piece was basically these guys act like this because this is what the OKC organization wants. This is what they push. It's either you're with us or against us. And you see it with this next question stuff.

These guys, they walk around like gods in OKC. It's us against them just with everything. And it leads to, I don't know, I think it's really bad behavior. But that's one thing. On the other hand, I don't really care because those press conferences are so inane. They're such a waste of time that I kind of agree with them. Like, I don't want to fucking be here. You guys don't want to be here.

None of us want to be here. We're going through this charade, this custom that has been in place for the last 50 years, but I hate it and I can't hide it. So I don't blame him for doing it. But at the same time, I think it's shitty that he's doing it. I'm torn on it is my point. It feels a little bit like arguing bat flips right now,

which has become political. Like I know who like the anti-bat flip people are and i know the pro bat flip people are and that there's no like well you know maybe some bat flips are stupid and other bat flips are awesome um that's kind of what it feels like a little bit because there's so many people that let's just say hate us okay the media they're just not that impressed with us yeah they're like what is it two guys and fucking sweatpants a couple microphones like that's us right now yeah i could do that shit you didn't you didn't you know what i mean like i get it and i used to think that when i wasn't

doing it and then i i went and did it and so i think there's always been a lot of i wouldn't even call it animosity i'd call it deeper than that. I think there's just a lot of people that look at us in the media and think we're all fucking losers. And honestly, I have friends that work in this business that sometimes I look at something they say or something they write where I'm like, what? And there's other people that are in this business I flat out don't like and would never spend a minute with where I'm like, you guys are the reason athletes think all of us are fucking clowns and why fans are going to stick up for the athletes more than us. So I'm not even really looking at this as taking sides, but I just think there's kind of a level of decency that goes along with the gig that you have to figure out. Now, if i were an athlete and i had to

go shower and come back naked and put on my compression shorts or whatever in front of seven heavyset white guys just staring at you and then there's a couple women which you know honestly i'm not even talking about this like as a male female thing of all the things that we're trying to update the thinking of here in in present day language and the way we talk and the way we decipher things, am I weird for going, you know, because I'll talk to some of my buddies that play and they're just like, that's insane. That's kind of like, does it still have to be done that way? Now, if you ask the beat guy, and I don't envy the beat guy because that's a tough job. You've got to be around those guys all the time. Right.

That's your whole life schedule you're trying to work these relationships but it's like is it the only way to work the relationship to be standing there at the locker room while you see his dick well that was another only way to do it that was another piece curtis wrote about sidling which was uh mark's mark stein term from way back about these guys searching for the six minutes they can grab somebody when they're headed to their car or headed for the workout. And the whole game of the beat writers basically admitting there's no real way to get information unless you start building these little side relationships, the DM, stuff like that. My whole thing is the system is broken and it's been broken for a while. And there was a reason we did it in 1950, 60, 70 this way, because we didn't have the internet. We weren't televising press conferences.

Nobody cared about the access to these guys. You had two or three people in the locker room max, and they just did it that way. And it's like the whole reason I wrote my basketball book was about the Basketball hall of fame. It was like, why do we do it this way? Well, that's how we've always done it. And that's the answer. And anytime the answer is, well, that's how we've always done it. You know, we're headed for just stupidity, just sheer stupidity. Well, that's how we've, that's how Dick Young did it in 1954. It's like, well, that's idiotic. What could be done? It was 1954. Like, what if you said, like, I wonder if it would work to's like, well, that's idiotic. It was 1954. What if you said, I wonder if it would work. You're like, hey, you know what we're not doing anymore?

We're doing no more locker room stuff. The locker room is their room. It's that team. Stay the fuck out. Stay out of the locker room. But does that mean then the beat guy would be listening to this right now being like, well, if you do that, we're never going to get any time with these guys. Well, is that true?

Can you not go to shoot around and hang around? Or is the guy shooting around and he's like, fuck off? But what are you getting in that true? Like, can you not go to shoot around and hang around? Or is the guy shooting around and he's like, fuck off? But what are you getting in that time? I follow basketball constantly. What are you getting? I do think some people get something out of it, though. I do think there are reporters that do a really good job of building these relationships. I'd have to still think there's some value to it.

Like, you're acting as if there's no value in having access at all. No, I'm not acting like that. We're talking about specifically the horde of people all around somebody. What are you getting out of that? You're getting the same quotes. Everybody else is getting only there's eight to 20 people around somebody. What am I getting? Like, what am I getting from, I tweeted about Friday night, Lisa Salters at ESPN interviews,

Russell Westbrook, right after that game. He is talking all kinds of shit to Lillard that whole game. It is trending on Twitter. It's by far the most important story of the game. And she has some five questions and never says to him, what was going on with you and Lillard? Which is the only thing I cared about. Then we talk about tonight, Stephanie Reedy interviewed CJ McCollum.

Nothing about, hey, was it sweet? Like They talked a lot of shit on Friday night. Was it sweet to really stick it to them tonight? No, that wasn't asked either. So why am I watching your sideline interview then? You're not going to ask the questions I care about. What's the point? If you're asking me to defend sideline interviews, I'm not going to do that. I'm not asking you to defend that. I'm asking, what are we getting at in this stuff? How many times have you been enlightened or heard anything that you were like, wow, wow, that was a moment. I watched so many games. I tell myself that's it. No post game, no pregame. Like I won't, I don't watch a ton of it because I'm going to spend 10 hours in games on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. So to add extra stuff, to add all the post game, you're

right. I don't get a lot out of it. Ryan, that podcast you did with Bill was great. What would you change going into the next podcast? Wouldn't it be great? We take our clothes off and somebody comes in and they're like... Hey, that second segment, Bill really went at nephew Kyle there. Did you wish he had done that differently? You know, look, Kyle's part of the team

and that's something we're going to keep in-house because a lot of us, it's a long season. It's so fucking stupid! why do we do it this way okay it's ridiculous i'm pushing back a little bit here though you're are you proposing completely to eliminate it i'm saying let's make that i'm proposing that we that we create something different and new because go what so hang room? One thing I was thinking was you have an assigned reporter after a game.

They work with the other reporters. They come up with like, I don't know, eight to ten questions and they just have a one-on-one with that person and then they disperse the info. But I think when we get to the playoffs, these guys are at the podium anyway. Why do we need 25 people there? I can watch the interview on TV. I can watch the press conference on TV.

I don't like, you could be eliminating jobs. I'm not eliminating jobs. I want a better system. I want a better system in that if I were an athlete and the first thing I'm seeing when I come out of the showers, I got to change in front of all these people. I'm not, even though that's the way it's been done forever, it's not great.'t know why i don't understand how everybody's been like yeah that's totally normal it's totally cool i think you're starting from a situation where the guy's like oh cool i can't even see any of my shit at my locker because it's surrounded by people and that sucks i i do think there has to be some kind of access that isn't just the podium access or isn't just a lot there has to be some kind of hey i'm around the team all season long

82 games like a few minutes you and i decide like i think you have to figure out some of that stuff because look we still love the rumors we still love all the bullshit we love the shit that isn't even true it's entertaining yeah and if you never have any of those relationships built i just don't know that those like really good hey here's what happened articles that maybe come out once a year about a team that went that always come out once a year about a team that went wrong. That always come out after the guy left the team. Especially in Boston. So that,

that's, you've just made my point kind of the, the, the thing that really bothers me is I hated the next question stuff Westbrook was doing. And it, and then I also hated the reaction like, Hey man,

these guys are just trying to do their job. And it's like, what's their job to, to get a terrible answer from Westbrook. Who's never going to say anything. Like how many guys are actually good quotes right now? Joel Embiid, Kyrie Irving, who's off the reservation every three weeks, but how many guys actually bring you real insight into the game? Right. The only time you really see it is if somebody gets time to do like a feature on somebody and they spend real time with them. And that's when we get insights.

Yeah. But a lot of times in the feature, it'll be like, Hey, we have something coming out. Like when I read that article, the Curtis article, there's a couple of things that I remember, like Westbrook did a one-on-one with Trammell when his Jordan brand deal was done. And you're like, Oh, okay. And the other part of that article that I think is a really important point, this whole thing out, is that this is more specific to the NBA. The NBA, this is a homer job. If you're on the broadcast, you're expected to be a homer. If you're a sideline, you're basically a team employee, even if your station isn't owned by the team. I remember when I was doing the Celtics games up in Boston, and that's always the funniest thing about me is being supposedly the Boston guy nationally. Everyone in Boston thought I hated all the Boston teams.

And I would go out there and I was lucky enough that the Celtics people let me do that stuff. But at one point they thought Tommy Heinsohn was too critical. I'm serious. This is true. And I would look around and be like, what's going on around here? And we started calling the green teamers. And then I remember one of the guys was like, Ainge told me flat out, like, what's going on around here? And we started calling them the green teamers. And then I remember one of the guys was like, Ainge told me flat out, like, hey, nothing wrong with being a homer. And I'm like, why would you want to do that? Like, why would you just want to be a homer

and sell the team's message? But when you're on the broadcast, that's what you're expected to do. Like, I'll listen, you're the same deal. League pass now. Oh, it's cheerleaders. Every fucking game is a commercial for the team and that's how all ownership and all the front offices want it well also those a lot of times those guys are riding

the planes with the guys and yeah i get it there's a whole bunch of you like oh westbrook's fucking it up again tonight they get a champ they get a championship ring if the team wins yeah i know i know but i mean that's that's also weird but nba pr people though like in the guys who try to book a show all the time like nbr and not all of them but a lot of them man just say fucking no just say we're not getting you the guy and instead they do this game this false hope bullshit where it's like yeah well you know we'll run that up the flag which is exactly what curtis was saying in that article with the Thunder guys. So I think when you have all of these people protecting all the guys,

I think it gets back to the origin of it. Is it even Westbrook's fault if this is the way he was told that they were going to run the operation down there? And it isn't just like that there. It's like that in other places too. I'm not saying it should go away. I just think we're doing it wrong, and I would love to come up with a better way to do this. I'm all for it.

But I don't- I think it's crazy that so many people are in the locker room. I think it's adversarial for the athletes. So they just retreat into this whole generic quote thing. And then when they actually do say something, like Kyrie can't help himself. And Kyrie caused a lot of problems this season because he couldn't help himself.

Now, some people would say, this is great. Other people would say, if you interviewed me every day for the next eight months, I probably would say three dumb things during those eight months, right? So is that good? Is that what we want? Is this a situation where we're just trying to get people to eventually let their guard down so they say something dumb and then we can make a story out of it? Because we don't get any real insight out of it. That thing they, online the other day, when Durant, did you see that two-minute video of Durant breaking down, Patrick Beverly guarding him?

And that was fascinating. I love that. Occasionally you have nuggets like that and that's what makes all this access worth it. But my point is, for the most part, it's just crap. And we, we, we forgive it because every once in a while we get the Durant moment or we get Kyrie saying something crazy. And it's like, oh yeah, that's, this is why we have this. But for the most part, I don't like it. And I just wish there was a better way to do it. And I don't know why we do it the way we did it

60 years ago. Are we though too isolated in the way we're looking at this and not realizing that anything that's ever been important and certainly as important as the NBA is that they've all had the same stuff. Reality shows that are huge, podcasts about them, all these like imagine watching a reality show and then watching a breakdown of the reality show you just watched. They do that on all these shows now. True. All these magazine articles, all the stuff that you're like, it's the same thing thing so there's clearly a thirst for the interest level here that honestly i even though i think a lot of it is very outdated and makes the relationship nasty to begin with so we're in agreement on that one i don't i don't want to see it become a thing

where like all of a sudden the access is diminished because- I'm not asking for diminished access. Because then somebody's just going to want it back again. They're going to go, wait a minute, how come we don't do more with these guys? By the way, The Ringer, we send people to locker rooms all the time, and we're always hoping for nuggets. We're always hoping for- We've had John Gonzalez and Paolo Getty. We've sent a bunch of people, and they've come up with good stories from that stuff.

My point is, why is this so hard? Why is this fraught with so many complications? And why do we put athletes in the position where they constantly just have to talk about fucking bullshit and they're not going to say anything? And this is somehow the way we do it. Like the sideline, the interviews of the coaches after the first and third quarters and the post-game interviews are fucking atrocious. They're atrocious. Total waste of time. All I did was watch basketball the last 11 days.

I've been home. I've watched everything. I have like all kinds of opinions. I never saw one anything during any of those interviews that i thought was interesting and one thing but i think it's what am i gonna learn that we've always gone like oh and this is back to your point so it's not a disagreement it's just well you know we've always done that we pay for that access they know that it's part of it i mean they started doing more and more of that stuff remember they started doing this on all these baseball broadcasts it's like let's get in

the dugout let's throw a headset on the guy that i kind of like but it's so that is so crazy i kind of enjoy that the only time like baseball managers seem drunk like the only thing that could make wired for sound less entertaining is if it were longer whenever they have the players be like all right we're gonna go to gary i know the process of that so well i know what happens they They film The Wire. I know. Each team has a representative. Yep. And they basically have the ability to neg any single thing on that

Sounds of the Game, which is why we always get, come on, Ryan, let's have a good podcast. Let's go, Ryan. Come on, baby. Talk, talk. Come on, guys. Hey, make sure you talk. Hey, we can get back.

Come on. Come on. Boozer, when he was mic for sound, he was on the bench most of it. And I thought, my God, he might be the most annoying guy on the bench I've ever heard. So that was enlightening on that one. Well, it's interesting that football, which is so horrible in so many different ways and manages to do just about everything wrong. And yet, their all-access stuff is so much better than the NBA. Their policy is better about it.

They allow way much more. The NBA would never do hard knocks in a million years, ever. They would do the generic sanitized version of it. They would never do the real hard knocks they would never do like the stuff we get on the uh that mic'd up show you know after the afc title game and the shit like yeah that's damn amadoa mic'd up just saying crazy shit to grock like the nba would never do that i'd love it if they did it i i guess i keep thinking about i remember i remember before i knew how much it was edited out on the wire for sound i used to think scott brooks was the worst coach ever way long like i because he'd always be like

it's entity god rebound guys we've got a rebound possession and then somebody at es fans like oh yeah no we yeah it's completely doctor anything that's good so back to my original point what do you want from us arrest book after a game do do any of us expect he's going to say anything interesting no he's smart enough not to there's a street here that we haven't gone down yet let's do it is that as much as I love this league and I do and I love the game of basketball I love basketball I can't ever imagine not loving basketball as much as I love it there There are certain nights where I go, cool, we're just going to sit here for like five hours and watch guys argue every fucking call and be wrong 90% of the time. And these guys are all like becoming more and more unlikable because

they're all fucking miserable. And then they can't just play the game and just get the answers right. The argument with the refs is the worst it's ever been. It's so unlikable. It's out of control. You know, here's the thing. I know everybody hates refs too. The players are wrong

all the time. I know. I know. It's funny. I talked about this on The Potter a few years ago. I actually stopped going to Clipper games

because I hated going and watching Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and Doc Rivers argue about absolutely everything constantly. Every call was the biggest mistake that's ever happened. The fans get caught up into it, and it's just 20,000 aggrieved people. They're just furious. And then you watch the replay.

It's like, oh, yeah, he hacked them. I hate it. And I don't know if there's any way to stop it because I think it ties into this whole bigger picture of just the way players are wired now where it's like, I'm the shit. How dare you? How dare you? It feels like there's a real detachment of reality.

Now the players don't, they don't want to get booed. We're not allowed to boo players anymore. Can I just gently boo? Can I go to a Celtics-Bucks game next week and just kind of boo when janice is at the free throw line or is that not allowed anymore um that's a little different no i think ben simmons was upset because his own fans are booing him no but people now it's like oh man these fans they're brutal it's like you know i went to the games of the 70s the fans were fucking brutal in the in the boston guard the 70s it is way better fucking brutal in the Boston Guard in the 70s. It is way better now.

It's so much nicer. Yeah, I don't ever go in there now thinking this is intense. Go back to game six, 86 finals, Houston-Boston. All the Sampson is a sissy signs. They're hanging Sampson's jersey from the rafters with the Sampson is a sissy sign on it. And he comes out. And it was just,

everyone was so mad at him because he punched Siegfried the previous game. Real hate in the air. And it really affected him. He went like two for eight. But that's not cool anymore. That's not, you know, it's...

Now I'd be like, oh man, you know, Ralph, Ralph had some anger banishment issues in game five. You know what that would be? It would be Boston again. Well, listen. If a 7'4 guy punches a 6'1 guy on your team,

the fans are going to be mad about it the next game. I don't care what city it is. Yeah, I don't know. Boston, man. So, I don't know. Do we solve anything? Do we sound like two old men there? No, we don't sound like two old men. I want't know. What did we solve? Do we solve anything? Do we sound like two old men there? No, we don't sound like two old men.

I want to cover, like, I feel bad when I get mad because I start going like, what is this, Ryan? You're going to have a problem with all these different superstars now? Like, what are you doing? Like, if this guy isn't good enough for you, who is good? Are you only going to like Curry now? Like, what are you doing? And then I feel guilty about it because there's so many of these guys.

I love their games and I love the moments that, you know, the entertainment and all that stuff. But I just think there's this real nasty, almost dangerous detachment between the refs all suck in their eyes, but they screw up everything as players. And then, of course, they're wrong all the time, but nobody ever brings that up. And then the media, although they can be ridiculous and brutal, and sometimes I think just they sound ridiculous on the media side. And I understand why the players don't like them. I don't know. I don't really want to choose a side in this whole thing. That was the whole reason I brought it up because I look at topics like this,

I would say 19 out of 20 times that I'm like, I have a take on this. I have an opinion. There's one of two ways I can go. I feel this way. And in this case, I'm kind of against both sides of it. I think the way that we cover sports from a day-to-day basis needs to just change and evolve. And it just hasn't, it stayed the same. And I think even the beat writer guys that we know, I think would agree with that. It's like, why I've talked to them about it.

Why do we do this this way? I don't know. I don't understand it, but this is the only way that I, it's a lot about, I want to make sure somebody else doesn't get something I don't want to get, which I totally identify with. Um, the point is, I just don't think we learned that much. I don't think it's interesting and I would like to see it evolve, and I have no answers. Ryan, how do you think this segment went? I think I got a little intense there, but that's just the way I play. Talk about preparing for a podcast. You know, there's pens.

You can't do without the pens. Paper's a huge part. I bought a one-subject mead at the Rite Aid down the street. That's a true story. Came in, thought maybe we were getting takeout, but then it was leftovers, but it was really good because it was filet. Great leftovers. It's unbelievable.

I was afraid about how the beans thing was going to go when I turned those down, but all in all, I mean, I don't know. I was ready. I was ready. Ryan, when you talk about those leftovers, what impressed you about the steak? Well, a lot of people cook steaks we know that right a lot of people out there got different styles and you know there's

just this thing more and more as you get older it's like if you're over 30 you don't like it raw you're a loser and this thing still had its flavor it still had a little coloring in there but it was cooked through and uh i'm not kidding i was setting you up for the last two for you to say next question to one of those i really thought that i you to say next question to one of those. I really thought that was- I wanted to say next question. I thought it was just sitting there for you. We could edit out that because it wasn't even that funny. I disagree.

I enjoyed the hell out of it. You thought it was funny? Yeah, I love it. I think press conferences are the fucking dumbest things ever. Let's take a quick break, talk about some Ringer podcast. Dual Threat with Ryan Rosillo. You're doing it this week right oh yeah

draft week yeah draft week we're doing a mock seven rounder in reverse I like it that's great I was just

how can I shake up the game I was looking around at all the different content people backwards mock draft excellent so we have that if we have the

and supplemental picks we're launching on luminary which Luminary launches on April 23rd, Luminary Premium. If you want to check out the rewatchables, 1999, we picked 15 movies from 1999. We've already done a couple of 1999 movies on the rewatchables feed. We picked 15 for all different reasons reasons basically based on what was going on 1999 and we're doing this little thing we're doing 10 a 10 episode run and then another five episode run but if you want to sign up for luminary check it out at uh luminary.link slash bill simmons

or yeah use that one that'll be a great one what is my other option though? what do you mean? I thought well there's you could do a rewatchables if you want luminary.link

slash rewatchables and then binge mode Wednesday night Game of Thrones that's coming up too and then all the awesome podcasts we have

Ringer NBA show I think I'm going to go on the Ringer NBA show Thursday night actually so keep that on your radar as well alright couple more things for us to hit that to go on the ringer NBA show Thursday night, actually. So keep that on your radar as well.

All right. A couple more things for us to hit that I had on the agenda. Round two, fuck, marry, kill warriors, rockets, Celtics,

bucks, Sixers, raps. Yeah. No prep. Wait a minute. Yeah. Fuck,

marry, kill warriors, rockets, Celtics, bucks, Sixers, raps. Well, I'm going to marry, kill. Warriors, Rockets, Celtics, Bucks, Sixers, Raps. Well, I'm going to marry Warriors, Rockets.

That's how I feel as well. Right. Who would I just want to maybe bring somewhere for a weekend? I'm going to be like, oh, wow, you live right around the corner i didn't know that um i would say give me i just want to know what the celtics team actually looks like right now i think they're the kill option even as much as not for me because i'm a celtics fan but just in general i think sixers raps will be yeah but i want to see what's going on there because i don't know i want to fuck sixers raps just because i can't i that series could go all kinds of ways i like the matchup it's weird buck celtics i don't really want to kill any of them dude well here's my fear with buck celtics the pacers aren't good no um a A lot of Wesley Matthews, like a lot.

A lot of Darren Collison, some Corey Joseph. Sabonis was bad. Sabonis not showing up. They just really had trouble getting offense. Nate McMillan didn't seem to realize that Tyreek Evans just spread out and set him a pick and just let him go to the basket and try to change things around. You always find a way to blame a coach. Yeah, sometimes.

Sometimes. Bill, why do you always find a way to blame a coach? Well, you know, coaching's hard, obviously. Bill, it's something about you and coaches. Talk about that. I think that series came at the perfect time for a Celtics team that actually had their rotation in line for the first time in 90 games. I'm giving you credit.

You called this on the Marcus Margarita. I wrote about this in my book 10 years ago because I was always fascinated. I think I wrote a column about it on ESPN magazine, like 07, 08. You used to write? When I used to write, back before I retired. The Rockets won 22 games once.

And they won with this really goofy seven to eight-man rotation. And it was basically T-Mac. Yao Ming was there for a couple games. Then Dikembe came in. Yao Ming got hurt. They kept winning. Dikembe comes in.

It was like Chuck Evans, Rafer Austin. But they had eight guys, and it was just eight guys that played well together. Chuck Hayes. Who's Chuck Evans? I don't know. It sounds good, though. Yeah. Eight guys that just knew the roles Chuck Hayes. Who's Chuck Evans? Sounds good though. Eight guys that just, they knew the roles.

They had a best guy. Everybody knew how many minutes they were playing. And I think this is something over and over again that gets forgotten with the NBA is that you only need eight guys. And maybe the ninth guy plays six minutes. Like Daniel Tice played six minutes today, but for the first time

all season, Hayward, Jalen Brown, Tatum all playing the right amount of minutes. Daniel Tice played six minutes today, but for the first time all season, Hayward, Jalen Brown, Tatum, all playing the right amount of minutes. All in the 30s, all of them have talked about how they need minutes to be comfortable. It makes sense because if you've ever played basketball, you just like to be out there. You're getting a rhythm. You're not looking over your shoulder, seeing if the next sub's for you, all that stuff. And as much as I love Marcus Smart, and I think when he comes back, he probably takes the Rozier minutes if he comes back. I still think him getting injured,

my big hope with it was that it was going to open up this eight-man rotation, that kind of where they should have landed all along. They were just afraid not to play Rozier. They didn't want to bury him. I think they actually should have buried him. I think it would have made the team better. Now they had these eight, everybody's playing enough minutes and they have some momentum now. Unfortunately, the Bucs are a

thousand times better than the Pacers and Smart was the best guy on the team to guard Chris Middleton unless Jalen and Hayward can step up. During this season, Smart was the best guy against him. They were really good collectively in a way that it just hasn't felt in a while. And I think the Hayward thing is the most promising because it's not the numbers. Because if you just dig into the numbers, you'd be like, wait a minute, he missed a bunch of shots there. You'd have to watch him all year long to see what he's looked like. And this is a carryover to the end of the regular season. But as I always hammer home, this end of the regular season things can screw you up it really can screw you up like i look at this jazz team and i imagine at some point we'll get to that they're down 3-0 down 3-0 against a houston team which i think is somewhat overlooked on how special they've been statistically since

the all-star break they're the number two defense their net rating is number one like houston's been on this role and i thought like well utah figured it out if you're going 21 and 21 and then I went through after I was like hey man look at their record after 21 and 21 but then I went through it again and looked at the teams they beat I'm like that's unbelievable how long they went without having to really beat anybody that good last year with Philadelphia they're about 500 they add a couple other pieces and they go on this run and it's like well half the league is resting and the other half is trying to lose games like this stretch can screw you up so with gordon hayward you know he's it wasn't a really long stretch it goes back to maybe that san antonio game the first time i really 30 minutes the first time i really noticed it was that miami game

when he was just attacking and and i think you know know, unless you were an NBA junkie, you just didn't watch a lot of Utah Hayward. And I don't think people really realized how athletic he used to be. And you see it now. His whole game is drive, attack, or pull up three. And that's what he does. And he's just like attack, attack, attack, go to the rim, attack the rim. That's what he's good at.

And it's back. Because he's kind of big. He he's actually like sneaky a big guy and then you add in the tatum's fourth quarter in boston where you're going wait a minute and then jalen's he's passing up three and because tatum was passing up jumpers and going on the basket finally right and the ball's moving better yeah you remember you were the old you're the youngest guy in nba history to score 20 points or more in four straight playoff games. That's the reason we were so excited about you. And they're running off rebounds more, but they're getting the rebounds.

But look at game four and they're sweeping the Pacers. Kyrie wasn't even in the top five in scoring. I don't know how it ended up closing if you ended up in top five. Horford shot it awful, but it was okay. So where Kyrie has bailed them out of so many games, I feel like this happened the regular season. We don't need to get into all the personal stuff. There's something that's really promising about what we just saw. But yes, I also still don't know because I kind of think that Pacers team is borderline a playoff team. And when Oladipo went down with the main injury

they were 31 to 15 I know they'd won a bunch of games when he had missed time earlier so their overall record with Oladipo is like 500 but when he was gone gone they were a blow 500 team and you know it's pretty simple from a basketball standpoint like who what was the thing they did on offense that scared you oh Oh, okay. Nothing. Bogdanovich. It would have been spreading out Tyreek Evans, but they barely did that. Yeah. They weren't scared. Tyreek actually felt like the only guy that was like ready for a fight in game four.

It was the perfect, perfect opponent for the Celtics team. They have some good momentum with the whole Kyrie locker room thing. Cause I do think he fell on the sword. I think he realized he was acting just kind of crazy and has made a concerted effort to say and do the right things and not cause the distraction, which unfortunately now going back to what we talked about earlier, it's so easy to cause a distraction.

Now he's kind of realized, all right, I'm just not doing that anymore. So that helped. But Hayward's, Hayward's playmaking, he's just fun to play with when he's playing like that.

You know, he just seems like in pickup he would be fun to play with. He was great. The ball moves. He doesn't care if he shoots. Getting other guys involved. Yeah. Utah ran their offense through him

and you kept thinking like, man, if Hayward ever had a second guy in Utah. It's like a point forward almost. Totally. Yeah. So now if he's playing. Really good passer.

34 minutes a game. And then Brown's two-way game has been really good passer, 34 minutes a game and then Brown's, Brown's two-way game has been really good now for I would say three months. Horford is rounded into playoff Horford for him. And Roger is

the eighth man on this team and that's somebody he would have played 35 minutes a game for Indiana. You know? He would have been their guy. He would have been taking shots.

So heading into this Milwaukee series, on the one hand you say they finally figured it out here we go and then the other hand it's like such a dramatic difference

between Milwaukee and Indiana it's like night and day and they don't have home court they they don't really have anyone

to guard Giannis but nobody does I mean Horford they can build the wall and do all that stuff Middleton's the problem they have to figure out how to take out Middleton really have anyone to guard Giannis, but nobody does. I mean, Horford, they can build the wall and do all that stuff. Middleton's the problem. They have to figure out how to take out Middleton because he killed them last year.

He kills them all the time. And that is where, it's funny with Hayward, everybody's talking about the offense. It's the defense where they really need him because they need Jalen and they need Horford to slow down Chris Middleton. And if they do, it'll be a series. I think I just, I, you know, watching them all year and to see people after these four Pacers games going

up, knew they'd figure it out. They were doing it after game two. It's like, they're supposed to win at home. And first two games, there were eight point favorites. I'm not, I'm not going to, you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to fall into that trap that goes, I think they can get Milwaukee now. I'm not going to... You know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to fall into that trap that goes, I think they can get Milwaukee now. I'm just not.

I got to see this version of it against Milwaukee. But again, if you watch these games, like look at the Denver... I know we're going to spend a ton of time in Denver-San Antonio because I'm still kind of lost on that one. But those games have been entirely different. I know what's happened individually,

Jamal Murray and his story, the up and down-ness of it. Milwaukee may come out and run them ragged, or game one, Boston, they're going to have so much time off, by the way. Yeah, from what I'm hearing, that game one isn't going to be until Sunday. The earliest would be Saturday, so you think it's Sunday, huh? Yeah, I think it's Sunday. I think it's going to be Sunday, Tuesday.

So, yeah, I mean, you get a week off. That's great for the Celtics. But Milwaukee's going to end up sweeping, I would imagine, on Monday. Yeah, that's done. That's a goner. So could I see Milwaukee winning 4-1? Absolutely. I think if they're up 3-2 going into game six in Boston,

it's a Friday night probably, the crowd will be great. And, you know, for as fucking frustrating as Kyrie is, and, you know, multiple times I said on the pod, I was ready to drive that dude to the airport. Like, I just like, this is just not enjoyable to root for you day in and day out. But now that you're in and day out. Yeah. But now that you're in the playoffs

and you really see, like, there's seven guys who know what they're doing. Like, who really know what they're doing game after game. It's like, I know what shot

I can get at all points of every game. He's one of the seven. And they got through all the shit with him and now they're here and they're three rounds away. And this is when you want them.

There are little reminders throughout this. How many guys? How many guys? Seven? Look, you're with me. I'm not. No, but let's make the list right now. Durant, Curry. Durant, Curry, Harden. I think Kawhi. I think Dame's on there. I think Kawhi's on

there too. Would you put Embiid on there yet? No, because I think Emb's on there. I think Kawhi's on there too. Would you put Embiid on there yet? No, because I think Embiid has... Man, I love that guy. And he was filthy in that last game. But he can be susceptible to a second defender coming over just because of his size. His passing was really good in this Brooklyn series.

But it's hard for him just from his size standpoint to navigate all the shit in a broken down possession. Yeah. Like guys will send second guys and sometimes he'll get a little caught up. I mean, really what he is, is he's the guy that's supposed to mess up the defense, but depending on where he's starting with the basketball,

say like less than a minute to go and it's a tie game, that's not always easy for the big guy. It just isn't. So it's not really even a knock on him. It's hard. Really doesn't seem like he's in shape. He's always been tired. That's not always easy for the big guy. It just isn't. So it's not really even a knock on him. It's hard. Really doesn't seem like he's in shape. He's always tired. He's always tired.

I mean, he's like falling down tired. You know how they sub him out too. They give him that break in the fourth. Yeah. And then they bring him back in. And in the last game, I was like, all right, how is this going to play out? So Kawhi definitely. Kawhi's underrated when it comes to this.

I think Dame definitely. Dame, Kawhi, Durant, Curry, Hard this I think Dame definitely Dame Kawhi Durant would you put either OKC guy on this list I would not over Kyrie and getting a really nice look at the rim

in the playoffs no and LeBron is not playing cause he's well I thought he's prepping Space Jam 2 I thought we were just doing playoff guys

I'm just saying in the league Chris Paul still can get wherever he wants. Whoa. I'm telling you. I got to say Chris Paul has looked pretty good, but I also think it's easier when you can pick your spots six times a game versus the burden of, oh shit, I have to shoot 28 shots today. Kyrie's been playing 37 minutes pretty consistently.

So yeah, look, I think we'll know a lot game one, game two. And for, Grandy always talks about this. Weirdly, the Celtics team are more liable to do a stinker at home than on the road, and I have no explanation for it. The crowd, like, just gets bummed out sometimes, and maybe that'll change now we're getting into these last rounds. Philly, Brooklyn. You were upset about the ejection.

You used a swear. I did. I swore on Twitter. I just like, come on. That's not a double ejection. If anything, like eject Embiid because for the second time in three games, he's fucking nailed somebody. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Well, I think it looked bad. So we back up the whole thing on the on the jared allen play i can see where dudley thought he just tried to decapitate jared allen because he had two days ago whistled an elbow right in his head and that's the thing about the thing that i don't think he understands or maybe he does understand or the mb defender like the mb thing that's all connected you can't go out there and bloody up a dude and then laugh about it and an apology that is,

you were a dick about it. And I love Embiid, but he was a prick about the whole thing. So now Dudley's role, because he knows who he is. I'm like the old head out here. I got to just. I loved it from Dudley. So Dudley had to do that because he felt like, did he just knock Allen down again?

Because he doesn't see it. And now in the replay, I think Embiid kind of went with those swipes where it's like if i get the ball great if i don't you know i'm also gonna jack you up i don't think anybody should have been thrown out but if i had to rank them i would put it bead first but i don't think it was a flagrant either i just look the two shoves were not throwoutable that was no absolutely don't you think that's insane yeah but in today's thing where if anybody lands wrong or their head is hit

and then it ends up being a flagrant, I feel like the NBA is like, if this is spilling into the stands, even if it wasn't even that nasty, we got to get some guys out of the game. It's the playoffs. You don't just eject guys in playoff games unless there's a phenomenal reason.

I'm against it. The weird thing about the trade-off there, like Butler, oh, we lost Butler and they only lost Dudley. You're like, yeah, but this is the whole point of the Sixers, is that one of those four guys is going to be invisible offensively anyway. So you could still survive without Butler. If Brooklyn had gone to Levert down the stretch, they would have won. They forgot he was on the team for the last four minutes.

He's their best matchup in the series. Russell has been, like Jamal Murray, they would have won. They forgot he was on the team for the last four minutes. He's their best matchup in the series. Russell has been, like Jamal Murray, very hit or miss. It's almost like Philly didn't know how good Levert was in the beginning. I'm like, how are you guys not? You know what I like about his game? There's a herky-jerky 1970s feel to it. A lot of Doug Moe. It's like he's driving in the basket.

He's stopping. Then he's going again. Then he's stopping. Then he's like going in for a layup, but it's, it's very disjointed, but intentionally there's no, there's no, you know, Pierce was good at this too, where Pierce was. Ginobili. Yeah. Well, yeah, but Ginobili would have like weird crossovers and, but Pierce had that weird

herky jerky trying to keep you off balance you thought he stopped and now he's going again and that's what i like about lavert i like lavert in general i've been so impressed with him and just be this guy that's been experienced and being like all right i got this i got this because you know that's that's one of the things with all these playoff series where i'll look around and be like okay what's a one doing with the magic like what are we doing there and then right they stop playing and you're like oh maybe i'm really smart why is kurutz in the game like what what's the what's the point of starting him he was really good when he started playing and then but the last couple months he's been bad it's been terrible and

then clearly atkinson's like okay you know if i have Dinwiddie and Lavert like I can use one of those guys and I'll get I'll get Damari out of there because it looks like Damari who at times is a nice switchable defensive player hit some threes he's just not hitting him now but I never try to sit there and say oh as I'm at home going hey that substitution's wrong this guy's stupid for playing this many minutes because we don't really know well I bet on Brooklyn game four and I was like what just give the ball to Karis Lavert what are you doing yeah just he's every time he has the ball he gets a good shot whether he makes it or not it's always a good shot i think it's always harder for the other guys when they're so used to the way they would want to close a game it's always yeah and

it's like wait a minute you know you were gone and like russell's had a really good year so i think it's hard sometimes like even a damari carroll you'll notice where he goes well i'm getting a shot up like i'm not taking zero shots this is tough because i really thought they could have tied the series and i think they should have after butler went out and uh they're left on the table i think they could absolutely win game five there i don't think they're gonna win the series but i i think they've played them pretty evenly. This one's more personal for you though, because you were hinting at it when our preview pod. I just wanted it to be a fun series, but no, I was, I still think it's been a fun series. As a Celtics fan, I wanted Philly to get knocked out. I was hoping Brooklyn would beat them in the series. This has been the one other than, I think Portland OKC is the one I

look forward to the most, but this is the one I look forward to second most for whatever reason. Because I still find Philly fascinating. I actually think Philly-Brooklyn is number one for me. Because I think Philly is one of the most fun weirdo playoff teams we've had. Absolutely. The Embiid, fucking Bogdanovic, Boyan coming in. Who's actually? Boban.

Boban. Who was terrible. I'm sorry. It's 11 o'clock at night. Boban was so bad. Like, Boban. Does Boban get the biggest pass of any individual player in the NBA? Well, he'll make like two 10-footers. People are like, Boban. Boban could just go into the corner and start taking a piss and a free throw. And guys would be like, that guy's so good on Twitter.

Love Boban. He and Toby and Boban. He's in John Wick 3. For real. He can't not hang on to the basketball. And I actually thought he was pretty bad i love i love like they're completely completely ill-equipped to guard basically anybody like of the spencer dinwiddie to kairi level of i can i can get to my spot i'm but how

is that possible how can jimmy butler not be one of those guys because he's six foot seven he can't guard he's gonna be able to guard kairi oh no no kairi but caris but even caris you should be able to spencer dinwiddie by the way if harris plays well in that game four the nets won by 10 maybe he missed every wide open shots that whole game i think philly is really really sneaky bad defensively and uh and if toronto has their shit together i would i would give them the advantage in that next series. And that's before we get to the coaching. I meant to look that up because... I just think you get

good shots against Philly and Embiid. Embiid makes a huge difference with the rim protection. Like, there's no question. What about him being hurt? Huh? What about hurt, not hurt?

Embiid? Isn't that weird? Yeah, because, I mean, think of how good he was. He was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's special in game four. I think he has a sore knee mean, think of how good he was. He was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's special in game four. I think he has a sore knee and I think he's out of shape. Is he ever?

But okay. But he's definitely not hurt because he put up like 35 and 17 in that game. And then again, he'll be like. He can't be hurt. Yeah, but then he sat out of the game. So it's not like he's 100% either. But I think he's sore. I think he's not 100%.

But hurt to me is like, how is this guy playing? How is this guy out there? He's not, he never felt like that. Do you know how many shots Joe Harris took in game four? How many? I knew he was missing everything.

I can't believe somebody wasn't like, hey, Joe, congrats on that three-point contest, but fucking passed the ball. What was it? He was 414, 0 for six from three. He killed them. like hey joe congrats on that three-point contest but fucking passed the ball what was it he was 414 0 for 6 from 3 he killed them all six of those shots were wide open do you know in that that utah game on saturday night he's shooting 19 from 3 he hasn't made a three in three he went two excuse me three for four in game one joe harris since then in 26, 29, and 35 minutes, is 0 for 2, 0 for 4, 0 for 6.

He hasn't hit a three-pointer in a week. He's been fucking horrible. That's what I'm saying to you. They're not even, and Russell has been bad too. And they're still in these games. So, you know, Mitchell was, everyone made such a big deal about how hard and sucked on Saturday night. Mitchell missed 17 in his last 21 in game four.

He was terrible. And Korver had some nice things to say about him after, which I thought were, he had this long speech about what an unbelievable teammate Mitchell is and how he really, really wants to be the guy. And it was really, it was one of those file away because if Korver's this passionate about it, he really must think this guy's great.

But he played like a 21-year-old in that second half. Yeah, I watched it because I watched the game and then I went back and watched it again the first and fourth quarter because I wanted to focus in on the Harden stuff. I just basically bragged. Yeah, that was great. Sorry.

Like sitting here this morning watching Trailblazers grizzlies again i didn't know what they were doing on these switches but this is amazing you know you like tweet that out like 7 a.m like oh just just running through how they shade the screen um that's some of my favorite twitter yeah because it's just all you're doing is really you just want everyone to know that you put this much effort in and you're doing it. I've done it, so whatever.

I just did it. I just did it. It's the way Jared Allen was shading on the high screens was a new look for Kenny Atkinson. I'm going to tell you, the way Mimic or Core sets up at the elbow, watch him on horns. All right. What the hell were we talking about oh uh Mitchell Mitchell

kind of kept a minute like it's a close game in game four yeah but even though they put up some points Utah I'm never gonna like a team with one score and their three-point shooters were terrible on those I don't know what the numbers are. But I feel like watching it, I'm like, is everybody going to miss every corner three here in this game and then to close out the game? And yeah, Harden was 0 for 15, but he's still collapsing you defensively on those lobs, which I don't really know what the hell anybody's supposed to do for.

And Mitchell also, he'll force it because I think he looks around and be like, what am I supposed to do? Rubio's going to miss another one. A little jingle juice here from outside. And they're trying to mimic the kind of Mitchell they're trying to do their own hardened Capella thing with Gobert sometimes on those Mitchell drives but then Mitchell will get caught in between defensively and I'll just look at Utah and go you know why I thought they'd get a game or two maybe because that's just how series work but Houston's at this level now that I don't want to say it's overlooked but i watch them and go if they beat golden state even though i'll pick

golden state because i just will it's i don't know is it going to be a surprise are you going to be surprised if houston beats golden state no because i already bet on houston well there you go i i think they're going to be golden state and I said this to you on the podcast a week ago. You said think? I think they're going to beat Golden State. So you're picking them. You're going to be picking them. I picked them last week. I picked them the whole time. Did you do that in the pod? Was I not paying attention at that point?

You probably were zoning out. The Rockets are now 6-1, which is still crazy to me. It feels like it should be 4-1. I think two teams can win the title and those are the two. It sucks it's in the second round. Does it suck?

Does it? I kind of like it. I think this round two is really epic. I love all four of those series. It's going to be incredible. By the way, if it's Denver-Portland, that's going to be a really fun series. It's going to be up and down. I'm going to have no feel for it. It's going to be like the Spurs Nuggets series, which has also been really fun. And anybody who gambles on this

has a gambling problem because- None, no feel. Seriously, don't gamble on Spurs Nuggets. Game to game, nobody has any idea. The players on the court have no idea what's going to happen. No, because when you're watching it, you go, oh, wait a minute. Derek White. So you're adding this to two primary scorers in Aldridge and DeRozan. And then Jamal Murray sucks. Oh, no, he's awesome. Oh, no, he's like, Derek White, oh, this is the guy.

And then he's like. Eight points in game four, and you didn't even know he was out there. He's 36 in game three. Yeah. And everybody's going nuts about it. I'm like, God, is he going to suck in game four? You just feel it. I started watching, watching be like what makes him so good i'm like oh look at how he drives away from the aldridge screen that brings two defenders now he's perfect he's i he's actually

now he doesn't technically qualify for a little more athletic than you think but i feel like some guys look at his haircut and go that's the greatest haircut in the nba there's some haircut profile so some guys look at him and go there's no fucking way this guy's dribbling around me. I think that's what happened in game three. Quickly. I opened this up to Twitter. Would you rather have best of five or best of seven? Round one, 75% of the people would rather have best of five.

I'd love the first round to be shorter. Shorten it. Do you know when they changed this? Do you remember? 2003. Yeah. Still unclear why they changed it other than just being fucking greedy. Yeah.

See, these things go like- It was just pure, unadulterated greed. Whenever anybody says shorten the season or let's do this, let's do- Whenever it's, hey, they don't want to do it because they don't want to lose the money they make from it. I don't want to have these debates. Do you realize how rich these owners are and how much their investments in the teams have gone up do you understand how everybody everybody every owner they have has had their investment gone up by between like three and ten times yeah i get it so i actually have an issue

when it's like oh they need that extra game you're telling the businessman who's been this successful to actually own a team that he's supposed to just hit a cap on all of these things. I actually have a much more rational argument for you. It's actually bad for the league to do it this way because the games are just less interesting, unfortunately. And a lot of the series end early anyway. And by the end of game three,

you know where half the series are going. I actually looked it up. What do we want from the first round? We'd like a little less predictability, right? Well, last year, only one non-top four seed won. That was the Pelicans. They swept the Blazers.

Year before, there was one non-top four. Year before, same thing. Year before, two. Like I go down the line, there's not non-top four. Year before, same thing. Year before, two. Like I go down the line. There's not a lot. Last year, we had two four-to-three series. Year before, we had one. Year before, we had two.

Year before, we had two. The whole thing about, oh yeah, they need those extra games. We never end up playing those extra games. We never end up playing the extra games. You know what would be cool? A really exciting series. And I think one of the reasons they're afraid to do it is because a couple of times we've had some 1-8 situations where it's like the 8 seed shouldn't have the advantage of they split on the road and all of a sudden they have a chance to finish the series at home. Here's the easy solution. If you're the one seed in

either conference, you get four of the five games at home. You get one, two, four, and five at home. That's your victory prize for winning the one seed. Other than that, we're going best of five. And if we go on best of five in this whole thing, Brooklyn wins game one, and now they have a chance to finish Philly off in three and four. I'm just more interested. Celtics are in the finals last year. Yeah, maybe. But with these series, you knew Boston, Indiana was over after two games. You knew Milwaukee, Detroit was over after one game. I knew that before it tipped.

You knew Houston, Utah was over, I think, after two games. Two games. Yeah, I'll give you two games. Because they steamrolled them. We don't need a best four out of seven, five out of eight series, basically. So I would do that. I would go back to the old way.

I would do best of five, and I would give the one seeds an extra home game in the first round. I'm all for it. But every time anybody does the, hey, we should rejig the entire playoff thing so that it's 16 teams instead of eight from each, and you're like, okay, but you have to get, what, 22 or or 24 owners to vote for that so that means you're never going to get it because half the owners are going to be in the east you're never going to get enough of those votes to change that so stop arguing about it hey we should have less games the season should be shorter okay well

they don't want to give away that money stop arguing about it so they're not going to give this up except i totally agree with you because i think some of these matchups are so painful so here's why i think they will give it up because the ratings are down for these first rounds because the series suck okay but they're going to argue that it's lebron they're going to say a bunch of different factors i i do not i don't when it's a one-year sample of ratings going down that is not the time to start trying to tweak everything i think they were down last year too, though, first round. I thought they weren't. I don't know. I don't know what to believe. These series are bad. I would like something to be done.

Last thing and then... Write a letter. Last thing. Barkley had his top five before the last game. Yep. His number one guy was LeBron. Number two guy was Durant. Number three guy was Durant.

Number three guy was Giannis. Number four guy was Kawhi. And his number five guy was Harden. I thought that list was batshit crazy. But then I thought, oh, this is actually a cool one for like, who are the best five players in the league right now that you would take in a playoff series? LeBron would not be my number one, FYI. But I actually think I would go with Harden.

One. Yeah, I think I would. I think he's the best player in the league right now. The fact that he sucked on Saturday night and his team has so much confidence now and they knew he would rally around a little bit in the fourth quarter and still figure it out and he hit the biggest shot of the game. He's my number one.

What's up with that doggy style defense Utah was going with there? That was a little weird. fourth quarter and still figure it out. And he hit the biggest shot of the game. He's my number one. What's up with that doggy style defense Utah was going with there. That was a little weird. I think Giannis was the best regular season player, but I want to see him doing in playoffs. I want to see him do it against a team that has played him six to seven times in a row over two weeks span and is exploiting every foible and weakness that his game has. I want to see it.

So you're picking Harden, even with the Clippers comeback dud, the San Antonio dud, and the can't make a shot. I just think he's at the peak of his powers right now. That's who you just picked is the guy you trust the most in a playoff game. That surprises me. That's a fair point. Yeah. No, playoff series.

Whatever. If I had to win a playoff series right now and I had equal teams on both sides the guy that has absolute flame outs and was 0 for 15 that's what i'm feeling right now he was terrific at the end of the game so you kind of knew i was at a buddy's house and we were watching it and i said all right how many how many points you think he gets in the fourth quarter we set the over under eight and a half and he smashed it the other one i was thinking was durant durant what he did against the clippers because he has the resume of it the clippers have been so uh impressive not impressive i guess well no they're impressive because that's not a very good team and yet they

they show up thinking they're going to beat the warriors every night they play them and it's hilarious and they came back game two they get smashed in game three which is what i expected in game four was i I went to game three. It was grizzly. I know. I was thinking about going to that one too. It was 11 to four in like one minute. Was there any Durant thing that you got to see live that you hadn't noticed

before? Was there any new Bill Simmons? I've seen him live so many times. Now I'm going to flip my pick. I almost feel like the more I talk about it, I'm like, ah, it should be Durant.

I just love the way Harden's played all year. But the thing with Durant this time, it's the, it's the array of shots that he hits. Like Harden's doing a variation of four things every time, right? Durant can post you up. He can pull up three. He can do like the little pull upup jumper that he has he can drive to the basket he's got the better handle though and sometimes when durant drives in a crowd it's

a little bit earlier on the mb stuff like i worry about a seven foot one guy driving where that's when you can be smaller like this is going to sound dumb and kemba's not my pick but i'm convinced now that kemba is as good as he is because he's so small. We'll save that for our Hornets podcast. It's for August. But what was cool is he just hit every shot. He hit was a little bit different. And you're picking Durant then.

Cause I'm picking Durant, but the Warriors as a team, I like the way Harden's playing more this year. I honestly think this is Harden's year. I really do. I really deeply feel it. He's going to be holding up that trophy. I think the Rockets are going to win the title this year. You know what would be funny too

is the correction that'll happen. Be like, well, he was tired against the Spurs and that Clippers team. I think he's got it this year. I think he's the guy. And I think, this is what I asked will you root for Harden

against Giannis in the NBA finals well you already bet on it so you're not the right guy to ask yeah I'd be rooting for the Rockets what if you had no money on it

and you're just at home and you're thinking about basketball well I don't like you as this gatekeeper of thought and legacies the irony is I don't really like

the way the Rockets play so I'm always rooting against them like I was even I'm telling you right now the way the Rockets play, so I'm always rooting against them. Like, I was even rooting for Utah. I'm telling you right now, I'm just going to let everybody know, I will be rooting really hard for the Bucs.

Say, Eric Bledsoe, you're hitching your wagon to? The whole deal. For Colapass? DJ Wilson. Hey, let's talk about the difference between working hard and working smart. I like to work hard.

Sometimes I work smart. I'm telling you all the Rockets are going to win the title this year. That's a product of me working hard and working smart. It's a combo. They have the look. I asked Daryl Morey. I was like, how are the other players regard Harden? Because I think this is a really important little detail.

Do the other players, is there a reverence about how well the guy's playing? Did you ask him that question on the podcast? I did. I asked him that. You should do sideline. And he was like, actually, I am starting to hear the way the guys talk about him. It's starting to get that feel. So, yeah. Somebody asked me the other night about him,

and it was somebody in sports, an important person. And he goes, what's his deal, Harden? He goes he he had turd and i went you know what i go i think there was a time that that was kind of the consensus on him but i'll be honest i don't really hear that anymore works his ass off yeah added something to his game every year it's a very pro harden comment he sounds like somebody's zip recruiter would have identified their technology and tools make hiring more efficient and effective imagine Imagine how quick you get hired. Smartest way to get hired. ZipRecruiter's powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience for your job.

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the smartest way to hire. All right. This is always the best part of the podcast. When we're a little groggy, we're doing mailbag questions and we do Game of Thrones. And there's a lot of Game of Thrones stuff. We're going to save that for the end. Want to talk about some Tiger zigzags, which we brought up last week after the Masters.

And I asked you, we're in the sports business. Nobody, there's never a 100% zig. A couple stragglers have to zag. Yeah. What's going to be the zag? I asked you. Couldn't really come up with a good one. A couple of readers said uh

mark from madison emailed you want a hot take how about the masters is the least impressive or meaningful major for tiger to have won congrats tiger you're good at this one fucking golf course try winning elsewhere that's a good zach uh and then alec from Greenville, North Carolina said, what about comparing him to Jack? As in Jack would never go 10 years without a major. Oh, that would have been, that would have been really good. Just a sports talk show. Not like a column, not the New Yorker.

Yeah. Right. That would have been a good one to throw on first take like hour two. The history books will show that Tiger isn't as dominant as people think. So that would have been good though comparing Jack. Sarah Spain at ESPN figured out a pretty good zag.

She did this whole- Never saw this one coming. She did this whole thing about we're all idolizing what Tiger did here at the Masters, but that shouldn't excuse his behavior from 10 years ago and wrote this big piece about, you know, he cheated on his wife and all these things that, you know, he ended up apologizing for.

But we shouldn't forget that he did that. I'm good with all that stuff. He's a flawed dude. I saw the terms of the divorce and I was okay with everything that happened. Look, he hit rock bottom. He was completely humiliated. He was a national pariah. His marriage completely blew up.

He embarrassed himself with his family and his kids. He had to go and do a press conference because he couldn't stop side piece action. And in front of his mom. Can you imagine? He hit rock bottom in seven different ways. If you had to do a presser in front of your mom being like, Perkins waitress, sorry.

You know? Like, so I didn't quite, and it wasn't just out of that corner. It was just, it started to float out there. I didn't see it coming, and I went, oh, so this is the thing where. This was the zag. Because he's won the Masters, I should just, I should make sure I remind myself in the enjoyment of his redemption. That he's a human being with major foibles.

That he made some mistakes. Yeah. Okay. Ryan Erickson sent us an email. Magic is a tampering machine. Last summer, the NBA warned him with the conspiracy bill. Paul George said he didn't stop. Maybe he ratcheted up a minute.

Who knows? Maybe heeted up a minute. Who knows? Maybe he stepped up a level. Now the NBA was forced to step back in with an ultimatum. Magic can step down or heavy fines along with draft pick forfeiture for all the tampering for Magic. The result? Magic stepped down without giving a real reason, and the Lakers avoid getting hammered.

What are your thoughts, conspiracy bill? I like it. Who? First of all, I'm jealous. No, first of all, it was extremely jealous when I read that email. How did you not think of this? I don't know how I didn't think of it. I blame myself. I got to go back to the drive. Oh, now I'm going to press conference phone. Sometimes you miss them, but I got to look in the mirror and I just got to do better next podcast. I feel like I started, I was at least early on, I feel somewhat responsible for this email

and thought with my Paul George theory, but I wasn't able to take it across the finish line. Bummer. Speaking of the Lakers, Andrew wants to know, why not Dwayne Wade as the next Lakers coach? That would be because LeBron's not allowed to be player coach. So why not getwayne Wade as the next Lakers coach that would be because LeBron's not allowed to be player coach

so why not get a banana boat buddy to be the coach and LeBron's really the coach you know what would be great for that Carmelo's an assistant no Wade introduced to every arena

as a first year new head coach he's giving a suit jacket to the other coach we just added a whole nother season to the Dwayneane way so everybody can give him gifts the last dance he can exchange jackets blazers last dance hashtag hashtag last dance he's walking around miami that was the longest retirement ever now kareem's was because kem, we had to give him gifts and pretend we liked him. That one's more personal for you. This is Michael Mailey.

I sent this one to you because I really wanted your take on this. When Ben Simmons is in the gym practicing, what does he do? He can't work at his passing or vision, his two best skills. So what does he do? Selfies? What does he do? What does he do in does he do in practice great i've asked this

because every shoot every broadcast let's face it like a lot of the national broadcast too is what you're talking about local broadcast the nba has to approve you right you had to go through it when i did the draft stuff i had to fill out this paperwork and you know i remember one time somebody said like oh this may not work out for you and i was like what i was like guys the nba like me like i'm fine and i think there's a real message where if you're doing a national game abc tnt or whatever they don't want you saying what all of us think at home like as soon as the announcer or the play-by-play guy color guy play-by-play guy starts going well he puts in so much work at the gym and you're like how come the other guy doesn't go well what the hell is he doing in there because that's what i do when i'm home like how could you be working on your shot

that much and never take it for two years so what does he do what walked me through 90 minutes in the gym with ben simmons ball handling is he they say they all say he takes jumpers um i don't know i don't know what that is but like there's all these people too like there's lazy people out there and i'm not i don't know if he's lazy or not lazy i'm not i have no idea so i'm not sharing that opinion but there's guys that i'll see that go uh hitting the gym now it's all everything's new and you're like all you're doing is posting a fucking picture some deadlifts and you're not doing anything like some people that are lazy think showing up and doing minimal shit is actually working hard.

So for the person for it to be up to that person to gauge how hard or not hard they're working. I don't know. Let's get some cameras in there. This is all access. Let's do this. Hard knocks Ben Simmons. I like James Harden when after a game,

when there's actually video of him working at 11 o'clock on like a step back three. Well, that's my thing with boxing video. Like we'll see it with different football players or guys and be like, oh, look at this footage of him. Like, well, because he gave it to you. And everybody who's like okay at boxing wants people to see that they're like pretty decent

at throwing a punch. So I gave this, like Russell Wilson's the king of giving you boxing footage it's like my daughter played for our eighth grade team last year and she she loves soccer she doesn't like basketball as much but she did it because they needed girls for the team and they had almost won the year before so she's kind of like she's like durant a little bit just about as moody. What?

What? It's a kid's corner podcast. Who did I offend more? I don't know. But it would always be like, it would always be like, Zoe, you should go outside, shoot some jumpers.

Yeah, I'll go out there later. And then she would just never go because she just doesn't like basketball that much. I wonder if Ben Simmons is like that where Brett Brown's like, hey, Ben, you should go out and shoot some jumpers. He's like, yeah, I'm going out there in a second. And me, it's just in the gym fucking lifting.

It's just good. I want to do- I worked on my free throws for 10 minutes, coach. We need to go to the gym to work on our Brett Brown accent because I want to do it so bad. What's like a New Hampshire one? No, he's from Maine. We screwed that up.

We started calling it Rhode Island last time. That's right. He's from Maine. And I hear it. It's amazing. It's so good. And I can't do it. I've been practicing.

Like when he did an interview the other day, I'm like, oh, okay. Well, it's because it's raspy and it's old and then there's just words that are murdered where it just you're like what the hell was that word it's so much more he sounds like like you're stopping by sandwich massachusetts to get gas on the way to like hyannis and you're at the at like the dunk you decide to get a coffee i can do the cake and he's at dunkin donuts and like brett's like, yeah, wait, you headed a hyenas? I was just there.

And he's just like, I don't know. But it's more kicking, though. It's deeper. Yeah, the Cape accent, I usually can do that one. Because I worked with all these Cape Cod framers back when I was deciding if I was just going to be a framer. And they'd come over. My dad's name is Bob. And they'd be like, hey, Bob, that dorm is a bitch.

We got to clock that. There's like a three-quarter gap on that front dorm, Bob. It's fucking whipping wind in there. Can you do Rhode Island? No. My grandmother's, my whole father's family's from Providence. So I can't. The Rhode Island accent is the Boston accent after like seven drinks and cocaine.

Yeah. Well, I don't know about the Coke part. Wait, I have a couple more questions for you. Do you want some cake? It's from Cavell. Cavell. Josh from Louisville wants to know, is Russell Westbrook the clubber Lang of the NBA? His skill and intensity can dominate his opponent,

but his own energy can be used against him. It's pretty great. I'm going to defer to you on this one. Clubber Lang, next question. Well, Jim Corner this week. I have a reader, Jim Corner, from Jess. I'm a longtime female listener and huge fan of the various iterations of the pod.

This week you asked for listeners to stop writing in about naked men in the locker room. I want to support that. Until you have seen an elderly naked woman shaving her legs in the shared shower area of your locker room, you have nothing to complain about. The woman's locker room at the YMCA can reach a level of what the fuck that makes silver forest sound majestic xoxo jess i'm nervous i'm super silver for i forgot i don't even really know what that means but that sounds horrible yeah i think i know what she's talking about but you think i forgot my father my father called this segment he goes that thing it's not that's not thrown games

no no i totally screwed it up i apologize to my dad he was like that thing you do guy in the corner guy in the corner so that's way better guy in the corner uh well i don't know it doesn't sound like i can't fix that i'm just a man do you have a gym corner this week i hesitate to ask do. I'm not sure how I feel about sharing this, but this is a milestone step for me. Great. I just started working with a personal trainer. Oh, wow. This is like when Tony Soprano finally went to go see Dr. Melfi. You're right. He knew he needed the help the whole time kept fighting it off i've been a lot of pain you know it's going down my right leg for a while i just expected it to go away and then i realized you know it's been about four years and uh it's just the pain the pain hasn't stopped

and i don't know what's wrong i had a crack in my leg once for a couple years and i couldn't get it fixed and have insurance and i stopped playing basketball in my mid-30s which is a terrible idea because some of the skills have never recovered but I still feel like those new Durants are coming out so I feel like I gotta get my game right for this summer yeah um but yeah personal trainer yeah man 90s kid female trainer okay maybe the nicest human being I've ever met my entire life and she's a little thrown off because she doesn't really know what my deal is and there'll be some guys that come up to say hello at the gym like hey man just downloaded the one with you and bill fucking killer love those guys and then another guy will come up and be like

unfortunately he's gonna listen to this now he's gonna apologize you're not bugging me dude i really appreciate you like the podcast definitely come up and say hello all the time another guy came up he goes are lakers getting anybody and like didn't even say hi and so the girl's like what's going on meanwhile hold on can we freeze that for a second yeah i'm always interested when that happens because then it happens to me from time to time when somebody will come up and they start with the question and it's always, it's always like they're aggrieved about their team to the point that they

can't remember to even start the interaction. It's like, dude, what are we going to do about LeBron? And that's how they just start. I've never met the person. I'm like, I don't know, man, you're in trouble. Sometimes you can freak me out too, because'll be like did we meet right like how how do i they're just in mid mid segment i was in a building the other day and a guy came out of the hallway and he kind of did like a and i went oh man i'm like i don't remember this guy so i'm like what's up and he was saying hello to somebody behind me he wasn't even saying hi to me so i don't think it's as rude as it sounds right now because i think guys are that like they're in despair the guys

that are super into it are in such despair that they've thrown out all normal protocol or sometimes they're trying to be funnier and more often than not the transactions are always pretty cool when somebody tells you they like what you're doing so i never really really bothers me too much. I love it as well. I had a- But the girl guy trainer thing, they're starting to wonder like, Rosillo, but she's helping me with injuries. It's not like she's spotting me. Nobody's judging you.

It's fine. It sucks though. Don't let those people at the gym judge you. Can I ask you this question? Because this happened to me last week. I was playing golf. I brought my daughter because she likes driving the cart.

And I just want to play nine. Adults like it. Want to play nine kids love adults like it want to get in nine holes in like under two hours course was really slow there were two guys behind me and it was like a par three where they finished their hole

I'm waiting like I'm like why don't you just join me and we can just play these last four holes together so now we're playing and

like a hole in the guy goes, we've met before, right? We've played together. And I was like, no, he's like, I could swear we met you before we met before,

but it was really, he just saw you on TV or wherever. And probably TV, probably TV. So now I'm in that position of, am I like a fucking asshole? I'm like, wow, I used to be on tv

i was you know the espn and hbo show that's how you saw me because then somebody like oh yeah that's right but then you feel like a douche bringing that up so i was like yeah you know i used to work on his at espn you probably saw me like somewhere around there and he's like yeah yeah that's where it was so it went from did we play golf together to no I saw you on my television but it is weird the power of TV where it makes people think they've

done something with you but you've just yeah they see your face and they're trying to figure it out television is crazy powerful unbelievable can't wait to be back on people with you you're were like, no, I'm on ESPN. And then you say, I was on first take last month.

I fucking crushed three of the segments. I fucking crushed it. Crushed. Did you see the one on March 30th? I fucking crushed it. We broke down rotations in the L West, but we had to project out three years from now. Fucking killed it.

Fucking guys. Last question from Mark and Sudbury. I hesitate to ask this, and I don't think it's going to happen either, but I think it is worth mentioning. Assuming there are eight teams left vying for the NBA title and Stanley Cup, the random odds for the Celtics and Bruins

both winning random odds, resulting in the Boston Grand Slam, are now 1-64. This is if the Bruins get by the Leafs in Game 7. Where do you two homers place the true odds on a Boston Slam? And if that happened, how would that change your no complaining for five years after your team wins the title role? I mean, the Boston Slam, it's not going to happen, but it

is incredibly still in play. It is still in play. It's so stupid how ridiculous this run has been for two decades. They have a chance to go four in a row. It's supposed to be over. It was supposed to be over seven or eight years ago,

and it's not over. When the Bruins won in 2011 2011 and they could have had another one that's the scary thing well that's usually how the 13 yeah like fucking blackhawks game right the blackhawks game and then you could even argue that celtics thing and so we shouldn't sit here and start saying well here are the ones they should have had two on top of everything else but that that 13 they easily could have won but that's just the way it works like alabama when you look at the same run at the end you'd be like oh he could have had all these other ones you're like yeah but he got a couple the same thing with the pats like the

pats have a couple they could have lost but they also have a couple they should have won i think the pats are at the right amount exactly that's the kg celtics i think the over under was one and a half and they went under yeah i think they could have had another one anyway so a boston slam like the idea of this thing even happening then in 2001 you're sitting there and you're drunk in new orleans going i can't believe they beat the rams and then you say yeah you know what's going to be crazy though this is going to be start of something where like in 18 years you're going to be doing a podcast with a guy where there's a chance that all four teams could have won a title in consecutive sporting i remember that's so no wonder everybody hates people from boston i remember in 86 we had the pat superbowl

46 to 10 yeah celtics win the title yeah the bruins flamed out that year but then we had the Pat Super Bowl, 46 to 10. Yeah. Celtics win the title. Yeah. The Bruins flamed out that year, but then we had the Red Sox almost won the title. It was all within a nine-month span. I forget. Yeah, they lost to some team from New York. And I remember thinking that was insane. It was like, wow.

That was nuts. In eight months, we were just in three of the four finals. We went one and two. But all right, it's time. Episode two of Throne Game. No, but I got to- So if you haven't watched Game of Thrones yet, this is the last thing we're doing on the podcast.

You can exit and come back later. This is where Rasul and I recap Game of Thrones. Some highlights. Little start at the top. Jamie Lannister, nobody was vouching for him. Brianna Tarr steps right up. Steps right up. Says, I got this guy.

This is my guy. Right. I scouted him when he was in Greece. I was at a bunch of YMCAs rebounding for him. I knew this was going to happen. I want you to spend a lottery pick on this guy. Yeah. It's at the end of the lottery.

We don't really have a ton of options. It's like, look, the death people are coming. We got to use the pick this year. What are the death people called? White Walkers. The White Walkers are coming. If we don't use the pick this year, it's two second rounders next year.

Yeah, we need bodies. We're just using them. We need bodies. He'll fill in. He's got one hand, but he's really good with that one hand. A lot of veteran experience. Because that was a tough room. Like, like hey our brother's handicapped because of you

you also killed my dad and you killed my mom and my dad and you've had sex with your sister for years yeah so we're not super into handing you a bow and arrow here right away all right so that's one part so that was good i enjoyed that do you What's going on here? I just wrote notes so we'd remember. Holy shit. Jamie then goes outside, apologizes to Bran. Yeah. Sorry for pushing you out of a 100-foot tower and paralyzing you.

My bad. And then Bran just is creepy. He was like, look, I was freaked out. I was having sex with my sister. You showed up. I panicked. Our families were at war. Your mom said stop climbing. Yeah, you shouldn't have I panicked. Our families were at war. Your mom said stop climbing.

Yeah. You shouldn't have been up there. There's a reason we went up to the high tower. Right. How did they get up to that tower, by the way? Elevator. They had elevators in 1300? Pulley system.

Pulley system. Boulders and whatnot. So, Jamie, I apologize. Bran says we're cool. Yeah. If the world ends tonight i'm the i'm the last vessel we have to anyone remember anything we're good i've got bigger fish despite the fact that he sucks in every scene extremely forgiving not a grudge holder not at all he's like you know you lost a hand yeah i've lost the ability to walk we're probably

it kind of felt a little bit like hyrie lebron yeah like i don't know you're like what everybody's good now you guys might be teammates get along yeah what happened james like can i talk to you for advice with dealing with my jamie's like i called bran and he was like look i should have never chucked you out of a window and now you're're in a wooden sled. At least you get a chair now. So then, speaking of Breanne, big spot for her now training some of the sword fighters. She's been known to do this, though. Patrick. Some people are saying too much too soon.

Yeah, she's got a whole- Can't she be a coach and a GM? I don't know. No, that's a good point. Because she's got that high ground there on the left flank, I believe. Yeah. And then Jamie was like, I'm in. Don't want to see her rush it.

Sansa and... Who? Daenerys. Great scene. Sansa? Sansa. What did I say? It was a soft A, yeah.

It's like 1130 at night. Sansa. It's Mario. Did I say Sansa? Yeah. I meant Sansa that's alright it's almost better

Herndonarius I need some coffin Herndonarius Denarius or Denarius? D money Herndi have a seat and uh warmed up to each other

yeah hey felt better sleeping with your brother talked about real housewives at Winterfell yeah men are stupid and then

well the actual quote is men do stupid things for women they can be easily manipulated Sansa says this now wouldn't say she had a ton of experience with men when she has that quote right

she has the marriage with Tyrion where she never has sex with him right then a really awful marriage with ramsey that was probably the least popular ship in hbo history and that's about it what about joffrey wasn't she with joffrey at some point too joffrey but never consummate god boy ramsey wasn't exactly a rebound was somehow somehow joffrey was a step up from Ramsey one of the worst characters In the history of television And then played Mick Mars But my point is where does she suddenly get the wisdom

To talk about relationships I didn't really get that part You grow up fast in Winterfell So nice warm relationship Bonded over some stuff Got a Starbucks Same latte order was crazy And then it got cool right at the end

Daenerys took the hand off Why'd she take the hand off Kyle? Same latte order. It was crazy. And then it got cool right at the end. Daenerys took the hand off. Why'd she take the hand off, Kyle? She said some shit. Got deep for a second and Daenerys didn't like it. Yeah, and then also Daenerys had the line that I'm getting maybe a lower back tat when said I thought he'd be taller. I thought he'd be taller. We got to keep track of the ig lines that are like huge if you want a queen earner yeah you know if you want a whore buyer if you want a queen earner

and so then this week is i thought it'd be taller big so they had a big game plan about the big battle and all of us were perplexed because it was like, yeah, we're not going to have enough people. We got to do, you know, they're trying to do the Belichick kind of game plan. Nobody brings up the dragons. The dragons should be in the first sentence of the game plan. It's like, well, you know, but hey, Daenerys, the dragons are going to show up, right? Like we're going to have those. Yeah.

They're going to breathe fire and kill. And like, we're good with that, right? Just think if they had how stupid the whole thing was. I have a hard time with this. Like I understand dragons are flying around and there's a 400 year old hot chick and there's all these different things that aren't real, but I still feel like it was so annoying that they had to lose a dragon because the people in King's landing and thereabouts surrounding areas were

that stubborn about the White Walkers that it was like, why don't you band of misfits just go all the way up there and kidnap one, just we'll believe you. And then that didn't even work anyway, because now everybody realizes that Cersei's not giving them the army, and that's why Jaime's up there by himself. And it just, they're down a fucking dragon, and there's a White Walker dragon now, and he took down the whole wall. But you know what would be a boring TV show? Not losing the dragon, having three dragons in there, zero, and never getting past the wall.

That'd be the end of the show. So I'm sorry. These are all really great points. Just, you know. So another thing that happened, Tyrion started a podcast. You're right, and they filmed it. Started having guests. What a guest list big conference had brain on

it's like uh brand's like hey so what's your story is like oh it's a long story it's like i've got some time right and then first let's talk about zipper critter and went right in on right on brand brand tells his whole story for two hours. And then Jamie's there. Then Jamie comes in. Guest number two. Episode two. Jamie. His booker's incredible. He's really good. Had the fireplace there. Fireplace chats with Ty and Tyrion. And he had them drinking too. Which is always a better way to

work the guests. Loosened up the guests. Very smart. Brian was like, can you win with Daenerys? And then other people like Tyrion's like, I think she's a compiler. So that leads to the third podcast, which Jason Gallagher dubbed the Winterfell, the shop, the shop.

Yeah. Six people. They're all drinking in front of the fireplace. For some reason, Maverick Carter was there. I thought that was weird. Why he was hosting. Look good though.

Look good. Good suit. But so they all hung out. Then, then quite possibly the most unwanted sex scene in the, Looked good, though. Looked good. Good suit. So they all hung out. Then quite possibly the most unwanted sex scene in the history of HBO, which is really saying something. Aria is eyeing Gendry.

In fact, there were some seeds planted earlier. It's been going on for a while. And it's like, they'll never actually do this. Like, this is our little Aria. This is America's sweetheart.ica's little warrior sweetheart i can't stand her but yeah well it's just like we've seen her since she was like nine no i get it yeah 10 like they'll never actually go there with this so then finally she makes her move and she was aggressive about it too she was aggressive and clothes are now coming off and the three of us are watching. I looked away. And all of us are going, no! No! No!

No! No! No! No. The clothes kept coming off and she just jumped gendry and had a sex scene on Game of Thrones. And it was, I just I think we could have had the gist

of it. I don't know what happened or why this happened. I have an explanation. And it just, it took too long. I never understood this. But Game of Thrones is about female empowerment. And never more so than this episode.

Most of the women never die on the show. Stark Mom, yeah. There's a couple other strikers, sure. That didn't go great. But there are a ton of dudes going down all the time. And in this episode alone, it was coffee talk with Sansa and Daenerys. Yeah.

It was the knighting of Brienne of Tarth. Well, we didn't get to that yet, but yeah, that was an emotional scene. It was Arya's I'm taking over where she was like intimidating a dude

who makes, she's intimidating a dude who makes swords for a living. Dragonglass swords. And then at the end, that little elfin girl who's always apparently in charge of the room

when she's like nine, she was like, no, I'm going to fight. And they're like, can you not? You're like nine and weigh 98 the room when she's like nine, she was like, no, I'm going to fight. And they're like, can you not? You're like nine and weigh 98 pounds. And she's like, I'm fighting. And she goes, you know, William Wallace. So boom, boom, boom, boom.

I'm telling you right now, the talk is going to be on fire this week. Breaking down what kind of storylines we had development. This is a female, is the future female forward. That's what this episode was. With a catch. Jon Snow finally tells Daenerys at the end, actually, I'm also Targaryen. Remember that whole thing?

But that was actually my dad. Yeah, Jon Snow is like your buddy in the wedding party that's getting a little drunk the night before. He's Friday night. Right. The Friday night, the night before the wedding. He gets way too banged up. And he goes to the groom.

He's like, hey. He's like, I'm so happy for you two. And just so you know. Just so you know. Didn't mean anything. Right. Like, it was Cancun. There was another.

Her roommate was awake. You guys were broken up. Like, I was sort of hooking there was another her roommate was you guys were broken up like i was sort of hooking up more with her roommate than her anyway but then she she jumped in i just it meant nothing i just wanted to make sure you heard it from me buddy like pick another time to tell the horn's going off right the horn is going off so but it's going back to your female empowerment thing. It sets up now the Daenerys heel turn. Yeah. Because she's not

just having this. Because now it's like, oh, wait a second. That guy is actually the natural heir to the throne. his sister doesn't like me either. I've got two dragons. I'm taking everybody out. So you know the third episode. And she's like,

I haven't been on Tyrion's podcast yet. I was right there. I walked right by me. I'm definitely not going to get booked now. I'm not even the rightful heir. He just had Arya on. That was bullshit. What's going on?

We could do a daily web show we could use you on. So yeah, next week is the Battle of Winterfell, which is apparently going to be an hour and a half and is going to be one of the great episodes of Game of Thrones history. You know, it's directed by the Battle of the Bastards guy. Oh, really? Yeah.

I just read that tonight. So that was, Kyle, anything else? That was this week's episode of Throne Game. They did it to us again. It's fine. It was a big setup. It's been two setup episodes, but you know, when you're trying to combine 20 storylines

into 120 minutes to set up the big reveal as a writer, I totally get what they're doing. Like 20 minutes of that could have been a montage. I think 20 minutes. Montage. No, no lines. 80s movie style. People are cleaning. Start painting the house

should we end the podcast playing a little aunt belachi would it be funny though if the game of thrones guys were like hey what do you think for like just five minutes we fuck with everybody and do like an 80s revenge of the nerds scene is they're getting winterfell ready for battle it's like we're gonna take this stuff like a montage and john stone's got like a huge smile and a big bundle of dragon glass and it like falls and somebody catches some of it and they start laughing at each other and there's no dialogue and it's just like an awesome 80s song over the top of it all right i was in the closet with gendry real fast hey dude easy okay don't cut it out no don't cut it out, but...

Then cut to Gendry just asleep after. That guy's just ice cold, baby. First of all, he just had sex with Arya. The White Walkers are coming. You're all going to die tomorrow. Everyone's on the fringe. I'm pretty sure I'm not like, hey, man, I'm going to tune in. If the horn goes off, will you wake me up?

If the horn of death comes, will you just wake me up? Let me know if those devil skeletons get close. I got to put my contact lenses in. I'm going to try to grab a little shut eye here. Do you guys want to watch a movie? All right, here's Aunt Blatchie. This is my son and his friend. Kyle loves this.

Wait a minute. My son's 11 and so is his friend. Kyle likes this. Is that your son rapping this is him parent corner wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute what do they call themselves the tic-tac and melatonin he calls himself melatonin was the other thing? What was the Aunt Belachi thing you said? I don't know.

He made up, this is what they call the song, Aunt Belachi. Aunt Belachi? Yeah. The best people to make weird rap music titles are either really stoned adult musicians

or 11-year-old kids because that's how you come up with Aunt Belachi. I got to tell you, I didn't hate it. Yeah, that's the scary part. Listen, professional wrestler or rapper, I gotta tell you I didn't hate it yeah that's the scary part listen professional wrestler

or rapper I've got two possible job vocations for my son feel good I feel like he's warming up to me though today

he is he definitely was you get to see him in his underwear he was totally comfortable because I was like it's halftime

and I want to get some shots up because I saw your hoop and then I go well then he looked at you like is the underwear okay andime, and I want to get some shots up, because I saw your hoop. And then I go, well, that's my last pen. And then he looked at you like, is the underwear okay? And it clearly wasn't. So he put some pants on. Well, no, I told him.

I go, hey, do you want to shoot some hoops? And I didn't know, because he's like, look, I'm just a stranger, basically, in his house. And he was into it immediately. So I was like, do you want to go outside and shoot some hoops? He goes, yeah, definitely. And then I looked at him standing there in his underwear, and I go, should I take my pants off the answer is probably yes and he gets

stone face he's like no and then he like throws his pants off it's a big week for your female personal trainer and pantless basketball yeah nobody look i'm great with kids people wonder if i hate kids i love kids i just i don't have any that's all you're great with kids and you killed it on that march 30th first take how does he know about the mariner six and seven guys all right we're officially uh officially getting giggly here hey thanks to the zone thanks to uh hashtag talk the to hashtag TalkTheThrones. Check it out at Ringer if you missed it. Thanks to Lisa.

Especially, big thanks from Kyle. Lisa's most popular multi-layer foam mattress made with premium foams for cooling, contouring, pressure-relieving support. Please check it out. Kyle, your review, A++ or A+. Is there three pluses? A++ from Kyle. Don't miss out. Live healthier, live happier by arresting deeper orders today.

Get 15% off your purchase for a limited time at lisa.com slash BS. Use promo code BS. That is L-E-E-S-A dot com slash BS. If you missed the rewatchables, we did the natural a couple weeks ago. We did Major League a couple weeks ago. Then we did Field of Dreams this week. So the baseball trilogy is complete. Saving Bull Durham for later. You can check out

On Luminary. Our little 1999 series is coming. American Pie is the first one. A movie that is still entertaining and has also aged terribly. We broke it all down. If you want to hear it, check out Luminary. Download the app. Follow all the

instructions I gave before. Back with a couple pods this week. Ralph Macchio in the studio this week. Old friends Desus and Mero will be in the studio this week. We still have the Michael Lewis interview we did, which was awesome. A lot of good stuff coming up. I'm going to probably pop on the Ring of the NFL show. And then Dual Threat with Ryan Rosillo.

The draft stuff this week. You love the draft. Love the draft on it. Trying to think of something creative, something different. We won't go seven rounds in reverse, but I'll come up with something. Do you want me to come on dual threat and just go through the 18 receivers Belichick has picked in the last 18 years and how he's gone one for 18.

And this is somehow the Belichick Achilles heel, but it doesn't matter because we've won six Superbowls. Yeah, I've done these. I've done it. We can do it. Come on. And cause I had a power rank, the Belichick, Achilles heel, but it doesn't matter because we've won six Super Bowls. Yeah, I've done these. I've done it. We can do it. Come on. How about I power rank the Belichick receiver draft picks? Chad Jackson's up there. Chad Jackson.

Bethel Johnson. Brandon Tate. Bethel Johnson. Yeah, it's for us. Who was the guy last year? Brandon Berrios? Is that his name? I don't remember. Well, I want that guy. Who's the guy I want from Oklahoma?

Hollywood. I want Hollywood and I want the tight end who's great in the workouts. That guy. What was that guy's name? Iowa guy. Yeah.

Fant? Yeah, Noah Fant. All right. Check out Dual Threat. Thanks, everybody. Back later in the week with more. Until then. more until then