The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 104: Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: June 8, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell to discuss Rick Barry's free throw mechanics, GSW's reinvention of the wheel (14:00), expanding the pool of NBA stars (23:00), Kevin Durant's next destination (30:00), Steph Curry's brand and cheap contract (35:00), Muhammad Ali's era and surviving the 1960s (43:00), LeBron James's ridiculous training regimen (1:01:00), and the Carmelo Anthony-Kevin Love trade potential (1:04:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, the BS podcast is back. Sorry for the delay. We had HBO test shows for any given Wednesday, June 22nd. Today's episode of the BS podcast is brought to you by Seat Geek, our presenting sponsor and the only fan friendly app for buying and selling tickets for sports and music. Other sites have the nasty habit of showing you lower prices and charging you huge fees at checkout. At SeatGeek, the price you see is always the price you pay. Download the free SeatGeek app or go to SeatGeek.com. Today's episode also brought to you by Harry's.

Change your shaving experience for the better with Harry's Starter Kit. It's just $15. That includes the razor three blades and your choice of Harry's shave cream or foaming shave gel get $5 off your first purchase with my coupon code BS that's an entire month's worth of shaving for $10 with free shipping harrys.com coupon code BS

my new HBO show is called Any Given Wednesday again it launches on Wednesday June 22nd at 10 p.m. Set your DVRs now. Don't forget about After the Thrones on HBO Now. And don't forget about TheRinger.com. We launched last week on Wednesday. Columns, features, short posts, podcasts, you name it.

Go to The Ringer. I even came out of retirement. I wrote a column, for God's sakes. It had been 13 months. A 13-month writing sabbatical, and then I came back. TheRinger.com. Check it out, please, for the love of God. And we're off.

Yeah. Clearing off for you. All right. 30 years ago in this day, the legend, Larry Bird, played his greatest game of all time. In my opinion. It wasn't his greatest statistical game, but it was his greatest game. He put his imprint everywhere. The Celtics won the 1986 title.

Shout out to the legend. And shout out to the other legend, Malcolm Gladwell. How are you? I'm very well, Bill. You don't even remember that game. You're in Canada.'m very well, Bill. You don't even remember that game. You were in Canada. You didn't have TV. You don't even know what happened.

I read about it a week later in Sports Illustrated. You read Jack McCallum's feature and you felt like you were there. You're on my podcast corner. You launched a podcast. We're now frenemies. What's going on? We are. We are.

Revisionist history. First episode drops next week. Ten episodes. One a week for ten weeks. First one starts on next Thursday. And you did this by yourself? You produced it yourself? You wrote everything yourself?

Explain what the process was. I did it with Panoply media which is with the guys at Slate so I had mostly reporting myself and then wrote all the scripts but I had a whole team of

really good producers and people helping me out because this is new territory for me but it was super fun I mean this is not like a podcast where like yours

where you know you have people on in your chat this is like This American Life kind of thing right

prepared reported things so explain it to me in one sentence every episode goes back and picks a

person episode one episode one, one show about a song, something from the past that I think has been forgotten or misunderstood. Okay. So I have one episode about Rick Perry, your old friend. He's still mad at me. Went down to see him. Well, you know, it's funny because you said that. And then I went and I reread the Rick Barry section, thing you wrote in your book of basketball. Yeah.

And you're incredibly nice to him. I mean, where did you put him? You put him in the top 20, didn't you? Yeah, I think he was like 24, 25. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing I wrote was that he was this brilliant basketball player and it got overshadowed by everybody talking about what he was like as a teammate and some of the turmoil he got in. But I tried to present both sides of the story but be really, really fair about how great he was. I had this whole case about how he should have won the 1975 MVP.

I think he finished fifth because the players, the players voted on it. So they just, you know, they just boned him over. And that was one of the better individual years anyone's had in the last 40 plus years. So,

yeah. Yeah. He's a really interesting guy. Yeah. I mean, years. So yeah. He's a really interesting guy. And you get a sense of why he was a difficult personality because he's a perfectionist. I mean, he refuses to sacrifice anything

in the pursuit of playing the best basketball that he can play, which is what I was talking about because my show is all about why does no one ever, why do bad free throw shooters not experiment and not try and shoot them the way that Rick Barry shot them underhanded? And if you're a 50% free throw shooter and you're getting pulled at the end of games and you're leaving a million dollars a year on the table because that's a massive weakness in your game,

why wouldn't you try to shoot it another way, right? And he's really interesting on that subject. Like, if you're Dwight Howard or you're DeAndre Jordan, why on earth aren't you doing something to address this glaring weakness in your game, right? Yeah. I mean, if DeAndre Jordan is an 85% shooter, he is in another level. From the line, all of a sudden he's a whole different player,

and you play him differently, and he could, what would he make, what do you think, how much more do you think he could command on the open market if he was an 85% free throw shooter? Well, I think everybody is going to make a ridiculous amount of money with the way the cap went up. But I think it would change his ceiling as an impact guy because he's such a liability with the free throw shooting.

And you look at the defining game for him, I think it was Game 7 of the spurs series a year ago when the clippers had to take him out the last six minutes like they just couldn't afford to have him out there which is really crazy because he was easily you know their most disruptive defensive player and the guy who protected the room for them and they were basically just like you you can't play and our whole season's on the line. You have to sit over there. You could say the same thing for Andre Drummond. I mean, there's all of these big men who are just, and all they have to do is fly to Colorado Springs

for like a month in the off season, knock on Rick Barry's door and say, Rick, I want to try this in private. Let's try this. And if I can, if I'm mildly better, I'm all of a sudden commanding all this more money and next contract time. It's all it takes, and they won't do it. When he played, I think Wilt tried it.

Didn't a couple people try it? Did he talk about that? That's what my show's all about. Wilt, in his greatest season, 62, shoots underhanded. And when he has his greatest game, the 100-point game, and he shoots something like 28 for 32 from the line, he's shooting underhanded. So Wilt tries it, is massively successful with it, has his greatest game ever in basketball with the underhitter free throw,

and then the next season goes back to shooting the old way and becomes a 50% shooter again. It just makes no sense whatsoever. Well, I think there was a little bit of a, I don't know, it wasn't like cool to shoot that way. People made fun of it. People, especially back then, people, there was like a masculinity issue with it. And I think it got into some of those guys' heads. People, especially back then, people, there was like a masculinity issue with it. And I think it got into some of those guys' heads. When you say especially back then, I mean, there's still a masculinity issue with it, right?

That's not past. There would be unless DeAndre Jordan went from 39% shooting to 78% shooting. And then people would be like, you know what, he figured this out. And it's weird. It's like you think of all these other sports where people have made adjustments, like, uh, I don't know, like the long putter is a good example. Like say it's, it's helps people putt. It doesn't look great. People use it. It works. Um, you would think the underhand free throw would, would kind of be like the long putter of basketball. I'm amazed one of these guys just hasn't brought it back just for the attention it would bring.

If Andre Drummond started doing it, it would put his career in a totally different light. He would be in mainstream conversations and people would be talking about him. It would be fun to watch if it made him better. I don't know. By the way, where is his coach? We'll be talking about him. It would be fun to watch if it made him better. I don't know. By the way, where is his coach? Why isn't his coach coming to him and saying, I got an idea. Force him to do it? Why don't you send him?

Yeah. Is that what coaches are for? Who has done it in the last 30 years? Has there been anybody? I don't even remember anybody doing it. In the college game, there's two guys. There's... I can't pronounce his name. For Louisville,

Onyoko, or a Nigerian-American kid. So, the one guy... There's two people in college who try it. Canyon Barry, Rick's son, shoots underhanded. And this guy, Onyoko, whose parents are from Nigeria.

So essentially the two conditions under which people, Americans, will shoot underhanded free throws is A, if they are related to Rick Barry, or B, if their parents are from Africa. That's how far you have to go before you're willing to try a really good idea. Just think if Rick Barry had had an illegitimate kid in Africa, that kid would definitely be shooting underhanded free throws. There'd be no question. But like Canyon Barry, a fantastic free throw shooter. Yeah.

Have you been watching the finals? Do you have any weird Gladwell thoughts about what you're seeing from the Warriors or the Cavs or anything? Anything that's jumping out at you? I thought... Well, I was, I mean, this is going to sound like the worst kind of, after the fact, but I always thought that, I never counted, I thought the Warriors were fine against OKC. I always figured they were going to win.

Really? I couldn't believe that a team this good wasn't going to go all the way. I don't believe that a team this good wasn't going to go all the way. I don't know. I was like, Game 6, somehow the impossibility of Game 6 escaped me at the time. This is my own naivete. I was like, well, of course they're going to go off in one of the games. So they went off.

So Clay Thompson, I mean, the whole point of that team is that in any 10-game stretch, they're going to have two games where one of their shooters goes crazy. So they had one of those games, right? And maybe I'm being, I think I'm being naive, but I was like, I was a little ho-hum during game six. And afterwards, I was like, oh, wait a minute.

That was like a weird historical anomaly game. And if you replayed it a hundred times, it's never, you're never going to come with the same result. I've been, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I can't remember a non Boston game that I've, I've spent,

wasted more time just thinking about and trying to figure out what it meant because I was convinced Oklahoma city was going to win. In fact, the last podcast that I did, and we had to take like a 12-day break because we were doing test shows and just got swallowed up. But the last podcast I did was basically centered around the theme,

why OKC is going to win game six. And I talked about it with my buddy House for almost the entire podcast. And the one thing that I said was, it's not a lock because either curry or thompson or both can just go crazy and make a bunch of threes but okc is better and the only way golden state can beat them in this game is if they just have this crazy shooting night and it was exactly what happened it was 17 they had to make 17 threes to get out of there

um to put that in perspective like i wrote this in my ringer piece last week like i think the warrior i think they have rockets in the celtics um 30 years before i think they made like 15 threes combined in the whole series you know so to me it's like it's this dramatic game that you talk about this revolution that we've had in basketball this decade with the way the game has changed fundamentally um the shooting the three-point line how people behave on fast breaks the spacing the type of players that play, the fact that somebody like Roy Hibbert is suddenly almost obsolete with the way the game has gone. And everything crested in that game.

Because under any other model of basketball, Oklahoma City wins in six. And in the new current 2016 model, there was a way for Golden State to win that game. And I don't think they should have. I think Oklahoma City was better, but that doesn't mean they were actually better. Does that make sense? Like Golden State, as you said, the great thing about them,

the awesome thing that is going to make them the back-to-back champs, is that it's just really hard in a seven-game series to avoid those one or two games where they just go nuts. And they would just do. It was law of averages like it was almost like philly winning the lottery like they didn't win last year they didn't get towns but they won this year and it's like at some point if you have 30 to 35 odds over and over again you're gonna hit and it was like game six it it just hit. Clay was due. They kept rolling the dice, and they said, oh, there's a seven.

Here's Clay. And that's what happened. But I still can't totally wrap my head around it. Yeah. Do I sound incoherent? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it would be really interesting to hear, is it Haralabos? Haralabob, yeah.

Haralabob. But anyway, it took me a long time to accept the fact that he was real, because he sounds exactly like the kind of person you would make up. Like, if I were to ask you to come up with a kind of imaginary alter ego, it would be Haralabob. Yeah, like my Canadian gambling alter ego? He spends his entire life watching basketball, gambling huge sums of money,

hanging out with supermodels, and, you know, making, and he has no fixed address, and he's from Winnipeg. I mean, the whole thing is just, I mean, it's like you wouldn't, it's fiction. So I actually Googled him after hearing him on the podcast a couple times. I was like, oh yeah, I actually think he does exist. It's not just Simmons' hoax.

I know, I was actually excited to meet him and do a podcast with him in person because I had the same thoughts you had. I was like, I'm 99% sure this is a real person, but this guy's too good to be true. The Canadian gambler who sits courtside and hangs out with supermodels. I was like, is that this person? It's not just Canada. Yeah. As a Canadian, it's more specific than that.

It's Winnipeg. Right. Like, Winnipeg, do you understand that Winnipeg is like, North Dakota is like Paris compared to Winnipeg. Winnipeg is so far off the beaten track. But it's also this incredibly fascinating city where all kinds of really really interesting people emerge from it it sort of

makes sense that he's from Winnipeg I'm kind of fascinated with Winnipeg I don't know if I ever told you this but I've been to Winnipeg have you really? the first year I was at ESPN before I had enough sway to stop them from making me do stuff like this they've sent me to winnipeg to write a piece

about the season on the brink movie which was like the first espn movie and i went to winnipeg and it was like minus seven and minus 35 wind show and i you know i'm from the east coast i lived in boston had a lot of cold moments and this was this was like i felt like i had nothing in my life that could compare me to how cold it was and i don't know i i left there i was like wow you know they had a little downtown it was very cute but i was just like, these people are better people than I am. I could not live here. I'm just a weak person. The weather is exactly the same as the North Pole, only in the North Pole the summers are better.

Wow. The summers in the Winnipeg are like all mosquitoes and black flies. There's no respite. It gets really, really hot, and then there's an infestation, a biblical infestation. If you grew up there, you're tough. You have to be. Haralabab does not surprise me. So the Warriors, as a big picture story, with the way they've reinvented things a little bit,

I think people feel like this is replicable. And I've talked about this before about how, what a fluke it is that Curry and Claire on the same team. But yeah, I'm thinking longterm and how kids emulate what they see. And you think like Jordan, the way he played inspired basically two generations of people just trying to go one-on-one and be the hero, right?

They all wanted to be Jordan. That's how you played. You just try to beat people off the dribble and your teammates were there, but not really. And Kobe was like a creation out of Jordan and everything he did. And he basically, um,

took everything that Jordan did that I liked and didn't like and magnified it and tried to be the bigger version of it. Now I wonder, is this going to happen with Curry and clay? Are we just going to have this whole generation of kids who are in the gym all the time, taking 25, 30 footers,

fallaways, heat check shots. And that's just where we're going. What do you think? Well, here's the question, and I don't know enough about basketball or kind of human physiology to know the answer, but what we're going to discover in the next 10 years is how much of great shooting is innate and how much is practiced. Clearly, when people talk about how Curry's form is perfect

from a kind of if you could analyze it on a computer, there's almost no better arc than he has, etc. Some element of that is simply the way he's constructed. But some element of that as well is that people like Curry, I think,

practiced those kinds of long-range shots more than any previous generation of basketball player did. So now we have a whole cohort, a whole generation of young basketball players who are going to be practicing these kinds of shots to a degree that no one else did. And we're going to find out, is it kind of learnable, that kind of outside shooting? And maybe it is. You know, I would really love to go back 20 years and, you know, the great three-point shooters of way back in the day and ask them, downtown Freddie Brown or Curry's dad, Del Curry,

and compare their workout regimens, shooting regimens, to the current generation. I think, were they even doing anything close to what people are doing now? That'll give us some clue. I support anything that would lead you to track down downtown Freddie Brown. How many points do I get for hauling downtown Freddie Brown out of the memory attic? To me, it's on the short list of the greatest sports nicknames that ever happened. It rhymed. It's awesome.

If you were writing a sports movie, you would have a character named Downtown Freddie Brown. It also described what he did. I like when nicknames describe what athletes actually are and what their specialty is. So, Downtown Freddie Brown, he made shots from downtown. You're not going to do better than that. Hey, quick break to talk about our friends at Slink TV. I really hope you didn't spend the NBA playoffs figuring out which of your friends will invite you over to watch games or to save up to spend a lot of cash on drinks you can watch at a sports bar.

Oh, and I really hope you didn't waste hours every night looking for a shady live stream like Gladwell would have 30 years ago. You had a better, cheaper option. Slink TV, the best way to watch live TV on your turf. For $20 a month, get more than 20 live channels, including ESPN and TNT, plus your favorite entertainment and news, AMC, CNN, Adult Swim, IFC, other top networks. You can also add on channel packs like the Sports extra package for just $5 a month extra, no installation, no extra gear, no annual contracts and easy online cancellation. You just need an internet connection. You're ready to go. Start watching for seven days free

at sling.com slash bill Simmons, get sling TV on your favorite device. Restrictions apply. Here's my thought on three pointers. The the science is better the science favors these guys and and i i really think that's part of the reason why the old guys can't understand why these guys are such good shooters now because they can't wrap their heads around it they just fundamentally don't fundamentally don't understand it and part of the reason these guys are so good is because, as we've discussed ad nauseum, the era-specific advantages. But if you read about what Curry did to revamp his body, there was a great piece about this, I think on ESPN.com five, six months ago, about how he just kept having ankle problems. And they couldn't figure out how to stop him from having ankle problems. And they literally taught him or retaught him how to kind of walk and run and how to put his weight correctly on certain parts of his body.

They did all these exercises to train his legs to operate differently. And it saved this career because 30 to 40 years ago, he just would have been another guy that, that was like, Oh, that guy was good. And he got hurt. You know, he would have been Gus Johnson and he would have been Bill Walton and all these different people. And now you can save those guys physically and you can give them the science and the medicine and the training and the know-how to treat their body and to optimize it the best possible, most efficient way. 40 years ago, he just keeps getting hurt. And now he's Steph Curry. And I think that's the biggest difference now.

What do you think? Yeah. So what that's doing is it's expanding the pool of potential superstars, right? Yeah. So the pool used to not include all those who dropped out because of injury or what have you. Now the pool is just, I mean, it must be, I don't know how much it grows because of our increased sophistication in dealing with these kinds of physical issues. But let's assume it's 25% larger. That's huge.

Or even 10% larger. That's huge. The other thing I think is that in this kind of going back to this question of weighing the relative contribution of nature and nurture, I kind of think that 25 years ago, people talked a lot more about natural shooters. And today, they talk a lot more about natural shooters, and today they talk a lot more about trained shooters. But our expectation now is that shooting is something that's much more amenable to practice than it would have been 30 years ago.

I could be wrong, but that's my sort of, as I look at sort of, I think back to the way we thought about when we described basketball greatness back in the 80s. The language is different. That's the real expectation that these guys can dramatically improve their performance through kind of intelligent practice.

Well, you think about, like look at the guys that I grew up watching. A lot of them shot differently from each other. You had guys like Jamal Wilkes. His shot, nobody has that shot now because in the 60s and 70s, you taught yourself how to shoot. You didn't have AAU. You weren't on some team when you were 10 years old

with the coach being like, no, no, no, release it from here. And now you have all these guys. To me, Steph is a freak for a million reasons. I don't think his shot is replicable. I think it's pretty actually unique from how fast his release is. It's just not common. I don't think a lot of people could imitate it. But Clay is like out of a great basketball shot factory.

Like you watch Clay, it's just perfect. And it's like the same thing as i think mike miller was a guy like that um the way ray allen shot like there were certain guys that just kind of figured out the mechanics of how to shoot almost like a golf swing and clay is the personification of that he's just if you watch him it's just perfect everything he does how he can straighten his body curry's curry and larry bird are the only two people i've ever seen if somebody told me this and i was mad i didn't think of it first so i apologize because i'm stealing this from somebody but

curry and bird they could get they could be on like the left side they could get a pass from somebody at the top of the key and start their shot not being squared to the rim which is you know everybody else would have to get it gather turn shoot and bird and and steph and i'm sure there are one or two others but those are two that jumps out were the only ones that could just shoot if you just spun them around blindfolded and they and they would still be okay um clay is the more conventional incredible awesome shooter. And, like, you know, they know now. I thought one of the great things with Steph is for a superstar,

he knows when to back off for his teammates, which Bird was like that too and Magic was like that, some of the greats, where Clay gets red hot. It's a closeout game for them, potentially where they might go home for the year. And Clay gets hot and Steph just lets him do it steph wasn't like no no now it's my turn steph's like clay's hot let's ride clay this is great they're remarkably disciplined you know my favorite player on the whereas is sean livingston yeah um by the way speaking of shooting form has Yeah. Right.

Still ugly, but impeccable. Yeah. Right. extraordinary gifts and such beautiful form he is i mean he shows incredible restraint as well right like freelancing out there he's very good at knowing exactly what he's good at which a lot of players aren't you know i was thinking though they they had the 40th anniversary of the triple ot sun celtics game which i actually went to i was six but i fell asleep for i think most of the second half uh but they showed it and it's why they consider it to be the greatest, most dramatic game of all time. There's no three-point line on the court.

And it was the first time I had seen a game from kind of the pre-three-point era in a long time. It's so weird. And everybody's goal in the game was so different than it is now you know everybody's trying to get as close to the basket as they possibly can it's very similar i've written about this to a hockey power play where in a power play you're just trying to get closer and closer and put more people in front of that and just just try to make the defense collapse on itself and that's what basketball was for a long time.

And now it's completely different. I can't remember, maybe football where it used to be ground and pound, run game, run game, and then all of a sudden passing opened it up and the sport completely changed. Wait, was it more or less entertaining? It was different. I don't know. I guess it depends what you like.

I think younger fans love the threes. I think they're used to it. I think it's a little bit of the baseball home run mentality. I don't know. There's something to be said for the way some of those 80s team played and low post players. We did a test show yesterday with Roy Hibbert, and he was talking about how everyone three years ago was saying

what he brought to the table was the model for, this is verticality, defense, this is where defense is going, and now the sport has completely changed. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to have to start my own league with Dwight Howard and some of these other guys. They don't need centers anymore. It's very strange. I'll go home and shoot threes off them. Yeah. Yeah. It's very strange. I go home and shoot threes all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. When you watched OKC Golden State, is Adams everything you wanted from a basketball player? Like 90% of what you wanted? I don't know what you mean. I've been dutifully listening to all your pods and watching the games.

And I know that you've become incredibly enthusiastic about him. Again, I'm unconvinced by him. What? He had a great series. But what about, I mean, I don't understand why this team had a mediocre season for the level of talent they had. Yeah, they had 55 wins. Two great, two really great players, but I don't even think that they

fit together terribly well. I think they have one transcendent player, Kevin Durant, and a kind of uncategorizable player in Westbrook. The rest of the team is just not interesting. I mean, categorizable player in Westbrook. The rest of the team is just not interesting. I mean,

Sean Livingston, to mention him again, is a guy who doesn't start for Golden State. He would be the third best player on OKC. Am I wrong? I think Adams is the third best player. I actually think he might be the best center in the

league. And I'm never going to understand why he didn't play more best player i i actually think he's i think he might be the best center in the league and i'm never gonna i will never understand why he didn't play more of those last few games especially game seven because they'd kind of figured out the kryptonite for the warriors which was length you know draymond had to spend so much time keeping adams away from the room those couple games and i actually went back i looked at the box scores I was studying the plus minus the plus minus didn't really reflect what I thought Adams's impact was like when I was watching the game which is part of why I don't totally trust plus minus because I thought what he brought to the table was one he was protecting the rim and the Warriors kind of had to think because he'll just he'll clobber somebody who doesn't care.

Like anytime you're playing at somebody like that who might hurt you, it's in your head. But then he just put so much pressure on Draymond for Draymond to keep him away from the basket. And it made the Warriors, the Warriors had to start playing Bogut. They had to do things that they didn't totally love doing to try to neutralize his effectiveness. And in game seven, I just would have gone down in flames with adams and i you know and they basically picked robertson over adams because they couldn't have two guys who couldn't shoot out there at the same time i would have i don't know robertson robertson played uh played very well but if i'm the warriors i'd rather have him out there than, than Adams. Cause Adams, I didn't have a matchup for Adams was like the guy that I'm secretly hoping never comes on the court.

And that was my takeaway. I wonder if Oklahoma city did it over again, would they play the same lineups the same way? How would they account for the Iggy covering Durant thing? I'm sure that that series, they gotta just be thinking about it over and over again because I do wonder if they were better. I don't know.

It's a great, it's one of the all-time great series. It really is. I think we'll be talking about it for a long time. The fact that we're halfway into the finals and we're still talking about the semifinals. I will say that one,

the one thing that your ringer column on Durant convinced me is he has to leave. I honestly don't think he should stay in OKC. It's just too brutal. The lesson of this season for him is if I want to win a ring, it's not happening in the West. Right? It's too hard.

I mean, it's a harder path. I don't know. After I wrote the column, I was saying, I don't, not changing my mind, but they were so close. I think you have to stay.

I think you have to risk it. Even though he's got a pin in his foot and he had three surgeries, they were so close. And, and, and, uh, the reason people give for, uh, and this, I think was the most crucial point that you made in that KDP, the reason people, the rational case for him staying is, oh, he signs a short-term deal.

He can get way more money if he goes and is a free agent, whatever, next year or the year after. Yeah. But the problem is that his off-court money is now so large with his shoe deals that the money he's getting from OKC, from basketball, isn't necessarily the most important economic driver in his decision-making. Yes. And that's a really interesting... This, I think, is a fact that's changing sports in a way that's underappreciated, that when you have situations when stars are making way more money off the court than on the

court, that fundamentally changes the logic of their decision-making about where they want to play. You could make a case, hypothetically, imagine you said to Kevin Durant, would you, if I could give you 100% certainty that you could win a title in the next two years, would you accept, from an economic standpoint, would you accept an NBA salary of zero? And I think you could make a very strong case that he would make more money off, he would make so much more money off the court after winning a title that he would make more money off the court after winning a title that he could rationally accept an NBA salary of zero. I rarely have an awesome point, but I think I have an awesome point on this. But we have to talk about 5-4 Club.

Because I know you're busy. You might be busy like me. I'm busy, Bill. You might be launching a TV show. You might be busy like me. I'm busy, Bill. You might be launching a TV show. You might have launched a website. You don't have any time to shop. Whether it's for the office, the club, soccer tournament, dinner event. It doesn't matter.

You just don't have the time. Maybe you're just lazy as hell. Some people are just lazy. Some people just don't like shopping. Do you like shopping? I don't like shopping, Bill. I don't either. Thanks for playing off me on these.

I appreciate it. 5-4 Club has you covered. They provide styling advice and recommendations. They'll make you a styling profile. They'll deliver clothes to your door every month. Four style profiles. Classic, casual, forward, mix. Free shipping.

Direct delivery to your doorstep. Clothes come every month or so. It's only $60 a month. Go to 54club.com. You've got to spell that out, 54club.com. Use promo code BS at signup. Get 50% off your first package. $120 worth of clothing for $30 for your first month's package.

All right, speaking of money. So this is the Curry part. You just tapped into something that's super important. I was looking at the salaries. The Warriors' best advantage over anything is the fact what they're paying Curry. All right, so you know the Warriors' highest paid players? Clay Thompson.

They pay Clay and Draymond a combined 30 million they pay Bogut 12 million they play Iguodala 11.7 million and they play Steph Curry 11.3 million

he's the 5th highest paid guy on his team on the other side LeBron makes 23 Love makes 19.5 Irving makes 14.7 and Tristan Thompson makes 23. Love makes 19.5. Irving makes 14.7. And Tristan Thompson makes 14.2. Tristan Thompson makes more than Seth Curry?

Iman Shumpert makes nine. Channing Frye makes 7.8. Their top six guys make like, I don't know, 20, 25 million more than the Warriors' top five guys, something like that. But the Warriors have Livingston at 5.5. They've got Harrison Burns on a rookie contract. So they just lucked out to some degree with this Curry thing because I don't know if they would have been able to afford to keep Draymond

and Klay under these current seller cap rules, right? They would have had some trouble. And then on top of it, normally this would be a giant issue. But as you just pointed out, Curry makes so much money off the court, it's actually great for him. You could argue that by taking a lesser salary, like let's say he made $17 million. So it's an extra $6 million, right?

Your agent gets 10 uncle sam gets 50 so by so by the time you're pocketing an extra like 3 million 2.7 million by the time everything's said and done or you're on a 73 win team making 11 million dollars a year i'm pretty sure you can make that up with commercials so in a weird way even though i'm sure this isn't his intention in a weird way, even though I'm sure this isn't his intention, in a weird way, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to him. I think he makes over 30 million bucks now in

off-the-court endorsements. It's something like that. LeBron makes 35. And these NBA salaries, I don't know if the price tag matters like it did 30 years ago. What do you think of that? So, yeah, this is the interesting,

so there's two streams of income here. There's the court income and the off the court income. They're both increasing, but the question is, is one increasing faster than the other? So we know that with the salary cap going up, the on-court money is going up quite substantially. But if you're in the kind of A-list sport, which is basketball, and you're handsome and charming and really unusual,

you have to think that the trajectory of your off-court money is higher than your basketball money. Right. I don't think this, I don't think in other words that Curry's calculus should change. If he's a completely irrational actor, he should say, I will, I cannot make a basketball salary

that in any way impairs my team's ability to win. Yeah, but he won't do that. That's such a hard thing to do is from an ego standpoint to accept that i i mean brady's been doing it brady this brady never got enough credit for this with the patriots he's always taken i would say the last six seven eight years he's taken less than he could have you know he took especially like the last couple years i think he was making like 10 and manning was always making you know 16 17 18 whatever but the fact that they had a player who's willing to sacrifice that who saw the big picture

was a big part of the reason why the patriots were able to always get one or two extra players trade back for picks all the things that they love to do i I wonder like, you know, when you think about like something like Carmelo did, right. He took, he grabbed money early. He did. It was a five year, like $110 million deal. He just grabbed it. It didn't make the team really any better. Um, it didn't set him up for the longterm. Like that's the one where I, I scratched my head and wonder who's in your life. You know, he could have gone short wonder who's in your life you know he could have gone short term and just waited for you know tried to win like done a whole bunch of other things but i do think though that that uh curry is positioned to make more money off the

court this summer if they win again than anybody we've seen since jordan because i think he's the most popular basketball player we've had since jordan right? You don't think LeBron and Kobe have ever reached the level that Curry's hit. Yeah. I think he'll never do this. But can you imagine, just from a standpoint of permanently establishing

a kind of persona and identity for you in the broader culture. Imagine if in the offseason, Curry said, for the next three years, I want the minimum. Oh, wow. Tear up my country. So now, does he make that money back on the outside after doing that? Absolutely, right?

All of a sudden, he becomes the most interesting athlete in America. You know what the analogy is? It's a very, very stretched and poor analogy. But think about what the long-term impact of Ali's principled stand on the Vietnam War was. You have one of the greatest athletes of his day, one of the most popular athletes in the world, goes to prison on a matter of principle at the height of his powers. At the time, that seems like a devastating, the worst possible thing an athlete could do, toss away his best years. But on the other hand, that decision permanently elevates him above all other athletes, right?

He becomes someone that we respect for reasons far above the normal reasons we respect athletes. He becomes a kind of moral figure. And I've always been, you know, first of all, I cannot imagine another contemporary athlete making the same kind of decision. It's almost impossible to imagine somebody doing the same thing today. Secondly, on a lesser level, I'm always amazed that so few athletes don't make some version of that same calculus to say, if I want to be a major cultural figure, then some kind of sacrifice is not a bad thing. Ali never actually went to prison, right? I've heard both versions of this and i used to know things like this and i can't remember what actually happened i don't think he actually went to prison i think he was you know going headed to prison before a couple you know

before the appeals and all that stuff how many years he loses he lost four years no it's you're 100 right it would never happen today and I think the difference between what Ali did and what his era was versus the era now, the guys, the way they think now, they don't think about like broad cultural impact and that kind of thinking. They think more about like business brand impact. And Jordan's been a bigger influence to those guys than Ali was.

And I'm not saying, you know, I don't blame them. I'm not putting them down for it. It's just, it's a fact. Like these guys all want to be multimedia companies. They want to start,

you know, they like LeBron has that uninterrupted and he has a deal with Warner brothers and he's involved with space jam. And like, that's where his head's at. Um, Carmelo wants to be Carmelo Inc Kobe's Kobe Inc he wants to

sell stories and do that you know tell stories and do documentaries and films all this stuff and that's kind of where the headspace has gravitated for these guys and whether it's a bad thing or a good thing I don't think it's for either of us to say but but in Ali's

era somebody said this i you know there are so many great things written about him in the last week i can't remember who said this but um ali was one of the few people who survived the 60s and still kind of almost like became bigger in the 70s a lot you know there you had all these people in the sixties that fought for certain things and, um, stood up for certain things. And then by the time like 1975 rolled around, either they were dead or they had lost their luster or they had sold out.

And Ali was kind of the only one who gained steam. I'm sure there were a couple other people, but I thought that was a really good way to put it. Like he kind of belonged to two different decades in completely different ways and that's one of the many reasons he was the greatest and he's the last

he's really the last boxer to have a truly international profile I mean he was the most popular athlete in the world and for a period and I don't think was the most popular athlete in the world for a period. And I don't think... Was there a boxer post-Ali who was even in the top 25 most popular athletes in the world?

I think Sugar Ray Leonard was. Sugar Ray Leonard was. People forget how big Sugar Ray Leonard was. Yeah, Sugar Ray Leonard was 1976 gold medalist. Won the title from Benitez. But he wasn't big internationally. The thing about Ali is you could go almost anywhere in the world and people knew who he was.

I mean, he was an international celebrity the way only soccer players are now. Sugar Ray was big in America, but I can't imagine that if he had gone to Nigeria in 1978, they would have known who Sugar Ray was. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I'm always amazed by how popular the soccer players are compared. Somebody like Ronaldo, I think he's got over 100 million fans on Facebook, like 60 million on Instagram. And, you know, you think these numbers that have no correlation with any professional athletes that we have. And it is increasingly, it's increasingly weird to me. America is this American Canada are these bizarre outliers when it comes to soccer.

Everyone else is crazy about it. And somehow we've, I don't know how we've avoided the kind of fascination the rest of the world has with soccer. It's coming. I think a lot of the groundwork has been laid, and you've seen it. I think it's completely different than it was seven, eight years ago. I mean, ten years ago,

did people even know the Champions League final happened? You know? Now I feel like, this year I felt like most of the people I know at least know it happened. I don't know how many of them watched it, but, you know, it does seem like a baby steps thing. I still think it's not really going to have the dramatic bomb level impact until we have a great American player. Because that's just how Americans roll. We like to be the best. We want, we need Tiger or we need Ali

or we need Michael Jordan for soccer. And that's what will make the difference, I think. Yeah. You don't think so? See how long that takes. Remember Freddie Abu? He was supposed to be the next... Freddy I do, yeah.

Freddy I do, I do, that's right. Hold on, one more. Quick break to talk about Simply Safe. It's summertime. Guess what? Burglars skyrocket over the summer. Did you know that? Summer is the worst time for burglars because people go away.

Protecting your home and family. Can't wait. I worked with Simply Safe to put together a massive security arsenal, a special package handpicked by me, entry sensors, motion sensors, glass break, everything you need to stop criminals from touching your home. If a burglar so much as tries to break in, an ear-shattering siren will let him know police are already on their way. 24-7 monitoring, $14.99 a month.

They will never lock you in a long-term contract. You get a 60-day money-back guarantee. No reason to try it today. And right now, if you try it, $100 off my hand-picked security package. Go to simplysafebill.com. It's possibly the best home security deal you'll ever see.

When you read all these Ali things, I'm sure you read a bunch of them over the last five days. And then I found out that it seemed like everybody was writing about it. It was the biggest story, all that. And then I heard my old friend Dan Lebitard on ESPN Radio yesterday.

He was saying that Kimbo Slice's death had gotten to that point. This was yesterday morning. 1.6 million views on espn.com it actually got more traffic than muhammad ali's death did the piece where he died on espn.com and it and it got me wondering if people are under 40 what do they even think of ali because they weren't there they're just it's just other people telling them stories about how great Ali was and YouTube clips and all this stuff I barely made it like I I first remember Ali in 74 from where I rolled to sports and I was kind of there for the tail end of the

prime and then at the slow fade but I felt it I was there I love loved the guy. He was, you know, he was like probably the first athlete out of Boston, non-Boston, that I ever loved. The under 40 people, what do you think they think of Ali? I think that Ali is one of the as an example of an athlete that I think you

actually had to have seen him not just box because he was such a unusual and unique boxer but also in his prime talking when you we forget what an app what a hilarious and magnetic public figure he was he was on there was a clip he was on that dick Cavett show yeah under 40 is no idea who to cap it is either but this is a guy who would go on kind of intellectual talk shows, not just hold his own, but be hilarious. You know, do those crazy poems, you know, make fun of his hoes.

I mean, if you witness that kind of performance art, then you were a fan for life. But if you came along too late, what you saw was you know, Ali with Parkinson's is kind of diminished. Man, it was just a little bit of spark left. But you know, even, I remember there's a restaurant in no longer there, but in Manhattan that in the men's

bathroom, they had a picture, that famous picture of Ali in his prime, taken at the bottom of a pool. Did you ever see that one? Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of the iconic, and you look at him and he is about as beautiful a physical specimen

as you've ever seen. Yeah. And it's like, that is the Ali you had to have witnessed in order to be a fan. And if you can't, because so much of Ali was so much in the moment, and if you didn't catch him in the moment, I don't know whether you'll ever get the magic.

Yeah, I did. We had Max Kellerman on the test show I did yesterday. And Max is 43, and I'm 46. And I think the cutoff is 45. I think if you were born after 1970, you missed it because Max's first memory, Max loves boxing more than both of us. His first memory was Ali and decline, you know,

and that started like around 76, you know, and then headed into the Spinks fight and then tragically the Holmes fight, which is still one of the worst sporting moments of all time. But he missed the Zaire Manila part, which I'm old enough to remember like when he beat Frazier, when they came on a wild road of sports and they talked about it, when he would come on and wild road sports all the time,

like he was the star of wild road of sports. And so I get it. Like he, he, if you're a little kid, he just won you over. And as you said, he was the most handsome. He's probably the most handsome, famous athlete we've ever had. He's at least in the top three.

And the funniest. He was the funniest athlete we've ever had. I think him and Barkley are in the finals. I think he wins four games to one. I think Barkley wins game three. Barkley says something hilarious in game three. He might steal game three, but Ali wins four games to one. I think Barkley wins game three. Barkley says something hilarious in game three. He might steal game three, but Ali wins four games to one. He was the best interview of any athlete we've ever had.

Has there ever been a better interview than Muhammad Ali? As you pointed out, he'd go to the Dick Cavett show. Nobody else could do that. And the way he won over all these sports writers, and they all wrote over the last six days like guys age age range 45 to 90 roger angel wrote a piece about ali you know he just i don't think we'll see it again and the jordan thing by the way you're leaving out one thing. He had a great dresser. He was like, I mean, in the greatest of 70s, you know, tradition. I mean, he was like, no, the man, he was a five-tool player. And cared about the right things.

You know, he's going to take some hits historically, and he already did for some of the stuff he pulled with Frazier, which is really terrible in retrospect and you could you know hbo did this in the ghost of minoa's documentary they they uh you know they spun it they made frazier the hero and they made ali the villain and there's a way you can do it like he he turned frazier you know ali basically said he's this is you if you root for frazier you're Ali basically said, if you root for Frazier, you're rooting for Uncle Tom. If you root for me, you're rooting for black America. And positioned in a way that just wasn't fair in any way, shape, or form to Frazier, who, you know, grew up in the worst possible situation in Philly

and hated Ali until the bitter end. You know, really genuinely hated him for the stuff he said. Um, at the same time, like, I think I have a tough time sometimes judging people that were saying and doing things in the late sixties and early seventies by the standards we have now, you know, I think in 2016, Ali's not saying that stuff. And I'm sure in the last part of his life, he had to have really regretted it,

right? No, it's, yeah, we, it's that period, Ali happens to overlap with his athletic career overlaps with the most tumultuous,

you know, 15-year stretch of the 20th century. Yes. It's just like, so it's like everything is hopelessly jumbled and mixed up with, you know, civil rights, then Vietnam War. I mean, it's a lot. Like the guerrilla stuff that he did is just awful when you watch it now. When I was a kid, I thought it was funny. I was like, oh, look at Ali punch that doll. This is hilarious.

You know, and now you look at it and it's just awful. Like you cringe. And, you know, I, people didn't bring up a lot of that stuff, but Ali had warts like everybody else. Like, you know, he certainly had a romantic warts. He was, he was, he was, he was he was available you know he had his flaws but he's certainly to me I don't think we'll ever see anything like that again and I don't think

I don't know why I'm thinking about this but same era of transcendent athletes when I was doing my podcast episode on Rick Barry and Will Chamberlain, I went back and read all this Will Chamberlain stuff. And, you know, it made me think that Will Chamberlain may well have been the most extraordinary. If you just talk about physical athletic ability in the broadest possible sense of that word. I don't know whether anyone has ever, will ever come close to Bill Chamberlain. I didn't understand, I'd forgotten the fact that he was this,

he could potentially have been a world-class track athlete. Yeah. I mean, there's, he was, he's essentially, he's not, I mean, he's seven, whatever he is, one or two, but he's, he's essentially a six-foot-two guy with an extra foot. He doesn't pay any penalties for his size. So he's just as nimble and coordinated and fast. I mean, he's just unbelievable.

And his strength is, particularly at a time before people, when people weren't doing advanced weight training and all the stuff we do now, the guy's unreal. The guys from that era said, they said he was like so much stronger than everybody else, like it was a joke. Like he was not human. Yeah. He's the only player from that era who I think you could plunk him down in the contemporary NBA and he'd still be a star. I think I'd still have my money on Bill Russell as well in that conversation. I think he would have been the greatest small ball center ever.

It's a very, very small list. Yeah, I think the thing with Will was he was so far ahead of everyone else who played that position in the moment that now if you see the clips, it's like, oh, yeah, we had other guys like that. But in the moment, there was nobody like that. It wasn't even – I mean, he was going against these 6'8 guys. I had a couple – the NBA got me a couple of the tapes of his games. I remember I saw one that was like a 78-point game or a 73-point game or something. And it almost didn't seem fair.

It seemed like they put an adult in a high school game. That's how dominant he was. But also, you remember, how hard must it have been for him to stay motivated in those games. So he's putting up those kinds of extraordinary numbers, you know, in a setting where he may have been coasting half the time for all we know. Right? Greatest athletes we ever had, Ali won. Who's two for you in, let's say, our lifetime? Let's go 1960 on.

Who's second? Any sport? I think Carl Lewis. You always go track. I love when you go track. Carl Lewis might be the answer, too. Carl Lewis is an unreal athlete.

I mean, he's sort of off the charts in many ways. But would I go? I'd put Wilt in my top five. Holly, Will, Carl Lewis,

Gretzky. Gretzky has to be up there. I mean, Gretzky is like an order of magnitude better than anyone else in his peer group. I would have, if the criteria is how far ahead of you were

versus everyone you were playing against, um, Bobby or has to be in the top five. Cause if you just watch those clips, it's the same kind of will Chamberlain thing. And we were like, wow,

this guy, this isn't fair. Is he using different skates? He's so fast. And he hurt his knees almost immediately. And it's, it's basically what we were talking about. The Steph Curry thing before about different era

Bobby Orr plays for 20 years and there's no conversation about who the greatest hockey player is ever it's just Bobby Orr no defenseman ever did this and he has knee injuries basically from his third or fourth year on and is out of the league in 10 years

I did this with because I'm this with, because I'm obsessed with running, with running, and I forget why, but I, I asked about 10 running experts

who were the greatest never-wises in running. Yeah. And it's all these same stories. So, particularly 15, 20,

25 years ago, before we had all this advanced sports medicine, there's a whole category of runners who are amazing until, you know, through 18, 19, 20, they're just off the charts. And then they get an injury and never recover.

And, like, the list is insanely long. There's all these guys. If you look back in the 70s, these guys that, you know, as high school seniors in Minnesota run some time that just blows your mind, and then they vanish because they get an injury that today we would have dealt with in two months, and that was a career ender back in the day. But you could go across just so many people like that in the previous generation. I have an answer to that.

Yeah, when I redid the Hall of Fame, I had a whole wing for the what-if guys because there were so many of them in hoops. It's just so easy. You break your foot, tear your knee, you hurt your back. Which one? I forgot that list. Who was on that list? There's so many.

I mean, Walton is probably the greatest what-if of all time because he's probably one of the ten best players ever if he can just stay in the four. Len Bias is way up there. A lot of the guys from the cocaine era, for a variety of reasons, whether they were on cocaine or not, but that generation, like Bernard King and Michael Ray Richardson, people like that, there were a lot of those.

Everyone said Gus Johnson was amazing. And I think he blew out his patella tendon. Elgin Baylor's another one. Elgin, everybody said, was the first guy who was vertical and hurt his knee. Elgin Baylor, I didn't realize his career was cut short by... Oh, yeah. By his sixth year, he had a ravaged knee. He was playing on one leg.

I think he only had maybe four years before his body broke down. He blew out his knee, and he was never on one leg yeah he only i think he only had like maybe four years before his body broke down he blew out his knee and he was never the same wilt somebody that people said was never quite the same after he blew out his knee i think in 1970 he never never moved quite the same but there there's been a bunch of them and you know i forgot to say this when we're talking about curry and how guys prepare for themselves now i i just by chance spent some time with uh maverick carter a couple weeks ago who's lebron's business partner and we've had kind of a love-hate relationship he feels that way i've never really felt that way but i think he feels like we have a love-hate relationship because he always brings it up but um he uh i asked him like what's the biggest misconception about LeBron?

What's the one thing people don't realize about LeBron? And he said, people don't realize how hard he works on his body. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, LeBron spends a million and a half dollars a year on his body. I'm like, what does that mean? And he's like, well, he's replicated the gym that whatever team, whether it's Miami or Cleveland, he's replicated all the equipment they have in the team's gym in his house.

He has two trainers. Everywhere he goes, he has a trainer with him. I'm paraphrasing what he told me, so I might not be getting all these facts right. He has two trainers. Everywhere he goes, he has a trainer with him. I'm paraphrasing what he told me, so I might not be getting all these facts right. He's got chefs. He has all the science of how to sleep, all these different things, masseuses. Everything he does in his life is constructed to have him play basketball and to stay in the court and to be as healthy as possible and to absorb punishment when he goes into the basket and gets crushed by people now think about what an advantage that is compared to what the guys had 40 years ago when you know you basically

dave cowens just puts on his converses does couple stretches, ducks some secondhand cigarette smoke, and he goes out. And then he rides coach. And LeBron has just created this whole life to survive in NBA season and playoff series. And it's like, I don't think he's missed a playoff game. He's played 13 years. He never missed a playoff game. He's played like almost 200 playoff games.

It is kind of unbelievable. The resume he's putting together is unlike anything anyone's ever done. It really is. It has no parallel. Even somebody like Kobe missed games and got hurt and had bad seasons and missed the

playoffs and had years where he didn't even have to play a playoff game. LeBron's been at least in the second, third round for 12 straight years. He's always had to play a playoff game. LeBron's been at least in the second, third round for 12 straight years. He's always had to play eight months. Do you think he will ever win another title in Cleveland? I think Kevin Love will be the fall guy this year. What about Love for Mellow?

What's your take on that suggestion from Ringer yesterday? I loved it. I love hypothetical fake trades. Lala wears the pants in that family. She's not living in Cleveland. That's not happening. I don't think Carmelo goes anywhere. I think they like being in New York.

I think he wants to be in the Knicks. I think love going to Boston is more realistic. Or maybe somebody who has the type of assets, but I think LeBron gives this one more year and if it doesn't work, I don't know. But remember he picked all the players. It's, it's,

he's the one who said, you know, 82 million for Tristan Thompson. They had the same agent. He was involved in that. Like they don't sign him on Schrumper for 40 million bucks. If he doesn't, if he doesn't kind of nod his head, nobody, they're not putting together that team without soliciting his input.

Like it's just not realistic. So I don't know. I would say he comes back for one more year. I think loves the fall guy and I know nothing. I'm just talking out of my ass right now. I'm qualified for a daily sports show. What do you think happens? I was so tantalized by that suggestion of Mello for love.

Maybe it'll happen. I don't want to ruin it for you. It might happen. I'm not saying it'll never happen. Well, I don't like Mello. One of my few objections to your book of basketball was I thought you put him way too high, and I

think there's almost no athlete on your top 100 list who has fallen further since you wrote the book than Mello. I just think he's not interested in being a great player. I mean, part of being a great player is understanding where you can achieve your greatness, right?

What sort of setting will bring out the best? And he's completely indifferent to that. He should have left New York a long time ago. And he doesn't. I don't know. I find it frustrating to have someone with that level of basketball ability who's just I don't know

is indifferent the right word he should be asking the question where can I win a title they should have asked that three years ago he should have gone to Chicago and that would have been really interesting to see how that played out I there's a scenario and it's been Yeah, and that would have been really interesting to see how that played out.

There's a scenario, and it's been rumored, and I'm not saying it's going to happen, but it's the same kind of rumor circles that in 2008 people started rumoring that all these guys were going to end up on the same team, LeBron and Wade and all those guys, and that it actually happened. So I feel obligated to mention it. I do think there's a possibility that lebron will finish i think he's at the tail end of his prime right now so maybe we'll call it the back nine we use a golf analogy he's probably on like hole 13 right now maybe hole 14 who knows i could see him finishing the last few holes with the people from his generation and doing it that way. And just being like, I'm with Dwayne Wade and Chris Paul and Carmelo and Joe Johnson.

And it's just all his dudes. It's just like, this is, you know, I had a great career. This is how I'm going to go out with all my friends. I could see that happening. Yeah. It's just like, we're the old dudes. We're going to, we're just going to, we're going to get together. We're all boys.

We all have each other's back. And this is how I'm going to spend the last few years of my career i could see that happening after 2017 but you know what killed him is the sports illustrated letter it bound him to cleveland because he can't leave now he'd seem like such a hypocrite and such a dick right to this whole thing. I'm Cleveland. It's time for me to come home. And then it's like,

all right, guys, I'll see you later. I'm going to LA. It's a nice word there. See you guys. So I don't know. I think he's stuck. He has to convince Lala. He has to convince Chris Paul.

He has to get all the guys from his generation. All right. Can you plug your podcast? Yes. One more time. What's the title? Revisionist History on the Pan from his generation. All right. Can you plug your podcast? Yes. One more time. What's the title? Revisionist History on the Panoply Network.

Available on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. 10 episodes. I don't know. Sign up now. Subscribe now. I had a lot of fun doing it. Yeah. Help him get to number one on iTunes.

Thanks to Simply Safe. Remember, burglars skyrocketed over the summer I worked with SimpliSafe to put together a phenomenal Security package with entry sensors Entry sensors Motion sensors and glass break right now Get $100 off my handpicked security package Go to SimpliSafeBill.com Thanks to Slink TV

Remember no installation, no extra gear, no annual contracts No BS All you need is an internet connection You can be watching more than 20 live channels dot com. Thanks to Sling TV. Remember, no installation, no extra gear, no annual contracts, no BS. All you need is an internet connection. You can be watching more than 20 live channels including ESPN and TNT. 7 day free trial. Sling.com slash Bill Simmons for the best of live TV on your favorite device. Restrictions apply. Thanks

again to 5-4 Club. $60 a month high end clothing membership that will provide you and Malcolm Gladwell with stylish clothes that are bound to make you stand out in the crowd. Go to 540club.com. Use promo code BS at signup. 50% off your first package. That's $120 worth of clothing for $30 for your first month's package.

I'm just sending you 540 Club stuff, Gladwell. Thanks again to HBO for launching my new TV show. Any given Wednesday on June 22nd, you may have seen the promo seven too many times. I think we have a new promo coming out. Thank God. Don't forget about After the Thrones on HBO Now. Don't forget about TheRinger.com.

Have you gone to The Ringer? No one loves The Ringer more than me. Oh, good. You're happy with The Ringer so far? Oh, I love it. Great. I want more long articles is what I want so far? Oh, I love it. Great. I want more long articles is what I want.

But no, I'm loving it. We'll get there. I mean, the thing is, we just launched. We're going to hire more people. We're going to have a bigger staff. We were able to launch with more people than I had hoped for, but you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And when the ringer puts ESPN

out of business, Dan, I'll be happiest of all. That was so sweet of you. We just want to coexist with a multi-billion dollar company. Malcolm Gladwell, as always, a pleasure. Do you have a book coming out or no? Nothing? Just a podcast. Just a podcast for now.

Book is next, but that'll be a couple years. A couple years. I've been bitten by the podcast bug. I know, next, but that'll be a couple years. A couple years? A couple years. Okay. I've been bitten by the podcast bug. I know, you love podcasts.

It's great. All right, thank you, buddy. Okay, bye-bye, Bill. Anytime y'all want to see me again, rewind this track right here,

close your eyes, and picture me rolling