The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 93: Chuck Klosterman, Wesley Morris, and Joe House

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks to Chuck Klosterman about Prince as one of the most prolific musicians of his era, and they revisit the film 'Purple Rain.' Wesley Morris comes on to share his memories of the artist, and ponders what other musicians we’ll mourn when they die (36:00). Plus, Joe House calls in to talk about the NBA playoffs (55:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today's episode is also brought to you by HBO Now, home of After the Thrones, the ringers postgame show for Game of Thrones, which debuts this weekend. It stars Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan, uh, game of Thrones premieres on HBO Sunday night, April 24th. And just a couple hours later on HBO. Now you can watch after the Thrones. This is big. It's a, we made a studio for it. We have Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald. There's a cameo by Mallory Rubin. This is a real thing. It's a real TV show. You can download the HBO Now app, start a free one-month trial in time for After the Thrones.

Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald. Don't you want to support those guys? And speaking of support, go to TheRinger.com, subscribe to our new newsletter. We are closing in on 200,000 subscribers, and we are going to talk about Prince with Chuck Klosterman, Wesley Morris, and then a little NBA playoffs with Joe House. Here we go. It's Friday.

We have Joe House coming up in a little bit to talk about the NBA playoffs. A possible Wesley Morris stop by. Who knows? He texts. He doesn't text. We never hear from him. On the phone right now, Chuck Klosterman. And 24 to 30 hours ago, Prince passed away.

And a shocker. Sometimes with celebrity deaths, you kind of have a hint of it maybe I there'd been rumors that Prince was sick but I just didn't believe he's only 57 what was your reaction well I mean not only was he 57 but generally now there's different kind of rumors coming out now who knows what it, but I always viewed him as living his very clean life. Yeah. And he obviously was not overweight. He was incredibly fit. You look at him at 57, he doesn't look that different than he looked in 1990-something.

I mean, he did not seem to be aging in any kind of dramatic way. I mean, I know that for a while he used a cane and he missed the show because of the flu or whatever, but I gotta say, I was pretty shocked. I was walking in to see the movie

Everybody Wants Some, and then all of a sudden, there's seven texts and you know something happened. Yeah. The coverage the last 24 to 30 hours made me wonder how many celebrities have ever had a higher approval rating than Prince. Seems like everybody loved Prince. He was.

I mean, universally respected, if nothing else. You know, I mean, I do think that the timing with Bowie, of course, you know, people were so, there was such sort of a social response to that. I wonder if, like, you know, because to me, the Prince thing seems bigger because of his age and because who knows how many records he was still going to put out. And, I mean, I don't know. This doesn't really seem like a bold statement. I think a lot of people are saying it. I mean, in terms of pure talent in rock, pop, funk, you know,

in terms of hitting the all-field, being able to perform, write, sing, play, I mean, he's the most talented person ever in this. I mean, he's the most talented pop musician ever, I think. So it just, it does seem like a bigger deal, but, you know. Yeah, I would, it's weird. I was thinking about him versus Michael Jackson. I always thought Michael Jackson was like the most talented person in the music realm.

But Prince could also play all these instruments, and then you hear these people say he was the greatest guitarist ever and all this stuff and it made me think like man maybe prince was the greatest ever i i think he was i mean you know that comparison of course in the 80s it happened all the time because then it was still like it didn't seem weird at all to compare two guys just because they were both black and you know kind of smallish people but and you if you remember at that time the initial feeling was that prince was the weird one yeah like prince was seen as the weirder of the two guys and then that changed dramatically over the course of the 90s not that people suddenly saw prince as being you know uh you know like the guy door. But he was much more calculating about sort of his behavior.

Although when we look back, like I think for people of a generation, like the next generation who will know who Prince is, but had no experience of him being alive, I think that when they look back at that period when, you know, he briefly changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, that's going to seem so crazy. But when it happened at the time, it did kind of seem like Prince being Prince. Right.

He had a lot of the check marks that musicians hit, and he did almost all of them in really successful ways, right? Oh, yeah. He tried to do a concert movie, and it was actually, I mean, it was more than a concert movie, but it was really good. Most people, when they try that, it ends up being a disaster. And he did the double album, and it was actually a really good double album. And he did the album that he never released, that there are always rumors about,

and that had the most mystery to it of anything other than, you know. He plays a Super Bowl halftime show, and it's either the best one or the only one that's not bad. Right. I mean, that's like, you know, he did that the best. When he makes Purple Rain, this idea of a pop artist saying, like, well, okay, I'm going to make a movie that's kind of loosely based on my life, and I'm going to play myself, you know, that goes way back to Elvis and all that stuff.

Purple Rain's, like, to me, the best of those movies. I mean, you know, it's a strange in-between thing where parts of it seem like bizarrely real, like this must be a reflection of his life. And of course, some of it was fictionalized. And his acting is good. I mean, there's the scene where he gets off the stage and he's really upset. He paces back and forth in his dressing room and he sits down for like two seconds and pouts.

Then he gets up and paces again. I mean, that's a different kind of acting. But boy but boy i just i can visualize that in my mind right now i haven't seen that movie in 10 years maybe yeah yeah i was shocked by i guess i shouldn't have been shocked but you know prince was kind of our generation and when when he took off like i remember all the beats to it and i think the difference between when he died and when David Bowie died was the number of like teenagers and people in their 20s that were just as upset about Prince like as we were. And it reminded me a lot of the Michael Jackson thing where you just realize like, oh, even though this guy's from my generation, he's he's trickled down to 20, 30 years after me. I don't think Bowie, I'm sure there were some people out there that loved him who were like under 25, but it wasn't like Prince. Oh, no, that definitely existed.

You've got to be always careful now. I feel like whenever these guys die, it kind of drives me crazy when I go on Facebook or Twitter and I see people really personalizing this event as if the entire world exists so that they're the main character in some story and now prince died so how does this affect the main character but i will say this i mean bowie there was never a time in my life when bowie wasn't famous like when i got into music boy was famous when i got into music prince was like this rising person but he seemed initially like,

when I was real young, I kind of associated him with dance music and pure pop music, which at the time, it isn't this way now, but at the time, it was seen as definitely secondary to rock or whatever. Then 1999 comes out. It's a great record,

but still it sort of seems as if it's sort of appealing to just like a segment of the culture. And then he makes Purple Rain, which is a great record, but still it sort of seems as if it's sort of appealing to just like a segment of the culture. And then he makes Purple Rain, which is a rock record, and it ends up being like probably with Appetite for Destruction the best rock records of that decade. Like those are probably the two best rock records of that decade. And his guitar playing on that album is amazing. It seems better than any of the metal guys, you know,

or most of the metal guys who were famous for specifically that. He was almost doing it as a secondary thing. And then, instead of still staying on that trajectory, he makes a record that kind of moves back, kind of into psychedelic pop. I mean, it was like, he could kind of do everything. There really isn't any aspect of music that he didn't do exceptionally well and the other thing that still blows my mind about this is like okay i think he had 39 records at one point i thought someone say 32 but then i saw someone else say 39 39 studio records live records and all these things so he's one of the most prolific artists of all time typically with guys who are that prolific

you know whether it's like the guy from guided by by Voices or Ryan Adams or whatever, there's this criticism built in that they need to focus and really bear down and make a great record. And that somehow being prolific is a way to avoid greatness because you're, you know, you're putting music out so quickly, you're doing work so fast that there's no pressure to sort of, you know, say like, this is my statement. Nobody would ever say that about Prince. He has five or six sort of monumental, epic records that if they were the only record he had put out, he would be in the conversation among the most important artists from that period. I mean, it is sort of his career really is staggering.

Yeah, and he hit that genius stratosphere pretty early, and after you do that, you can do whatever you want. He just, he, I mean, I don't think most people can even name three, the titles of three Prince albums for the last 20 years, but it doesn't matter.

You know, he's just releasing music. It's great. Oh, great. Prince put out something else. I went to a journalism convention in, like, the 90s, like a newspaper journalism convention, and there was somebody giving a talk who had been a high school teacher in Minneapolis. And I can't remember who she was or why she was giving this talk, but the nature of it was basically that, you know, that she had this student who basically refused to do his homework.

And any time she tried to get him to do his homework, he would say, like, it's not going to matter. I'm going to be famous. And she was like, that ended up being Prince. Sometimes people who are really arrogant are totally right. Right. I remember, I don't remember what year it was, but when he put out whatever the first album was, Dirty Mind?

Did he have an album before that, or was it Dirty Mind? Well, the first record was like in 1978, and the second record was self-titled. I mean, Dirty Mind was 1980, I think. That's the first one I remember, and part of Prince was like, you're looking at him and you're like, who is he? Like, there was looking at him and you're like, who is he?

Like there was racial identity stuff that you're trying to, is he Puerto Rican? Is he black? Like this guy's so interesting. He was so different. The song Controversy approaches this idea pretty directly. Where he kind of says, you know. He was a little androgynous. We're black.

You were very androgynous we're black you know very androgynous yeah maybe uh i i i i in terms of of just i mean that whole period from like the late 70s and the early 80s i think for a lot of people they said like there's this guy he's really talented but the main thing they said was he's an extremely sexual artist right but there was just like that that um almost as though that that it was a gimmick the way that you would look at you know uh you know any number of very often female but sometimes male artists over time whose sexuality was the main thing you know samantha fox or whatever you know um but uh that didn't last long i mean it just I had a vague memory of him on SNL at some point

during the early Eddie Murphy years and the same thing there was this real mystery about him which is one of the things that made Purple Rain so unbelievable because you go out and it's like I don't know anything about this guy I don't know what he's about I don't know if he's straight I don't know if he's gay

I don't know what his background guy. I don't know what he's about. I don't know if he's straight. I don't know if he's gay. I don't know what his background is. And then Purple Rain comes out. And I don't think you can overstate how great that movie was. Because when musicians made movies, they were either like what you said, like the Elvis type of movie. Or they were like the Led Zeppelin song that remains the same, like just really egocentric concert movies. Or it was like Pink Floyd, The Wall, just fucking weird. And this was a movie that starts out with Let's Go Crazy. And it's just five minutes of Prince just kicking ass. And it's shot like the best possible MTV music video that ever could have come out. And I mean, in the theater,

I'm sure you remember this too. It was unbelievable. It was like the best first five minutes of a movie I've ever seen in my life. And then it just went from there. And still, there's some uncomfortable things in that movie. Oh my God. I wonder, is that the last movie where we're supposed to root for the character throughout the whole film even though he hits his girlfriend i mean he like this i i think that probably there's a probably you know

a much younger generation who are not going to watch this movie this weekend because it's like you know they're going to they're going to be on snapchat or whatever people talking about print they're going to watch this movie and for them it's going to be a real bizarre thing because it's just you would never see that in any kind of movie now. Even just the fact that, like, he makes the woman jump into the lake just to be – just basically to be mean to her, you know? Right. And you were talking about, like, SNL. Go ahead. There's a lot of movies that haven't aged well from the 80s for a variety of reasons.

And that one's way up there. Because basically the theme of the movie is his dad pretty ritually beat his mom. And now Prince has started to veer down that direction with his girlfriend. And can he realize that he should find true love over just repeatedly beating up his girlfriend? That's a pretty fucked up plot for a movie well right i mean i think that the themes are even a little weirder i mean like like the key theme the key point in that movie is when he's playing the piano with his father and like his father says you know friends like you write any of this down and he's like i don't need to write it down.

That's the difference between you and me. And it's like, that's like, really, this is a movie about the concept of art and the meaning of art. And, like, is that what Prince feels about music? Or is he disregarding, is that all a lie? I mean, there's also a part earlier in that film where a guy at the club at First Avenue, like, directly says, like, you know, nobody cares about your music but you. Or basically, like, no one digs what you're doing but you. Yeah.

And, like, that was an incredibly important point for Prince to have in this movie. That, I mean, if I think that he probably, in a way, saw that as the defining quality of who he was, that throughout his career, I shouldn't say that, from 78 up until the early 90s, his record tended to be about a year and a half ahead of what everyone else was doing. And I think that he just really saw himself as being like, I'm getting something. Like, I am musically advanced in a way that the rest of the world can't accept, and if they could accept it, it would mean I'm not so great. You talked about Saturday Night Live. Go ahead.

I had a couple more Purple Rain thoughts. It wasn't just that he hit Apollonia. There's two really mean scenes in that movie that have nothing to do with violence. One is when he makes her jump in the lake. Also, Jerome throws a woman into a garbage can oh yeah that happens too that wasn't great but like he's supposed to be the bad guy but it's not really played in a sinister way like it's definitely done for comedic value but yeah oh no question and then the darling nikki scene is incredible and you could argue that's actually the meanest scene in the movie. He plays this song and it's a really mean spirited song, but it's an incredible performance. And it's one of the key moments in the movie where he feels like she's the girl in the song and it's and it's really emotionally devastating and it's really weird and it's also a really weird song i

don't i mean it's definitely one of the weirdest songs he's ever done but it but it's part of the journey of that movie is at the end he his his music is almost too mean-spirited or whatever edge it has that the two girls in the band, that when he finally ends up playing the beat of Purple Rain and then writing a song about it, it's almost like now females have infiltrated his artistry

and now everything's okay. Although, in truth, it would never happen. He wrote that song, but he was essentially saying, look at me, I'm accepting these songs from these other people this is the fictional part of the movie there's an early

part of that movie too where he he brings apolloni over to his house and he's playing what sounds like a woman moaning rapalonia think that like he has taped someone secretly while they're having sex and he's like no that's a person crying played in reverse it's like this is the kind of dude i am you know and they're like i'm sure this is on youtube i haven't looked but somebody will do it's like there's a a scene of him from the american bandstand you know like way way back and dick clark asks him a question and he just holds up four fingers and it's not a question about numbers yeah it's not a question about numbers. It's like a question like,

you know, like, you know, what do you, like, you know, how did you get into this or whatever? And he just holds up four fingers. That was like the person he was. The other part of Purple Rain that's really interesting is because you don't see celebrities do this to themselves,

but like Morris Day mocks Prince in the movie. He mocks the Let's Go Crazy song, which is kind of a vulnerable moment if you're Prince, right? Like Let's Go Crazy is the first five minutes of the movie and it's phenomenal. And then later on Morris Day just mocks it. And I don't know a lot of artists who would have let anyone do that. Well, and also within the context of the movie yeah his father has just tried to kill himself right that's what he's in mind so that's like a pretty uh uh remorse stays amazing in that movie too how many times did you see prince in person twice first time was the best show i've

ever seen there's like there's a book some well some guy uh named sean manning put out an anthology about like he has 50 people to write about the best show they ever saw and that was the one i There's a book, well, some guy named Sean Manning put out an anthology about, like, he had 50 people to write about the best show they ever saw, and that was the one I wrote about. And then I saw him again. I saw that one in Fargo in 97, and I saw him in Cleveland, like, 2000 or 2001. What I remember about that second show is that in the middle, he, like, did a medley of nine of his hits, just seamlessly put together in about three minutes and the rest of the show was like weird song yeah i saw him i had to do something at the webby awards in like 2006 and it was right when the webby awards were getting going

and it was it was kind of the first year they had tried to blow it out and they were like yeah we got prince prince is gonna sing at the end of the awards and and everyone was like no way prince isn't gonna sing and he said no no he's gonna sing it's like so it was one of those things and prince came out at the tail end people like were just kind of in disbelief he sang one song dropped his guitar and just walked out. It was amazing. I'll never forget it. And then the last time I saw him was last year.

We went with Rembert to this Brand Jordan event, and there was rumors that Prince was playing, and of course he started playing at 1 o'clock and cranking out hits, and he must have played for like a half hour and then he came back played for another 45 minutes but it's like you said before there was an agelessness about him he was just as good last year as he probably was 30 years ago there was no set no sign of decline at all people who saw this tour where he was just playing piano were rhapsodic about it like this is the greatest thing they ever saw.

You know, I mean, I know like how you love kind of like coming up with like these little terms like the Tyson zone, you know? Right.

He used the Tyson zone to just like, that's like describe somebody that anything that they could do in public is possible. Like Johnny Manziel. Yeah, like Prince was like that,

but like best possible version of the Tyson zone. Like, I mean, I was so confused when I found out he was doing the soundtrack to Batman. That seems like the weirdest thing to me when that happened. But I would looking back now, it's just,

it makes total sense. What's the sort of the weird kind of up in like just the, just the way he was, you know? I think that, uh, when he changed his name to the symbol that was pretty weird that's in the moment i felt like the wheels were starting to come off for him and you know that's when musically he he'd had such an unbelievable run in the 80s and um i don't know i i thought that did set him back. I wonder if he would do that again. If he could have done his career 10 times, would that was right in the middle of that period. Now, you know, Prince didn't really do interviews. This is like a kind

of a famous thing, you know. And if you did interview Prince, you couldn't tape record it or usually take notes. You just had to sit there kind of. But so we were trying, we were in Fargo and he wasn't going to do an interview. But email was, you know, the idea of emailing someone in an interview was just starting to be possible. My coworker, Ross, emailed Prince 10 questions, and he answered all of them. A lot of the questions he would answer with what would now be called emojis. They'd ask him a question, and he would just send back a picture of a human eye, or he would send back a pyramid or whatever except if I recall the one question he totally answered

was that was the time around the time when remember they were talking about contracting the Twins and the Nationals yeah for some reason

the last question my friend Ross he doesn't even like baseball at all like asked him a question about that and he gave like a very cogent

full answer to that question like that was the one thing he would answer like he was like a very cogent full answer to that question like that was the one thing he would answer like he was like they should not contract the twins that's the two biggest mysteries of prince's life were like who was he he was always dating somebody and he had a type and it was always kind of this anonymous pretty type but i could never figure out what was going on with him on that end and then how big of a sports fan was he? Because it actually seemed like he was a legitimate sports fan,

but I never heard him really talk about it eloquently, and I never heard anybody kind of push him to go there. This is how big a sports fan he supposedly was. Remember, this is, of course, all the print, so this is always hard to prove. But supposedly, he was so into the Bulls, particularly during the second run, their second three-peat, that during concerts he would have them put monitors on the sides of the stage showing the game,

and he would watch the game during guitar solos. He would walk to the side of the stage and kind of put his head down so it looked like he was looking at the guitar, but he was actually watching the game. So that seems like a pretty big sports fan to me. Yeah. But who knows if that's true? Well, you know, it certainly seems like something he would do, you know.

As far as his dating life, of he has super interesting super interesting all the way through uh whenever you've seen like apollonia or whoever interviewed about prince very often they will mention that he was the best smelling guy that he was a really great smelling person i guess um and you know he just i i this is i don't even know if this is like a bad thing to say, but, like, I'm always sort of amazed that he's trying to pick up a girl from the Bengals. He's really into, like, Susanna Hoff, I think it was. And he was like, boy, what should I do? Oh, I'm going to give you this song, Manic Monday.

Play this song. It'll probably go to number one. Like, you know, do You want to go out now? Instead of sending someone flowers, he would give them songs to record and become famous. I had no idea that he gave Stan back to Stevie Nicks. I have a feeling

he gave like 50 songs to people and we probably only know about like five of them. Yeah. Well, you have Big Sinead O'Connor's song. He did that one you know i think uh he just could effortlessly do this and effortlessly is always i know you're not supposed to say that anymore because it somehow suggests that a person is not working hard and he was obviously it but there was something about it that he just just intuitively understood

although not the easiest person to work with. I knew a girl in college who was friends with someone who had worked on some Prince records in the studio in Minneapolis. And one time, Prince called the guy at, I think she said it was 11 o'clock p.m. on Christmas Eve. I said, get in here.

And he was like, come in and play on this. You know, it's like, the guy was like, well, it's kind of a weird time, you know? And he's like, it doesn't matter. It's like, you want to work with me? Come in and play on this. The guy was like, well, it's kind of a weird time. And he's like, it doesn't matter. You want to work with me? Come in now.

I really want to read the definitive piece on how big of a sports fan Prince was. Let's say I ran into him when I was on NBA Countdown. Would there have been recognition in his eyes? And would he have pulled me aside and just wanted to talk about the Bulls for five minutes with me? I feel like there's a 50% chance he cared about sports that much. They would have been like, oh, the white guy from NBA Countdown. I want to talk to this guy. It's possible.

I would guess that Prince probably read a lot of sports. We don't know much about his life, but we know that he spent a lot of time at home and he was interested in technology. There's no reason to assume that he'd be like, I'm not interested in the internet. I'm not, you know. I wonder if he read Zach Lowe's pieces and really liked how Zach Lowe broke down

how somebody was defending the pick and roll. Well, he had played in high school and people who played pick-up basketball, like the famous Charlie Murphy story about them playing basketball at midnight, the story always suggests he was pretty skilled. I mean, very little guy, five, I don't know, five-four, maybe? It's like a Spud Webb type. I think more like a Muggsy type. I think Spud Webb could have probably took him to the block.

Prince. Prince. Unbelievable. Well, I'm going to be, I was busy yesterday. I'm going to do like a four-hour deep dive into all the stories because it seems like everybody wrote something. So I'm sure there's a million things out there that we haven't even talked about. All the great stories just about like oh weird things about prince you know prince um fired a guy for looking at him once supposedly you know my wife when she was the uh when she was the music critic yeah in minneapolis

at city pages at one point prince like took her aside into a small room and tried to intimidate her for something she had written questioning his misogyny, and he wanted to explain being a Jehovah's Witness to her. And it's just like he did, like a lot of people have these stories about it, because like, it's a little bit like Bill Murray. Any encounter you have with him constitutes telling. Like, he was not somebody who was out in the public, so if you had any sort of exchange with him, that alone makes it worthwhile.

Like, you know, it's a story just that you were in the same place he was. Yeah, I might have to make up a Prince story. I'm going to have to make, I'm going to think about that this weekend. I'm going to make up some story about how he emailed me about a column. We had a whole exchange about it.

Something like that. Last question. And then we have to go. What was Purple Rain about? The song? Yeah. What was it about? What was he trying to say in Purple Rain?

Well, okay. Here's my assumption my assumption always has been that that uh he had loved the field strawberry field but beetles and he wanted to make a song like strawberry field forever and uh uh purple rain sort of represents uh a universe or a world that transcends our own, that when we reach whatever sort of, whatever kind of mental plane that he believed we were supposed to exist on or that he existed on, that it would almost be like, sort of like moving into a heaven where the sky would be purple, and purple was his favorite color. So you would sort of be supported and sustained

by sort of the kind of majesty and beauty of this color that would fall from the sky upon you. I guess that's what I thought, but I don't know. I've never really thought about it before. Because it starts out like he's breaking up with or somebody has broken up with him and he's trying to reconcile his role in it let's let's quickly just i'm gonna go on the computer here i'm gonna read it to you he said it goes i never meant to cause you any sorrow i never meant to cause you any pain i only wanted one time to see you laughing. I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain.

And then... Okay, that I think is that the you, don't cause you any sorrow, you any pain. I don't think that's a person. I think that's the collective of us. I think we are all that person. Then later it goes, the next stanza,

I never wanted to be your weekend lover. I only wanted to be some kind of friend. Baby, I could never steal you from another. It's such a shame our friendship had to end. That makes me think he's singing about a person. It does. Like a person there. But then it gets weird.

And that's also a big, he has a lot of songs like that where he's like, like I could never take the place of your man. That's a real hot-button issue for him. So then it goes, I only want to see you underneath the purple rain. I'm wondering if the purple rain is something that comes from him. And he's like, look, I'm sorry I messed around in this relationship, and maybe I led you on, and you know, I just wanted a connection with you.

I wanted you to be part of my purple rain. But then it gets super weird. Then it goes, honey, I know times are changing. It's time we all reach out for something new. That means you too. But then he goes, you say you want a leader, but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you better close it and let me guide you through the Purple Rain. So now he's talking to all of us.

He wants to be our leader. Okay, but there's also, you know, that's the last song on Purple Rain. The first song is Let's Go Crazy, which also has a heavy religious theme. You know, that's an interesting thing. Like, you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you better close it. It's almost sort of like, I think he's suggesting that people keep trying to find secular ways

to understand reality. They need to embrace the kind of the Christian conventional God. Because that's, even on these early super sexy records, he talks about God a lot. Wow. It's a really weird song,

and it's an awesome end to the movie. And it's hard to overstate how gigantic that song was in 1984, which really might have been the best year in the history of pop music, if you really broke it down. Well, a lot of people feel that. Or like, when doves cry. So it's like a funk song, and there's no bass on it. That's a real original idea.

Like, Let's Go Crazy was, I mean, Purple Rain was probably only the third biggest song from that record, which is just amazing when you think about it. It's true. It feels like it's the one that's lived on the best, though. Maybe because it was in the title. I don't know, Let's Go Crazy. I think Let's Go Crazy is just that, I don't know, to me that is the one. But, you know, it's Go Crazy. I think Let's Go Crazy is just that. I don't know.

To me, that is the one. But, you know, it's all subjective. Well, the smartest one he had was Parting Like It's 1999, which he clearly wrote well in advance, knowing that in 1999 it was going to be the signature song of that year. I like when artists do that. It was a long-term play. I mean, maybe you didn't feel this way,

but when that song came out in like 1982, didn't it seem like 1999 was so far in the future it would never come? It was like Escape from New York. It was odd that we were all like like everybody who was alive in the 1980s knew that they would live to see the 21st century but that would still be kind of the de facto thing you would use to describe a distant future that would never be reached yeah and that and that was so part of it was yeah we're gonna party like it's 1999 because that's a million years from now

which was basically the same thing from Escape from New York. They made Escape from New York I think in like 1980. And it's like 17 years from now, New York's going to be a maximum security prison. It's like 70 years from now. But it was really like 17 years goes fast. It's like, hey, it's 97. I guess that's not going to happen.

All right, Chuck. Always a pleasure. Talk to you soon. You bet, man. Bye-bye. Before we call Wesley Morris, I wanted to talk about a couple new podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. The first one is called Keeping It 1600. It is hosted by Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, both of whom used to work for Obama.

And each week they come in and they talk about politics. They talk about the election. They have famous political guests you've heard of. And it has become a very popular podcast for us. It's very good. And they do it once a week, usually on Thursdays. And then the second one is called Shack House. It's presented by Calloway.

It stars Joe House and Jeff Shackelford. And they talk about golf. And not playing golf as much as the PGA Tour, who's going up, who's going down. They did a great Masters post-game show that really broke down what happened in the tournament. They'll talk about their own golf games. People like that one as well.

And you can subscribe to the Shack House podcast on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Check both of them out. They're doing really well. Shack House and Keeping It 1600. On the line, my old Grant League colleague, my buddy, Wesley Morris. Sad week for all of us.

I was thinking of, you were one of the first people I thought of yesterday, actually. How are you feeling? I think it's really sunk in yet. Like, I'm, it's just, it's surreal. And, I mean, the more I read read less the more things kind of make sense but it's just uh it's just crazy i just saw him a month ago i just saw him a month ago in concert and he was fine you saw him play yeah he played uh i did i saw him play he signed that book deal with a random house and

i went to a he wanted to play a concert for signing his book deal so he played a little concert in some club in in in like chelsea basically and you know there's maybe like i don't know how many people are there, maybe 70 people, 80 people. And he did one set, very short, you know, pre-recorded track that he played organ over or keyboard. And he, you know, riffed a little bit on a couple songs. And then he left for like two hours. First of all, he started way after he was supposed to. And then he left for like two hours. First of all, he started way after he was supposed to. And then he left for like two hours.

And during this time, I mean, I stayed because the DJ was good. And I like, you know, you know me. I will dance forever if the music is good. And the DJ was pretty good. She cut off too many songs, but whatever. She was good. And so then this rumor started circulating that he was going to come back, and he wanted to play for the people who were coming to the show.

So I wonder, who's going to come to this show? So in this two-hour break, the cast of Hamilton shows up, and Jennifer Hudson shows up, and the cast of The Color Purple. So it's these two shows. They're on opposite sides of this tiny bar, and it's just like the energy was so great. But, you know, as if you couldn't love the people involved in Hamilton anymore, they had the time of their lives.

I mean, they just couldn't believe it. And then last night they did a Let's Go Crazy tribute. I couldn't tell if it was just on YouTube. My kids showed it to me, of course, because they know everything that's going on with Hamilton. I think it was at the end of the show. Did you see this? Yeah, yeah.

I think Lin-Manuel at the end of the show, I mean, Lin-Manuel tweeted that he, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of Hamilton, tweeted something about what they did. I think it was at the end of the show. And then I watched the thing and it was, it's great. So when you were at Grantland, you and Alex Papademos had a podcast called Do You Like Prince Movies? Yes. And then you talked to him a little bit yesterday on his MTV podcast, correct? Yes.

What did you talk about? We talked about the, like our seminal, like a seminal Prince moment. I don't really have a seminal one, so I kind of flubbed that one. But his was about Batdance, which I thought was very Alex and true. But, I mean, Batdance is like, it's a great song,

and the album is sort of underrated. Nobody really ever talks about it in the context of Prince's very good work. But I mean, there's so much about Prince that is underrated from the standpoint of his output, because there's so much output. And so much of that output is so good that it's just, it's so easy to underrate it. Chuck thought that he was the greatest ever because he could do the most things I always thought Michael Jackson was 100 true yeah I always thought Michael Jackson was the greatest ever just because he was the best at singing and dancing and basically writing you know basically writing

pop music and also having the dancing element but then you kind of when you when you include all the all the instruments that Prince could play as as well or better than anyone on the planet, and then on top of that, the fact that he just didn't decline at all over 35 years, 40 years? No. He's the best. So I think I'm talked into that now. But here's the thing about Michael Jackson. There are two ways to evaluate the best,

right? Cause I mean, if you really want to be honest about this, Prince's peer isn't Michael Jackson or Madonna. That's it. They're his contemporaries, right? Yeah.

Like his real artistic peers are like Stevie wonder and the beetle. Yeah. Like that's where he is. Right. Like crazy output, is. Crazy output, visionary. I mean, not that Michael Jackson wasn't a visionary, but his vision wasn't as grand and as ambitious

as Prince's. I mean, he's up there with George and Paul and Stevie. That's where he is. He was the best songwriter. He was an amazing musician. I mean, he was the best songwriter. He was an amazing musician. I mean, he was a great live performer. The thing that Michaels got on Prince is when Michael Jackson died, the world stopped.

That didn't really happen yesterday. Right. Like, you could go into restaurants and they were playing you and you could hear MGMT. You could hear Taylor Swift, which is what happened to me. I sort of had to leave all the places that weren't playing Prince. And part of it is you can't find his music if you're using a streaming service, I'm sure. But it just didn't feel like the world stopped in the way that when Michael Jackson died, nobody was breathing.

Yeah. And that's how much Michael Jackson meant to everybody. I think Prince, I mean, you know, we're talking about a Magner. We're not talking about a whole like order of magnitude. We're just, it's, it's, it's a slight difference, but it's, it's different. It's slightly different. Well, and the other thing with Prince, I said this to Chuck, that shocked me was um like

the under 28 generation how who don't know who yeah who weren't even there when when it was like when he was just at the all-time peak of his powers but but it still resonated with him the music trickled down i was really happy to see that. I didn't expect that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what Chuck said, but the thing about Prince is he is probably the most elemental of the big three, right? Of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince. Because, I mean, we agree they're the big three, right? Yeah. I mean, are you talking 80s? 80s big three?

I'm just talking about like major pop stars in the last 40 years. Who else is there? Like who else is up there? I was thinking maybe U2, but it's just

a different thing. If Bono died tomorrow, it just wouldn't be the same thing. Would you put Whitney in there? Nope. Okay. I mean, Whitney's that next tier.

She's on that next tier with Bono and I mean, with U2 and I mean, there's's that next tier. She's on that next tier with Bono and with U2. There's a whole next tier. And I just feel like Madonna, in terms of the way they change the way we think about presentation and the relationship between persona and i mean david bowie did some of that yeah he kind of did it i mean he was doing it before mtv and i think mtv is a huge is you know a huge part of this too like the ability to sort of capitalize on this medium and turn your music into movies prince didn't really care about that his videos suck but i mean he was still part of that era and he made he had huge hits and for himself and other people during that era so i don't know do you have do you have a different theory or like somebody you add to that no i think that's the right theory i it's funny

though that prince's videos sucked and yet purple rain was basically the greatest music video ever made. It just had scenes of dialogue mixed in with these unbelievable... You could argue the opening of Purple Rain is one of the five best music videos ever made, even though it was a movie. I don't know why he didn't care more about the five-minute art form, but obviously it didn't interest him. Can I offer you a theory? Yeah.

His songwriting was too good. It just was too good. Like, his songwriting was great. Like, you just had a visual. And, you know, I'm just trying to think of some songs where, like, you don't need... I can never take the place of your man. Now, that is a song... I i mean it actually happens to have a video because a sign of the times but

it's not particularly it's not a video video like you're allowed to sort of create your own narrative like visual narrative for that song in a way that i mean because it's so specific it's such a story that he's telling. And there's a, I mean, at his best, he was really good at that. What was the song he did with Sheena Easton? Which one? There's one on the Batman soundtrack.

No, You Got the Look. That's what it was. You Got the Look, yeah. They had a video of that. He kind of, Sheena Easton was just basically this Scottish pop star. And he made her super sexy just by doing that one song with her. And then it got parlayed into a Miami Vice story arc for her. Prince had this way of just, when he kind of blessed somebody in a big picture way, they got a little momentum from it. Yeah, I mean, was she sexy for you? I don't know. I was saying to Chuck, the first few years,

I didn't know what he was. I didn't know what to make of him. I didn't know if he was gay or straight. It was a very androgynous time in general for pop culture, and it was just confusing and mysterious. And then Purple Rain came out, and it was just kind of amazing. He went from not knowing anything about this guy to he's playing this complicated character and you're diving into the thing. I think that was one of those movies that I actually remember what theater I saw it in, who I was with.

It was really an experience. It was with. You know, it was really an experience. It was great. And it was somebody that was clearly super talented, but had never kind of put himself out there like that. So I don't know. I didn't know what to make of him. What did he mean to, you know, when Bowie died, and you did a great job writing about this,

about what he meant to the gay community, and a lot of people wrote good stuff about that. What did Prince mean? It's less clear, right? Because he wasn't, he didn't, he trafficked in queerness, but he wasn't in any way, he wasn't in any way overtly queer. I mean, queer is like a weird thing, right? Like it's something you are, not something you profess to be like, it's, you can't, it's something you are not something you profess to be. Like, it's, you can't, it's like camp, you can't, you can't do camp, you either are or you're,

you've either achieved it or you haven't. But I mean, look, this is a guy who in controversy was, you know, asking questions that like, you know, rhetorically asking questions about, you know, am I straight or gay? Um, I'm neither man or, wow, what song is that? I'm neither man or woman. Um, I think, I think it's,

I think it's, it's, uh, it's on, um, it's on Purple Rain, and now I'm, I am something that you'll never comprehend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to worry, I need to cry. Yeah, I would die for you. Yeah. So, I would die for yeah. I need to worry, I need to cry. Yeah, conscious. I would die for you.

So, on I Would Die For You, I mean, he's laying all this out there. He's like, he's setting himself up as being this androgynous person, but he's so resolutely heterosexual in so many ways in the songs. But there is a kind of performance of heterosexuality that is interesting. in the songs, but there is a kind of like performance of, of heterosexuality.

That is, that is interesting. I mean, it's not so much to say that like he's pretending. I mean, I think Prince was very, really attracted to women. Yeah.

And he had a type. Right. And he had, he definitely had a type. He liked that kind of biracial. I don't know what your ethnicity is, but you're a little tall and you have like a really pretty creamy skin color. Like that was his type.

Yes. Tall, thin mocha. Lots of hair. It's amazing he never, I'm sure he tried, but it's amazing J-Lo never got pulled into the Prince Vortex. He probably circled her. She's not tall enough probably. You don't think so?

Yeah, she's probably, I mean, and I don't know. Maybe she's not anonymous enough. I mean, he definitely had a type because, you know, I think he liked his privacy, too. And, you know, he never dated a celebrity. I mean, as far as I know, there's probably somebody obvious I'm totally missing. I don't think he did. Carmen Electra. She had a Carmen Electra thing.

I remember that. God, she snared some good ones over the years. Carmen Electra. There's another one that I'm missing, a totally obvious one, but I can't remember. remember well so who so who is who is the biggest star left from basically my generation trickling down to yours springsteen madonna you'd put madonna over springsteen oh i mean it depends on like how are we talking about this? I don't know. I was just thinking about how the world just basically shut down for the last 24 hours because Prince died.

If Madonna died tomorrow. God forbid. God forbid. Yes, God forbid. I mean, the world would stop. Because not only, I mean, it would be, I mean, it just, it would be it would I mean, it just it would be that would be Michael Jackson. If Springsteen died tomorrow, it would be a lot of there. You know, it would be like Bowie's dying a little bit where you have a lot of shock and outpouring.

But Springsteen's relationship to American popular culture is just different from Bowie's. It just isn't the same. He won't have reached as many people in the ways that Bowie did because Springsteen just did a different thing. But I think the outpouring that you would feel would be from a class of person who wasn't saying anything when David Bowie necessarily died. I think the short list for me would be mccartney madonna springsteen um mick jagger mick jagger well mick jagger is going to be a huge one because bono i mean but like okay so we're talking about two different classes of death unfortunately right like i mean and we're speaking only hypothetically.

This is so morbid. Yeah, I feel bad having this conversation. It's just, I'm more thinking about, like, when artists reach the point that, if God forbid they pass away, like, the world stops, like it did with Prince yesterday. It's kind of the final level to get to if you're an artist, for how many people you've reached and touched. Right. final level to get to if you're an artist for how many people you've reached and touched right

no i mean it's it's it's crazy to think of it think about it this way but you can't help it you know when when this sort of thing happens like i think i mean unfortunately for what we do like important people dying is kind of the thing you you have in the back of your mind a lot of the time anyway. Yeah. Because, you know, it sort of shuts your, I mean, selfishly, it kind of, it changes your life. Now I'm depressed. Don't be depressed. I mean, we still have all these other great people, and we still have all this great Prince music.

It's okay. I mean, it sucks that he's gone, but, I mean, he left us he's gonna he's got so much music in that vault bill i know he could put out an album every year probably until we die michael jackson prince madonna i think it's funny or not funny i think it's interesting you group those three together because not only were they great at what they did but they were really interested in the art of of moving their career along in a way that always stayed interesting and different and new looks and new wrinkles and new paths and trying different things. And that's one of the arts of staying famous, you know, is to constantly keep people on their toes.

And all three of them figured that out, I feel like. Right? But in different ways, right? Like, I would say, wouldn't you say Madonna was the person who, like, did it the best? I mean, Prince didn't change that much, right? Like, he changed sounds, he changed, but his look was pretty, it didn't really change too much. He just was a crazy dresser. He was always up to stuff, though.

I think Madonna was the most calculating. Madonna clearly looked at it and said, every 18 months I have to zig this way, and then I'll zag that way, and then I'm going to zig back this way. She was almost like the most of a student i've had to do i think prince did it naturally it's just that i think he just got bored and tried different things and decided to change his name to a symbol and all that stuff and then well that was a legal matter just right and michael just had a lot of issues and yeah i had a lot of things happen to him and i had a lot of issues and had a lot of things happen to him and had a lot of demons and I think that probably pushed him to make

some of the choices he made but three fascinating people. Are you writing about this? Yeah, I'm writing about it. I just finished something about sex basically. Like what, you know how sex works in print basically

great I look forward to reading it Wesley Morris read you on the New York Times great to hear your voice talk to you soon okay bye before we call house

the star of Shack House our golf podcast that you can subscribe to on iTunes I want to give a quick shout out to channel 33 that's the ringers podcast that houses podcasts like Jam Session with Amanda Dobbins and Juliet Limon.

They talk about pop culture. The Watch, Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. That's where you'll get all their leftover Game of Thrones thoughts and then all kinds of thoughts on TV and all kinds of other stuff. Brian Curtis' media podcast is there. David Shoemaker just did an MMA podcast and is going to be doing a bunch of wrestling podcasts there we also have an NFL draft podcast with Mally Rubin and Robert Mays

that people have really liked so check that out channel 33 subscribe on iTunes subscribe on SoundCloud and it's really good if you like this one there's a very good chance you'll like the Channel 33 pod. And now, let's call House.

Joe House, how are you? Hey, we're Friday rolling. Friday rolling. Old times sake, Friday rolling. Why not? We're going to pour one out for Prince a little bit later. Let's talk hoops first.

Okay. So, this has been probably the worst round one I can remember in my life. I'm sure there's been worse, but recency bias just tells me that this has been awful. And I was trying to think of how I'd fix this or whether it even needs fixing. And really the problem is the league is so top-heavy right now. None of these series are that interesting

house would you go back to best of five with the following caveat top two seeds in each conference get four of the five home games so golden state right now houston just gets the one game at home that's it now they got to go back to Golden State for four and five. What do you think? So I like the idea of some creative thinking around how to make these playoffs more exciting and interesting. I will tell you, I personally try to make them more exciting for my own self by making small, modest wagers, none of which have come to fruition. I've been wrong on every one, and that's because the favorites, with the exception of the Dallas game and the Golden State game

and the Pacers, you know, very first one, but the favorites have been overwhelmingly kicking ass. And so it's just not been that fun to watch. And so, yeah, let's do something creative with this first-round matchup. Having said all of that, I still like seven. I like seven because I like having lots of games every night. And seven means there's going to be lots of games every night. And seven also means the teams grow to intensely dislike one another over the course of the

seven. I like that. I like how the follow onon for the next season, sometimes you get some rivalries that you didn't necessarily anticipate that develop over the course of seven, even when you're in a situation like this year where the better teams are putting the beat down on the lesser teams. So I wouldn't change it, but I like being creative in thinking about tweaks.

The thing I liked, you repeating again, you did a little bit of a Twitter suggestion box. The play-in for the eighth slot, we really have to come up with a way to incent the remaining teams to have something to play for and not put the league in that awful position where in the last week you have teams doing like what Sacramento did, which is sitting their very best players and altering the potential outcomes for genuine playoff contenders because of that. Yeah, so you described the entertaining assault tournament, which I had been pushing for

like since like 2007 i don't even know um basically you guarantee the first seven seeds in each conference and then you take the other 16 teams and you have a play-in tournament for the two eight seeds now i mean you can go even further with this and just say it's a 16-team free-for-all, and you throw away the conferences. But however you do it, it would allow us to have a team like Minnesota in round one, which would be so much more fun than, I don't know, Houston? Yeah, the depressing Houston. Sad Houston.

That was, I thought, one of the funniest vines I've ever seen in my life last night when Harden hits the go ahead shot and they cut to the Rockets bench and it's just all stone faces and people trying to calculate if they can change their first class plane tickets to tropical locations by move them back two days hilarious

I loved it it's so funny I can't think of anything in recent memory where the team so disliked one another they were so unenthused by competing in the playoffs is there any any proxy any any comparison to it I Dwight Howard is really starting to hurt his legacy a little bit I think it's because this also happened in that last Lakers year remember when he ended up getting himself thrown out of that last game but yeah I mean it's a team that should be good when you look at it and then you actually watch them and you go oh yeah Dwight Howard's not the same guy

anymore and oh James Harden's kind of a ball hog and it's probably not fun to play with him but uh but back to the Entertain and Sell tournament. I'm all for trying to make all this stuff more interesting. Right now, the round one, you have the occasional game seven with Spurs Clippers, right, like last year, which was awesome. Yeah. But guess what? The lower C, the teams that lost in round one last year, they only won nine games total. There are eight teams that lost in round one last year, they only won nine games total. There are eight teams that lost in round one last year.

There were three sweeps, two series ended in five, two series ended in six, and then the one series went to seven. This year, it looks like we might not have a game seven. I would say Cavs-Pistons will be done in four or five toronto indiana probably six miami charlotte's done in five the hawks are probably going to sweep the celtics warriors rockets will go five max spurs is a sweep okc's five clippers blazers is either four or five we might not have a game six in round one

so at the heart of your suggestion and at the heart of what you're sort of mulling here is really kind of a philosophy question what's your philosophy with regards to how important should the regular season be and shouldn't the seeds matter for the good teams? And you're expressing a little bit of dissatisfaction with the fact that

we're getting games that are, for the most part, are not that competitive. But isn't that, on the other hand, an endorsement of the seeding? House, I don't need seven games to find out if Golden State's better than Houston. You know? Really, what we, you know, in the 90s, when the playoffs got really fun with those best of fives and TNT and all the different games every night, and they really kind of figured out how to make the playoffs fun,

it was really fun to watch those best of fives. I enjoyed them. And it's like you have a situation. We'll never forget Denver-Seattle. Yeah. And you have a situation. how to make the playoffs fun. It was really fun to watch those best of fives. I enjoyed them. And it's like you have a situation. We'll never forget Denver-Seattle. Yeah. And you have a situation. We'll never forget Dikembe on his back. Like OKC-Dallas.

Dallas wins game two. And now there's a little edge to the series, right? OKC's going to Dallas. They're clearly a better team. But they have to win a game in Dallas, so they're not even coming home. Last night it's like, all right, it's 1-1, but, you know, we're going to take one of these next two. We'll get it back to OKC.

We'll get back home court, and we're going to win this series. I like that best-of-five edge, and I like the fact that there wasn't a lot of ground if you effed up. And also, you know, the best uh and also you know the best of five the one thing that was bad about it was you play this whole season then you could have three bad games and you're out i think if if you guarantee the top two seeds in each conference for the five home games and you made it really tough for the road teams to pull it off and you really penalize them for not being in the top six.

That solves that for me. I just want things to move faster. So if you had the tournament, if you had a 78 game season or an 80 game season, whatever, and then you had that tournament that took off another week, everybody got some rest. And then it's like, boom, let's go best of five. Now, and now we're moving and it's like, oh, this team's much better than this team. Let's get this series over with. Like, I love the Celtics. I thought we had a really good season. They're not going to beat the Hawks. Bradley's out.

Olenek's hurt. Jake Crowder's playing at 50%. Like, this series, when they couldn't win game one, this series is done. I don't see it happening. You know, this is a team that collectively overachieved. And if you start pulling pieces from the collective overachievement, it's just not there. You can't play Marcus Smart. I love Marcus Smart.

But he's one of those guys, if he doesn't have it, you don't play him. And when he has it, you ride him. You can't rely on him for 35 minutes. Yeah, you're bringing me around. So if you could ensure, if you could guarantee that the Entertaining as Hell tournament fills that void for me of, you know, I want three games a night starting, you know, whenever the playoffs start all the way through until June, you know, until we have the finals. You can have it.

As long as it can go. I know. Yeah, if you can guarantee me that, then I'm willing to jump over to the five. And I do think the idea of giving a reward to the top two Cs in each conference absolutely positively makes sense. And that's as far as you need to extend it. It's just top two. You don't need to make that, create that same, you know, reward for the top three teams. I'm coming around a little on it. Really bad round one. I think a couple of positive lessons we

learned was, one, I really like Kevin Lovett, the five. I think this could kind of alter Cleveland's ceiling a little bit. I've been could kind of alter Cleveland's ceiling a little bit. I've been waiting for them to play in there. That's where basketball is going. Nobody has a center anymore. I don't understand what took so long, but when they play Love at the five and LeBron at the four, I don't know. I just like it. And I like that he's playing well again, because I missed watching him play well. So that's been fun. The Clips, I went to game two. I don't think Blake's 100% healthy.

I thought he was picking his spots. I didn't like the way his body looked. I didn't like his posture. I do think he's banged up. But their bench played pretty well, and Chris is playing great. Redick's playing well. DeAndre's playing hard. It's a team that if Curry's hurt or if Curry's playing at 60%, it's a team that can at least make the Warriors work for it, I think, in round two.

I'm increasing my ceiling for the Clips. What do you think? I agree with that. We have this history of the Clips being up for the challenge. The two teams definitely don't like each other. Yeah. You know, that old cliche. But really, the Clippers' season was so altered by that loss they had very early on to Golden State,

where it looked like the Clippers had that game, and Golden State, as part of their 24-game streak at the beginning, came back and kind of stole one, and it really took the heart out of the Clippers for a while, and they didn't really even get it. They didn't get that heart back until after Blake got hurt, which was such a weird, you know, now looking back in the rearview mirror, the course of the Clippers season, they really got reset, reconstituted, refocused after Blake got hurt. But there's a great history between the Clippers and the Warriors. Both teams think that they hold themselves in too high esteem.

And there's a genuine, you know, FU. Chris Paul can't wait to go push Steph and grab him and punch him in the nuts. It's going to be spectacular. I can't wait for it. I like when you said Blake got hurt like he pulled his hamstring or something. He got hurt because he kept punching the equipment manager in the face. We should mention that. From multiple accounts from people I've talked to i don't know he was

out already he was on his way back yeah yeah but from multiple i've heard the blake situation's not great i hate to do a source to say steven a routine on this but you know he knows they try to trade him i think they're with the training staff because he had this quad issue that was a real issue for him. And if you watched him, if you're watching him closely, like he had that great dunk in game two. He's not in the air like he used to be. Like he's definitely, I would say, 60, 70 percent of his leaping capacity. And, you know, I don't know. I think it's going to be a really interesting situation to watch because if they lose in round two, then the whole should they trade Blake,

is it time to break this up, that's going to start. And guess who's going to get blamed for all that. So I think he knows that. I also don't think that having that tension is necessarily a bad thing. You know, we've seen the Rockets won a title after they tried to trade Robert Horry. Players get over it. It's a business. So maybe that little edge is

a positive thing. I don't know. Chris is pretty locked in. And Chris, I think that's the fourth Clippers-Blazers game I've been to over the years where he just demolished Damian Lillard. It's like a big brother, little brother thing. It's such an interesting matchup and so curious to me that Portland can't get Dame free.

Why does he have such a hard time getting away from Chris Paul? Very good defensive scheme by the Clips. They did a nice job because the Blazers are basically built around these two guards. It reminds me a little of the old KJ Hornacek sons teams

from the late 80s, early 90s. But that team had chambers. Portland has nobody else who can score. Portland's dying for Nick Batum, ironically. They need an outside, they need a stretch four is what they really need. Yeah, yeah, they need, like if Moe Harkless was good, they'd be in a lot better shape.

Or they had somebody, you know, like 2001 Jalen Rose, some sort of perimeter guy who's not a guard who can create shots because, you know, it's just too easy to stop two guards when nobody else is making any work.

In the playoffs when you play the same team. Yeah, that's right. I went to that game with our friend Nathan and, yeah, we ate sushi and then he had

an entire thing of chili cheese tots. I couldn't believe that picture. Why did he do that? I've never seen anyone have sushi and then chili cheese tots. It was incredible. It was really like. It's a weird combo. What's happening is you're losing your corner is what I'm learning.

You're just losing your corner. Nathan's flat out taking it. Look, look, look. No, Nathan's been sort of hovering around. He's been creeping. He's watched, you know, he was a judge at House Eats 3. I know. The showdown down in New Orleans.

And maybe he wasn't impressed. He's talking a little talk here and there. Anytime Nathan wants to sit down at the table, I'm right there with him. And by the way, ask Nathan about the price he paid the next day for having hot tots after sushi. I don't think it was worth the price. It was a rookie move, is what it was.

I want to see you guys eat deep dish pizza because one of the underrated house seats moments of my lifetime was when you ate an entire deep dish pizza in Chicago. It was one of the most disgusting things i've ever seen it was also it was inhuman i was actually you left us last summer i was so hungry and you the funniest thing was afterwards you're like hey we were you know it's

four hours before bedtime you want to go get a movie and And I'm like, nope. Got to go back to the hotel and lay down. Deep Dish. I'm not going to see a movie. Deep Dish is not your friend. So, Big Picture Basketball. Giordano's. So good. Thank you, Giordano's. Great pizza.

Big Picture Basketball. Go ahead. I'm not changing my opinion on the Cavs. I think when they, even though I like what they're doing with Love, I think when they have the right matchup, there's some chemistry stuff that might self-combust. I don't trust Ty Lue. I don't trust their perimeter shooters.

I don't trust the fact that it seems like they play better with Della Vadova than Kyrie just from the eye test. When Della Vadova's out there there's a coherence that I kind of like I think at some point that stuff's going to bubble Spurs look great

you're doing glass half empty I'm glass half full I think they're pulling out just enough I think love at the five is just the beginning we haven't seen Channing Frye yet when we might that's a perimeter just enough. I think love at the five is just the beginning. We haven't seen Channing Frye yet. That's a perimeter angle that still to develop.

We haven't seen a full-on J.R. Smith game yet where he scores 30 points and a half. There's a whole bunch of Cleveland yet to come. We also haven't seen the full-on J.R. Smith game yet when he accidentally elbows someone in the face and gets thrown out and changes the complexion of a series.

I would have, I still have the Warriors one. I'm not thrown off by the Curry injury. Spurs, I think the distance is tightened a little bit because even if Curry comes back, we have no idea if he's, he might be 80%, he might be 70%. I mean the Celtics did this with jay crowder

they rushed him back which i thought was a mistake and he's just not healthy and and i actually wish they just shelved him for the whole regular season until he felt better because who cares if you're five seed or seven seed like big deal um spurs have have closed the gap i would put the clips three i think the clips are playing better than OKC. I don't like what I'm seeing from OKC at all. I really don't. I know they rallied back in game three, but it just seems like in these close, tight games,

I just don't like their offense. I don't have either one of those teams ahead of Cleveland. I like Cleveland at three right now. I think the Spurs and the Warriors are a strong one too, I don't have either one of those teams ahead of Cleveland. I like Cleveland at three right now. Okay. I think the Spurs and the Warriors are a strong one, too. But I've been very impressed. That game, too, was impressive. That was a beatdown.

I put the Clips over Cleveland's stuff. That's just me. I'm not attached to it. Cleveland took the upstart Detroit shot. And I think Detroit is a sneaky good team. I still don't have a good explanation for why they faltered a little down the stretch. I didn't watch enough of them to develop a point of view on it. But we, on one of these very podcasts, one of these rolling joints,

peeped out the possibility of Detroit being an interesting matchup. And lo and behold, it was a great game one. Game two kind of stunk because Cleveland shot so well. And this love thing really is getting some legs. Love from the corner, love from, you know, a bunch of different directions. You know what the problem is, though, with the Pistons? Tell me. Reggie Jackson.

Yeah, I know it. It's just not there. It's just not there. It's all the things that I don't like about Isaiah Thomas' game with not a lot of the things that I love about Isaiah Thomas' game. It's just, I saw a ball with somebody who's just not that good of a shooter and who thinks he's better than he is. Sorry, Reggie Jackson, but I think he's just a third guard.

I think he's an overqualified third guard who, if he's your crunch time guy, I'm not that excited. Hey, quickly, because we've got to go to some other guests. Yeah. Your favorite story about Prince that you read over the last 24 hours. Oh, wow. I actually watched it on television. There's a local broadcaster here in D.C. named Donnie Simpson, who has been a legend in sort of the African-American radio community here and radio stations that played hip-hop when I was growing up.

So I'm a big Donnie Simpson fan, too. He told a story about meeting Prince and Prince knowing who he was and inviting he and his wife to a party. And they were in Minnesota, and Prince invited them to his house and said, Hey, man, I was going to try and do a Prince. I'm not going to do a Prince. He invited Donnie and his wife, and Donnie thought, Wow, this is unbelievable. First of all, Prince knows who the hell I am. And second of all, we're going to a party at Prince's house. And they went, and it was like 10 other people there.

And Prince played some music, and Donnie, you know, said that was, you know, that was the way that Prince, in his personal life, you know, ran some of those relationships. And he was just blown away by being included in such an intimate group without having met the dude and having learned that Prince knew his name for the very first time hours earlier. So that was a cool story that I think was the way Prince touched a lot of people. I mean, there's a legion of those kinds of stories about him inviting people

or expressing an interest. I mean, he was a huge Timberwolves fan and went to all those games. And the Lynx as well. And that Minnesota basketball did a huge outpouring of, you know, gratitude for Prince. But that's a story I saw in the last 24 hours that I thought was cool. And just when it was starting to look good for Minnesota again, they spent all that money on Tibbs.

I was like, this is great. Minnesota's back. And then Prince. Unbelievable. I didn't want to laugh, but it's so funny. Unbelievable. I mean, I'm not laughing. It's a sad thing, but right.

It was like, really? We're still in good shape. Come on. Minnesota's still in good shape. Well, the Prince thing is such a bummer. It's only 57. Yeah, I know. It was like, really?

Gosh, young dude. Young dude. When Michael Jackson died, it was awful, but it wasn't shocking. I mean, he had some issues. And the Prince, it just came out of nowhere. Yeah, well, you didn't also think that MJ was going to be coming out with another 20 years, 25 years worth of music. There was no ceiling for Prince. He was still out touring, still performing, and you still expected great, unbelievable genre-defining records coming out of the dude.

Joe Haas, always a pleasure. Talk to you soon. Hey, you know, we went this whole 20 minutes without talking about Scotty Brooks. Thank you for that. It's a great time to be alive here in Washington, D.C. sports. Nats, Caps, and Josh Norman on the D.C. Gruden's radar. Let's not talk about Scotty Brooks. I'll talk to you later, Bill Simmons. Bye, house.

Before we go, I wanted to mention we have a podcast that I already recorded with Key and Peele that is coming on Monday. So be ready for that. Thanks to HBO Now. Download the HBO Now app and start a free one-month trial in time for After the Thrones. For God's sakes, you got to watch After the Thrones. Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald from The Ringer. They finally got a TV show.

It comes on just a couple hours after Game of Thrones. The big premiere, April 24th, Sunday night. And you can watch After the Thrones on HBO Now and even on HBO on Monday night. Thanks to The Ringer. Quick reminder, go to theringer.com to subscribe to our new newsletter. We are closing in on when we're going to launch this site.

I'm excited about that. And thanks to SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor, and our favorite app for buying and selling tickets for sports and music. Enjoy the weekend. Hopefully the NBA playoffs are a little bit better than they were last weekend. And good luck to the Kings tonight because my kids are unhappy whenever the Kings are out of the playoffs. So keep your fingers crossed because I like when my kids are happy.

Have a good weekend. See you next week.