The Bill Simmons Podcast - Gronk's Gone, the Zion Zone, Harden vs. Giannis, and NBA Playoff Fixes With Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss Rob Gronkowski's retirement, Duke almost losing in March Madness, Trae Young vs. Luka Doncic for ROY, Harden vs. Giannis for MVP, NBA playoff matchups, mailbag questions, "Gym Corner," and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's very special episode, the Bill Simmons podcast that we're going to come up with a name for this Rosillo Simmons collaboration is brought to you by ZipRecruiter on the Ringer Podcast Network. Working smart, using science and technology to enhance performance and longevity. Sounds like Tom Brady to me, Ryan. Sure does. ZipRecruiter's technology and tools make hiring more efficient and effective. Smartest way to hire. So effective. 80% of employers who post on ZipCruiter get a quality candidate through the site.

And just one day, 80%, four to five chance. My listeners can try it for free. Go to zipcruiter.com slash BS. ZipCruiter is the smartest way to hire. Meanwhile, SoFi, hey, did you know you're being underpaid by your bank accounts? You know that? No, I do. That's why SoFi just launched SoFi Money. It's like checking and savings morphed into one single account. You'll earn way more interest on your money. You'll pay zero fees. Open a SoFi Money account. Learn how you can get your money right at SoFi.com slash Simmons, S-O-F-I.com slash Simmons. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, the world's greatest website where we are celebrating March Madness.

We're mourning the retirement of Rob Gronkowski. We have 1999 Movies Week, probably the last great movies year ever, which we've done a couple rewatchables from that. We have a ton more rewatchables coming. We have an announcement on that a little bit later this month. Are guys going to do mo better blues i don't think that was 99 1990 no if you get to it it's not part of the gimmick oh uh thank you that it had movie movie week whole bunch of features about that you can also listen to big picture with sean fantasy a little bit talking about stuff The rewatchables this week, Pretty Woman. It's great.

This is one of the most fun ones we've done. One of the best hooker movies ever? That's what we decided. It was one of the best seven hooker movies of all time. Me, Julia Lippman, and Amanda Dobbins. And that is coming up. And then Chase Serrano and I are doing Fast Five. I put on my Instagram, I was preparing for the Fast Five pod.

There's a scene with Vin Diesel where he turns. What is preparing? Preparing means watching the movie again, taking notes, getting the categories ready. Vin Diesel turns. He's looking away and he turns to the character seven times in two minutes. It's really when he elevated a level as an actor and a performer, I feel like. So yeah, check out my Instagram story for that. Coming up, Ryan Russell and I are going to talk about all things basketball. And we are going to name this podcast finally. Here's why.

I'm so tired of getting emails from people with names for- You're tired of it? I thought we loved this. I thought this was the routine. I'm tired of it. Three weeks, I'm tired. We have some good ones this week. All that's coming up first.

Pearl Jam. All right. Brian Marcillo's here. Nephew Kyle's here. His heart's with One Shining Podcast, and Rob Gronkowski. Let's talk Gronk for three minutes because I'm not sure he's actually retired. I think he's retired right now.

It also wouldn't be surprising if he came back on like November 10th for eight weeks. I don't think it can be ruled out. What an amazing career though, nine years. It feels like he's been around for 17, but think how short nine years is. Paul Pierce had played for the Celtics for nine years before he even won the NBA title.

Yeah, I love his career he even won the NBA title. Yeah, that's... I love his career. I love the whole thing. I love everything about it. And realizing when they got him, because he had a bad back situation in Arizona. And traps around. And he shows up and you're like, oh my God, this is going to be unbelievable. This guy should have been a top 10 pick.

Quick story. And I think I'm okay telling this. I don't think anybody's going to be unbelievable this guy should have been a top 10 pick quick story and i think i'm okay telling this i don't think anybody's going to care but mike stoops who was the head coach of arizona at the time he was a huge huge fan of me oh yeah coach stoop so shout out to him um so he told me the story off the air because i was like what you know having gronk there like did you really he goes dude it was nuts like i knew what he was but you know, having Gronk there, like, did you really, he goes, dude, it was nuts. Like I knew what he was, but you know, he had problems staying healthy. He's like, so Belichick called me before the draft. I was like, Hey, uh, I'm like, no Belichick. Hey coach, what's going on? He's like, all right. Uh, what's the deal with this Gronk guy? Is this guy an asshole or what? He's like, no, he's a big teddy bear. He's unbelievable. He's like, you're going to

love him. You're going to love having him around. All he cares about is winning. You know, he's, he's absolutely everything you'd want a guy. He's like, all right, cool. And that was it. Thank you. That was it. Cause he was just trying to figure out like, is this guy, one of those guys that's too much extra, you is it actually distracting is it not worth it and all those things and he's like no he's like he's he's awesome so yeah i'm uh i'm bummed i'm bummed he was tired i mean if he's happy whatever but uh you just hate it 29 years old because you could see it this year right you could see how different he was i love that he's getting out a year too early instead of two years too late which seems to be how football goes a lot of the times

you can see it this year. At the same time, was able to dig deep a couple times in those last few playoff games. I think he's the third greatest Patriot of all time. I thought about this for the last 24 hours. I think Brady is number one, and then John Hanna is number two, and I think Grok is three. I think he's the best tight end ever.

There's some real pushback on that. I can't tell if it's because of the hatred for New England. No, it's absurd to come up with another candidate because the thing that separates him is the blocking. His blocking has always been incredible. He was a top three or four offensive tight end ever just from a pass catcher standpoint, but then he was the best blocker in the league at that position for the entire decade. Right, and it was weird because, you know, he wasn't the same offensive weapon this year, but then it was almost like people were trying to say,

oh, look, he's really focused on the blocking now. And you're like, no, he's always been. Yeah, he's always been amazing at this. He cleans guys out. My favorite Gronk play ever. I tweeted this this morning. I tweeted the clip because I found it on YouTube and they lost the game.

It was the Denver game that they lost by two on the two-point conversion, the AFC title game. But it was fourth and 10. Right. He was really the only guy anyone would have said they're throwing to this guy. It was the season's on the line. There's a minute 30 left.

They're right around midfield. You know they're throwing it to him. It was like playing Madden where you just know the other guy's going to throw to video game Gronk. And you're just like, it was like playing Madden where you just know the other guy's going to throw to video game Gronk. And you're just like, all right, I'm going to play nickel. I'm just going to spot him coming out. I know he's going to run a straight line, but he might catch this anyway. And that's exactly what happened. He just runs a straight line. Brady throws a perfect, he's got two guys on him, makes this crazy catch.

And he's running under it too. It's he's just and in that moment i think you would have wanted him over anybody else um and he was also like just an awesome teammate um even when he got a little walkie a couple times i don't feel like there was never any maliciousness to it there was never people going oh man grock's being Like he's just, everybody just was all in on him all the time, which is hard in football. It's really hard. And I know, you know, there's probably some people listening to this right now.

And they're like, oh, you know, Gronk gets treated this way and others get treated differently. And, you know, a lot of that stuff came up in conversations on shows when I was back in Bristol all the time. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah.

Levitard. Like why is he a character? But if he was a black guy yeah basically that's i'm convinced that there's nothing more in the world that levitard wanted than for gronk to be black i think it's if you could grant levitard one wish he would just be like make gronk black to see if eliminate cancer or make grronk black, he's like, I'll get to cancer next time. So, but he does like, you know, there, there, there are times where Dan will say something and I'll be like, oh wow. You know, maybe I hadn't really thought of it that way. So I appreciate that.

But with the Gronk thing, I, I really think it's pretty simple. It's expectations. He never pretended he was anything other than just a big goof. Yeah. And when you're the tight end and you win,, you don't have to, you're not held to the same standard. If you're a quarterback doing that and you won, I don't know. I mean, I think you'd still get beat up a little bit. So I just think he's always been the same guy the whole way through.

Agree. The fact that he has a clan, it's not a family. I mean, it's unbelievable like if those guys are around and like braveheart like that'd be the clan you'd want to join it is a true posse in every sense they'd have the most wheat yeah they'd have the best canoes you know and you would just be like if they declared war on your village you'd just be like fuck you here here's our flags five super Bowls in nine years, won three. Hail Mary against the Giants, which was on the side of the end zone that I was sitting on the second time they lost the Giants.

Were you at both of those games? I was. That was the last time I've been to a Patriots Super Bowl. No kidding. Yeah, I won't go anywhere. It's because you can't get out. So it's like being trapped in your own car accident. It's like being trapped in your car after it's flipped over a hundred times,

just waiting to be the jaws of life to come. You can't leave. And it's the worst and fans of the other team. And it's just like, just get me out of here. So, yeah, but he almost caught, he's playing on one leg in that Superbowl. They have Gronk on one leg. They have Ocho Cinco, who doesn't even need to be covered as one of the two receivers.

And they still almost win. And that Hail Mary goes, it's in the air and Gronk on one leg trying to get it. And he really did almost get it. And then he was also involved in the Eagles Hail Mary too, I think, which wasn't as close. But awesome athlete.

I was thinking about it. Just trying to think about when you have athletes pass through your life, almost like the approval rating, like how a presidential candidate or a president has an approval rating, and it would be like 42%, 48%. And then you have some athletes go through your life, like Paul Pierce. You'd be through your life, like Paul Pierce. You'll be like, I fucking love Paul Pierce.

Eh, 03, 04 is kind of a pain in the ass, right? 05, there's things you point to. Eh, I wish he'd been in better shape. Gronk, really, I wouldn't have changed really anything about the experience. It was a great nine years, a couple bad luck injuries. I just really enjoyed rooting for him. I liked having him in my life.

You know how different players in different sports, there's times where it looks like LeBron should have, there should be another league above the NBA. Yeah. Pedro at times, I'd be like, he needs to have, there needs to be something better than Major League Baseball. Watching Zion sometimes this year in college.

Totally. You're like, oh, Jesus. Right. Gronk had moments or stretches through his career where you just went. It doesn't seem fair. Yeah. He seemed like the Little League, the 12-year-old in Little League. It's like, that guy's 6'3".

Why is he in the Little League World Series? He drove here. Right. he drove here and you know probably the worst thing that happened to him was when they changed the head hunting rules although that would have also been bad for him and guys just were going for his legs left and right and

when TJ Ward finally took him out and blew at his knee like that was inevitable because that had been happening over and over again where he's turning to catch the ball and guys are just diving at his legs full speed. And it was always going to end badly. And it finally did. But he had some bad injuries.

What did he break his arm twice? He has a plate in his arm. Well, remember that thing? Two major knee injuries. Well, the arm thing was ridiculous. Staff infection. It kept going on and on and on. They're like, oh, no, it's good.

No, it isn't. No, it isn't. And then, I mean, I forget how many different times they went in on his arm. Was it four times or something ridiculous? So. Quite a career. Quite a nine years.

I wouldn't take back a thing. I'll miss the guy. And I think we'll see him again on like November 10th. You think he's coming back? You're putting that out there right now? I think it's 50-50. The fact that it's this removed

from the Super Bowl tells me it's real. Like if it was the week after, I'd go, oh, you know. Well, we thought it was going to happen right after, remember? Yeah. But I mean, you talk to any NFL guy like the week after the season, they all want to retire. Yeah.

Like this, I'm over it. And then, you know. So I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, he was awesome. They have 12 draft picks and at least two of those. He'll do the two tight end draft probably right although now they did receiver two all right we've talked enough uh football i liked how you said we

were only going to do three minutes on grunt how many we do six just under 10 oh fuck sorry sorry america um as soon as you said it i was like yeah right us three minutes march madness quick sure it's been brutal the the saturday was the worst the duke game saved it from a 24-hour stretch of people wondering if college basketball was dead how do we fix it the duke game was really fun really dramatic one of the better round two games i think we've had. I loved it. And it reminded me why I love March Madness. But getting there was a slog. Right, because Saturday night, I'm like, okay, other than LSU this morning, this whole day sucked.

And Kansas is down 30. And you go, okay. How many teams are down 25, 30? At least four or five, right? I felt like everybody on Saturday. Jesus. And then we knew the big east wasn't any good but then villanova to get trounced like that you're like okay well i guess

i don't have to like i just had it turned to this thing on saturday where i was like the games were on and then i realized like i've just stared at this for five minutes and nothing's happened you know what i mean and then i checked out the atlanta philly game which was awesome um because i was getting annoyed with college hoops but you're right yeah i mean that's the duke thing like it's such a duke way to win to miss your own free throw game winner well zion misses the three right and it and if uh if they get the rebound it it's over. Bounces back out. Duke gets the ball back. Zion has, I thought, a phenomenal, phenomenal big-time play there where he gets the three-point play, ends up missing the free throw. But that was awesome.

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, that's the thing. That was great. That's what I wanted from him in that spot where everybody, you could see everybody else was kind of scared at that point. And Zion's like, okay, I got this. Zion is the most, and I tweeted this out, but he's the most well-liked Duke player of all time by non-Duke fans.

I was rooting for them in that game. I couldn't believe it. I've never, I mean, I used to always, and look, this is a lot of New England. This is me being a Big East guy back in the day. And I just hated Duke. I hated him. I hated him.

I created ways to hate him. I used to get so mad about him in the day. And, you know, I just hated Duke. I hated him. I hated him. I created ways to hate him. I used to get so mad about him all the time. Yeah. And then, you know, you do the job and you start meeting some of the guys and you like some of them. And then, you know, you can't do anything except have just a ridiculous amount of respect for Coach K.

So this is weird. Like I've kind of wanted them to win games. I openly wanted them to win. Yeah. Normally I would have been all in on Central Florida, like to the nines. Right. Like Lehigh.

I remember being like, yes. Right. Like the biggest Lehigh fan. I remember working out in West Hartford and I was like, stopped everything. And I don't normally do that. Usually I'm a lot more focused.

I wonder if college basketball during the age of social media, it's in a weird place because the guy in Wofford who just couldn't make a shot. And then people are mad about that the way we would be mad with professional athletes. And these guys are like college kids. It's going to happen. Murray State, those guys, they just played badly. It's a big stage. You're on CBS. Everybody's going nuts about John Morant. And then Florida State comes out and hits a million shots in the first half. And all of a sudden that game's 25, it's over. The way momentum goes in college hoops is pretty tough. And then when you see

people going nuts about it, it's like, all right, settle down. Think about this. How many times have we seen late game situations where everybody seems like they've forgotten what you're supposed to do all the time, right? It's the kids, the coaches sometimes. Sometimes the coaches on like the worst, the lesser of the two teams, depending on seating. It's like, wait a minute,

you guys have a four point lead here with three minutes to go. Like keep playing basketball. That Rick Barnes thing yesterday was, I mean, he's always been... I've always been making fun of him when I used to watch college basketball at the time. He was always a train wreck. That was really

special yesterday. What were they up? 27? 25? Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm like... I watch all these situations and I go, okay, wait a minute. If it happens to all of these great coaches and all of these kids, then it really is the best evidence of how big the moment is that it screws you up. And if it happens every year and it happens like every, like next weekend, we're going to have a really stupid late game situation where all of us are going to be home watching going, what are you doing? Like, how do you not figure this out? So I think a lot of that has to do with just, we forget how hard that is, how much pressure you're under in those spots.

Especially now you have the teams that make this Sweet 16, they go back to campus and it's just a two-day, you know, love fest for those guys, right? Now they're hearing from everybody they've ever met in their life is texting them, DMing them, hitting them up. And now they're going to this Sweet 16 and that's

another level of pressure because it's like, oh man, and then what if we make the Final Four and then all of a sudden you're down 10, everybody's looking at each other. John Morant, it was funny, the announcers in that game because they wanted it so bad

and they're like another three meanwhile they're like down nine four minutes in Florida State's making everything right but they want CBS wanted that so badly and then with Duke at the end normally you'd want the upset but there's no way they

didn't want Zion to at least make the final four that I mean that was a ratings catastrophe if he gets knocked out Normally, you'd want the upset, but there's no way they didn't want Zion to at least make the Final Four. I mean, that was a ratings catastrophe if he gets knocked out. Who is the signature guy in the tournament if Duke gets knocked out? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, North Carolina's got a bunch of guys. Now you're just looking at coaches. Yeah, the North Carolina.

The point guard, where's he supposed to go in the draft? Kobe White? Yeah. the North Carolina, the point guard who, where's he supposed to go in the draft? Kobe white. Uh, he's, I think it's, it seems like it's right outside of the lottery, but that guy's a gamer, but I could see that changing.

You know, he can be one of those guys where you go, he's been, um, I don't, I don't know offhand if this is true or not. I have to look it up, but I thought maybe he struggled a bit.

Maybe I shouldn't even be going down this road, but started a little bit at the beginning of the year and then really took off. I mean, I thought he was so great in so many games. What NBA guy does he remind you of, past or present? Gabe Pruitt. Gabe Pruitt. Come on.

No, I just always try to think of random Celtics guys for you. I'm so bad at the comp thing. Other than Doncic being hard and everybody yelling at me when I said that. That's pretty good. Yeah, people yelling at me that hadn't watched Doncic play. I'm like, that's stupid. Like, have you watched him? That was absurd last year.

I will say, though, and we've talked about Trae Young a couple times. How about this? This is like a real thing now. I watched that Atlanta-Philly game because i had it on one of the tvs you were tweeting about herder yeah i'm kevin herder you love him uh probably a max trey young has i don't know whether it's just hanging out with migos is giving him confidence or what's going on but that dude's got some swagger already. Yeah, he had that though before.

No, but it was gone. Remember, Summer League kind of knocked it out of him and then early in the season, but now it's like really back. Summer League was brutal. Summer League, it looked like he was over his skis. Totally. But man, he took Jimmy Butler right off the dribble for that game winner, had Embiid coming at him

and did this kind of mid- 2000s Nash little floater shot. That was big time shot. I still hate that trade, but but man, at least he's good. At least Bagley's good. At least there's like no Darko Milicic, Hashim Thabit type of regret. I can't believe that it's a real thing now, though. Like when we did, what, last week's pod or whatever we were doing, and I went ahead and, you know, we ended up not doing all the awards, right? But I looked at Trey and then put him next to Doncic's stats, and I go, this thing's

really close. It's really close. It just feels like, you know, if we're going to do this, Doncic from the beginning was so steady. His three-point shooting tailed off really last two months. He's like under 30%. I think he had a bigger load in terms of that team was initially trying to make the playoffs. He had a lot of attention early.

Trae Young was the opposite. Atlanta, no expectations, and lot of attention early. Trae Young was the opposite. Atlanta, no expectations, and he was terrible early. And then he was able to just get these reps, right? For a team that didn't care what it was and just wanted him to play 38 minutes a game, run the offense, keep doing your thing. There's no bad shot. Keep going, keep going, keep going. And that worked. And that was, you know, we've seen rookies go into different situations where sometimes they're in that situation. You're just getting reps, which is great. Or there's like the Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum situation, where you're just on a good team. You're expected to figure out everything on the

fly where you fit in. Which situation would you rather be in? Because I always thought it would be better to be in the Jalen Brown situation. But the more I look at it, I actually think it's better to be in that Trey Young, Colin Sexton situation where it's like, we stink, do your thing, get some reps.

It scares me a little bit, right? Because, you know, Trey was somebody at Oklahoma. They didn't have a lot of other scores. So when you watch it, you're like, man, you're not going to be able to do some of this stuff.

It's like some of these shots, like no way an NBA team is going to take you seriously if you're taking these kinds of shots and yet trey still takes some of those okay but the overall numbers are really good and he's been on this tear but even in that philly game like and i tweeted out i'm sure you saw like he took a 30 footer right early in the shot clock a couple possessions before he hit the game winner and you go what is the point of that um you know i just don't think that really anybody other than steph or clay should be ever taking those kinds of shots but the question is three years from now are those going in 40 of the time and if that's the case

right there is something to the steph thing you can't you can't really get in his case but i i was afraid like it's a really good question because i remember thinking like oh is that mean because he's going to be on Atlanta? Look, Atlanta ended up being a lot better this year than we thought. I mean, Collins is terrific. Once Collins came back, that became one of the most fun league past teams. Them and Sacramento were my two favorite. Oh, these guys are on.

All right. Yeah, right, right. So it was fun. So even though I go, you know, I didn't like the roster. We knew it was going to be a bad year for them. They're competitive. They're fun. So whatever like concerns I had of him just being able to do it all on his own

and not having to answer to anybody, I do think it's going to be a positive for his development where the beginning of the year, I was worried about it. And I'm sure it's a hell of a lot more fun being him than being Jalen Brown. Let's take a break. Hey, the old way of watching sports is over stream over 100 fight nights a year featuring the biggest names in boxing and mma without the pain of pay-per-view fighters like canelo alvarez triple g daniel jacobs anthony joshua michael venom page rory mcdonald and more plus behind the scenes

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Check it out. So Trey Young by the month, November was 20% from three, 14 points a game. It got a little better each month. February was his breakout month. 23 and nine, 44% from three. And in March, he's at 37%. But he's basically, since the All-Star break, has basically been 25 and eight, 40% from three.

Which I would say, if you told me that in June, this is what this guy's stats are going to look like after the all-star break. And here's, and your team's going to have a chance to win 30 games. That would have been like a celebration. Yeah. Where this story is now versus where it was draft night when you're going, what are you guys doing?

And what was weird was we all like Trey young. It was just like, you guys, why are you passing on Donchage? What are you guys doing? Right. And then it became a thing like, Oh, you hated Trey, Trey Young. It was just like, you guys, why are you passing on Doncic? What are you guys doing? Right. And then it became a thing like, oh,

you hated Trey, Trey Young. If you liked, if you thought they were dumb, but it's like, no, I can think both. I just think Doncic is James Harden.

As you said, he's, he's somebody who could be the best player in a championship team. I don't know if Trey Young can, but he's at least proven he can be one of the top three guys on a championship team. The fact that this isn't a raging F is a win. Yeah.

And it's not even close to a raging F anymore. And that's what it felt like during summer league, where we would have sports center rips of him for 30 seconds, looking like he doesn't belong out there. It was summer league game. Summer league was really alarming. And it got so bad. I was starting to kind of like root for him a little bit right it felt bad good lesson as always don't take anything away from summer league ever it's the worst it's the it's unbelievable it's like they're playing a

different game i mean like the fact that he was so bad in those games and then look he had some good output games i think there were some good stat number games that he had in summer league, but it was still a lot of shots from what I remember. And look, I was out there. It's one of the best basketball experiences if you're into hoops. It's so much fun. We'll wait till Zion goes this year. Oh my Lord. I wonder if he'll be sitting it out though. Like LeBron, remember when LeBron did the summer league stuff in Boston and he just would decide certain games he wasn't going to play? I didn't enjoy that.

I want to talk about playoffs. I didn't prep you for this ahead of time. Great. This is the annual, are we sure we like the way we do the NBA playoffs conversation. Years ago, I did the Entertaining as Hell tournament, which I've now kind of backed off on because I really liked the 7, 8, 9, 10 thing. So if we had, basically, if we guaranteed the top six seeds in each conference and then put the last two up for grabs in each conference and had 7 versus 10, 8 versus 9 for those last two spots. First question, would you want single game

or would you want best two out of three for that? What would you want to watch as a basketball fan? I feel like single game is good. Yeah, I don't need a below 500 team getting, I don't know. But then again, do I want the 10th seed moving on? So here we go. In a single elimination, it's more likely that it would. You'd reseed it after. But here's how it would go this year. If it season ended today,

we would have number seven Detroit against number 10 Charlotte. In Detroit, winner takes all. We would have number eight Miami against number nine Orlando. Miami home court, winner takes all. Utah home for Minnesota. And then this is the one that got me really excited. San Antonio home for Sacramento. I just look at it this way. Is it more fun if we had those four games? Yes. Do I really care who the seven or eight seeds are? Not really. So why not? And then could this allow the NBA to cut back on the regular season a little, maybe go from 82 to 78? You have these four games and you televise them on ABC on a Tuesday night and a Wednesday night, double headers,

you take the money from that, maybe that replaces some of the lost attendance. I just wonder though, do we really need some kind of system where after 82 games and you're that many below 500 that you actually have a chance to be in the playoffs? All these teams are either 500 or Minnesota is the only one that's not doing great now, but here's the other thing.

So if you had like a ninth or 10th play in possibility, would the Lakers be, excuse me, would the Lakers be trying more right now? Like now you have the shadow of LeBron. Oh, you don't want to see LeBron in a one game playoff. Uh oh. Be more fun. It is. The answer-oh. It'd be more fun. It is. The answer is yes.

It would be more fun. And I think there's an unintended consequence there. Maybe it is intended that maybe you find a better way to sue the tanking stuff if you have four more teams viable in this thing, or maybe six more teams. Because then the Pelicans can't do the whole, eh, Davis, we'll just play him 25 minutes a game and we're kind of tanking, but not really.

It's like if you have a chance to get into one of those one game playoff spots, you can't really throw away your season if you're in the mix. I don't think. I think that's irresponsible to your fans, to everything. I want to watch my team in a one game playoff I just don't want more playoff teams

I just don't you're getting the same amount I know I know what you're saying but it's we're locking down six seeds in each thing so there's some real value

in being in the top six I get that it's only going to be eight teams once you're actually doing it again but I I don't know like win

win 45 games. That's the new podcast is Lukewarm with Ryan Rossello and Bill Simmons. Did you want me to be more excited about this? No, I just... So you're saying you would... You love fixing stuff. You're saying you wouldn't watch those four games.

Of course I would. So there we go. So there we go. We both would. Right, right. I already said that. And yes, it would be more fun. Yes, it'd be more fun. I think we should have... Here we go. Oh, yeah. Right. I already said that. And yes, it would be more fun. Yes, it'd be more fun.

I think we should have, here we go. Oh, yeah. I haven't written anything out yet. We should have the number one seed be able to pick their opponent. And then all the way down, make it a TV show. Get Sprite involved. A couple ads. I have been calling for that one forever.

Oh, really? No, no. Did I just steal that from you? You did not. You did not. Don't you like it as we get older and you're like, I've thought of this thing

and you're like, I wrote that three years ago. I have 20 years of content. I had the all-star, two guys picking the all-star team thing. That's in my book. That was sort of my, how I'd fix the NBA,

how I'd fix the NBA chapter. And I'm televising it. And I thought it was like this absurd idea that would never happen and now it's actually happening. You know what I love about that too is what a massive,

it's a great example. It's not because of the entertainment part of it. It's an incredible disconnect on the two sides. All the players think we really care who's going last. And none of us care.

None of us. I've not once ever been like, I can't wait to see who's, I don't not once ever been like i can't wait to see who's i don't know anyone that said i can't wait to see who goes last bradley biel went last he's going to be 13 all nba this year right it's this persecution complex thing of of today's whether it's a public figure or an athlete and it's like oh you guys just like no we're all we all love basketball and we want to see how you would draft but But you know, can I get super philosophical here for a second?

This ties into the whole youth sports culture we have now. Uh-oh. Yeah. What does that mean? Everybody thinks their kids should be playing. This is new? The whole concept. No, no, no, no.

It's worse because the parents are more psycho than ever. Privates. If my kid, if I'm going to do all this driving, if we're going to make this commitment to the team, but you're coming off the bench, then maybe that's not worth our time. It's all about what is this doing for me? Is this a perfect situation?

Oh, it's not? Well, then we should find another situation. There's a lot of that. And I think that ties into the last guy picked in the All-Star. Well, I wouldn't want to be the last guy picked. It's like, guess what? You're still one of the 24 All-Stars. It's great.

Giannis and LeBron, it's not like it was Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson picking the teams. Giannis picked four centers. It's not like there's any rhyme or reason to this. Um, I don't know. Uh, yeah,

look, I, you just talked about kids just now and then driving around. This may not have anything to do with what you just said, but I go, maybe I won't have kids. Cause I would hate to have to drive around LA and bring them to practice. I would,

I would love nothing more than for you to become a youth sports parent about six years from now. And all of your takes on the behavior on the sidelines, I think you'd get a lot of material out of it. Oh, well, I think I would go out of my way to never be one of those parents though. I would just determine, hey, I'm not going to be that way. I'm not going to be nuts. My daughter was in a tournament a couple of weeks ago and the game started late because two games earlier, there had been a brawl between the parents on both sides

that had to be separated. So our game started 20 minutes late. We had a little league. Think about that. You're going to fight at your kid's soccer game. It doesn't surprise me though. Like, dude, when I was seven or or eight we were on the cougars and we were the yellow team and there was this coach in the town that like really knew his stuff and he was a great baseball player in

the past or something and he he like we would have the dumbest arguments with the parents the parents would go crazy on each other. And then like one coach was like, Hey, you don't have a first baseman's mitt on your first baseman. He's disqualified. And he'd be like, Oh, okay. Well, your catcher doesn't have the proper catcher's mitt. He's disqualified. And like, this was really happening. We're all eight and we would sit around and watch the parents argue. And I swear to God, one time it was all the kids sitting in the field on their gloves waiting for the parents to stop screaming at each other. And I don't know if it went on for an hour, but it wasn't like five minutes either.

So seeing that and then seeing how crazy the parent thing is and having buddies that coach in high school and different stuff. And they're like, it's the worst because of the parents. Well, the good thing is with the NBA, it stops with the parents when the players finally get there. There's no stories at all about parents being completely irrational and horrible and calling the GM and the owner all the time and calling the coach. Can you imagine? Oh, wait, I can think of like 12 stories right now. Can you imagine being a parent of an NBA player and calling Thibodeau? Like, I really think you're using Gorgie Jang wrong

this is Andrew Wiggins' dad I have some thoughts on my son in the pick and roll you know I really don't like how you cross match him defensively he's like you know I think a couple

mix in a mix in a shooting guard every now and then. Well, there's always every year there's a draft and then the rookies come in the league. And then around November, December, stories start floating around about two of the guys in the lottery who are now on NBA teams whose parents are a problem. And I always enjoy it. Every year I hear it. Yeah.

I mean, I remember when I came home. His mom moved there. It's been bad. There's so many stories that are crazy that you can't really say that I always wonder like, how impactful is this? Is it just the way it's done? Like, think all the stories that you know behind the scenes that we can't ever share with anybody.

And you just go- I wish I could share some of the parent stories. But then again, it's like, is it just part of the deal and it sucks? Or does it actually lead to you losing more games? You know what I mean? Because some of the stories of guys, they're really good teams and it works out. And it doesn't seem to be a problem. So I can never figure out the value or the loss of value on having just a really shitty

situation with a player and his family. I would think the biggest problem to navigate, and I'm sure this isn't a new NBA problem, is the people in the player's life who they're interested in that person being the best player in the team. They don't want to hear about how this person fits in or it's all for the greater good or you got to sacrifice some shit. They're just like, how does this person become a max player, the best player on the team, get endorsements, become super famous? That's their end game. So you look at, let's take Boston, for example. If I'm in Tatum's friends and family circle and I'm watching this season and Tatum by every metric is, is been worse the last nine weeks than he was all last season, which makes no sense.

He was, I think Saturday night, I think it was five for 16, no free throw attempts in the game. Uh, they, the Charlotte game that they blew, like he's really regressed. It's alarming. Um, and if I'm in his circle and I'm watching that, I'm panicking. Because I went from like, this is the guy who dunked on LeBron, who almost made the finals, who is this trade asset that Celtic fans are going, I wouldn't even trade him for Anthony Davis. And now nine months later, Jalen Brown has been better for two solid months. I don't think they could get Anthony Davis for Jason Tatum as the centerpiece of the package right now unless you threw in a bunch of other stuff. And he's not getting enough shots.

And I don't feel like he's been as good as an offensive player. I don't really know what his endgame is if he's just going to shoot twos. We're in a situation now where it's like, if you're not shooting a lot of threes and you're not getting to the line, I don't really know what his end game is if he's just going to shoot twos. He's in a situation now where it's like, if you're not shooting a lot of threes and you're not getting to the line, what are you as a basketball player in 2019 in the NBA? The fact that he doesn't get to the free throw line is the dumbest thing. He's like two and a half free throw attempts a game. He's 680s. He should be able to get to the rim two times a quarter, right?

Yeah. What's up with his ball handling? Do you think it's actually not as good as we thought it was? It's been bad this year. He needs like a personal trainer. Can you imagine though if we were hanging out during the Eastern Conference Finals

going, hey, you know, probably next March, we'll have real questions about how good he's going to be, and he'll have regressed, and Jalen will be better than him. And you'd be like, what? They'd be like, well, we won't have to schedule that podcast, because that's not going to happen. And it's bad. It's so bad. You need... My thing with young NBA players, and we talked about Trey Young earlier, you need a couple of like really signature things

if you're going to make the jump, right? If you're going to be like an all NBA type guy, like Bradley Beal, incredible shooter. Like he always had that. He had some length. He's got a little bit of a mismatch, but ultimately the shot was the thing that he always had. And even when he was young

and even when he came in the league, you would watch him and you go, that guy's like a taller Ray Allen, like I see it. Tatum, I felt like watching last year that he was going to be this potential 27, 28 a game scorer. And this year you watch him, I don't see the array of shots. I don't, if he's not going to be able to get to the basket consistently, I don't know how he gets to 27 points. How would you fix him? I'd get him away from Kyrie.

Yeah. And I think that's kind of the deal here. And when Kyrie had said that stuff about, you know, you can't just take long twos, he was, and, you know, when he was saying you can't just dribble, dribble, dribble, take a long two, he was obviously talking about Tatum. That was earlier in the season. I was talking to somebody that said, hey, watch,

watch how they use Tatum at the beginning of the game and how Kyrie like gets him involved. And then later on, it's just, it's almost like he's doing it out of like hey let me obligation let me let you pretend you're part of what we're doing but then you're not really going to be and if you're Kyrie you're you know this is the part of where Kyrie where I can understand his frustration where you go look if we just spent 10 minutes talking about Tatum's regression then why is Kyrie supposed to hold his hand and fix it you know Kyrie's got enough things going on. I may not like Kyrie's approach, and I may not like all of his quotes,

but I could certainly understand his frustration. So I don't know how it's fixed. Do you feel like if you're a scoring forward in the NBA in 2019, can you ever make an all-NBA team or be that caliber of a player? If you're not either making three to three and a half threes a game, or you're getting into the free throw line eight to 10 times a game.

I don't, I mean, that doesn't even seem like it's a player that exists anymore. Right? Well, it does. It's, it's the four forwards of the Celtics.

It's Marcus Morris. Jalen's taking a couple more threes, but if you're the forward who's averaging like 14 and five, that's the easiest guy to replace in the league right now. You know? Right. And we're thinking he's going to be- We talk about Herter.

You joke about Herder but I know what Herder is like Herder's gonna be in the league for 13 years you know he's gonna have moments he'll be on like a title team

as like the Kyle Korver of some 2025 team you think he'll be the first active Hall of Hammer he's 10 years in they go you're a lot

but I think we're at the point with the nba now with the specialty thing where if you don't if you're not the highest possible level of something then i don't know what to do with you totally but see i thought his finishing at the rim like the way he could get last year right and i go okay there's there's his so what happened to that i don't know and you know remember last year when it was the only time i think i'd ever criticized brad stevens and i like was ready i apologize for doing it ahead of the comment clear out give it to tatum and i said i'd like them to let tatum force the issue i'd like them to actually you know we we all hate iso ball and we get mad about it a whole piece on the ringer about it like let him loose let's go yeah

it's a chance to win. I would like them to have bad forced possessions with him. So do you think Kyrie, you think the Kyrie thing has made it impossible for the let it loose thing and now he's in this weird no man's land? Right. Because if you will go back and watch last year,

he's like a different guy. So a lot of this has to be mental slash situation. It is. That's what I think. And like, that's where i kind of give jalen credit he was so bad the first half of the season you're absolutely right the tear that he's been on the last couple months and it was kind of him just going awesome and f this like that's really what it felt like i really respect how he's handled the last couple months

i'm gonna get my buckets in transition i'm gonna attack when i can attack and you know that's just what i'm gonna do i'm going to wait around for it anymore. The thing is, like, you just never know with young players, which is why it's so dangerous to now so low on Tatum. Because, like, look at Russell. Look at Russell, how he's evolved from year one, year two, year three to now where he is, where he's going to be in the playoffs. He's on the radar of basketball people, but I think there's this whole other wave of casual fans that probably haven't watched a lot of Brooklyn. And they're going to see this guy and be like, is that the guy in the Lakers? The guy who just made the 28-foot pullback three to win a game on the road?

Wasn't that the guy in the Lakers traded? There's this whole audience now that hasn't even seen him yet. I was on with Zach last week, and I said to him, I feel like my test for you as an NBA guy is what you think of D'Angelo Russell. Because you want to get on the Lakers for moving on from him too soon. Okay, that's fine. But dude, even the beginning of this year, I was still going, this guy's never going to figure it out.

He's never going to figure it out. Because he's another guy who didn't get a lot of free throws, but he has somehow figured out this perimeter, this long range game. These floaters he's throwing up too are nuts. But he doesn't get to the line more than three, four times a game. He's actually a really good comp though for your Trey Young thing, where it's like, are you better off being a young guy who's just like, go ahead. We're not going to be any good. Just go figure it out. Is that what D'Angelo Russell did? Because he was always a guy that took shots.

He was always a guy that was out there, and the usage stuff that I've talked about in the past about him has been absurd, but now it's just sort of working, and they're competitive, and it's not this empty stat night that you see from a lot of guys that are on bad teams. Can I get back, though, to something? Because this is something we were alluding to, and I needed to bring this up. Wait, hold on.

Can we take a break? I'm going to tell you. Give me a greeny tease. China just bought your 401k. Details next. Let's talk about Zoom. Every day is a little bit better when you use Zoom. Zoom Video Communications,

the web's best reviewed video conference service used by millions, including people at The Ringer, to meet one-on-one or hundreds at a time. With Zoom Video Conferencing, you connect face-to-face with anyone across town or around the world using flawless video, clear audio, and an instant sharing of files, videos, anything you want. Connect through any device, desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, conference room system, Zoom video conferencing,

Zoom rooms, Zoom video webinars, Zoom phone. Put state-of-the-art tech at your fingertips. Let you do business at the speed of Zoom. And if you're not using Zoom video communications, the only question I have is this, why not? I'll make it super easy for you. Visit was like to my, having my entire day, my entire year revolve around the Red Sox 705 pitch, you know, where I go. Okay. I handed a girlfriend a Nesson schedule once we started dating and I was like, the red ones are home, white ones are away. And then there's some 10 Oh fives.

I mean, we go do dinner maybe before, but this is where I'll be the next six months. I didn't miss a game. I think for like seven years, i didn't miss a game i think for like seven years i didn't miss a game if it was if i was outside i'd bring an earpiece radio thing golf fishing loser uh celtic stuff i never cared about anything else as much as i cared about the red socks including people but it just sort of went away. Right. And the thing that sucks the most about it is it kind of went away right when they started winning. Yeah. I mean, if I worked in insurance, I would be a much happier fan type now, but you still have it for the Celtics.

And I think it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I guess I didn't really set that up. No, no no no i i do like i was watching the stupid spurs game last night well i i know you but i was like i know they're gonna lose i know aldridge is gonna have 40 i was wrong he had like 48 48 and i'm watching it going i'm just waiting for glimmers of hope because i really do think they're gonna lose to indiana though okay so this is this is perfect this is perfect this. This is why we're flowing here. You've said some stuff in the past where I was like, he's really still locked into some of the stuff that maybe I think doesn't mean anything. And maybe sometimes I downplay that stuff too. Because I remember caring about the results all the time or hoping. And that's really what the Celtics season has been now.

With eight games to go, you guys are still doing this, like, hoping for a sign. And Marcus Morris last night, his quotes were insane. Like, oh, we still know that we can kind of put this thing together. You're like, what gives you any hope? So that's why I was really surprised or maybe i shouldn't have been by the plane ride to like the plane ride just fixed it right just fixed it and they blow an 18 point lead to charlotte yeah and then housed by a team they're still supposed to be better than in san antonio so there's nothing that's fixed here no it's it i

actually think it's worse than ever um that's after thinking it was fixed though no i thought the charlotte game was was absolutely appalling it was a complete collapse and it was like the 10th time that's happened this year and uh the stevens thing i i don't understand so what's fair about stevens here because you remember during the playoffs last year we were doing the stupid the Stevens thing, I don't understand. So what's fair about Stevens here? Because you remember during the playoffs last year, we were doing the stupid topic of like- I honestly thought he was the next Popovich. Right.

How many players would you draft before you take Stevens? Some guys are like, well, maybe five. That seems, that's like the dumbest segment ever now. Well, Kyrie had the thing about criticizing how they didn't double kemba which was a really dick thing to say you shouldn't say that publicly he's fucking right i was watching the game going kemba's the only guy in this team i'm scared of why what are we doing he's just he's just casually pulling up from three in transition and has it uh so what's fair like seriously because it just looks like stevens is a good coach okay i'm not doing this i'm not doing this thing but there's a really good coach

there's this anti and it's an anti-boston thing too it's like oh you idiots you guys you know the next pop and all this stuff you're like okay that's fine but like i believe a guy can be a really good coach and have a bad year and this thing this is more about these players never fitting together or never really figuring it out and it's just sort of like i don't to me it's not oh they should have done this or they could have done this or brad should try that brad's tried a bunch of different things here but the hit that he's taking it's and i'm not saying this is necessarily fair but like outside of the fan base people want to wipe away like all of his accomplishments even even though they're all kind of accomplishments that are like close, but no cigar type of thing.

That's such an old saying. But the thing is though, the advanced metrics still say this is like one of the six best teams in the league. I look, that's a part. I look at the numbers and it's like offensive rating. They're like,

if you did a blind resume on their fifth point differential, their fat, it's like, what is going on? Aliens are going to study this team and be like, what happened? Why did this team win 10 less games than it should have? And here's the other stupid thing. I spent 10 minutes on Saturday.

It wasn't even 10 minutes. We had another Milwaukee injury and I'm going, you know what's going to happen here. Right. I was like, they're going to be in the Eastern Conference Finals. And I may not have any idea how good they are or not. Because I know everybody loves doing this Pacers thing. They had the OKC win, which is the right time to be playing OKC because they hadn't been able to figure it out for this weird stretch. I just think they're the type of team that if you have flaws and you're not a tight team and you're sloppy and you're ready to be taken down by somebody, Indiana is

the type of team that will take down a team like that. They just play hard. They know who they are. They're well-coached and they're just a solid B. And they're going to be a B no matter what the situation is. They're going to be a B. And if you can't beat that B, they're going to be a B no matter what the situation is, they're going to be a B. And if you can't beat that B, you're loose. The Celtics carry themselves like a team that will go like an A plus. Yeah. They'll be like,

ah, whatever the pace. We've got it. Yeah. We're fine. So, I mean, that's,

that's the thing that's, you know, we're sitting here with what they have eight games to go and they haven't figured out anything. And I sit there and go, so let me get this straight. Like I'm supposed to think anything differently of you guys. You've given me 74 games of evidence that none of this works.

And I think that's just kind of what this year is going to be. There's this stack called clutch usage rate. That's pretty cool. Love it. Um, wonder what mine is. And it also has like, you know,

EFG and true shooting, all that stuff. Kyrie, basically, if you look at these numbers, Kyrie is the second best clutch player in the league. If you're just looking at the advanced numbers, right? Harden's usage rate in clutch situations is 48.8%. I'm surprised it's not 100. Yeah. So it seems like that should be higher.

48? Yeah. All right, just to put that in perspective too like if you're at 37 you would lead the league in just you know a full game donovan mitchell is 44.6 kairi is 41.7 and kemba's 41.6 now you'd say like well kemba's having a better year than kairi he's like not by by any metric. His stats aren't better. His advanced stats aren't better. Kyrie, 56.4% with the EFG, 61% true shooting, which basically it's only him and Harden over 60 and Kawhi Leonard's at 60.1. Just to put that in perspective russell westbrook 33.9 right and he had for usage rate he had a 36.8 efg he had a 40 uh god that field goal um the first triple my point is that kairi's actually having like a great year as a closer but if you're watching the games you're like man this team just blows games late. What's happening? So last week I did the all NBA stuff with you where I didn't prep for it.

And then I did it with Zach where I totally prepped for it. Thanks. So I apologize. That's great. And I went through it and was like, I don't think I'm gonna have Kyrie on one of these all NBA teams. And the first three spots, like you said, are locked up. It's Harden, Curry, Clay.

Yeah, let's do the checkpoint. Or excuse me, not Clay, Lillard. Yoka, Giannis. It's Harden, Curry, Clay. Yeah, let's do the checkpoint quick. Oh, excuse me, not Clay, Lillard. Yoka, Giannis, George, Harden, Curry. Right. Second team, Embiid, Griffin, Durant, Lillard, Westbrook, unless you want to put Kawhi for Griffin, which I guess it'll depend on how many games he ends up missing. Yeah, whenever you're doing this too,

after going through the exercise, like whatever your rules are, you're going to contradict your rules. You're going to be like, games matter. You're going to have to cheat on something yeah right you so 13 towns definitely absolutely probably lebron kawaii griffin whoever the leftover two are bradley beal i think has made it yeah and then it's kairi versus kemba and clay and i put kemba so i left kairi off and then i looked back at his numbers and I go, this is insane. Yeah. His numbers are just better by every metric.

It's incredible how good he's been statistically. And yet I don't really feel like I'm wrong. I don't think I should just have to go, oh no, his numbers are better than Kemba's. Like I look at what Kemba did on, I mean, look, he's been doing it all season. But to do that by himself, I don't think it's absurd. I really don't. If the Lakers go 32 and 50 and San Antonio goes 49 and 33, would you be mad or horrified if I put Aldridge 13 all NBA over LeBron? I always worry about this stuff. I go, okay, this is how I feel about Kyrie. Am I doing this? Am I rooting for this outcome? And I'd ask you that about LeBron. Like, are you trying to find a way to keep them off? I feel like I'm really bending my rules that I've had forever about rewarding, losing guys with all NBA spots. Like there's some sort of tipping point where it's like, all right, your team won 32 games. I don't really want to commemorate this with a 32-mile NBA. Right.

But then do you think, do I feel like there were 15 better players than this guy? So that's the thing. Is the Aldridge- That seems ridiculous. But San Antonio, it's basically just, it's Aldridge, DeRozan, and just a bunch of role guys. They lose their point guard before the season. They're in a tougher conference.

They certainly had a lot of the same reasons to crater that the Lakers did and they didn't. And he's been really good. I'm so impressed with them, man. I mean, they get smoked on the rodeo road trip and then they come back and they beat a bunch of good teams. Yeah. Not just, oh, we're back home. We're going to go on a stretch here there. I also. I really like the way Aldridge just, I was kind of back and forth on him during the course of his career. I just liked that he's one of those guys that just knows who he is. I like when the NBA veteran stars hit that point when they're like 31, 32, 33, where they're just like, this is what I'm good at. Oh, I'm going against this team. They're not going to be, I'm going to score 48 tonight.

And then he just does it. And it's just calm. There is nothing last night with him where you felt like he's like, man, I'm feeling it tonight. He was just doing what he does. Celtics couldn't stop it. They didn't have the players. It must be awesome when you're like, no horror for tonight.

It's going to be sweet. I'm going to destroy these guys. You know, LaMarcus probably suffers from that, that playoff snapshot these guys you know lamarcus probably suffers from that that playoff snapshot thing you know so it's like if you're not really paying attention you you get lost you know lamarcus aldridge isn't somebody who's ever like you know thought of as a brand or any that kind of stuff the portland thing was weird he wasn't a bad teammate he just was an isolated guy they certainly seemed happy to see him go in a weird way there was a lot

of like stuff floating around i think they left pretty sure well i remember talking to different people around it but like they wanted to keep him because he's a good player you don't want but when he left they weren't like oh this is the most devastating moment of our lives no it was more like we'll be fine he's kind of he's kind of a prima donna and they've recently talked about this too like he and lillard talked about it recently where it's like look we're cool we never it wasn't ever and that's what i was told it wasn't necessarily bad it was just like lamarcus was going to do his own thing all right you know not everybody's the same but the point is that he was so bad in certain stretches true in the

playoffs like remember when you have some of these absolute donut games and when you do that and it's kind of the only time people are really paying attention to you, it can ding your rep way worse than the ratios are off. It's almost like having a bad Monday night football game for quarterback. San Antonio. And I'm guilty of this too. Like you just kind of feel like you know who they are and you don't need to. I watched some of these other teams when I'm watching a night and I'm really

trying to learn stuff. And San Antonio is one of the, it's like that restaurant you've been to a million times. Yeah, we're fine. I know what they do. I know what they serve. I know what the service is there. I don't need to go back.

I know what they are. And I think – I wonder if Aldridge is actually a little bit underrated this year because you watch that team and you go, man, these are just random dudes for the most part with two stars, you know? Yeah. I think he's underrated now. I do. I think he's underrated. And I can't, I can't believe. I think DeRozan's a little underrated too. I think his contract's absurd, but. Yeah. When I brought him up because I was looking at, at some of the stuff, like for clay on third team, all NBA, and then I looked at DeRozan's numbers, and I was like, man, can I make an argument here?

And then Zach just absolutely slammed the door in my face on his plus minuses. He's like, nope. And somebody actually on Twitter hit me up with this, so I don't know if it's 100% true or not. So do you care about the plus minuses? I think when you're a guy that everywhere you go and it seems to be like a minus when you're on the floor, that makes me wonder sometimes. I've always kind of liked DeRozan. I liked him at USC, so he's one of those guys where I was like,

man, this guy's pretty good. I think he should go higher in the draft. And he's had a nice career, but the playoff dings for him are terrible. The plus minus to me is tied too much to who else is on your team for better or worse. Like if let's say you did, you're doing this podcast once a week through mid-July. Let's say I replaced you three times during the course of that with somebody who's just terrible at talking basketball.

Does that, should that change how I evaluate you as a partner because this other person wasn't good so like what we did this with westbrook a couple years ago it's like wait a minute when he's off the floor that team collapses like yeah because they don't have a backup point guard who was that dude who read the team two years ago remember that guy he? He had a weird name. Not Cameron Payne. No, but they traded. But then there was the other guy. He was awful. He's not in the league anymore. I can't even remember his name. He was so bad. But it was like, yeah, when Westbrook's off the floor, they're minus 14. It's like, yeah, because they don't have NBA talent. What do you expect? So like with San Antonio, the infrastructure of that team is so good. I'm not shocked that the plus minus, like DeRozan out there versus not being out there.

I don't know. I don't know plus minus. You don't, well, do you just dismiss it though? It sounds like you're dismissing it. I don't dismiss it. I look at it. I think like it's one of the many things you should look at, but I think sometimes it could be a little deceiving.

You're not talking Dion Waiters, right? No. You would never forget him. No, it was abrinas no go ahead samaj kristen oh yeah that dude yeah let's look at samaj's stats well 190 from three point 3 3 45 shooter 34.5 percent I'm going to get his advanced. He played 15 minutes a game. He has a 5 PER that year.

He played 64 games, 15 minutes a game, 5 PER. I mean, so anyway, that's my point. I'm interested in plus minus. I think it says something if somebody is minus 39 in a game and that confirms what you're watching. It's like, man, when that guy was out there, the team was a train wreck. But you're right. You're right about the teammate thing.

Like there's certain guys to be like, oh, look at so-and-so's plus minus. And you'll go, yeah, because he's always paired up with this other guy. Like that's always the Steph stuff where to me it's real. It's that consistently when he's out there, like that's the best version of them. And that's a really good, yeah, because of all the different things that he's doing, that the spacing he creates and all that stuff.

So I have some stats to go through really quick. Awesome. I can't wait. No, no, these are good. You're going to care. No, no, I'm pumped. This is genuine.

So Harden's now at 36.4 points a game yeah he won the MVP this weekend because that's what everyone's doing the 61 really helped he scored 25 2,545 points

he's got 8 games left MJ had 28.68 so he's 3.33 away from that doable that's like 40 40 yeah 42 a game Kobe had 2868. So he's 333 away from that. Doable. That's like 40, 42 a game. Kobe had 2832 in 2006.

So he's 287 away from that. I think he does that. He's going to create the 700-350 club? 700 made free throws. 350 made three-pointers. That's going to happen. He's going to make the second made three-pointers. That's going to happen.

He's going to make the second most three-pointers that anyone's ever made ever except for one Curry season. 700 and 350. Are you voting for him for MVP? I got one more. Dude, do you realize there are three games out of the one seed right now? I got one more. He's taken 932 threes. Already a record.

He's 68 away, eight games left, doable, of taking 1,000 three-pointers this season. Think about that. 1,000. 1,000. 1,000 three-pointers.

Imagine if you had told somebody in the 80s, a guy's going to take 1,000. I'm ahead with Chris Ford's taking one a game. I'm like, whoa. Jesus. You know who's got some range is Wedman so here's the case but it's

also really stupid though when people do some of the arguments about like oh you know Bird never made this many and you just go guys like it's just it's not it's not the same game I want to wait to see how the last two weeks play out but I'm going to give you the best case for Giannis

other than the fact that they have the best record in the league by four games and he's the dominant two-way player in the league this year. He's only playing 32.9 minutes a game and he's still putting up 28, 13, and 6. If you do his per 36, which in the playoffs, he'll be playing 36 minutes a game. He's basically 30, 14, and seven.

Harden's per 36 because he's playing more than 36. He's 35, six, and seven. So five more points than Giannis. Giannis has seven and a half more rebounds and the assists are about the same. And Giannis is a transformative defensive player on the other side. That's amazing that he's at only 33 minutes.

They've done a really nice job of protecting him, of getting him out of there when they're doing blowouts, of just kind of pacing it. And when he gets to the playoffs, he's going to average 31, 32, and 15 a game, which would be like Shaq in those three Shaq seasons in the playoffs. Yeah, because what it used to be, you'd always be like 38, 39. If you're one of the best players in the league, that's kind of... I used to only play like 44. And not sleep the night before.

Yeah, that's why his career was over when he was 31. I still feel like if they're're gonna be four or five games better than everybody else and uh and he's having this season he's having i don't understand why he's not the mvp i with all due respect and appreciation everything hardens done the two-way player thing is it's very close is it's so close it so close. And I really don't think a vote for either guy is the wrong vote. But can we at least wait to see how the season ends before? Because you're right. If Houston gets the one seed when they had hit rock bottom.

It's three and a half out. I just double checked. Is that doable? I guess not really. Who knows about Golden State though? No, but seriously, the fact that it's even a potential thing here, but you're right. I mean,

who knows about golden state? That golden state Dallas game. I thought something was wrong. Yeah. They showed it. I had some game I was watching. Then Dallas is up 30. And I was like,

that is misprint. Yeah. There's power. 70 Dallas, 76 golden state 41. It's it's like come on that's not really the score yeah and then i turned it on to make sure it was real and i went am i gonna watch this now and i was like i probably don't probably don't need to watch this now uh so anyway i think it's i think i'm leaning harden but i don't i don't like that it's because you got 61 points

this weekend that some people are doing that like that's the stuff where I think we all look like idiots. Where, you know, there's like 80 games or so. And, you know, these guys playing most of them. And just because he had 61. Like, did you have a Giannis vote Friday and then Harden gets 61? And it's like, oh, change my vote. Like, that's where I think it becomes a little ridiculous. That was his best performance of all the performances, though.

Did you see the shots he was making the last three minutes? That was really out of control. Right. Because as frustrated as I can get with watching him sometimes, I'll also make myself go, okay, well, these are insane shots that he's making. Insane shots. And I saw him live in Denver a couple of years ago.

And it was funny because somebody was like, what did you think live? And you go, it's really weird. It's so weird watching him live because everything sort of stops. And then he makes these shots and you just go, what the hell, you know, what are you supposed to do with this?

So they're 47 and 27. What were they? They were like three, four games under 500 at one point, right? Yeah. Unlike two years ago, where none of us were really happy with any of the choices and it became almost like a political,

it was almost like a Trump carryover from 2016, where it was like, everyone's just attacking everyone else's candidate. I think these are two great choices. These are, like whoever's number two this year, that is a worthy, awesome number two runner up performance. Yeah. Think about the season.

Like one of those guys is not going to win the MVP. And the, and this is an MV. Both of those guys are having two of the better MVP seasons we've had this decade. So I think it's a positive, not a negative. Let's take a break.

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Allbirds believes comfort, style, sustainability do not have to be mutually exclusive. Head to allbirds.com to get your own very, I screw that up every time. It's incredible. To get your very own pair of soft and cozy wool runners. Quick playoff matchups right now. Bucks Heat, Raps Pistons, Sixers Nets, Pacers Celts. Nothing's changed. In the West, since we did this last week, it's completely changed.

Warriors, Spurs, Denver Jazz, Houston OKC. The Clips are the five seed right now. Portland Clips. And Portland, I just would like the Clips in that series. I actually think they could beat Portland. And Doc Rivers now, I think, has a legitimate coach of the year case. As stupid as some of the San Antonio

stuff is, you go, these guys figured it out again. They have another Forbes. I can't believe what the Clippers are doing. I can't believe it. The Tobias Harris trade, bringing in new guys midseason, and all those guys are immediately playing for them, and they haven't lost a beat

and it's really impressive. Right. Danilo, like watching him again, you're like, oh, wait, like that's right. This guy was actually

pretty good. And I'm sure there's people that forget, you know, oh, the guy that was hurt all the time. So, I can't imagine

them beating Portland. I just, I can't. Well, McCollum's not healthy for that series though. It's very, it's like Seth Curry has been the leading scorer

for Portland the last couple weeks other than Lillard, the last since McCollum went out. To me, that means they're beautiful. Right, but to me, I still think Lillard finds a way to carry them through this. I guess I kind of wanted to see

the OKC matchup. Westbrook's playing, have you seen Westbrook's stats the last I'm going to say month? The shooting percentages are up. It actually might have been a slump for him.

But Schroeder went the other way and it's been an apocalypse. Adams looks like he's banged up. I don't know if I'd mind playing them as much as I would have a while ago. By the way, the mailbag question I got the most this week was how do you reconcile the fact that Doc Rivers has completely out coached Brad Stevens this season?

Got 12 different variations of that question. That one gets really personal for you. I know you're cool now, right? You and Doc are cool. Doc's done an awesome job. Right, but I mean, there's history there where... Yeah, we you know, up and down like everybody else, but

he was a terrible GM, and now that he just coaches the team and has the right type of team, he's done a good job. I also think it really does seem like that was a circus trying to coach the Blake, Chris Paul, DeAndre, that whole crew and and then the people doc put in to play with them compared to the guys he have now he just has

these low-key dudes who play hard you know what i got that's the type of team he's great at coaching i got more intel on the the blake and paul thing yeah yeah let's hear it Or you want to save it for Zach's pod? Oh. Nice. Hey, man. I think Paul got sick of them. Yeah. And wanted them to make a decision. And they made a decision and gave Blake the full contract.

And then they made a decision a little bit later on. Uh, cause I, you know, I, I'd always heard, but like, look, I don't, I don't know Blake's side of it. I don't know Chris's side of it as far as like, I've never talked to him, you know, I don't know him, but that it was Chris. It was a hammer me. Yeah. Chris started to doubt him as a teammate. But look, I mean, how many times have you heard that people don't love playing with Chris Paul too?

So I don't know. It wasn't like a conclusion type thing, but it was pretty open publicly about guys. Not everybody here is all about basketball. Like he had the classic passive aggressive quotes out there that all these guys do where they're trying to... The original Kyrie. Chris Paul.

You know, every other team in the league traps Kemba Walker. Not sure why we didn't do that. Yeah, thanks. Did you see stuff after San Antonio? He started swearing again. Kyrie did? Yeah. Yeah. I can't go back to Kyrie. I can't either.

Sorry. I have some mailbag questions for you, though. Okay. Love it. This is from Marcus Gray in New Jersey. Based on LeBron's track record as a talent evaluator, who would be a worse NBA owner, LeBron or MJ? MJ's set a pretty, pretty low bar.

Remember when people were going to go there in free agency because they liked Jordan growing up and had posters? Yeah, that didn't really go. We say dumb shit sometimes. Yeah. But he's the hold he has over the younger generation. Yeah, these guys worship him. They'll sign mid-level deals for him in a second.

A lot of other teams are worried about it. Didn't really work out. Yeah. Like, hey, we got Nick Batum. Here's my answer for this. I guess I don't know how much LeBron should be blamed for this Lakers roster because there was a great clip floating around last week of this interview

Magic Johnson gave at Summer League right after they did all those signings where he explained it like he was Steve Jobs explaining how he came up with the iPhone, but it was about all these dudes he signed. He was like, I watched all these playoff series and people think it's about shooting. It's not about shooting. It's about toughness. And the teams that advance were the toughest teams. Like Houston, the shooting, yeah, that's all great. And they missed these shots. And Boston missed these shots.

And the team that advanced were the two mentally tough teams. So we wanted guys that were tough. Yeah, with all the Hall of Famers too, by the way. Yeah, the Hall of Fame part helps. But you watch it and you're like, oh, so this wasn't an accident that you have Lance Stevenson and Rajon Rondo. I don't know how Caldwell Pope fits into that. That's a bit of a departure then

from our earlier disagreements about this Lakers roster. I still feel like they're running by all those things by LeBron. I feel like he signed off. But with the way Magic talked about this did make me feel like it was all his idea at least and then lebron had to did you see the clip of palinka saying we look at like this is heaven

from or bread from heaven yeah and i kept waiting like i hadn't seen that original thing so it's basically a presser it's on palinka it was going around this weekend and you can't the way it's edited you can't quite see who the player is and then i was like oh is this lebron and it was pope oh jesus and it's this really like intense like there's this philosophical approach to it and like he's detailing this quote and what it means and he's like and we see players like this is, I think it's bread from heaven. And you turn and I'm like, oh, what? So there's a chance that all three of those guys might not be there. Unlike July 1st. And I'm talking about Luke Walton, Palenka, and Magic.

I'm just throwing it out there. They're not going to do that to Magic. No way. No way. Now, maybe it's you strip him of responsibilities, but keep him. One of those deals. That would. No way. Maybe you strip him of responsibilities but keep him. One of those deals. That would be too soon. Really? As bad as this year's been. Too soon? Yeah.

Bad as this year's been. What about both years? They're not going to do that to Magic Johnson. Have you talked to anybody about how the Clippers got Zubach? Where the Lakers called them and were like, Hey, you're interested in Zubach for Muscala? And the Clippers were like, sure. And then the trade just happened. That's how the trade happened. It was like, if I called you and were like, hey, you're interested in $50,000? I just have it sitting around in my house. I'll just give you

the suitcase full of cash. You'd be like, okay. I think they're a mess anyway i just don't think i think you're underestimating the magic yeah i mean i'm not saying dump him i'm saying strip him like he's more ceremonial than somebody who's like you know it's a great idea toughness um nathan wants to know is marcus smart a real tough guy or a fake tough guy because we've seen this is a big Jalen Rose topic about the hold me back uh these NBA guys who seem like they want to fight but they don't really want to fight I actually think Marcus really wants to fight and he's ready to fight and I think he's a real tough guy is my evaluation after watching yeah he can he can flop too much for me but that's all part of it the mb'd play i thought he flopped like mb'd hit him

but i think marcus also sold it so it was the rare retaliation after a flop which you don't see a lot um i'm not look i i don't i know that he got hit but I think he was also, I'm going to go to the ground. I don't think he's a fake tough guy. Me neither. Not when you do all the stuff that he does out there. How many real tough guys are in the league right now? I've got both Morris brothers. Sometimes Markeith, though,

like those guys will push dudes around. Markeith, like that was one of my things when he was was on the Wizards is he would like push a guy early in the game and then late in a game like when they blew that series of the Celtics yeah I don't know I didn't back when Brad Stevens could coach yeah back when Brad Stevens knew what he was doing the Wizards were my favorite for a while because they would lose to an inferior team and they'd be like well we still know we're better like I'm like, oh. It kind of sounds like the Celtics right now.

The Cavs. Be like, well, they were scared of us. They didn't want to play us. Yeah, that's right. Isaiah Thomas tortured you guys. Aaron Salmon. Oh, Stephen Adams. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Did you see that clip? Stephen Adams was just like, keep punching me in the face. I love it. Right. More. I will punch you back eventually, but just give me three more. I think I love it. Right. More. I'll punch you back eventually, but just give me three more.

I think I love the show Billions. David West was like a real tough guy that nobody messed with. Yeah, David West is a good one. He's gone now. Was Kevin Willis a tough guy or was he just the first guy that was jacked? Remember Kevin Willis? Kevin Willis had arms and other dudes no one had arms in the NBA. Yes, I had that one

year right around the time baseball guys were getting bigger where Kevin Willis had arms when other dudes, no one had arms in the NBA. He also had that one year right around the time baseball guys were getting bigger where Kevin Willis had like 17 rebounds a game. It was like just looked like he looked like The Rock in Fast Five. Another one, Aaron Solomon wants to know, Ben Simmons has scored how many times over 30 points in a game in his NBA career? That's his first question. What's your answer? One.

Twice. What is Ben Simmons' career high? 38? 32. 32. He then follows that up, parentheses, in the Greeny T's voice, is Ben Simmons overrated? We'll find out next.

But first, a word from Mahindra. Oh, we could edit that out. Sorry. A word from what? Well, if they're not a sponsor. I don't know if you want to do a lawnmower shout out. No, but let's do a shout out for these guys. Last break to talk about Roman.

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GetRoman.com slash bill for a free visit to get started. That is GetRoman.com slash bill. It is interesting though that there haven't been that many players in NBA history who had the chance to be like a top six or seven guy, but really couldn't put up more than 20 to 22 points in a game. And if they got super hot in a game,

it might get to 30. Jason Kidd was like that for a long time. Usually it's point guards it's not although i guess ben simmons technically is a point guard yeah i know right but point four or whatever he is when somebody says the jason kidd comp was simmons because of the shooting arc right i go you know that's still not good so what am i supposed to do watch 10 years of this i'm supposed to watch 10 years of him not being able to hit shots, and then he's going to be Jason Kidd from the outside? I don't see the comp with that at all.

It doesn't make any sense to me. And somehow that's a win. Like, oh, it took Jason Kidd a long time. Well, that's the whole point. That's why we're freaked out. And that's why it's the oddity that you point out. Alpha, last year you're going, the Sixers are going to have two top 10 players,

and they're going to be right there. This next run is going to go through Philadelphia, and it felt real. And then the problem with those expectations are that when you look like the exact same guy or some people are figuring you out a little bit. And I think in a series, Simmons becomes a different player because of how you can defend them. And it's the same opponent, five, six, seven games. And you're going, hey, remember this? You get better at following your own rules. And so I think that hurts the Sixers. I think that hurts Ben Simmons.

And in year two, to not see any semblance of anything that looks like progress, that's why he's this weird, could have been a top 10, but probably isn't a top 20 guy right now, despite the flashes at times where I'm like, this guy's sick. Like, watching him do some of the stuff that he was doing, granted, Giannis gave it right back to him. But, like, how many other guys can physically match Giannis in this league? That's the thing. He's an A-plus athlete. If you remove the shooting thing, there's this exclusive club of athletes who are

also really good in the NBA right now, and he's on that short list. That play he made against Boston, I thought, was the most interesting play I've seen him make in his career. In crunch time, in the last minute, when he took it to the basket and drew the contact and made that, that was like a big-time scoring play. I hadn't really seen him do anything like that in that kind of situation. That was after

Kyrie pointed to Tatum to say, stay up here with Butler, and then Kyrie stayed up, too. So Tatum let a guy guy go with Harris I think go free free to the hoop yeah by himself sorry I did it again uh I but here's like I don't like the Simmons thing I'm worried for him you know it's it bums me out thinking that he's going to be this staggeringly incomplete player because that's what it feels like like there was nothing i if he had hit 27 from three i'd go okay maybe maybe we have something here even though you wouldn't want

a guy taking a lot of shots if that's what he's doing but i i've always found it kind of funny when when guys go oh well you know shooting develops later you can work with a shooting coach and all this stuff it's like yeah, yeah, but when there's nothing, when there's no foundation whatsoever and the free throw still looks stupid too. I think it's weird when somebody is that good of an athlete and that coordinated and can't shoot. Like for more than, you know, 10 feet. It's just strange to me

because you should be able to figure that out. It should take one summer and you could at least become decent. So to me, it's got to be more of a mental block than anything. I don't know. I have some more questions for you. Some good ones this week. Eric Schwartz said, oh, Eric, he's a good emailer. If someone told me Zion dunked from the three-point line or injured his shoulder on the rim trying to block a shot, but I didn't see it, my default position would be to believe it and then to check if it was real. He did injure himself because shoes Nike makes

for mortal human beings couldn't contain his foot. Does that put Zion into the Tyson zone or does the Tyson zone not apply to feats of athleticism? My thought is this is its own zone. It's like a spinoff zone, the Zion zone. What's the Tyson zone again? The Tyson zone is when somebody is acting so crazy and so radically that at some point

you believe any story about them. So when Tyson got truly crazy, it was like, do you remember Mike Tyson got a tattoo on his face? He'd be like, yeah, I believe that. But he actually did. But then it's like, do you remember Mike Tyson went into a shark tank and killed a shark with his bare hands? He'd be like, yeah, I believe that. That was the Tyson zone. I think the Zion zone is an interesting idea. I think I would believe just about anything that would happen with him on a basketball court. You could talk me into it. So when this season got going, right?

And Zion was the number one pick. There were teams that were like, we wonder by the end of the year if it'll be RJ Barrett, right? And the right guys, the right teams were all in the John Morant thing. So this isn't new. You know what I mean? Like none of this is new to the people that are doing it. And I know that's not some great revelation here, but what has happened and how this has closed?

Like I was even willing to listen to the RJ debate because you go, you know, shooting, the way he can handle. Could be a 30 point score. Right. He's going to have more space in the NBA, which is a problem because his Duke team can't shoot. So a lot of times he's kind of like forcing the issue a little bit the way this duke season closes on coming back and seeing him in the moment like there's no debate yeah there's

his i absolutely love this kid's personality and he answered the way he answered against north carolina you know to to close out the ACC title game to be like, all right, I got it. I got it. Like don't none of you like Cam Reddish, I forget is even out there at times and he may go top five. So that part of the Zion debate, if you want to worry about how big is he going to get? Cause I think that's a real concern. You know, you don't want him to get any thicker or any of that stuff. I would say he enjoys competition. He's awesome that way. would say he enjoys competition and winning. He's awesome that way, yeah. He enjoys competition and winning

more than just about any young player I've ever seen. Like he really, all he wants to do is win. It's like yesterday when they won that game, it was like a spiritual experience for him. So, oh, we made it. I just, I love the way, I love everything about him. Yeah, like to not just be the physical specimen, right? But to care the most.

Yeah, to go- He cares the most on that team. And respond in those moments too. Yeah. Where I'm like, hey, I got this. Like, I'm going to be, I'm going to be like, he's gone now from somebody where I was like, you know, how well can he, all right, you know,

I don't love his shot. Handles better than, you know, I thought at the beginning of the year. Tries really hard on defense, even though he doesn't totally know what he's doing yet. But even if he gets beat, he'll try to block it from behind and save the play. He won't quit on anything. Yeah, if he doesn't pan out to the level that we all want him to,

and I still think there's a real conversation you could have you're like well what if he became i don't know if we did this before or not but i was like what if he became blake griffin and then everybody if i said that right now everyone listened to me like oh my god it'd be a huge disappointment like would it be yeah because it it's not it's not really fair like blake griffin's you know when he's healthy like was a third mvp yeah i think people are now thinking about him and it is lebr The LeBron kind of prospect. That's what they want. But it's not going to be mentality.

It's not going to be attitude. If he doesn't meet the expectations that we have, and maybe you're too lofty for him, I don't think it's going to be any of the things that we usually can't figure out. The guy comes to the league, like, what happened with that guy? Like, oh, he hated basketball. Or, oh, you know, this or whatever. Like if he doesn't pan out.

Injury and that's it. It's him jumping 58 inches and then landing on somebody's foot and something bad happening. Knock on wood, hope it doesn't. Jonathan Jarks wrote a great piece today about how that game yesterday kind of summed up what type of team you should build around Zion because they don't have the three-point shooting this year. And they had this giant rim protector who was like the Zion kryptonite, basically.

And what Duke really needed was to have the two extra guys on the floor who could space the floor and create some space for him. They didn't have it. So he was saying, much like what Milwaukee figured out with Giannis, the type of team to put around Giannis so he can succeed. That's what whoever drafts Zion, and hopefully it's a team that knows what the F it's doing. That's the type of team they're going to have to put around him.

Now he'd succeed in any situation, but if you want to reach the ultimate Zion destiny, you do have to put some thought into who's playing with him. And also where, what position he's going to be. I think he's a four, but I wouldn't be shocked if somebody played him as a five. Yeah. I mean, as you said that, I started thinking like,

wait a minute, could he actually do that? I don't think Francesa likes him though. He had a clip going around. Francesa? Yeah. I'll work on france yeah talk to him about zion because this was a great email from a from hold on before we're done with that do we are we never going to do the zion topic that you wanted to do last week that we didn't do and we were going to save it for this week because i think you may enter the simmons zone on this one like you might be so crazy crazy on the Zion question that it might be worth. You really want to do this at the 90 minute mark of the podcast?

From a producing standpoint, that's not great producing. Let's lead. Let's do it next week. It's not my pod. So, you know, let's do it. Let's do it next week. Abe from Orlando weighed in. It's good for me.

He has a supermax contract question. This ties into something that I thought the NFL should do. He said, let's say a player signs a Supermax contract worth $40 million a year. What if the cap hit was only something like $25 million? This way, teams could build around Supermax players. Team would be happier. The player receiving the contract would be happier. So there would be some sort of advantage for longevity with the same team that would allow for the team to build a little more smartly around the player. I always thought the NFL should do this. Like after five seasons, five straight seasons of the team, every year, that guy count, you'd get a million off, whatever that guy's cap figure is. And we're allow like, you know, the Ravens to keep Ray Lewis for one more year and the Patriots keep

Tom Brady for three more years or whatever. I'm not against some version of this idea that a team is rewarded for keeping its best player for a long period of time. And then that player is also rewarded because his team has a little cap advantage. I don't know if it should be 15 million, but maybe it's like, if you're with a team 10 years, it's 5 million off the cap, or I don't know. What do you think of this? I'm all for trying to figure out a way to, and it's not me being anti-player movement, but having fans feel better about the relationship with their star. Because as much as people want to knock David Stern, I didn't like that he seemed to make the players

the enemy at times, but he made a great point. He used to always do this thing where he'd be like, who did Dave Winfield play for? And you could say a bunch of different teams and you would be right. And maybe it seems old and archaic to go, oh, I just want my guy. But I know what it's like to care.

I mean, even though the beginning of this podcast, talking about emotionally how invested I was in all this stuff, I just think about all these people that still are the customer that kind of get screwed over all the time. Well, we felt that with Pierce, right, in Boston. He stayed long enough in Boston that we really did feel like he was part of our life for a prolonged period of time. It's cool. And we watched him grow up and become a man and the whole thing.

And now we're in this new era. And I read another article about it over the weekend where it's like, the players are in charge now. It's like, nobody's against the players being in charge, but can we find a middle ground? Is it okay for somebody to stay in the same place for 15 years? And what Curry's going to do with Golden State, right? I still feel like that's the most meaningful connection a player could have. Other people still feel like that's the most meaningful connection a player could have. Other people would say, no, the most meaningful connection is that they're in control of their own destiny.

All right, fine. But I still feel like what Curry has with that fan base is just going to matter more. What Kobe had with the Laker fan base is going to matter more than really any connection. Like somebody like LeBron, he's just never going to have that same connection. Cleveland's the closest, but he left Cleveland twice.

So I don't know. Yeah, imagine, and here's the thing, as long as you're not putting something in where it's not the franchise tag, which has really been crucial for the NFL, keeping certain salaries down, because if no one's ever getting the free agency, you can crucial for the NFL keeping certain salaries down because if no one's ever getting the free agency, you can't reset the market. And, you know, look, if Andrew Luck

were a free agent tomorrow, you don't think he'd get a hundred million. Yeah. I mean, I think a hundred million guaranteed, easy. 200 million, 110 million guaranteed, something like that. So I, as long as it's not prohibitive to the player, right? Well, so let's look at Kemba and Charlotte, right? So Kemba, if he makes 13 on BA, he gets like, he'd date potentially off from, yeah, 220. That's a disaster if you're Charlotte. You're locking down somebody

that you can't even make the playoffs with as 35% of your cap. But you also want to lock him down because he's a really popular guy in Charlotte. They love him. He's a great guy to have on your team. So maybe he should be worth 38, but it only counts for, I don't know, 28.

Maybe Curry making 42 a year should only be worth like 30. There is some sort of way to figure this out that I feel like would be fair. And then for somebody like Davis, maybe that's a reason New Orleans could try to keep him. Or else we just move to this system. Let's not even have contracts anymore

and just go free market every year. And Zion comes into the league and it's soccer and you're just bidding on dudes and you have transfers. Because that's the other option. I kind of would like to know. I mean, imagine trying to project out what would

actually happen. Like if you just went, Hey, no draft free market. How much would Zion get? We talked about this last week. I mean, he would get the max.

He'd get the max right away. Right. Yeah. I mean, John Morant went to, by the way. Yeah. And somebody would talk themselves into R.J. Barrett.

And Cam Reddish would make $100 billion for four years. And the team would immediately be dissatisfied. Okay, but then you'd have to figure out, okay, if that's where all that money's going, then how would that change? If you weren't suppressing those salaries, you'd have to figure out where are the the the other salaries getting suppressed you know like the

nfl did this thing where it's like hey vets why don't you vote on limiting rookie contracts it's like yeah that makes sense why would these guys make any money if they've never proven it on the field and all this stuff and then it's like oh wait a minute like people are really good at voting for stuff that affects other people than themselves so the nfl was the worst case scenario because well that leads younger too because that led to teams being like should we keep this guy we've had for 10 years no let's go with the undrafted rookie who makes half as much exactly right so that's been the thing where it's like oh these vets yeah we voted to get this piece of the pie and it's's like, actually, now we're just signing

more of those guys than you. I'd have to know who would they be taking from, like with that lower Supermax deals, with that- It wouldn't be taking from anything. It would just be like, if you have the Supermax- A free-for-all? It's capped at a $30 million cap figure or something. So whatever it actually is-

No, I'm down with that. It's weird for everyone. I understand that part of it. I whatever it actually is, it's worth whatever. I understand that part of it. I think that makes sense. I understand that part. I'm just saying if you did the rookie thing on top of all that, what if there was no cap?

What if it was just total? Do you think somebody would end up having like a $200 million salary? Owners don't trust each other. We've gone through this too many times. Rich guys don't trust each other not to make mistakes. It becomes the charity auction

at your kid's school where the parents have been drinking and suddenly somebody's bidding for some crazy, the parking space in the school is going for 10 grand. People just lose their brands. So Ryan Thompson said, you mentioned an old article about from past major sporting news cycles and reading them um we have the rewatchables and recapables what about the re-readables so i'm going to read something i wrote in 2008 you have to guess who the players you wrote this i wrote this okay his numbers are down his numbers are down in five relevant categories. He's putting up his worst numbers in eight seasons, and we can safely say there's been residual damage from blank. He's just not the same guy anymore. He's not. Here's the weird thing. Other than Nick Anderson,

I can't remember another good player floundering in his prime purely because of emotional baggage from a couple of tough losses. But what the hell happened to Blank? What happened to his edge? Why hasn't he taken the demise of his superstardom a little more personally? He's like Cole Trickle at the 63-minute mark of Days of Thunder right now. Who did I write that about? 2008.

2008. 2008. Dirk Nowitzki. It's Dirk? Yeah. Three years later, he won the title. There was a real... That year, I actually... I remember I had Tariqo on.

And I go, you know what I'm... It seemed like Dirk was unraveling. Yeah, I go, you know what I'm sick of? I was like, I'm sick of everybody going, look out for Dallas. Yeah yeah fuck these guys yeah there was i had like an epiphany on the air and torico even agreed with me he was kind of like yeah no that's a really good point like we waited on him we waited on him and like what's the point let's move on yeah and then they want a title uh before we get the worst calls ever gym corner, America's favorite segment. So some more podcast names.

We're deciding this and we're doing a Twitter poll. Prick and Roll. Wait a minute. Which one am I? Irrational Confidence. The White Shadows. Tommy Points. Pod Sham Pod.

I remember a road trip to the Tri-Cities once Slap the floor because we're two white guys slapping the floor Below the Rim I think that exists Steve Smith that's his Below the Rim segment on NBA TV

Podcasters only Kind of like members only NBA holes. Didn't you already do that? Sal, you always calls me an NBA hole. And I actually think that is a good name for this podcast. And then someone suggested,

suggested it's funnier in print. The, the Rosillo Simmons, NBA def jam podcast. So it's like the Russell Simmons. Yeah. I kind of like that. So we caught the nba def jam

can we get sued or you'd get sued right nba def jam why would we get sued it's just the name of the title yeah but def jam records welcome to the rossillo simmons nba def jam podcast i don't know def comedy jam too like we could we get sued spell it differently i think they're just d oh and there's one more right so there you go there's this one was really or Def Comedy Jam 2. What did we get saved? We can spell it differently. I think they're just D-E-F. Oh, and there's one more. Right. So there you go.

This one was really clever. The Depotted. D-O-P-O-D-D-E-D. That's good. The Depotted. So there we go. Don't send us any more names for the show. You're not a cop. Micro processes. Oh oh it's working

overtime that's one of the great yeah that was just to be like because whenever that it really hits home when Alec Baldwin's like oh it's good good to see that you're married I mean somebody can stand you your prick's working it's working overtime.

Damon is so good at being awful in that movie. You know what I mean? Like he's every guy that you didn't like and you're like, oh, he nailed it. Which is great because everybody really likes him. It's a great one. I'm going to post, we're going to do four choices and we're going to post on Twitter and people are going to vote.

Are you serious? I thought our thing was we were going to pretend we were going to do this. No, I can't take it. You can't take it anymore. I'd rather get emails about the NBA

versus bad suggestions for our podcast. People love trying to name it though, man. Kyle gets it. Kyle got an email actually. There's a Kyle-related email. We have Parent Corner and Jim Corner. What about Kyle Corner? Kyle rambles on

his late-night shiganigans, his on-and-off-again girlfriend, and his favorite vape flavors. That's from James Cooney. I'm not ready for that. He's not ready for that. He hasn't asked for his own podcast? We'd have to start with Kyle Corner. We'll be on Kyle Corner this week, Kyle.

Try to find a new apartment. That's fun. Got a whole thing going on. What happened? I'll tell you later. Okay. All right. That's Kyle Corner.

Maybe the most exciting part of the podcast. All right, Jim Corner, and then we get to go. Thought I tore a pec. Oh, that's like a Triple H injury. Yeah. But then guys were like, if you really tore your pec, you would know. So we had to strain, had to kind of shut down some of the chest exercises for about two weeks. Do the legs?

I've been heavy legs the last few months. It's why my knees hurt all the time. So it's great. My quads look terrific, but my knees hurt all the time so it's great my quads look terrific but my knees my knees don't work anymore um but i'd want to report that i did 225 uh for a bunch of reps the other day and i feel like i'm back i feel like my chest is back and i asked a guy for a spot too and it was also the best because it was the douchiest possible way i could have done it i was like hey man i was like is there any way you can spot me here and he was like yeah man

you know what are you going for and i was like it's not the weight like i got 225 like but i'm i'm dealing with a slight injury here and i'm i'm giving it a go today to see so you felt a little self-conscious about the 225 you don't want want to be judged. Well, a lot of times when guys, if they don't get a good bench, you'll be like, I'm a little dinged up, you know, dealing with something. But I actually was, like I was freaked. I did a heavy dumbbell.

I was in Chicago. I didn't warm up properly. I just wasn't in the right mindset. And I just was going, you know, it was very odd for me to be that non-prepped. You know how it is. And I felt something kind of like wiggle. And then I went and kind of like did some pushups and I was like, something's wrong, something's wrong. So I've been freaked out about it for a

couple of weeks now. So I was like, all right, look, I'm going to go in, do a nice, great warm up, test it. If it feels right, let's, let's go. And you know, we don't have to go crazy, crazy here, but we'll throw on 225 and we'll just see how it feels but he's thinking like well if this guy needs a spot for 225 then maybe like you said the guy's like do you want to lift off or how many i was like no no no i was like i'm gonna know right away whether or not we're good and then you know ripped out a bunch and it was fine yeah totally fine feel great did you feel like the guy side-eyed you like a tiny bit bit? Yeah, because then he's thinking, why would this guy ask for a spot

if he just did like 10 reps of this? No problem. Like, what was that? Did you strike up a friendship with him? No. Like, hey man, you want to go back to the locker room and look at some 75-year-old naked guys with me? Peanut butter shakes.

Hey, what if say you and I get a smoothie and watch some Squawk Box with nude old men? Got some emails about Jim Corner, including somebody who claimed that an old guy bent over and he just got a 78-year-old anus three feet from his face and has just never recovered. I'm telling you, there's a meeting. They have a thing. Old guys have a meeting. Yeah, and they go, let's make it the worst experience ever. And you're in. It's a meeting. They have a thing. Old guys have a meeting. Yeah, and they go, let's make it

the worst experience ever. And like you're in. It's a pact. They're all in on it. It's like we hate our bodies now. Our goal is to make everyone else hate themselves. Because I look at old men

looking at me and I know I'm going to be looking at the version of me in 30 years and hate that guy too. No doubt. But then every now and then I'll just see some old bastard.

That's like still just going for it. Usually I imagine he's on something. If you tore a pack, if you tore a pack, how would you work out? What would happen? A lot of legs and cardio legs. Yeah.

Like exercise bike, like Steph Curry. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I get a pen. I worry about your psyche. Don't, don't get hurt before the playoffs.

We need you for the playoffs for the pot. We need you for the Def Jam NBA podcast. I need to go somewhere for like four days, though. I'm thinking about like bouncing for four days to get my mind right, right before the playoffs. Yeah. So I don't know. I know there's, I see a lot of people go to Tulum on Instagram.

I've noticed that. Tulum? Have you done any Mexico? What about a road trip to Baja? I've never done the road trip. Is that the dumbest idea I've ever had? Driving to Mexico by myself? It could be one of those things you've just never seen again.

Like, where's Ryan? I thought they had him for the playoffs. He was supposed to be in Mexico two hours ago. Something about a torn back. His car's gone. There's no sign of him. His GPS has been deactivated. So I just shouldn't

roll around in a nice Range Rover in Mexico by myself? Have you been to Hawaii yet? Yeah, I love it. I should just do that. Do Hawaii. That's like a top 10 reason to live in LA. It's a five hour Hawaii flight. The Maui thing is-

Stay at the Jason Segel, forgetting Sarah Marshall hotel. Just wander around looking for whoever the Mila Kunis of that hotel is. That could be the move. Yeah. What if I show up and my ex is there with a fiance? That'd be awkward. I wouldn't handle it as well as Jason Segel did. You wouldn't want the room next to them?

Dual threat this week or no? Do I have to do one this week? No, you're not doing one, right? I'm asking. I don't know what to schedule us. I don't. Okay. I think we just looked at each other.

So we'll talk after this. So no dual threat, but the Ryan Russillo podcast. Ryan Russillo pod. The new segment we're unveiling, Uncertified Life Coach. We got a guy that he's 29, taping 10 minutes with him tomorrow. He wants to try to get his life on track. He doesn't seem like, he seems like he has a few things going for him though. So we got something to work with.

Good. The thing is though, is I told my friend about the idea and he's so into it that he stalked this kid's entire life and like started sending me emails of like okay this is where he's worked and this is his whole deal this is going to be really awkward for this kid great so i know that was a hard sell there so next week we we can officially do our lmba or we could wait two more weeks yeah i'll I'll do a better job. Yeah, eight games, eight or so, depending. But I let you down. I let you down last week. And then when I did it with Zach, I go, this is how I should have done it.

I got to say, there's not a lot of controversy with the NBA this year. And the MVP is like, it's two awesome choices and we shouldn't get all pissy about it. Do you want to come to the gym with me? No. Sounds awful. See you next week. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks to Ryan. Thanks to ZipCruiter. Don't forget to go to zipcruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to SoFi. Did you know you're being underpaid by your bank account? It's true. It might be true. That's why SoFi just launched. SoFi money, it's like checking and

savings morphed into one single account. You'll earn way more interest on your money and you'll pay zero fees. Open a SoFi Money account. Learn how you can get your money right at SoFi.com slash Simmons, S-O-F-I.com slash Simmons. Also, thanks to Allbirds. They make stylish, comfortable footwear designed for life's everyday adventures. The Allbirds Wool Runners, they're made from wool. They look great. Super simple design. Perfect for in the office, out in the town, or at the dark room with Kyle.

Head to allbirds.com to get your very own pair of soft and cozy wool runners. Back with two more podcasts this week. Don't forget about the Rewatchables as well. Pretty Woman, one of the 38 best call girl movies of all time. Top 7? Top 8? I don't know. Check all that out. Thank you.

......... I don't have feelings within On the wayside I'm a person never lost And I don't have feelings within