The Bill Simmons Podcast - Jalen Rose, Judd Apatow, and the 2006 NBA Redraftables

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by sports analyst and former NBA player Jalen Rose to discuss More Than a Vote, a nonprofit organization championing voting rights created by LeBron James, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Jalen, and other current and former pro basketball players (2:10). Then Bill, Chris Ryan, and Joe House revisit the 2006 NBA draft and discuss some of its subplots, comedy, and legends before redrafting the top 14 lottery picks (33:55). Finally, Bill talks to writer-director Judd Apatow to discuss family life in quarantine; directing his daughter in his new film, ‘The King of Staten Island’; working with Pete Davidson and Steve Buscemi; early-2000s comedies; casting movies; and more (1:56:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast on the ringer podcast network brought to you by zip recruiter. Well, we know COVID-19, it might change the way we attend sporting events or whether we can attend them at all, who you're sitting next to, how you're getting food and drink, whatever else. A lot of things may change as our world starts opening up again, but there's one thing that won't change our presenting sponsor zip recruiters mission. They'll continue doing what they've always done, helping growing companies

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Go to ziprecruiter.com slash work together. We're also brought to you by the ringer.com and the ringer podcast network, where we just have season two of one of my favorite podcasts, the wire way down in the hole with Van Lathan and Jamel Hill that launched. So if you're ready to hear people argue about whether Ziggy's a pocket was a terrible character or whether this season was underrated. That's your podcast. Check it out. It's really good.

I love it because it makes me remember The Wire, one of my favorite shows of all time. But also it's fun to hear people arguing about things that I was just arguing with my friends about like Ziggy Sabaka. I didn't love Ziggy Sabaka, but I thought he was an essential character because of all the drama he caused left and right. But yeah, I wouldn't say I would have a poster of him by office, but anyway, that's the kind of stuff they argue about. Check it out coming up. I have an awesome podcast for you. You probably can't listen to it in one sitting, but that's all right. My friend Jalen Rose is going to come on

to talk about a couple of things, including more than a vote. There's some really important thing that he's doing with LeBron James and some others. We're doing the 2006 redraftables with me and Chris Ryan. And then old friend, Judd Apatow is going to stop by. So this is action packed, but first Pearl Jam. My old friend Jalen Rose, once upon a time, he had a little podcast, Grantland Podcast Network, the Jalen Rose Report, with a guy named Dave Jacoby, who didn't even have his name in the title for like two years. And now, 4 p.m. ESPN.

Jalen and Jacoby. It was a long journey. It was a decade long journey to get there. Congratulations. Haven't officially congratulated you on the podcast. We give the people what they want. And I want to give you a big shout.

As a matter of fact, as I look over my shoulder in the studio, I have to go grab something because this is live. We family, we uncut and unfiltered. While you're giving me shout outs and acknowledgement, not only are you my brother and I love you, but how about this? Yeah. The forward to my bestselling book.

Right. Did I write that? I don't even remember. And this was half kangaroo Jalen. Oh yeah. And so I have to say a few things just content-wise. Yeah. When people call you the podfather. You call me that. No, no, you're the only one who calls me that.

Just for the record. Well, the reason why everyone should call you the podfather is like now it seems normal when people want to let their voice be heard to have a podcast or a radio show people i want to have a barbershop feel let our hair down and we you know get relaxed like you were so very far ahead of this movement um and for the rose report and jalen and Jacoby and the Grantland studio. And then we had Grantland Basketball Hour. Yeah. The job interviews we were doing.

Well, the Grantland Basketball Hour now, we only did 10 episodes. I was very proud of them. But our big legacy now is we were the first people to put Stephen Jackson on a television show. Now he's one of the most famous people in America. How about that? How about that? And I'm so happy and proud of him. He's doing an amazing job, you know, representing how George Floyd was tragically killed. And when I saw his picture and they called each other twin, I was like, yo, they do just look just alike. And I'm older

than him, so it's refreshing for me to see people just grow into their man bones and things become passionate to them and circumstances take place and

you get a new calling. And I see in him now somebody that understands that he has a bigger opportunity to make a great influence by representing the legacy like he has done so very well. And you and I have talked about this for a really long time. And somebody was born in the 70s, and I'm old enough to remember being taught about what happened with Emmett Till. Like, oh, he was whistling at a white woman.

Yo, when white people come, you got to cross the street. Or you got to eat in a different restaurant, like segregation and the laws were passed in the late sixties, but they didn't end the next day. So like there was a portion of my childhood where I got exposed to this. And I know about Fred Hampton when he was tragically killed in Chicago they ambushed police ambushed his house because the government and the president at the time didn't want another black messiah so like these are things I was exposed to in my childhood yeah I love basketball my father was Jimmy Walker I didn't know him and stuff like that. But it was like, man, Muhammad Ali didn't

go to the military? Really? Luau Stender was there? How old was he? Jim Brown? Bill Russell? Greatest to ever do it? So that early 70s

kid, it was important to be socially and politically conscious yeah it changed in the 80s because athletes needed to grow their games you know this you best-selling author one of the greatest um people at you know really being a historian of the game. Right. And I love you. You, my brother, everybody know that that's not hyperbole. That's a, that's a flat out fact. Google Bill Simmons and Spotify. Okay. So, but,

but bird and magic were charged with growing the game. Right. So people like, Oh, and the last dance mj was snitching he wasn't snitching that mj saying that the league was drug infested his cocao team was like a squirrel chases after a nut like everybody knows that yeah but what he didn't do is name people he didn't say someone's name that that's the line of demarcation. So they were like growing the game and magic and Bird is so very iconic and we know what they accomplished. But then MJ took the marketing of a black man mainstream. Because I remember because I was in college. It was like, oh, MJ, Nike. We were in college, Nike. We didn't have our own shoe,

but hey, let's wear these Barclays and wear these Huaraches. Let's wear these Deons. Let's wear these Bo Jacksons. And we go in places like Fab Five Nikes and black shoes and black socks. We're part of this. And then here comes Allen Iverson wearing cornrows and stuff like that. And it really kind of, from a socially, politically conscious nature, kind of tailed off

from that perspective because athletes started moving to the suburbs, rappers started moving to the suburbs, started getting paid top dollar, and all of a sudden, you start looking at the stats

and like, wait a minute. Like, we're still getting killed by police? Still getting treated like the 60s and people were sick and dogs on us and treating us like we were three fifths of a man. And so now Bill, the giants that current athletes stand on their shoulders. And I love seeing your Celtic Jalen Brown and Malcolm Brogdon and people that want to stand for what is righteous, I want the American white guy to know, America, when you were born, if you're 50, 55 or older, it's different for your family and your nieces, your nephews, and your kids that's 40 and under. They grew up listening

to rap. They grew up wearing long shorts, black shoes, black socks, loving sports, having black idols, having black people that they went to watch their movies or do their comedy and stuff like that. So we're family. We're a melting pot. And to see so many different people, racist, colors, and creeds to all be now marching and protesting for a common good, it's refreshing. And it brings me back to you because there was a time in this industry where I freestyled too much, so said people. And I know you were getting corporate emails about the things I was saying and you just let me and us cook and allowing that voice to grow creates moments where I'm proud that I could be on get up and we're talking about the scenario we're talking

about now and I'm able to articulate myself the way I was able to do so. And I wanted to thank you because the Rose report and Jalen Jacoby became that outlet to talk about more than basketball. And that was a stereotype that I wanted to overcome. Oh, yeah, he played basketball. What is he doing talking about football? What are you talking about baseball? That's just the dumbest thing ever. And so I appreciate you. And that's my soapbox. I thought we had more problems with countdown with, you know, the Grantland stuff was easy.

I could navigate that, but you trying to find the balance of who you actually are to hang out with versus who you are on a studio half hour show that's being shown to 20 million people. And you try to navigate that was really fun to figure out with you. We talked about it a lot. How far do you go? We, you would get feedback from people like, Hey man, tone it down. You'd be like, tone it down. This is my personality. And it's like, don't say James Dolan threw people out of the building. Like, okay. Well, you can Google these things. Like I'm not trying, I know he owns a team and all, I didn't make this up.

The most interesting thing that happened the two years we worked together was that Clippers-Warriors game. I don't know if I've ever told the whole story. You were actually involved behind the scenes talking to people in the locker room. And at one point, it didn't even seem like they had agreed on doing anything. And you just disappeared. You left the room and you were talking to people for an hour and they ended up doing the warmup jacket thing. But I look back at that moment. And I said this on the pot a couple of weeks ago, that that's a moment that I think in 2020 is probably handled differently.

I think they didn't totally know how far they could go and what they wanted to risk. But now I think by 2020 standards, they're risking it at that point. They're not playing. And again, I know this comment is going to probably make some people uncomfortable, but we know ultimately the power comes from who has the money. And when Tommy Smith and John Carlos did their protests at the Olympics, they were ostracized and were never able to get jobs again. And they were not made heroes.

The gentleman at the Ali Summit who over my shoulder, when they made political stances, as you know, they were not celebrated by the media. And so now when we do all of these, who's the greatest of all time list? To be honest with you guys, if you guys be like, oh, Bill Russell was only eight teams and Kareem was playing against. I'm not even going to talk basketball with you. Like, for real, like, you guys don't understand. The reason why they weren't celebrated the way they should have been celebrated is because their political stances. It's not because Michael Jordan or LeBron James achieved more. That didn't happen. When you start talking about greatness and dominance, you got to start with Russell and Kareem.

Right. That's when you start the conversation or you're using the word wrong. Well, and all the stuff they did beyond basketball too, you got to include the whole package. You're right. And Muhammad Ali. Luau Cinder, he's a young pup in this picture.

He wasn't even in the NBA yet. Right. He was not in the NBA. And so for Colin Kaepernick to take a knee and become symbolic to the George Floyd killing because the visual is a mirror image and now players that have been able to stand on the shoulders of the giants that i mentioned they make more money now bill they have more power now and it's been more awareness so when colin took a knee in 2016 it was 12 or 13 players. This year, it's going to be hundreds. What's the difference? They know they won't lose sponsorships now.

Well, remember Trayvon when the Trayvon Martin thing happened and LeBron and those guys, they took, what was it, an Instagram picture? Absolutely. And we were doing TV back then. It was, I think we were doing countdown that year. Yeah. And it was like a debate. They were getting credit. Remember they were getting criticized. Correct. Why are they, why are they wading into this?

And so our strength clearly comes from our intestinal fortitude of what we endured in 500 years in this country. That's where it initially comes from. We're inherently taught you got to work harder. You're going to have to do 10 jobs and get paid half as much. Like these are things that become inherent. But you're like, all right, I'm willing to fight that battle. But then what ends up happening is when in 2020,

we're celebrating that NASCAR isn't using a Confederate flag. I can't celebrate that. Right. You're celebrating common sense. Right. It's like we're not asking for reparations. We ask for equality.

Yeah. Well, I, I was planning on having you on next month as we got closer to the basketball playoffs. Cause you haven't been on in a while and we haven't shot the shit about stuff, but you did this thing with LeBron and a few others this week that I

thought was, was really, really cool, really important, really powerful. And you mentioned, uh, you know, Kareem and Ali and Russell and guys like that. LeBron's done some really great stuff. I, this might be the best thing that he's kind of spearheaded because this is something that could actually influence real change. And you are prominently involved, my friend Jalen Rose. Tell us about what you're doing and how it came together.

So LeBron decided, as you mentioned, that he wanted to create why your opportunity to make a change was basically more than a vote. So a lot of times people get discouraged, Bill, because we look up at the candidates and we like we don't like either one of them. To be frank with you, we don't necessarily know how they're going to influence the plight of the people that look like us. But this is a unique climate where one of these gentlemen have clearly just gone way too far. And so it's not even political. It's more knowing your worth, being a taxpaying citizen and a contributor to society, and overcoming obstacles that are placed in front of you and your community. So in the inner city, the lines are longer. You get up to the poll and the ballot doesn't work. You have elderly people working in the city, but you have younger, stronger people who are more tech savvy in the suburbs.

The lines are shorter. A lot of people don't have trust in the system. They don't feel if they send in their vote via mail, that's actually going to get counted. And then there's the elephant in the room. The popular vote doesn't necessarily dictate who wins the presidency. People don't like to say that out loud, but there's a thing called the electoral college. And if you put all of their pictures up, they look a lot more similar than opposite. Right. And that discourages a lot of people. And so what the goal is, is to is to re motivate them the way it happened in 2008 with Obama. We didn't have that same energy in 2016. We need to have that same energy

in 2020, especially when the person in power won't even say the phrase, Black Lives Matter, or won't even say the phrase, I can't breathe. That tells you, you have an opportunity to make change. Prosecutors, senators, mayors, president, you have an opportunity to make change. Let your voice be heard. And so that's why I applaud LeBron, because as the best player in the NBA and an iconic figure, you and I both know when you're in his position, when you start to have a political one, everybody is going to disagree with you,

even if they're wrong or not knowledgeable about the topic. So that's what I always appreciated about him. And he's been consistent. And I know you like that as well. Well, you talked about raising the energy of, for 2020 for a certain community. Um, what about the fixing some of the stuff that you mentioned a little bit earlier about, you know, there's a little chicanery with, uh, with some of the voting places, the lines are too long. the things don't

work they'll shut the shut the stuff down at 11 o'clock at night all those things how can you fix that with this coalition that everybody put together here so i just want to paint a picture it's one of my favorite songs growing up was Grandmaster Flash and Milly Mille, The Message. I remember being a little kid and Rapper's Delight came out of Hip Hop and Hippie. And I can't front. I remember when I first heard it and everybody was loving it. I ain't love it like that. And it was like the greatest rap song ever to everybody. I was like, it's all right.

I'm like, it's all right. Then I heard Broken Glass everywhere. People pissing on the steps. You know, they just don't care. I was like, it's all right. I'm like, it's all right. Then I heard broken glass everywhere. People pissing on the steps, you know, they just don't care. I was like, yo, that's it right there. And that's the picture I want to paint with this, because there are so many people who are able and willing, taxpaying citizens, that actually want to vote. But all of a sudden, you go to your voting site, oh man, the line is so very long, it's to deflate you.

It's designed literally to deflate you. You name any place you go, a ball game, a concert, a supermarket, the longer the line, the less encouraged you're going to be to stand in it, especially once you get to the front of the pole and it may not be working. So now you see all of these people coming outside, arguing, creating chaos. What is going on? What is happening? And that creates a level of mistrust that has gone for decades. So it's like, OK, is my voice really going to be heard? Also, the thing we hold in our hand 24 hours a day is called a smartphone. Why can't we vote from it? You're an NBA voter, Bill. You're a really notable CEO of a company. You do almost everything from your phone to your computer, right?

Yeah. Okay. If everybody's 18 basically has a phone, everybody gets a phone bill every month, so clearly everybody has a phone. Wi-Fi service is tracked, we should be able to vote on our

phone. Or how about have the day that we vote be a holiday where people are off? If I make $40,000 or less, I really want to make my voice be heard. But you know what I can't do? Take off work today.

I got work. Right. I got to take care of my kids. So you formed basically a nonprofit that will eventually be able to raise money. What are you going to spend the money on? Where is the money going to go? So basically what you try to do is you try to eliminate any barriers emotionally, psychologically or physically. That's going to make people feel that my voice, my vote cannot be heard.

It will not be impaired. We're in your living room. Hey, Bill, if you feel this out and you can't go vote on this day. Yes, you can mail it in. You can track that it actually arrived. Your voice and your vote will count. But people have not trusted the system for so very long. There are people who feel like delivering the mail sometimes. It's like, oh, you can FedEx it. You know, it's like, no, I'm going to go wait in the house no i was like no you can fedex it'd be you don't have to drive you can fly there right and so i'm really enthusiastic um who was on the call um skylar diggins trey young uh eudonis haslam draymond green, Kendrick Perkins, Stack Jack. Big shout out to Steven Jackson, as I mentioned earlier.

And it's going to continue to mushroom. It's going to continue to gain power. And it's just about voices. It's just about the charity that kind of makes it to the hood. It's kind of just empowering those voices that get left out. Actually, it's not political. It's not of just empowering those voices that get left out. Actually, it's not political. It's not even political. Mobilizing people to vote ain't political.

It seems normal. When Ed Orgeron does it, it's like at the bottom of the ticker, it's like he came with the cure for cancer. It's like it's normal. Well, that's how you're able to be a nonprofit, because you're not leaning one way or the other. You're just making it easier for all human beings to vote. That seems like a fair thing.

Right. I didn't know it was such a big thing. I was like, oh, okay. CNN, MSNBC. I'm like, oh, okay. I didn't realize it was such a big deal. So LeBron said, I'm inspired by the likes of Muhammad Ali. I'm inspired by the Bill Russells

and the cream of those bars, the Oscar Robertsons, those guys who stood when the times were even way worse than they are today. Hopefully, hopefully some way down the line, someday down the line, people recognize me not only for the way I approached the game of basketball, but the way I approached life as an African-American man. What year did you think he really fully understood the gravity of saying something like that? Because it seems like in the last, I would say, six, seven years, once he got a couple titles out of the way, as he was trying to put everything else together,

then you start thinking, all right, big picture. How do I want to be remembered 50 years from now? When do you think that was for him? Oh, and by the way, you're going to appreciate this. A couple of my greatest what ifs in modern era championship history. Yeah. MJ had not retired. Yep.

If Shaq and Kobe not broken up. If LeBron not left Miami. If KD didn't leave the Warriors. I think LeBron got his man bones when he left Miami. When he went back to Cleveland, people forget the letter that Dan Gilbert wrote. So that was basically a decision. It's almost like Spike Lee being a Knicks fan, Regardless to how bad James Dola is. And they throw me out of the arena.

I spent $10 million on them, put them in all of my movies and sit front row and been their number one mascot forever. Even he can't stop me from being a Knicks fan. That's how LeBron felt about going home. I ain't going to bring a championship to Cleveland. And so

to me, that's when he started to grow into the philanthropist and the activist that we see these days. You know, one of the greatest what ifs ever is if the legend had played you a little more in 98, the last dance has a totally different ending. The legend kept you on ice he apologized he apologized they didn't cover that in the last dance they had 10 parts they ran out of time that part I wasn't famous enough

I was happy that I even got an interview I was like cool good looking he made up for it in 2000 but it was a little too late that was fun to that was fun to see you in there and just we had talked a million times about that Pacers Bowl series and how

close it was for them to go down. It was interesting to hear the way he talked about it. Like it was really like you pushed him to the tail end of it and he still got out. And you know the disappointing thing is like he's he's

the goat so when the rest of the world watches that they get a chance to celebrate his greatness it's like the hero in the movie like he's gonna find a way to persevere like we know rocky's gonna find a way to win so that's how everybody's watching the last dance. And I'm seeing footage that I didn't know existed. I'm like, he was carrying that pot belly and smoking cigars in a locker room and on the plane. I'm like, we should have beat them.

I can't believe we lost to them. Pippen's hurt. Yeah. They cussing out Jerry Krause and demeaning him. I'm like, I'm like, I can't believe we lost to them. And then I thought about it, Bill. Tony Kukoc, he the one. Yeah, he got you.

People sleep on him. The way they're had, he had at least 20. Yeah. The way they were constructed for a game like that to get to basically over 90 points, they needed a wild card guy. Whereas you guys could always, you know, get to whatever point total.

But that was a really good Pacers team. I want to save stuff for when you come back before the season starts. Did you... Anytime. Wait, have you talked to your lovely wife about three and a half months in Orlando? Is she aware?

What's happening here? Here's what we decided. I was like, I got to check the guest list. And you're on it. So if you're going to be there, Jacoby, I got like six or seven people. Oh, Jacoby's not. There's no way Jacoby's going. He's not leaving for three months.

Cross him off. How about this? If you go, I'll go. Oh, so you're not going. You're basically telling me you're not going right now. I'm saying if you go, I'll go. Otherwise, I'll come to L.A. and do the show instead of going to Bristol. I'm saying that on wax.

Those are the options. I was studying round two, which would be two straight weeks. It's eight teams, so it would be at least two games a day. Same location. It would be like those last two rounds of the Olympics. It would just

keep going for two weeks. That would be great. I was thinking that would be pretty... Plus, the round two matchups are going to be incredible. I'm kind of looking at that one, but if I have to let go and get quarantined for a week and all this stuff, I don't know. So we'll talk about that when it gets closer. I'd be psyched if you came to LA though. That's the plan. We'll see if they do, um, an announcement for the NBA schedule is likely that'll be on ESPN and we'll do that in LA.

So I'll make sure we catch up. And if we do another pod, we have to do the deep dive on, I, we never talked about the conversation we had with magic and we'll bond that time about Detroit, Detroit versus Chicago basketball and magic's whole thing about George Gervin, how he was the greatest pickup basketball player of all time. And he just laid out the case for us for like four minutes. And we were all like, okay, good enough. We agree. Hey, imagine being a little kid at St. Cecilia gym. I'm a little skinny kid.

I used to, they used to give me like $5. I used to go get everybody Gatorade or Faygo or stuff. And I'd say, go grab ice, some George, some ice. Just think about this. I was a youngster. Get to grab George, some ice. Just think about this. I was a youngster. Get to grab Jor, some ice, put the Gatorade on there. Unbelievable. He'd be in the paint.

And he like, you know, money, money, money, money, money, money, cash, cash, cash. That's all he said. Ice, ice, ice. He just like keeps saying these words. And he made like 35 in a row. We was counting. I was a little kid. One, two, three.

Magic was saying whatever team George was on, that team just won. No doubt. You're counting by ones, and he could score any time he had the basketball. So it was like, all right. No doubt. So Magic figured it out early. All right, so I need George on my team, and then I'm just going to be able to stay in the court for three

hours. For those that don't know that that's a modern day, Kevin Durant. Yeah. So when he goes, yeah, he'll join the 73 win team, but he going to be the lead scorer and win finals MVP.

That's dirt. Kevin Durant, that modern day version. You agree with that? Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, we almost like Gerv with 24-foot range.

Yeah. Girvin would have been shooting nose. He would have been shooting nose. The thing with Girvin, it was just he was getting to 32. He was getting eight points a quarter, and that was it. And then there might be the 16-point quarter in there, the 20-point quarter, but he was getting eight every quarter. It was just happening. You're a prolific

scorer and an all-time great legend. When you go into the final game of the season and know that the guy that you going into a scoring title, we'll have 67 to 68 and you need to get over 70 and you get it like that. Like that's crazy. Yeah, that's great. It's true.

All right. So you'll come back when we actually had the playoffs. It was good seeing you said, everybody give Jacoby a kiss for me. I'll talk to you soon. Yes, sir. Love you, brother. See you soon. It was good seeing you. Sad. Everybody give Jacoby a kiss for me. I'll talk to you soon. Yes, sir. Love you,

brother. See you soon. See it. All right. The 2006 redraftables is coming up in one second. Joe house and Chris Ryan are on it. Wanted to mention that a house is fairway. Rolling podcast is back because golf is back.

I actually went on there this week with Nathan Hubbard to try to figure out who's going to win the colonial, but we are doing a free tournament. Fandlecom slash ringer golf. Every week that they have a PGA tournament, you can try to beat me in house and you won't because house is the best of this stuff. And always has really good instincts with who to pick, who's going to win. He actually wins money betting on golf, which is just dumbfounded to me. But, uh, if you, if you like golf, or if you want to get into golf more and try to figure out what's going to happen, who to root for check out a fairway rolling. All right. The 2006 redraftables right now. All right. The 2006 redraftables. Chris Ryan is here. Joe house is here. This is one of the dumbest dopiest drafts other than 2013.

Um, probably the dopiest draft of this entire century. We had a, for our first pick was named Andrea. We had six lottery whiffs. We had out of our top five picks, one guy became amnesty later, Tyrus Thomas. One guy was an iconic all-time bust, Adam Morrison. One guy became a internet punching bag and a despised New York, Nick Andrea Bargnani. And then the number five pick was a guy whose nickname was the landlord that I had totally forgotten until, uh, until I did all the research for this LaMarcus Aldridge was the only good top five pick out of this draft. Chris Ryan, this was also the last blog post of your Chauncey Billups blog, which has a new four hour documentary, uh, about it coming up by Ken Burns. Um do you remember of this draft first

when you think about it? It's intertwined with my experience on basketball internet in the first three or four years of the 2000s where it was truly weird out there. And people would just blog about the personalities that they were attracted to. And for as much as this 2006 draft is honestly,

it's probably a waste of this podcast's time to re-litigate it. What an island of misfit toys, man. And what a strange group of individuals to be in this lottery, much less this whole draft. And I remember that night and just like, that was back when basketball was truly weird back then. When guys like this would get picked, like Sheldon Williams would go in the top five or six picks of a draft

and you were just like, what am I doing with my life? I'm just watching this guy named the landlord get selected. House, Rossello and I, we did the 2005 redraftables and discussed this is an epic, epic GM run of just terrible decisions across the board for five solid years. And you can feel a lot of them in this draft combined with one of the weirdest college seasons we've ever had, where it was basically the height of JJ Redick becoming like a Cobra Kai America's villain on Duke. And then this bizarre Adam Morrison thing going on.

And all of us are like, wow, these are the best two players in college basketball. This is not a great sign for the draft. What else do you remember from that college season? I don't remember a lot from it. I think the overriding, overwhelming sentiment is what you guys have been saying, which is it was just crazy weird. It was so weird. I never thought that Duke team was very good, and yet they won, right? They won the title that year.

I never thought that Sheldon Williams was a wowser kind of guy, he got picked uh uh fifth in the draft it was like it was this draft i think is proof of how hard that the draft is like how can you fault gms how can you fault teams for you know taking a swing on a bunch of guys um The track records here are all over the place. How can you possibly mine a diamond like Paul Millsap back in this era? This is the kind of takeaway for me. We don't really have the advanced metrics component

yet. Even if you look, I don't want to spoil the redraft that we're doing later, but you have Rondo's the 21st pick, Kyle Lowry's 24th Paul Millsap's 47th PJ Tucker's 35th. And these are all guys that would become like top eight or nine relevant guys. And then you go the other way with the top five where only one guy makes it. Um, I, we knew it at the time. And this has only happened a couple of times with the draft.

I think it definitely 2000, definitely 2013. And then this one where people are like, holy shit. Hold on to your seats. We don't know what's going to happen. This draft has some just legendary dumb ass trades. So Chicago ends up with the number two pick because of the Eddie Curry trade that Isaiah Thomas made the previous summer, where he gives up two unprotected first round picks. The first one manifests itself as the number two pick in the entire draft.

Chicago gets this insane, dumb luck. Oh my God. Can't believe this worked out for us. Now it was too good to be true. They flipped the pick to number four, Portland, uh, for the rights to Tyrus Thomas and Victor Crappa house. Do you have a Victor Crappa joke? Yes, it's Victor Crappa.

That's the joke. Well, that trade was Krapa. Portland acquires the seventh pick from the Celtics, Randy Foy. Ray Flaffrentz's contract, which ran for two more years or three more years. And Dan Dickow, in exchange for Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff's contract, which was expiring a year sooner than Rafe LaFrance,

which is why Boston wanted it, and a 2008 second rounder. We're going to go into it later, but this is about as angry as my dad's ever been on a draft week. He was just completely enraged. We'll cover it later. And then the other one that's nuts.

Phoenix has the 21st pick. Marcus Williams is on the board. Controversial point guard who, uh, was had a whole thing at Yukon, stole some laptops. Let's, let's just call it.

He was a laptop stealer. Uh, and then Ray John Rondo's on the board who everybody was like freakish athleticism, huge hands. He was one of the original, uh, freak guys. Um, but, but had some, some chemistry issues at Kentucky. We'll leave it at that. Phoenix has the 21st pick.

They just trade it for a future Portland first rounder. Meanwhile, this is the height of Phoenix being great. They just could have had Rondo. They pass that up. Um, Chris, why were the GMs so bad? Is it like the internet hadn't properly bullied GMs yet for bad behavior? What was going on here? So I'll tell you what I think is I remember sitting in the back of a wonderful record store called Mondo Kim's on St. Mark's Place in New York City and reading your columns back then. And that was the first time that I was like, oh, yeah, you know what?

Somebody makes these decisions. These guys don't just appear in Sixers uniforms. And I remember that was sort of like that you were among the first people to introduce these ideas of like, these guys can actually screw teams up for years. And we should be paying more attention to how they spend the team's money, how they put these teams together. When I look at this list of... I mean, I actually am nostalgic for the era of dumb GMs. I think we had a lot more fun when there were more David Khans

and less Daryl Moreys. Now everybody's like, it's pretty rare when someone screws up on a monumental level. You know, this was the year I wrote the Atrocious GM Summit for four months before. I think one common theme with a lot of this stuff, there's more ex-players running teams. This was still the last part of the era, House.

House, I don't know if you know this, but you've had a couple X players run the bullets wizards to, to mix success. Um, I think what's happened by the time we get to 2020, it's, it's just a lot more smart people who didn't necessarily play basketball professionally. You know, I think back then you think like you have Wes Unseld, Ernie Grunfeld, Isaiah Thomas. It just goes on and on. Michael Jordan's making picks for Charlotte. And the wave is coming of the Daryl Morey, Sam Presti guys that are looking at it completely different, that are taking advanced metrics into account, that aren't bringing in explorer biases biases of, Oh no, this guy's talented.

We can save him things like that house. Would you rather have an X player or a smart person run your team? Just, I don't know. What's your pick? I mean, the one thing I will say in, in reviewing this draft and thinking about it, the, the dearth of talent. This is really a talentless draft. I mean, there was one potential superstar in the draft, and he got hurt. And that's it. Adam Morrison? Yes, and his name is Adam Morrison.

That was my favorite part of Chris Ryan's last blog post ever, by the way. What did you call his outfit? I think I compared him to a guy greeting you at a Best Buy, but I have to go back and check the tape. No, it was like you called him a rector, like a guy, like a priest in a rectory. That's right. It was excellent.

Remember how many Adam Morrison conversations we had in 06? This was still an era when people really, really cared about college basketball. And he was an incredibly fun college basketball player, both him and JJ were, it's hard to think of it this way now. And JJ has turned into such a good role player, but he was awesome to watch in college and the other schools really hated him. And he's talked on his podcast about, you know, it was a tough thing for him to deal with as a 20 and 21 year old, when you're getting hate, he Donnie like that with Morrison, this is Gonzaga is real official breakout as a big time program. Yeah. And he was unlike any other college

player. He w he was player. He was buckets. He was putting it up. We're now at the point of the conversation where I have to ask you guys. Adam Morrison. Could he have made it if he didn't blow out his knee on the Hornets, Bobcats, whatever they whatever Charlotte version they were at that point. I kind of liked him freshman year, our rookie year in Charlotte. I thought he had a couple decent moments

and I think the knee injury just killed him. Yeah, I think there's a couple of guys in this draft who were drafted a couple of years too early. I mean, there were probably a couple of guys who were busts no matter what. But this draft is a really interesting snapshot of a time before I think people started getting a little bit more

creative with how they how they developed talent in the NBA. So you've you see a couple of guys here and you're just like, yeah, this is just someone just straight up drafting a power forward because they think they need some help on the boards, you know? Yeah. And Morrison drafted in 2012 is just a much different player than he is in 2006. And he might've even succeeded in the era that he was drafted into. If he hadn't gotten hurt, that was the worst possible situation for him based on what we now know was his, you know,

particular kind of psychological makeup. Like he just, he, you know, as, as you said, Bill, he didn't have the um the disposition the demeanor

the psychological wherewithal to be alpha and they needed mj needed alpha out of that draft pick and the funny thing is he showed a ton of alpha as a college basketball player like yeah he was incredible at gonzaga i loved him and i thought he was uh gonna have at least a good a career as somebody like keith van horn like you know um you know that felt to me like his uh his basement his his floor um but i think it was you know the injury obviously was the career alterer but if he landed somewhere where he didn't have that pressure and he got got picked you know later in the lottery in the 10 to 14 range, I think he could have been successful in that era. There were some red flags that we did not know

how to take into account in the mid-2000s. Because even with him, and I remember my column had really taken off at this point. It had a lot of, it was the first time I was really getting inside information from different people. And the word on Morrison at Gonzaga was he was really fragile and they really protected him from the media. You know, he was almost like putting a bubble there because they were really, you know, worried about him. They were worried about what he could handle and they really sheltered him in a lot of ways.

And that was the word even before the draft. And I think now in 2020, teams, the science of studying just the brain and mental makeup of a player, and there's so much more emphasis now on mental health, there were real red flags with him. You throw him on Charlotte with a ton of expectations. Doesn't have a great rookie season. He's still averaged 11 a game,

but he's on a team with Gerald Wallace, Raymond Felton, Emeka Okafor. And it just, he gets the knee injury and he just kind of craters. I think he would have been put in a better position to succeed, but I also don't think he would have gone three because I think teams would have been put in a better position to succeed, but I also don't think he would have gone three because I think, I think teams would have been really concerned about some of the red flags with him coming out of a college. The Tyrus Thomas thing. Oh, good with Morrison though.

It's also like that catch 22 where the most value is derived from him. If he's a focal point of the offense, but the most pressure gets put on him when he's made the focal point of an offense. And also if you're an NBA team and Adam Morrison is the focal point of your offense, but the most pressure gets put on him when he's made the focal point of an offense. And also, if you're an NBA team and Adam Morrison is the focal point of your offense, where are you going? Right.

Another guy that Tyrus Thomas ends up going in the top five, it's fueled. And by the way, I will fully admit, I was completely wrong. I thought he was going to be a good pro. One of the reasons I thought that was he was awesome in the tournament.

And it was a classic case of the guy lighting it up for two weeks in March madness and everybody going, Oh, this guy. And it was just a Dick T's house. We've gotten sucked into those guys over and over again. That was a classic March madness, almost like a contract year. Like what Jerome James had his contract year and ended up making 30 million in the playoffs. It was the college equivalent of that. I think people are more hip to that now, getting seduced by two good March badness weeks.

Yeah, I mean, we've acknowledged it a bunch of times doing these redraftables that back in that era and even really, especially in the late 90s, we used performance in the NCAA as a highly weighted indicator of potential future success because the logic, and I think it's not crazy logic, was that on the biggest stage in front of, you know, with the sort of highest amount of pressure, seeing these guys perform,

there should be a reliable kind of indicator of how they're going to withstand that same kind of pressure. Once they're in the NBA, maybe don't take somebody from LSU is a good draft strategy. Hey, unless his name is Shaq. The number one pick of this draft, Andrea Bargnani. None of us were that excited about when it happened.

And I, and when we do the redraftables, I want to go into his whole career, but here's, here's how people felt when it happened. Jay Billis at the draft says a solid prospect with a chance to be a solid player. Red flag. Number one. Then he says later in the draft, this is before with a chance to be a solid player. Red flag. Number one. Then he says later in the draft, this is before he's even been taken. He does not rebound. He does not post up. He is not physical. He needs to work on his body. That's how bad this draft was. This guy was the number one pick house. And I were going nuts because we love Brandon Ryan college. And we were just like, here is the one guy in this draft other than JJ, who I think we both felt was, we knew at least he was going to be a valuable player.

We know if it was going to be a star, but Brandon Roy was like, we know what he is. He's a guard. Who's going to be able to create a shot. He had a very identifiable kind of crossover hesitation move. That was just like, well, in the NBA, he's going to score 20 a game. I wrote, um, when Minnesota took him sixth, I wrote in the diary with the six pick Minnesota somehow ends up with the best player in the draft brain and Roy funny how it always works out that way with the new rules and his hesitation move alone is good for 16, 18 points a game next season and three or four all-star appearances down the road. That was exactly what happened.

What we didn't know, we didn't have the intelligence, um, that his knees were like every, every good medical staff that looked at him was like, that guy's got five years. And so there was a real shelf life. And yet Chris and iconic four or five years for him. Oh yeah. I mean, some of the most like breathtaking moments of that of that NBA era I associate with Brandon Roy. It's missed him. Missed actually really enjoyed how unique his game was. Oh, God.

You know, I think some of these guys, man, like I miss these types of players because you think like Aldridge is in this draft still growing strong. He's on San Antonio. He's going to be a free agent after this season. And you think like we could have had 15 years of Brandon Roy. We basically got four and it wasn't like he did anything wrong. It was just his body. There was a whole thing about, he was missing an ACL and all these different things, but the Celtics had the seventh pick

and, um, that their team doctors basically i i think they've talked about this but this is what i was told by my boston people like the team doctors were just like you can't take this guy he's gonna be out of the league by the time he's 26 27 do you think that there's anything to the idea of the way like we have a better understanding of like how to get guys healthy like is there anything that could have saved for Roy? I mean, you're not a doctor, but like the way that the Sixers put guys on ice for a year or two here and there, is there anything that could have been done to prolong or save Brandon Roy's career? I'm sure. I'm sure. I don't know if it would have, you know, a hundred percent saved his legs, but I'm sure there's a scenario where

Odin's the other one, you know, we'll do Odin when we do 07, but, um, the Odin stuff was very, very basic things that could have saved him, right? His legs weren't the same size. Now they would know, Oh, just wear these sneakers. It'll even out, you know, then your body won't be off kilter and things like that. It's weird. We weren't thinking this way in, uh, in 2006, but we weren't, uh, one other note we should talk about Rondo goes 21 and Lowry goes 24. Um, I didn't like when the Celtics traded for Rondo. Here's what I wrote. The list of NBA teams that won an NBA title with a point guard who couldn't shoot looks like this. And then the list was just all empty.

But then I added, on the other hand, my Celtics moles told me that Rondo absolutely destroyed Randy Foy and Marcus Williams in their workout a few weeks ago. So who knows?

They win a title with him two years later. This is not one of my better draft diary performances. It's a great reverse jinx. There is an argument to be made. And I'm sure we can make it. If we were going to do not,

okay. The entire career that this guy's had, but if we were going to say the best version of these players, how would you redraft them? I, I think national TV Rondo is in the conversation for the number one pick. Wow. Well,

I'll tell you this. Well, I want to save some of the Rondo stuff for when we get to them, but I'll tell you this, his rookie year, which was a train wreck and they're tanking for Tim Duncan, basically two months in and Rondo was clearly good. And it was almost like inexplicable that they weren't playing him more. And I do think they sacrificed some of his rookie year because it was like when he was on the court, good things would actually happen.

And you know, he just, you could, you could just see something. It was not surprising to me when they do the KG trade, they, he, they, it was the one piece they wouldn't put in because Minnesota is like, give us Jefferson, give us Rondo. And they're like, you're not getting Rondo. We actually think we can win the title of fees in our seven man rotation. So that happened. Uh,

some comedy from this draft. Here's what I wrote on the Ty Thomas pick quote in the draft diary. I love that pick for them. And not just because he's a freakish athlete with a seven foot three wingspan. You can go to war with Ty Thomas. I don't know what war I was talking about. What are you talking about?

What war was that? Star Wars? I think it was the Falcon Islands. What was the Falcon Island crisis? Another one was they had a whole debate about Rudy Gay's potential because Rudy Gay starts sliding, which was actually dumb. I mean, Rudy Gay was talented. We were all frustrated with him. Yukon. There was a whole rap that he, that he didn't care enough. Um, Greg Anthony argued that gay will be better than people think

Stephen A is on this draft and it was clear he had to watch much basketball. Stephen A countered. I haven't seen him play that much. And that was the argument. Steven is one of the people on this draft. I haven't seen the play that much about Rudy K. He was a top eight pick. Randy Foy. Everybody was really excited about, including I think us because we liked him at Villanova. At some point they're talking about the pick.

He goes seventh. And then they, they Minnesota and Portland flip six and seven and uh portland gets brandon ray dickie v comes in dickie v is somehow involved this draft too and he comes in and he goes he's dwayne wade baby this is after dwayne wade had just won the 2006 title and dickie v's like he's dwayne wade so that was rough. Tough one. Stu Scott was doing the interviews. He interviewed Patrick O'Brien, who went ninth,

and he said, this is how he started the interview. Before the NCAA tournament, nobody knew who you were. What's the best thing about your game, Bryant, that people don't know? It's called a Bryant. That was a rough moment. Remember Sierre Sene?

Yes. Seven foot eight wingspan. Seattle jumped on him at number 10. And there's a story that I had in the draft diary that I researched, which was true, that they had taught him how to make a layup off his correct foot 12 months before. And then House, he'd played in a Belgian professional league the season before the draft.

He averaged three points a game where they're red flags in your opinion here. I mean, the amazing thing is that after that kind of a resume and with that kind of, of a background that some, uh, number of years later,

Yee Jing Lang got drafted. Yeah. I mean, a year later, he was the, he was the first. Sene was year later. He was the first. Sene was... He paved the way.

He paved the way for Yijing Lang, the chairman. There's a good what if here because Seattle, Redick's still on the board at that point. If Seattle takes Redick, they had Ray Allen

and then Durant's coming in 07. They could have just kept, they could have had just all three of those guys on the same team and had like the first ridiculous three point team. Or does Redick make them good enough to that? They missed Durant. Oh, good point.

Well, I'll tell you who didn't make them good enough. Say air SNA. So then we were all rooting for the Knicks to take Marcus Williams. Controversial a point guard. I had a joke in the draft. I'm still proud of 14 years later. He's leading all NBA rookies and steals right now. It's a good one.

Thank you. I'll be here all week. Um, Dan Patrick was the narrator of this draft and had like a kind of some tension with Stern. And at one point Utah was on the clock. They made the pick Stern didn't come out and Patrick was doing where, where'd he go?

Jokes. Stern emerged and said, Dan, I was sitting in the back listening to your pithy comments. He's the word pithy. Did Dan Patrick ever do another draft? No, never seen again. And then there's the iconic moment of this draft.

And when it really went to another level was the Knicks were on the clock at 20. Marcus Williams is on the board. And again, people thought Marcus Williams was like a top 10 pick before the laptop stealing thing. Rondo's on the board. The Knicks don't have a point guard. They have, it's like they're in that Steve Francis, uh, Marbury, just like, it's just headed off a cliff and why not take a young point guard? And they take Ronaldo Bachman. And I don't know as the years pass,

if the humor has stayed in place the way it did in the moment, but this was at a time of Isaiah's GM rain where the sex stuff was already going on. He did. He'd made a whole bunch of terrible trades and we had now reached a point where it's like anything was possible with the next draft pick and when they took balkman it actually delivered it was as good at from a comedy standpoint as we ever would have wanted and then they cut for some reason stern said ronaldo is not here the crowd's booing crowd's going crazy and dan Dan Patrick goes and it's probably a good thing.

And then they cut right to Spike Lee who looks like he just lost his dog. And that was the New York Knicks in 2006. So that was great. That's really about it other than Marcus Williams had 14% body

fat down for Marcus Williams, which should have been a red flag. I think that's what House is weighing in at right now. That's how it sounds like after a trip to Momofuku, he's at 14%. 14% body fat's high. Yeah. Anyway, all right, let's do the redraft. So I had, from a crapshoot rating, I had this draft as a 9.5 out of 10.

It's just an incredible redraft from where guys were taken. Who wants the first, let's give Chris the first pick because this was the, the final Chauncey Billups blog, blog spot draft. He earned the first pick. I am going to probably go a little bit controversial and I'm going to go Kyle Lowry.

Wow. Yeah. Oh my God. That is go Kyle Lowry. Wow! Oh, my God. That is controversial. Stunning! First of all, loved him on that four-guard Nova team with Mike Nardi, Alan Ray, Randy Foy. That was like a real precursor to offenses to come, I think. He's got a ring.

I think that he has really been an example of what you can do in the second half of your career if you change your body a little bit. And you can make the argument that a lot of his success is due to Kawhi, but I thought he's had... I overall feel like he has had a more memorable and impressive career than

LaMarcus. Well, here's the irony of that pick. Toronto had the first pick in the real draft. Yeah. And I should have done this. I'm sorry to the listeners. Here's how the actual draft went. Toronto, Bargnani, Chicago, took Aldridge, traded him to Portland.

Morrison third. Portland's picking for trades it to Chicago. Ty Thomas, Atlanta fifth, Sheldon Williams, Minnesota six Brandon Roy flips them to Portland for number seven, Randy Foy, Houston eight, Rudy gay, golden state nine, Patrick O'Brien, Seattle takes Sine, Orlando 11 with Redick. And then it gets goofy after that. So you have Toronto ending up with Kyle Lowry anyway. How did you think of that pick?

Well, the problem is it took Kyle a little while to get going. Like he didn't start every game until 2014. He didn't make an all-star team until 2015. And this is, we're talking about the 2006 draft, so you need to be a team that has eight or nine years worth of patience for that number one pick

to pay off. Now, he's really validated that selection over the last five years. I mean, you know, incredible at this sort of late stage of his career. House, you've got to trust the process. That is one hell of a process, Chris Ryan. So,

yeah, I couldn't do Kyle at that spot. So, this is the same year Daryl Morey takes over the Rockets, which we probably should have mentioned at the top. He's running the draft for the first time, ends up making the controversial Rudy Gay for Shane Battier trade, which eventually became a giant Michael Lewis feature.

And it's really like the first money ball moment for the NBA, where somebody's breaking down Shane Battier's, all his glue guy stats, and decides that's more valuable for the team we have than Rudy Gay's potential. And it's, it's honestly the first trade like that of the thing I knew Daryl. Um,

and we've talked about it on the, on these pods going back when he was at the Celtics, took the Houston job, talk to him a lot during this time. And I remember he asked me for advice when he took the job. And my advice was this find the dumbest GMs possible. Call them all the job. And my advice was this. Find the dumbest GMs possible. Call them all the time. There's a lot of them.

And that would be the easiest way to improve your team. So he trades for Kyle Lowry in February 2009. Kyle Lowry was somebody we all liked. He was buried on that Memphis team. They had had Mike Conley. Mike Conley was the top five pick a year later for them.

And it was Mike Conley's team. And Lowry's just trying to fit in. And he gets Kyle Lowry. He gives up Rafer Alston to Orlando. Memphis ends up trading Kyle Larry and Memphis. It looks like they got a Donald foil, Mike Wilkes and a 2009 number one pick to Memphis. And he gets Kyle Larry. And I remember talking to the day after I'm like, you motherfucker, you figured it out. You traded with Chris Wallace, smart move way to go, but he steals Kyle Larry, but house is right. It took a

while. And you know, we did the 2005 draft. We were talking about how Lou Williams has basically two careers where he's like, kind of like Jamal Crawford with less PR for the first nine years of his career. And then as the league changes, he becomes this weapon, this free throw three point weapon. And Lowry is another good example of, you know, if you look at, I had him second in the redraft, just for the record, but you look at him from just 2014 to 2020. So it's basically year nine of his career on he's 18, seven and five is 38% from three and a good defensive player too. Um,

it's defensible. Six all-star teams made a 13 mall NBA, but most important is a good example of somebody who wins the title. And his whole career trajectory is just going to be looked at differently forever. He's they don't win that title. You don't take them with the first pick. No.

Although I mean, I was tempted because he went to Cardinal Doherty high school in Philadelphia. Yeah. You have your Philly stuff. He wins the title and it basically takes all the baggage away. Whatever baggage we had with Kyle Larry. It's an incredible title.

He was awesome. And in that final game, put his ball at that whole series. He put his balls on the table, but especially that last game, he really won my respect house. LaMarcus Aldridge just landed in your lap at the number two pick. You want him?

Yeah, I'm going to take them. I mean, a steady contributor performs at a high level throughout his career. Nice number of all-star appearances, couple all NBA teams, you know, kind of a throwback player he he might have been better

in the like the first part of the 90s his face up ability um you know and the the pace of play back then but look he's still playing here you know 14 years on and making contributions he's still one of san antonio's best three So, you know, I, I feel pretty good about taking LaMarcus at this spot. It's funny at the time we were lukewarm on him in this draft because we'd, there'd been this history of these six 11 guys that weren't quite centers. Um, there was still some Charles Smith residue. The next, the next guy, just a really soft 18 and seven, but you couldn't count on him when it mattered. And we just had such a bad history with these guys. I wasn't a huge fan. I never was

impressed by him in Texas, but he's a good example. Like Rosilla was talking about in 2000, in the 2005 draft, some guys fill out in good ways and bad ways, right? Like we were talking about in the 2005 thing about how Marvin Williams was this really athletic, lanky six foot nine freshman at UNC, but then he filled out and he just had this really heavy lower body and it kind of changed who he was. Aldridge filled out in good ways. Like he really became a kind of a modern low post guy,

you know, is never like a get in the block, but from 10 to 12 feet was really good. One of my favorite games is to just go, go through, uh, college teams and just play a little bit of a, what if with, what if this guy had stayed a year and we did miss like a pretty incredible

Texas Longhorns team with Marcus. Cause that was KD comes the year later. And if, if everything kind of breaks right, you might have a Texas Longhorns team, albeit one coached by Rick Barnes, that has KD, PJ Tucker, Daniel Gibson, and LaMarcus. Wow.

Yeah. So he's 19 and a half and eight rebounds a game for his career. Two second All-NBA, three third-team All-NBA. He's only won four playoff series ever. Only one in Portland, uh, 2014 playoffs, which was a year before his free agency was really his breakout. And I remember doing countdown that year, us doing segments about is the Marcus Aldridge, one of the best players in the league now, shit like that. In the playoffs, he was 26 and 11. And this is two playoff series.

They beat Houston and then they lost to San Antonio in six. San Antonio ended up winning the title. That was when Dame was really coming on to Dame, finished the Houston series with the buzzer beater. And then a year later he left to go to San Antonio. And there was all kinds of stuff about, he didn't like that Portland was becoming Dame's team. All that stuff. It was like billboards, right?

It was like they were replacing him with Dame on the billboards. And apparently he really wanted to go to the Lakers and they fucked it up. And he ends up in San Antonio. When he goes to San Antonio, we don't know that Kawhi is going to become Kawhi yet. And you think like they had a couple decent teams, but that 2017 Spurs team that was ready to go toe to toe with the Warriors that that year was probably his best chance to I don't know if they would have beaten that worst team. I don't think they would, but that would have been a slugfest that series Kawhi gets hurt in the first game. We never know. I'm going to give you the

best forwards of the 2010s. You tell me where LaMarcus ranks. LeBron, Durant, Kawhi. He's not better than any of those three. Here are the candidates for the fourth spot. Blake Griffin, Paul George, Carmelo Anthony, Anthony Davis, Kevin Love, LaMarcus. Who'd you have in the fourth spot, Blake Griffin, Paul George, Carmelo Anthony, Anthony Davis, Kevin Love, LaMarcus. Who'd you have in the fourth spot? Davis. Yeah, me too. It's not, it's a no brainer to me. It's Anthony Davis. Agree. I would have Blake in the fifth spot. I agree with Blake. Blake in 2015 was the third best guy in the league. Yeah. So now it's Paul George, Carmelo, Kevin Love, or LaMarcus for the sixth spot. I think I'd go George.

Me too. I'm with Chris Ryan. Paul George, just because of the defensive offering that he represents. So now it's Kevin Love, who really peaks there a couple of years and then moves into something else. Carmelo who peaks the first three, four years of the decade, then tails off. And then Aldridge, who's been pretty steady the whole way. I would give the edge to Aldridge out of those guys. So I would say he's the seventh best forward of the decade. That's pretty good. It's not bad. Not bad for a draft pick.

All right. I'm on the clock with the third pick. My scouts really took this seriously. We looked at a lot of Rajon Rondo tape, looked at some JJ Redick tape, really, really did some background work on Rudy Gay, took Paul Millsap out for a nice long dinner. Talked to him for a while.

Really looked at Brandon Roy. Thought about him. And where we landed was Rayjean Rondo. Ah, yes. Here's the case. 2009 to 2012 playoffs, 66 games. The Celtics are a contender. Every one of those years, they almost win in 2010. And he's the best player in the team that year in those playoff games, 66 playoff games, 16, 10, and seven 46% field goal, 2.1 steals outplayed Derek Rose in 2009.

Derek Rose, a rookie, but more importantly, outplays LeBron in 2010. And this is LeBron second year of a back-to-back MVP LeBron up to one in the series. And Rondo takes it over and wins the next three. And he's the best player in that series. This is a bad thing for LeBron's goat campaign, by the way, because you feel like, all right, he's the best player in that series. This is a bad thing for LeBron's GOAT campaign, by the way, because you'd be like, all right, he's the GOAT. Well, that one year when Rajon Rondo outplayed him in the fucking playoffs kind of hurts the case.

Also, third-team All-NBA. And I think it's important to remember he got hurt. He blew out his ACL right as he was really at his peak. And I feel like that cost him a year and a half was never quite the same. So add everything up. And the fact that he really national TV, Rondo playoff Rondo, somebody you could really go to war with in a playoff series. And I think he's the third pick house. I would have gone Millsap, but I understand the case for Rondo. I mean, Millsap, his career was immensely helped by landing in Utah

at an established, you know, a team that makes the playoffs every year with a culture and a support system. You know, institutional integrity is the way I like to call it. So, you know, Millsap on a different team. Can he blossom that way? I don't know. But Rondo turns out we had this, we knew this about him from college. He's a motherfucker.

And you know what? That's a valuable thing, it turns out. He is the diametric opposite of Adam Morrison in terms of his competitiveness and his basketball. Now I don't, I don't want to say basketball IQ, but like his psychological competitiveness, his ability to jump in and, you know, just basically say F all y'all I'm. I'm going to do my thing. And now that translates into him not being able to coexist in a lot of different circumstances.

You know, the Dallas situation will go down as an all-time abortion. But, you know, Ray John's resume is strong. Yeah, he's got three years. You backed off the basketball IQ thing, but there are a few smarter players that I've seen on a basketball court. If you get a chance to ever sit close to a court while Rondo's playing,

you can hear him calling out sets. You can hear him calling out opposition defensive sets. He will be playing D and just be like, this is the play they're running. It's uncanny. It's too bad because he has the ACL thing, ends up in that weird Dallas situation, goes to Sacramento.

That sucked. Ends up in Chicago. That was also awful. And then kind of gets rejuvenated for that one really fun New Orleans year with Davis where it kind of unlocked him again. And I do think he's a great example of had to be on the right kind of team

with the right kind of players. He had very high expectations for everybody else. He's openly a dick if he wasn't happy with where he was. And the other thing is the league started to shift against him a little bit, you know, and his inability to shoot, which he got a little bit better at, you know, and his inability to shoot, which he got a little bit better at, you know, starting in 2015, he's at least like over 33% as a three point shooter. All those are wide open.

So he wasn't like a catastrophe, but you know, as a guy that really would have made more sense in the eighties and nineties, I feel like, you know, when, when the game was just played much closer to the basket and the stuff that he was doing, just the league kind of changed on him. He was also the other thing that, that happened that was really too bad is he was just a bad free throw shooter and never got better at it. I don't know whether it was because his hands were too big or what, but if you look at, you know, in 2009 and 2010, he's at least averaging three and a half free throws a game. Not great, but at least he's trying to get to the line that dips to the point that by the time he hits the second half

of his career, he's basically not going to free throw line at all. I mean, he is in Dallas. He shot 0.9 free throws a game. He's, he's doing everything he can not to have contact. And I think the book was out on him by the second half of his career that when he drove to the basket, he's dishing. Yeah. He's not going to try to bounce off guys. He's not going to try to finish because he didn't want to get fouled.

And I think to me, he's one of like the top five guys. I can remember Nick Anderson's one. Anton Walker is a good one. Guys who just didn't want to get fouled. Then it changed how they played. House was the opposite. House loved the contact.

Searching for contact. He loved it. It's an easy way to pad the stats. He wasn't afraid, especially in intramurals. He wasn't afraid to lurch into guys. Like House wanted to go to the line. Rondo was the opposite. So I actually, I weirdly feel like this wasn't the best version of his career.

I think there's a different version that's just better than what we ended up with, but it was still really good. Yeah, he's obviously a coach guy. He's obviously a guy who really mattered who wound up being the coach. And it wasn't necessarily always the better coach. I mean, Carlisle is obviously one of the best coaches we've had in the NBA in a long time.

And those guys couldn't be near each other. So, yeah, you know, the sort of environmental stuff with Rondo, it's like crapshoot. I have no idea who he would have thrived under. Well, the observation I want to make is there could still be another. Maybe it's not a full length chapter, but half chapter for Rondo in these playoffs coming up that we're going to have in the 2020 season. Right. He's healthy now.

And that Lakers situation is absolutely perfect for him to flourish and for him to make a, an impact. And Chris, you've said it a couple of times. It's prime time Rondo time. He might play a really meaningful role in how the Lakers end up in this 2020 playoffs. Well, he can't be better than LeBron, so that's good. I've been saying for years that national TV quarantine Rondo

was the most dangerous player in the NBA. So it'd be interesting to see how that plays out. The, uh, if Rondo had gone third in this draft, that means Charlotte would have taken him, which means Michael Jordan and Rajon Rondo would have been in each other's lives. So you could tell me that they actually would have fought to the death over a connect four game, or you could tell me that it would have been the greatest thing that ever happened to both of them where Jordan's like, this is my soulmate.

This guy hates his teammates as much as I did. He's super competitive. This is my guy. And Rondo just would have been like a 19 time all-star in Charlotte. And we would think of Jordan as this great owner. Maybe it's like Charlotte could be like an Italian soccer team where Rondo's just getting the coach fired every three months.

Charlotte's on their 19th coach of the year. This guy used to work at an Arby's and coaches AAU, but Rondo seems to like him. Rondo is impressed by him in a Connect Four tournament online. All right, Chris,

you have the fourth pick in the draft. This was the pick that, uh, was technically Portland. And then they traded up. Who do you have? Yeah, I'm going to go Millsap here,

even though I'm, I'm bored. Even saying the two words, Paul Millsap. It's funny. I had him sixth in my redraft, but I think it was out of pure boredom. Solid guy,

17 and eight from 2011 to 2017 for all-star teams. I think that was partially had to do with the forwards were just loaded in the West and pretty, pretty weak in the East for the most part for a 47th pick really couldn't have turned out better. And I can't think of anything else to say. Yeah. I mean,

a cool kind of a bridge player, like as a member of that, a bud Hawks team and the, the move into pace and space and move into, into the sort of drunk on threes NBA. But I, I feel bad, but I just can't muster a lot of like poetry about Paul Millsap.

House here on the clock at five. Um, I'm going to take Brandon Roy here. Oh, I, I think that five years of Brandon Roy is the functional equivalent of the longer careers of, of some of the guys that came after him. I mean, this five spot, the eligible candidates are like JJ, which is, you know, totally legit. Who else? Rudy Gay, you know, PJ Tucker, I guess.

I'll just take Brandon Roy right here. He made, he won rookie of the year and he missed 25 games that year. He was an all-star by his second season. He made two all NBA teams in his five years. So you're basically, you know, evaluating with all of the information we have now, what can I get in this five-year window that I have of, of Brandon Roy? Um, is it, is it enough with the other pieces that I have around me? And at that stage, this was an Atlanta pick, right? Am I right?

The fifth pick overall was Atlanta? Yeah. So they had Josh Smith and Joe Johnson at that point. Like, what a dynamic scoring team in the East at that moment. So I just, you know, go ahead and take a swing is my view with this draft. Pod listeners can't tell this, but Joe House just said all of that with a picture of John Wall behind him. So you know he knows what he's talking about

when he's discussing leg injuries. Yeah. Brandon Roy's first four years, 25-5, 47% field goal, 35% from three, 80% from free throw for, he made an all NBA second team, which is really impressive. That means I am one of the 10 best players in the league during an era where there were some really good guards, you know? So you, you have Colby in the league at that point, you have Chris Paul, Darren Williams, Tracy McGrady, et cetera, et cetera.

He made a third-team All-NBA, made three All-Star teams. And, you know, this is a little out there, but in the 2009 playoffs, he plays a

six-game series against Houston, and they lose. He averages 27 a game in that series. If you're averaging 27 a game in a playoff series, you're legit. And, you know, the Portland's just taken so many hits over the years. You think about, like, Greg Oden, Sam Bowie, they walked into, Bill Walton, Brandon Roy.

The talented guys that just, it's almost like the Bermuda Triangle in a lot of ways. What was a real bummer about this was what a great guy he was. And, you know, I hate sometimes when the talking heads talk about like great guys, character guys, whatever, but this was like a model citizen, awesome guy who kept having bad luck in his basketball career, but really handled it with real dignity. And when he had that moment in the playoffs, what was it? 2011 when he's hurt.

Yeah. When, uh, what series was that? Was it Denver? Yeah, I think it was Denver. Cause I remember it being kind of like a, an interdivision playoff series. And he has, I was, I'm sorry. It was Dallas. It was the 2011 Dallas series. And it's a really weirdly pivotal moment with that Dallas team. Cause Dallas goes to win on the, win the title that year, but their favorite in this Portland series, Brandon Roy is on really his last legs at that point. And Portland wins two in a row at home to tie the series. And in one of those games, Brandon Roy has 24. And the crowd is just out of their mind, out of their mind. Cause he has this throwback, awesome out tools, Dirk Nowitzki. We come out of that game four, it's two, two, and everybody's like fucking Dirk. What a choker, typical fucking Dallas. Fuck this team. These guys are cowards. Um, and then they win the next two and then they go on to win the title. And it was really like the last time Dallas got sucker punched like that by somebody.

But that's one of my favorite random games from this decade. That one last Brandon Roy throwback. Awesome game. The crowd loved him. So anyway, I want to support. Well, I just want to make one observation.

I was, I wanted to make sure I gave credit where it was due. You got to hook up portland for getting arguably the two best players in in this draft and they were a 50 loss team coming into this draft and two years later we're a 54 win team and i think it's some common kevin pritchard was heavily involved and uh steve tom penn too took over from John Nash. But, you know, in a draft that we started off this podcast talking about how weird it was in the first place, how talentless it was,

and how all over the map the talent was for Portland to go get the two best players, shout out to the Trailblazers. Yeah. Well, and as we covered in the 05 draft, they completely shit the bed in 05 because they had the third pick with Chris Paul and Darren Williams on the board

and traded down three spots for Martel Webster, Linus Kleza, and a future number one that became Joel Freeland. So that was like, this is like a Jekyll and Hyde thing with the new administration. Although I know House was high on Joel Freeland. I think Joel Freeland was high also.

The six pick I'm on the clock. I'm going to take our guy JJ. So first of all, average 13 a game for his career, a 41% career three-point shooter. And somebody who, as the league evolved over the course of the decade,

it evolved in all great ways for him. And he ends up, he's a 41.6 career three-point shooter. Is somebody that if it's a good team, he's a huge asset. And for basketball fans, really frustrating first few years in Orlando for him, where

it just didn't feel like he was playing enough. And it didn't really make a lot of sense. And we covered this in a previous book of basketball pod with that 2009 finals. Just so weird that they didn't space the floor with him more. Doc Rivers was the first one that really got it. Who was like, if we get this guy,

I'm basically getting what I had with Ray Allen in Boston. This guy who's just constantly running around screens, who is creating space for Blake Griffin. And he just figured it out. And JJ's been an asset ever since. But I think one great thing with him is just the longevity of just,

he's still going. I mean, he'll probably play for another six, seven years. So you got JJ. House took four and a half years of Brandon Roy. I totally get it. I'm getting like 21 years of JJ Redick, plus an incredible podcaster. I get all his multimedia too. That's right.

When I draft JJ, I'm smart enough to also get all his media stuff. So it's a win all the way around. I think you're right. We haven't even gotten to the late period Kyle Korver of JJ's career yet. Like JJ's still weaving his way through four screens per set.

Like we haven't gotten to the like, I'll trail and just drill this open three after somebody gets penetration. Oh, yeah. He's going to be able to play 11 minutes a game and just score nine points that might push you over the top. Yeah, it's an awesome point.

He's still fast. That's, I think, the point you're making, Chris. And in view of, he's also an avowed foodie. Loves to eat. Another very relatable thing about him. Likes to eat at all the best places has had many great food people on his podcast. I admire that engine, that running engine, uh, that he has to feed with good fuel. Great job, JJ. I'll tell you this.

He's a top three NBA player going nuts during the quarantine because he's been knocked out of his routine. This is, he's just somebody whose whole day was structured and goes to the gym and, and not being able to just do, do normal stuff. Those shooters are a different breed where it's just like at three 30, I I will shoot 793s in these seven spots, and then I'll be done at five. I'll see you then. You just kind of have to be wired that way. Wow, Chris.

I'll be interested to see what you do here at the seventh pick. You think I'm going to get funky? There's one obvious pick. There's a couple sleepers. Who do you have? Josh Boone. No.

No, I'm going to go Rudy, and I think Rudy is an interesting person to pair with JJ, both coming out of relatively ... I mean, JJ obviously had a more storied college career, but Rudy was great at UConn. And he comes into the league, and I feel like immediately, or pretty

soon after he gets into the league, becomes a poster child for an outmoded style of basketball. And kind of never really finds the place that really took advantage of his skills. I don't think he was ever going to have that McGrady gear. But it was clearly a scorer built in that mold. And maybe just wasn't good enough to deserve all those touches and had a game that was really 18 feet and in at a time when the game kept moving out and out and out. From 08 to 2017, first basically 10 years of his career, throwing out his rookie year, he's 19 and six, 34% from three, no all-stars, no all NBA teams. And I think you made the key point.

He's involved in two trades that really frame the last 15 years of the league. The first one is the actual draft day trade where Daryl trades the rights to Rudy Gay for Shane Battier, a trade that nobody type of trade, nobody ever made there. Shane Battier, a trade that nobody, type of trade nobody ever made. There's really only a couple examples. In the late 70s, Philly traded George McGinnis for Bobby Jones. And the real NBA people knew how good Bobby Jones was. He was an incredible defensive forward. He was an ABA legend, all that stuff. But George McGinnis was like a quote-unquote superstar, only he wasn't when you really picked it apart and you looked at McGinnis was like a quote unquote superstar. Only he wasn't when you really picked it apart and you looked at him, he was like a ball stopper. It can guard anybody.

It's kind of redundant with Dr. J and they trade for Bobby Jones. And it's this awesome trade. Rudy gay on paper made a ton of sense with McGrady and yell, right? It's like, great. Here's our third score. And Daryl was looking at it differently. It's like we, Shane Battier, great corner three guy, awesome defender, won't need the ball. I don't need to get him touches and just looked at it a different way. So that was the first trade. The second one happened when I was on NBA countdown in 2013, Memphis just dumped them to Toronto and basically got back the Jose Calderon, Tayshaun Prince contracts, Ed Davis, and created some cap space. And we went on the show and it was the biggest argument we had in the regular season. It wasn't like angry, but it was, we had magic and Wilbon on one side, me on the other, and Jalen kind of in the middle,

arguing about this trade. And they were killing Memphis for throwing away the season because Memphis was a playoff team and a potential contender. And it was like, what are they doing? Why would they do this? And at that point, we had enough advanced metric stuff. Like at Grantland, we were really ahead. I feel like we were really ahead of the game those first couple of years with the way we were covering basketball. And we had Zach Lowe. I don't remember if we had Goldsberry at this point. And there was a lot of early data about Rudy Gay. Like this guy actually doesn't really help your team. It's actually empty calories. They might actually be better off redistributing the shots that he was getting to other people. And we argued about this on the show, like really, really, really vociferously. And I got to say, I ended up winning because Memphis made the conference finals that year.

Partly, this was a classic Ewing theory trade. House, you were in all along. You never liked Rudy Gay. Dating back to UConn. The thing that made that trade work for Memphis was Tayshaun. Tayshaun basketball IQ through the roof. I mean, talk about a guy, you know, we, I've, I've been in the same place as him before walked up, you know, next to him. If he's ever weighed more than 175 pounds in his life, I don't know when it, when it was. Um, but that guy is so smart and such a good chemistry guy. And he was

a perfect compliment to that Memphis team and Memphis got, you know, better, uh, uh, by subtraction by getting Ray a boss. I mean, okay, sorry. A ball stopper out of the mix, right? Ball stopper. They got more minutes for Tony Allen. Tayshaun comes in as like kind of the glue guy, a little batty ask. It's a really smart trade. And it's funny because all the smart basketball people got it. And all the old school basketball people are like, you can't give up Rudy gay, man. He's got end of the game. That's who your go-to guy is. And it's like, actually, none of the stats back that up. We had crunch time stats at that point, and he was terrible. Yeah, I think that we, but we was like,

it was the transition from having arguments about guys with albatross contracts to having arguments about guys with empty numbers. And that was really hard to get over where you're like, look, man, 19 points a game in the NBA is hard. Like, that is not an easy thing to do, especially even to average it for multiple years like that. But at the end of the day, if you think Rudy Gay is one of your best players,

your team has a hard ceiling. Well, it was also an old school way of thinking about things, right? Cause I remember magic and magic. I thought we got a really good year out of him in a lot of ways, but he was still had that old school thinking sometimes of like, you get a guy like Rudy Gay, you can go to him in the last two minutes. And I remember being on TV being like, how hard do I fight with him on this? Cause all the data says this isn't true. It's actually not a guy you want to go to in the last two minutes of a game. He doesn't, he doesn't deliver. Um, but I think you look at the stuff that's happening during this beginning part of the 2010s and the data is starting to get really good. And the teams that had the data and real access to it, um, started to make smart decisions. And this leads to the hardened trade.

This is Daryl going all in and hardened as a superstar, because he's looking at these numbers and be like, well, what would happen if he played 38 minutes instead of 28? And what would happen if he started going the line more? And what happens if I build the right team around him? So anyway, Rudy Gay just weirdly involved in these two pivotal NBA moments that I think kind of personify where we went the last 15 years. It's so strange that he winds up on the team that we've historically thought of as one of the more progressive teams in the league. He's now on, him and LaMarcus are now on the Spurs kind of as these dinosaurs of a bygone era.

So he's second in this draft in points scored. He's scored almost 16,000 points. And he's a career 17 a game guy. He bounces around a little bit. He goes Toronto, then Sacramento goes and gets them. He averaged 20 a game in Sacramento for the first two years he was there. Then, then when St. Antonio got them, that's what everybody was like, all right, what's going on here? And St. Antonio is just trying to zig when everyone else is zagging. And I think that's how partly how they got into trouble. Cause it's like,

don't really, maybe don't zig on this one. Yeah. Maybe the zag is where we should be with, with putting together a roster. So they get in trouble house here in the clock with eight. I am going to complete the trifecta here of taking guys that are still playing and confessing up

a little bit of recency bias. I want PJ Tucker here. And it is another guy who like Chris's pick of Kyle Lowry got to be patient because PJ Tucker was out of the league within a year of being drafted. And it took him six years. He visited places like Israel and the Ukraine and Greece and Italy and Germany. So he had very well traveled, a terrific travel resume. He was signed by the sons in 2012, the D'Antoni small ball era, and he's made a whole career out of that. And it's a damn good career for a guy that's six, five, 245 pounds that Houston plays at center. I mean, I love the 2012 to 2020 P.J. Tucker,

and I think in view of all the guys that are around him in this draft, I like this spot for him. I remember when he started to thrive in Phoenix, which Dan Toney was gone at that point because he went to the Knicks, but they were still kind of in that mode of, you know, little,

little small ball, a little fun to watch. Like, um, and he was one of those guys who was really good kind of secretly if you had league pass, but it wasn't, wasn't ever discussed,

but he would always jump out when you watch the suns. Like, man, the PJ Tucker's a badass. I like that guy. Yeah. I'd love to see him on a good team. He became one of those guys because he spends basically four years in Phoenix. Nothing's really going on.

But then when he goes to Toronto, when they traded for him at the deadline, and Toronto was a real contender at that point, it was like, oh, that's a good one. I'm excited to see him on a good team. And then it finally happens with Houston. It's funny, though. There's really not a basketball reference page like this because he's 35 now. But to have the one rookie year and then five straight did not plays

because you're in Europe. And as Hal said, Israel, Ukraine, back to Israel, Greece, Italy, Germany. It's honestly unprecedented for a basketball reference page. And the league moves in his way. He moves his way in a bunch of different ways. And again, it's almost the theme of this podcast that the league moves in Daryl's way

because there's another guy to pass through Maury Ball University here. Amazing. To be one year and out as a rookie. Oh, he had some G League stuff too, House. 07, a lot of G League. Do you remember the trade?

The Toronto trade? I do not. February deadline? Well, Phoenix got a motherload. I didn't realize. Jared Sullinger. A 2017 second rounder or a 2018 second rounder. Yikes.

All right, I'm on the clock at nine. You know what? Fuck everybody. I'm taking Andrea Bargnani. What? Yeah. You know what? He's not a bust.

The whole Andrea Bargnani is a bus thing is bullshit. It's not accurate. It is accurate. No, it's not. It's not accurate. I'm going to make the case. Go ahead. First of all, he played 10 years.

He averaged 21 a game one year. In 2011, his fifth year in the league, 21.4 a game from 2009 to 2012. He's basically 19 a game. Um, decent three point shooter every once in a while. I thought he was feisty. He had, there was a little Italian feisty edge to him. And I'm not really sure what happened because I remember when the Knicks, when the Knicks traded for him, I remember kind of liking the trade being like, oh, that that's cool. That's somebody, you know, he could spread the floor for Carmelo stuff like this. And now I think because

he failed with the Knicks, there's been this revisionist history that he wasn't a good pro. The reality was he wasn't a bad pro. Even on the Knicks for two years, he's averaging 13 and 14 a game. He's playing 27, 29 minutes a game. He wasn't a bust is my point. And if I can get him at the 10th pick,

or 9th pick, I'm happy. In this shitty draft. Yeah, I'm happy or ninth pick. I'm happy. I, I, the shitty draft. Yeah. That, I think that the, the funny part is,

is that like, it's hilarious to hear you say that. And then when you look beneath him, it's kind of like, Oh, right. Like who else are you really going to pick? Right.

The only thing I'll say nice about Bargnani is, um, in 2012, we were all in Orlando for the All-Star game and Andrea was there not to play, but I will say this. He stayed in the same hotel complex as us and his girlfriend was absolutely unbelievable. It was, I, I, I try and be a decent person and not be a stare-with-the-mouth-open person. I just...

It was a long stare. I didn't care. I needed to consume all of it. He had a little something-something there for a couple years. He was Italian. He did have a little, Bafagullo! Tiny bit of that.

If Andreo was a Corleone son, who would he be? Well, Sonny. I guess a little Fredo Sonny mix. Little Sonny. Little little. No, he needed Sonny. If he had Sonny, he might have been a decent player. He might have been better than, you know,

10th in this crappy draft. Well, he also didn't live through his time in New York. I'm looking, I was just looking at my trade value list to make sure I never put them on a trade value thing. I don't think I did. I don't know. He wasn't bad.

I think if you average 21 points a game as a pro, you weren't a bust. I'm sorry. So it's one of my rules. Chris, you're on the clock with I'm sorry. It's one of my rules. Chris, you're on the clock with 10, and we just had a drop-off. Yes. It's pretty...

I mean, part of me wants to be funny here, but there's actually no punchlines. There's nothing funny about saying, oh, I'll take Boobie, or I'll take Steve Novak. I'm going to go with Thabo. Probably a little unfairly regarded now at this point as one of the reasons why the Thunder probably

were not ultimately able to get over the hump, although there are other reasons, but his inability to reliably knock down a jumper is one of them. Good defensive player, though. But a great defensive player. And I think ultimately, those years in Oklahoma, he was a real...

He was like an alpha defender. House, the draft just dropped off. You're at the 11th pick. I have nothing to add to that, to the Thabo conversation. But nobody even disagrees with it. I mean, I guess you could go Ronnie Brewer there, but House, you're up. Well, we're launching a new Ringer podcast next month

called The Best 50 Swiss NBA players of all time. And I don't want to step on that. So we'll save it for that house. You're up at 11. I'll take JJ Barea. Oh, that's who I had there. Are you still in the league? Another guy. I mean, this is it. I'm just taking the guys, you know, at the, at this point when your choices are are cj watson and ronnie brewer and uh who else i mean i you know i wouldn't have taken barnani uh steve novak i guess

i'll i mean you know barea um played meaningful minutes has been a terrific role player for dallas and and actually and actually made a nice contribution for his little bit of time in Minnesota as well. It's clear that he has some team leader kind of capacity and that he's well-liked, that coaches trust him. And at this stage with this group, that's enough for me. I thought he should have gone higher. Barea?

Maybe a spot higher, yeah. Well, here's the thing. In 2011, he plays 21 playoff games for a team that wins the title, 18.6 minutes a game, nine points a game, and famously fucked with LeBron's head when Dallas had him guarding LeBron. And it was the all all time Jedi mind trick. Fuck you. You're not,

you're not man enough to post this guy up. We dare you. And it like broke LeBron's brain for four finals games. It's another, another goat advertisement. Yeah. Well, that's tough.

10, 10, 11 are really like undermine the LeBron goat case. Um, but you know, he, he was, he, he, he didn't hurt them in those

finals, and if anything, had a couple good moments, but he had a galvanizing effect on his teammates that I think we can't sleep on either, where when he succeeded, it got the whole team fired up. He's just a little Puerto Rican guy. And if he made a big play in crunch time, the whole bench went bonkers.

But I know he's a beloved teammate too. And I think he's one of those guys. He's still in the league. Obviously, he's on Dallas. He's one of those guys that will stay a little like Udonis Haslam where he'll stay in the league three years after it's over just because he's so good to have on your team. So for the 11th pick, I think that's strong.

Well, I'm up with the 12th pick here. It's pretty grim. I'm going to go with Randy Foy. And here's my case at his peak was like a fairly interesting coming off the bench guy. I remember on the 2012 clips, he was, um, a third guard for them, 11, a game, five threes, a game, 39%, um, three point shooter was a pretty good three point shooter in his, at his peak and most important careers, 36.6, three point most important houses, dumb ass team traded the number five pick in the 2009 draft for him and Mike Miller. So he actually did have value. No, he didn't.

Go ahead. No, he didn't. He was, he was, he was terrible in Washington and I don't know if it was because he didn't want to be here, um, or whatever the situation was. Uh, but you know, he, he is, is you know look up journeyman uh now he played what does he play 700 games 750 regular season games um but i i unfairly hold against him what the franchise the position the franchise put him in by basically trading away the opportunity to have Steph Curry. And I'll never forgive the franchise for that. Well, you would think Rubio or Steph

Curry, one of those guys. Yes. So this brings me to, I had been saving my dad for the right moment. My dad was so upset this draft when they, is from my draft diary when they traded the seventh pick for a package highlighted by sebastian telfer my dad's quote was he's a five foot eleven point guard you know what he's going to be with more playing time a five foot eleven point guard i saw him in that documentary by the way not only would i not want him on my team, I wouldn't want him in my house. Um, fair, fair character assessment.

Cause he was multiple gun things after that. So that happened. My dad loved Randy Foy. When Randy Foy goes to the Celtic spot, my dad goes, this sucks. I really liked Randy Foy as did everyone else sitting at the draft. This sucks.

My whole night's ruined. I might take tomorrow off from work. I'm really bummed out. I can't believe this quotes from my dad. And then on Rondo, he said after they got Rondo. So we have two new point guards. One of them is five 11 and the other one can't shoot.

And I'm supposed to be happy about this. He was in rage. It turns out he was. Yeah. So, um, the Randy Floyd people did like, and Dickie V when he came on, I was like, this guy can be Dwayne Wade. It was ludicrous, but it was said by somebody who, uh, had a basketball analyst job. Yeah. So anyway, I'm happy to get with my pick

alright Chris you're on the clock we have three picks left this is going to be really brutal do we really have to do them? yeah we got to get to 15 you know I'm going to go Novak that was going to be mine

I like the belt Ronnie Brewer never had anything as cool as the belt so I'm going to be mine. Yeah. I like the belt. That's about all. I mean, like, Ronnie Brewer never had anything as cool as the belt, so I'm going to go with Steve Novak. Really good wingman during Linsanity. Yeah. Like, in a couple of the celebrations, it was really right there,

Bundini Brown style. Linsanity was getting his Linsanity on. Another one of those guys that probably born 10 years too soon, right? Yeah. Because you think about... 43% from three for his career is quite good.

It's weird that the Spurs never took him for a test drive. I was just going to say he seems like he's the kind of guy that has two rings if he plays for the Spurs. Oh, they did give him... I'm sorry.

My apologies. They did give him a test drive in 2011. Did they? Yeah. Yeah. So his two Knicks seasons, Jesus. There's a case he might have gone too late here. His two Knicks seasons, 19 a game. I'm sorry, 19.7 minutes a game. And he shoots 44.5% from three on 4.7 threes a game for two solid years and was kind of

dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. It was a garden favorite. Good value, Chris. Thanks. House, your last pick, number 14. I am taking this player just because I want to make this immensely juvenile and stupid

and obvious joke. And I like boobie. That's it. I'm just taking Daniel Gibson here. 397 career games, 16 win shares, you know, played important moments with the Cavaliers and his nickname is boobie. And that's all I have to say about him. Yeah. So in the Oh seven playoffs, he plays 20 minutes a game for our finals team and shoots 40% from three. Oh,

eight playoffs, 25.8 minutes a game for that team and shot 45% from three. And basically spread the floor. Couldn't do anything else. That's it great value house for my last pick um i thought about sayer sine just as a project maybe a couple more years working on the layup on the right foot i don't know. I guess Ty Thomas? You're back in love.

You're a guy. It's a guy you could go to war with, Bill. Don't think twice. There's some Jordan Farmer potential. Oh, I know who I'm taking. I'm not taking Ty Thomas. Fuck that guy. I'm taking Leon

Poe. Okay. Sure. Leon Poe with the Celtics in the 2008 playoffs, 12 minutes a game, uh, played every game and has an iconic finals game. I think it was game two. There's one either game one or game two was the Leon Poe game. I think when he just kind of comes in and lays the smackdown on the Lakers and does this thing, the guy had like no ACLs and, uh, did his thing.

You guys aren't as excited about this as well. I'm looking at this and I I'm trying to see if, if it's wrong. I believe he has the highest win share per 48 minutes of anybody in this draft. I think I'm looking at this correctly. Here it is. Game two.

He plays 14 and a half minutes, 21 points, 13 free throw attempts. Game two gets the Lakers. Single-handedly swings the game. Bill, is this when you announce the new Ringer podcast feed, the rewatch of Pose? That's all Leon Pose games. Listen, if we get to

like year three of the quarantine, the rewatch of Pose is in play. So is 50 greatest Swiss players ever. Both of those ideas could happen. Uh, yeah, I think we covered everything.

What a bizarre draft. So we went in, in order, uh, Lowry, Aldridge, Rondo, Millsap,

Roy, Reddick, gay, Tucker, Bagnani, Barea. I'm sorry. Bagnani,

Cephalosha, Barea, Foy, Novak, Leon Poe. If you just do those top six where they were actually picked, 221, 47, 6, 11, 835. This is a weird one. A lot of variance. Somehow the Wizards,

we didn't make fun of them in this draft before we go is there some sort of Wizards mistake we could have grasped on them? the mistake was at the 18th spot Rondo and Lowry and Paul Mills there's a bunch of PJ Tucker

there's a bunch of guys still out there that could have immediately contributed they drafted a guy I think he's Ukrainian, Alexey Pesharov, whose best attribute, the number one thing that he contributed to the franchise is being a dead ringer for Stewie from Family Guy. Wow. He looks, every picture of this guy is a dead ringer for Stewie,

and I think that's really all I can say about him. He was seven feet tall. He lasted three years and never played more than 10 minutes a game. The Wizards didn't have a great track record with international

drafting. The Jan Vesely experience. That's exactly right. Fellas, I really enjoyed myself. Thanks for redrafting the 2006 NBA draft with me. I just want to ask to be on a good draft sometime with you.

Want to be on a good one? I can do a good draft. He'll consider it. You're never going to be on a good draft. Okay. What are these redraftables? He'll consider it. All right. I'll tell you my request. You're never going to be on a good draft now. All right. Jed Apatow is coming up right now.

He was on the rewatchables this week. We didn't say anything. It was his request. Really fun movie to break down. I'm glad we did it. So, uh, wanted to remind you to check that one out. And then for the, uh, redraftables 2007, me and Marcello, that would be Sunday night. So get ready for that one. That is the Odin Durant draft. Hold on to your seats. All right, here he is. Jed Apatow. All right. Jed Apatow is here. We were taping this on the

same day. We just did the Say Anything Rewatchables. So it's like a double header. So now I have, we did the Rewatchables first. Now you're like a little groggy. It's like he had like a couple of drinks. It's later night. God only knows what you're going to say. You have a new movie coming out June 12th, King of Staten Island.

What is your first movie in four years that you directed? Trainwreck came out in 2015. Five years. On what you consider directed, because I directed three documentaries in the middle there. The one about Dwight Goodman, Daryl Strawberry, the 30 for 30.

And the one about Gary Shandling and another one about the Avett brothers. That's directing. You know, you've made some dots. I meant non, yeah, movie directing. Movies with Gryphs. Yeah, and I did a lot of crashing and love and I didn't direct over girls,

but working over there. So I was busy and I had one movie fall apart. And it takes a while to find something you want to obsess over. It's so much work. And for me, I try to never do it unless I'm completely obsessed with the idea. You don't want me walking in for the paycheck.

That's not going to result in anything that is ever going to be on the rewatchables. Well, think about the Avid brothers doc and the Shanley doc. That was a good example, right? You, you're doing, you're like all, all, all the way in on those. And unfortunately for me, my wife and the Avid brothers, as it's kind of taken over the last 18 months of my wife and I partly blame you. Yes.

You're in love with them. And I get it. I get it. Bullshit. She, she fucking went to Boston once and I get it. I get it. It's bullshit. She fucking went to Boston once and told me she was going to see her friend and I got to catch up and then all of a sudden they're in Worcester for an Ava Brothers show and I'm like,

that's why you went back. Why did you lie to me? She's hiding things from me. But yeah, they have a rabid fan base that is super loyal. It's unusual in these times. Yeah, they're fantastic. The movie is called May at Last.

And me and my friend Michael Bonfiglio followed them around for a couple of years with no sense of what it was going to be. And then we realized there wasn't a lot of conflict in their life. And we thought, well, maybe this is a movie about good guys who are really nice and make amazing music.

And it's just positive. You know, usually when you make these documentaries, you know, if you're doing the Dwight Gooden, Daryl Strawberry story, it's about a lot of dark, nasty stuff.

And, you know, people trying to heal themselves in some way. But this was fun to do because it was about creativity and brotherhood. And it's a really happy movie. So it's on iTunes. If you're out of content, if your queue is empty, it's on the iTunes.

Well, when you did the Doc and Daryl thing, you had the unexpected wrinkle of thinking that both of their lives were pretty cleaned up and they were in good good shape and then one of the two was not as in good shape as maybe you had thought and so then you had to figure out how to account for that as you're filming it yeah and i certainly called you during that time because it was you know you know the initial idea that I had was I had never seen them together talking about their journey. Yeah. I had never seen an interview.

They had similar journeys in terms of being very young people, having a lot of success and fame and great years performing in baseball. And then this terrible crash. And I never saw them talk to each other about it. So I thought that'd be interesting. I guess partially inspired by the 30 for 30 about Roberto Duran. Yeah, and the no mas, yeah. And so while we were making it,

we slowly realized that Dwight Gooden was still having a problem. Yeah. And we didn't want to make that movie. The unmasking him is still struggling. We felt terrible for him, but he would not acknowledge that it was happening. So as we are speaking to people, it becomes very clear that his struggle isn't over. And I called a lot of people and a lot of documentarians to say, well, what do you do?

Because I don't want to hurt his life. I can't lie at this point. We're pretty deep into this. And after we made the movie, he's had troubles. He got arrested a few months ago. I feel a little differently now talking about it more explicitly because now it's out. So in the movie, I think it's handled more artistically. You can tell what we're signaling mainly through this one scene where he's giving a speech at a restaurant to a bunch of people who clearly hired him to just tell war stories.

And you could just tell by the way he is talking, how he looks, and he's so skinny in this giant suit that he's having a hard time. And it's pretty remarkable how long he struggled for. It must be so exhausting. I really have a lot of compassion for that because I just think when you're caught in that kind of addiction, it really is a nightmare that most people can't even fathom. I hope he's getting the help

he needs. Then I just see Daryl Strawberry on TV all the time as a massive Donald Trump supporter. So many confusing feelings. It is interesting though. When you make a documentary, you do need, you know, you need some breaks sometimes.

And I thought that was a bad break that cause it was, it was, the Doc and Daryl idea was one of the original 30 for 30 ideas. We'd had that idea in 07, you know, it was like, you make a list of like what 10 would be the 10 had that idea in 07. You make a list of what would be the 10 docs that haven't happened yet. And that was always to me, that has to be one of them. And

it sucked that he wasn't in great shape when you're actually filming it. But hopefully he'll get better at some point. Did you watch the Michael Jordan one? I did. Let me say this. I had pizza last night. I'm still here today.

I still showed up even when my pizza was poisoned. Now let's talk about this for a second. I love the documentary. They did an incredible job. Let's talk about the one flaw of the documentary. They did an incredible job. Let's talk about the one flaw of the documentary. You can't present the pizza story like it's just true. Because you have to raise the question, why do you need to lie and say you have the flu? Why can't you just say you had a bad pizza?

Why do you need an elaborate cover-up for eating too many slices? So I don't know what happened. I'm not even guessing. But I don't believe the pizza part of it because is that just embarrassing? Like, I had too much pizza. I don't know. It seems to be more to the story. And I wish there was a voice of someone going, really? It was a pizza? I don't know. It seems to be more to the story. And I wish there was a voice of someone going, really? It was a pizza? Well, or it's... To me, it's realistic that you order pizza from the one pizza place that's open in

Salt Lake City at one in the morning on some night and that the pizza turned out to be like they use bad sausage or whatever. And then you got food poisoning from this crappy pizza place in fucking Utah. That's more believable than five guys showing up with a pizza

after having stinked it up or whatever they did. Well, let's explore this for a second. Yeah. When you order a pizza, first of all, they're trying to say that those people know it's for Michael Jordan. When Michael Jordan orders a pizza, he's not ordering it. He's like, this is Michael Jordan.

I need your finest pizza right now. You don't tell people it's Michael Jordan, especially in another city, because people know that that is a dangerous thing. And if five people showed up to ogle at you when they delivered the pizza, that would make you a little bit nervous. And Bill, let me say this. I am saying this as the co-author of the film Celtic Pride about fans kidnapping Damon Wayans before the big game.

And what team did he play for? The Utah Jets. Right. So I know a lot about abusing people before big games. So I've thought this through. The only way

I see it being conceivably possible is if the place had closed but they answered the phone. This was the last place open. They're like, hey, no, we need a pizza. And they're like, no, man, we're closed. Sorry. And they're like, hey, no, we really need that pizza. It's for Michael Jordan to try to see if they would reopen the pizza place. That has never happened ever. You know what happens? It's the only conceivable

explanation. Why else would he ever say his name to a pizza place? That's insane. You know what happens? You're Michael Jordan, which, you know, that's like saying Led Zeppelin or whoever, right? Yeah. And you call the front desk and you go, I know room service is closed,

but is there any way you guys can make me a roasted chicken? And they go, I'm going to go get that free right now, sir. I mean, you wouldn't have to go to the local place. Someone would figure out how to do it. That's the hole in the story. The Marriott where they're staying at is just unwilling to serve Michael Jordan, who's staying in a suite with a piano, but can't get any food. Can't get like a cheese plate.

But do you think if it is true that the reason why he would say he had the flu is because the idea of having food poisoning is embarrassing? Yes. Like it shows a weakness of some kind? And also, by the way, we've all had food poisoning. Does it affect you that far into the next day? They say flu-like symptoms.

Flu-like symptoms. Yeah, whatever that means. Nobody on the team ever snitched on the pizza story. No, not yet. It'll happen at some point. Can we talk about how old are your daughters now? 22 and 17. Are they both home quarantining with you?

They are. It's all of us here together on a roller coaster of emotions. So this is like kind of secretly a win for you because there was no scenario where you were going to be with your daughters again this much at the age they're at, right? Like what other scenario would have put them under your roof

with nowhere to go and they're just stuck with you? No other scenario where they would want to talk to me for more than five minutes. Right. Much less sit down and play board games with me for three and a half hours. You're trapped now. And I think that is part of this that, you know,

people are beginning to talk about. I heard Jerry Seinfeld talking about this this morning on the radio. You do develop a more intimate relationship with people in your family and your kids because you have a lot of time to fill. And at 17 and 22, your kids rightfully are looking to leave the house. They're not looking for a marathon mom and dad time. So you have these moments where you're like, well, this wouldn't have happened. This dinner wouldn't have happened. Us cooking together for two and a half hours wouldn't have happened. Us watching The Wailing on iTunes wouldn't have happened. Or whatever movie you're watching. So I was talking to a friend

and we said, this is all like icing moments. Right. Well, your older daughter, I mean, she's been acting now for how many years now? Like at least five, right? I mean, she was in Knocked Up, but we shot that in 2006.

So that was 14 years ago. But now she's like a real, this is what she does now. Yeah, I mean, Maud is on Euphoria. And she also is in the TV show Hollywood on Netflix. And she plays Pete Davidson's sister in The King of Staten Island, which was really fun because I hadn't directed her. It was 2011 last time i directed her in this is 40 and she had those great scenes where she would curse out leslie and paul rudd and and she was fantastic back then but now she's a very skilled actress so to have her

play pete's sister and in all the scenes she's the person who calls pete on all his bullshit and is very aggressive with him so So they're really funny electric scenes. What, what is the dynamic? I can't imagine like, cause my daughter is just always going to eye roll me if I screw up in it. Although I have a great daughter, but you know,

if I, if I say something that she takes personally, like I, you just kind of know your own kid in a way that nobody else would understand if they're all in the room with you. So how do you navigate that from a directing standpoint? I'm always interested in how you do that. The sensitivity of their feelings. Yeah. Well, especially with you where it's just, you, you have the lighter and they're covered in gasoline at all times when it's like parent-daughter, right? So it's just different than if you were just a normal director.

Well, on one level, you're allowed to tell them what to do, which at 22, she's not listening to much at this point. A little tougher. So on a set, I do have the ability to force her to do things. Like I can actually pick her clothes. Everything in life that you would never allow. I'm going to pick your haircut right now. And

sometimes you have a shorthand where she'll say, how was that? And I can just go like, not good at all. Do it better. And then I just walk away. Sometimes I'm comedically trying to

have her you know try some new things I mean her instincts are so good there was a scene where we first meet her character and I probably made her do it you know eight or nine times and gave her all sorts of direction and I got into editing and I watched all the takes. And the first take before I had said one word to her was so much better than after all my adjustments because she's just so subtle and was already doing it pretty great. But it is definitely fun for us. Like we get the kick out of doing it.

And she cares so much. So, you know, we have a blast. And Pete is really fun to work with. He's very present and alive. When he's acting, it's not like someone who's making notes in his script, trying to figure out how he's going to do it. He's just living the scene. He is there.

You are experiencing that moment. It's almost more like you've entered a reality. It's not like actor boy who's decided like, here I'll be loud and here I'll be quiet. Pete is just very present and that makes the scenes great. Why did you, I'm sure this is the question you're going to get asked the most as you promote this movie, but you look at certain people and you spot something in them

that makes you want to make a movie with them. And I think this has happened repeatedly over the last few years. What was the one thing you saw in him that made you think, this guy should actually be the lead in a movie? It's interesting because I always talk about it like it's like sports. You see these rookies and you get excited about them. I remember when I was a kid, we knew Darryl Strawberry was coming the year before. Right. We talked about it.

They had a Strawberry Sunday from Carvel. We had that promotion. Darryl Strawberry is coming. And then you watched him and you were like, oh, I'm so excited. Even when he wasn't playing well, like, I think it's going to happen. I think this is the guy. I had season tickets to the Lakers when Kobe Bryant started. And I saw all those first games, the games where he was playing terribly.

And we would laugh, like, look at this guy. He doesn't care that he's missing. He's going to keep trying. It is not slowing him down at all. He is going to figure out how to get this done. And there's been a zillion people who were in the same exact position and never figured it out, right? They just, they never got better. And that's how I look at a lot of these actors and actresses.

I'm trying to spot them at that early moment where as a fan i'm like i think it's i think it's amy schumer i think that's the person who it's going to be and then as opposed to just watching it i just try to help them figure out how to tell a story or how to execute who they would be as the star of a movie. But it's very much like a fan who, like when I was a kid, I remember seeing Andy Kaufman on Saturday Night Live, and then I heard he was going to be on Taxi. And I was like, oh my God,

Andy Kaufman's on the TV series now. And I would track his career the way I think people follow athletes. And that's how I felt with Pete. I saw him do stand up. He was 19 and he was tall and lanky and way funnier than I was at 19, darkly funny. And you could feel all the emotion in his eyes and his history and his joy and his pain. And he was instantly fascinating. And every once in a while, it might happen every few years or once or twice

a decade, you get a gut instinct. I think that's the one. I think that's the one that's going to break out. It's funny. I remember doing that even dating back to the 80s, right? Because Letterman would always, especially early when he was in the 82 to 85 range and he would just get all these people that Carson would never have on. Yeah. And you would just become attached to some of them, right?

Like it would be like Michael Keaton who, and these people are hat, they had careers like Michael Keaton was in night shift, but you would see him on Letterman. You'd be like, I'm with that guy, man. It's going to happen. It's going to happen the biggest way. And Hanks was like that. And Seinfeld was like that. And then there were a couple other ones that didn't totally make it,

but you're holding on the hope for way beyond. You see him pop in a movie like, oh, there he is. But it is funny when you get attached to people. Yeah. What's a brother theater? But Leno wasn't someone that Johnny Carson loved.

No. And Letterman had him on all the time, but that was partially because Carson didn't want him on all the time. Richard Lewis was somebody that, you know, was on The Tonight Show, but Letterman was the guy who loved him and really put him on all the time. He used to have George Miller all the time. Oh, sure.

He used to have his go-to dudes. Leno, the irony of the Leno Letterman thing was just that was his best guest. You would never get Bill Hicks on The Tonight Show. No, no. So it is funny. And with SNL, you could see that they've never totally figured out how to use Pete. But you could tell Loren is super enamored with them.

So they always like, we'll put them on update and they'll always like try to work them in things because they know he knew something, but he's not your typical like sketch performer, like a Will Ferrell, something like that. But he's something. What's funny is in these at home shows,

Pete has really excelled. Oh yeah. Because I think you're getting a not watered-down version of what he finds funny. And I think in a lot of ways, he's just beginning to show people what he can do on that show. Right.

I've watched a lot of friends get that job and slowly figure out how to navigate the process of how to get sketches approved and on the show. And it's certainly a challenging place. But man, he is so funny, Pete. I mean, to be around him, he really is ridiculously funny. But I also think he's a great actor. And when I was working with him as an actor, I thought, well, this is really a space he's supposed to be in.

He's a great leading man. He's very subtle. When people try too hard, I always call it sweaty. Like, oh, that person's a little sweaty. But Pete's not like that. He's very present, and he's not trying hard in the bad way he's just real

and he's very willing to be vulnerable in a way most people are not you you have buscemi in this movie and it's like you just kind of he's not in the movie as much as you would normally expect from steve buscemi you're kind of using him he's just in the movie as much as you would normally expect from Steve Buscemi. You're kind of using him. He's just coming off the bench just shooting some threes, grabbing some rebounds, guarding the other team's best guy for three minutes. And

it's a really, I just really like him and I'm always happy. He's one of those guys, right? You're always happy when he's in the movie. Oh, sure. Oh, Steve Buscemi's here. And you don't want to give it away, but he's just the whole oh sure oh steve buscemi's here and you don't want to give it away but he's just the whole soul of the movie yeah and so you i mean what he does in the movie i don't want to give away but it's it's very powerful as somebody who is you know trying to be there for pete steve buscemi was a a fireman before his acting career took off for

for about four years. And he stayed very close to that community. And when we were writing the movie, the whole time we were like, if we could have Steve be a part of this, it would be so great. And also, there's about a dozen firemen and firewomen in the movie, and half of them were real current firefighters. And so your biggest you know, your biggest fear is that it's not going to be accurate

and they're going to be able to call bullshit on it. So we said, if we just fill this set with all the real people, they will tell us if we're making any mistakes here. Have you worked with just about everybody you've wanted to work with at this point or is there still an ample list of people you haven't

gotten to yet? I don't think I've worked with almost anybody that I was hoping to work with. Well, you made a lot of movies, though. You're able to grab people and kind of pick and choose who you want at this point. So who's left? Well, usually the issue is that

I've only made six movies. And so if there's 30 people I dreamed of working with, then that's not gonna happen and a lot of times i'm writing movies about my age group whatever that happens to be at the time or you know younger years so it usually doesn't line up so you know one of my disappointments in myself is i have not sat down and cranked out the perfect movie for one of my heroes uh but that's okay i mean which hero i i mean all of them all the like the great snl monty python people that i grew up with i it was never i never had the great idea that would include them and i hope to

have those opportunities i definitely do the person that i was able to work with and it was a dream was albert brooks who was in this is 40 and that was everything that i hoped it would be and you know when we were shooting every day he would email me ideas for jokes for the next day's scene and that was the best part of my day, was the email from Albert. You know what? I can say this here. And it was always great. It was always fantastic. He was really fun. Did you ever cross paths with Super Dave?

I never met Super Dave, who couldn't be funnier, but I don't think I ever met him. It seems like people are either on the I've crossed paths with Albert Brooks side or they're on the I've crossed paths with Super Dave side. But nobody's ever been able to do the compare and contrast.

No, no. I couldn't do a compare and contrast. Because Super Dave was in all the Kimmel circles, so we got to know him a little bit. And he was like, it's just hard to believe they were related. It's got to be one of the strangest sibling combos that we've had. What about LeBron James? Now that he moved to LA,

are you guys just at each other's house on Tuesdays? How does it work? It's so funny because you have this very intimate week where you spend all day, every day with LeBron James, which I also just find so funny.

It's just like having Babe Ruth on your set every day. And he's also there to act, and he hasn't really done this before. He's been in commercials, but he hasn't really created a character. Even though it's a version of himself, it's still a character that we've made up. None of it is actually how lebron james behaves

and he's there working his ass off so into it so fun to deal with he is hilarious you know when you watch all those scenes none of it is because i got it out of him. He showed up rocking from the first rehearsal. I mean, we told him what we thought the joke was, which is you're basically Bruno Kirby from When Harry Met Sally. But for some reason, the person that Bill Hader talks about his relationship problems with is LeBron James because they're friends. And for reasons which there's no reason for, you're cheap. And the joke that was, and you couldn't care more about his relationship.

Like you're totally there as a friend. Which I don't know why that's funny, but it just made us laugh. And he was good with that? He laughed so hard. We pitched it to him at lunch one day when we were trying to get him to do the movie, and he just laughed his ass off. He got the joke instantly,

and it was all nothing but fun the whole time. Then we did all our press and did some things together, and he was always great. But I went to see a game a couple of years ago when he came to the Lakers. And for some reason, I felt very uncomfortable looking at him. Like, I felt weird because my only experience with him was telling him what to do or guiding him in some way.

And in my head, I thought, I don't want to lock eyes with him because I feel like I'm going to distract him during this game. Now, that's not true at all. There's no chance he would be distracted. But for some reason, as a neurotic Jewish man, I just thought, I don't want to bother him right now. And then we went to a game not too far before the pandemic. And I turned to my wife and she's just lit up like the Christmas tree, smiling and waving.

And I turned left and LeBron James is blowing my wife and she's just lit up like the christmas tree smiling and waving and i turn left and uh lebron james is blowing my wife a kiss ah not me by the way right yeah he's he's he's excited to see me at all but he seemed very excited to see leslie but then he was great what how long did the decision to actually release this movie as an on-demand thing, what was the process of that? Was it quick? Was it easy? Was it the only recourse? How did that work? I had a sense that this might be something that would be discussed. Just because people don't know when

the theaters are going to be open in a real way because they can open the theaters and a lot of people may not go and so these movies are gigantic investments so you know movies have been sold to netflix or other streaming services and the studios do need to make some money they can't just hang on to all the movies and just sit it out for the year. So when Universal called me and said, well, let's kick around the options for the movie, and we talked about it, very quickly I realized, the movie's done. I don't want to leave it on the shelf for a year. And the movie is about first responders. Pete's dad in the movie is a fireman who lost his life in service. And his mom is a nurse. In real life, Pete's mom is a nurse,

and his sister's a nurse. And the movie is about sudden trauma and grief and healing. And even though it's a comedy, it is about how we get through difficult things. And it is about heroes. And it just occurred to me, oh, this movie is supposed to come out right now. Like it would be weird to not share this with people. So I'm kind of thrilled people are going to get to see it. I mean, you got to see it. I did. And I mean, you got to see it. I did.

I'll tell you, I don't mind the whole on-demand movie thing just in general. I've always kind of wanted a version of this where people just have nicer stuff and the TVs are better and they can accommodate

the widescreen and all that stuff. It never made sense to me that we were forced to go to the movies. You know, same thing. Like I look at like what Quibi did where Quibi created this, you know, YouTube competitor or whatever. And they're like, you have to watch it on your phone. So it's like the one thing I feel like we've learned over the last 15 years is like people like to choose how they're going to consume something. And the more choice you give them, the more they almost appreciate it. So a movie like your movie, which I would have seen in the theater, and I guess my kids

are older, but you know, my kids were younger, like train wreck. If my daughter, if my wife and I were going to go that, we were like, well, we'll leave my daughter home alone with our son, or we'll get a babysitter. It would have been so much easier just to on-demand it. I like that we're at least testing this out and seeing what works and doesn't work

because I think this movie is the perfect example of people are going to on-demand this. It's a Friday night. There's no sports. We don't have a lot of options. There's no anything. All you have is the King of Staten Island. I also think the movie is very emotional.

I think it's as funny as the other movies, but it's definitely very real. Sometimes you just want to cry alone. You don't want to be sitting next to somebody eating goobers next to you while you're crying. It's funny. We were testing the movie. So before the pandemic, we showed the movie to crowds of 400. And that's how we realize if it's working or not.

We take notes and people fill out cards. And it's actually very helpful. But at one of the screenings, I'm sitting in the back taking notes and the guy in front of me like seven minutes before the end of the movie where you know when there's this really deep emotional painful scene just picks up his popcorn it's just like and he's eating it so loud and i almost lost my mind i totally ruined the scene for me and then after the movie the studio's, how do you think that section worked? I'm like, I don't even know what happened. I'm so angry at this popcorn eater.

So, you know, I think what I'm going to do is brainwash myself into thinking the VOD experience is perfect for this movie. And then as soon as the theaters open up, I will shit on VOD and go back to the theaters what uh what are you expecting from staten island from this movie how will they feel about the movie are they going to embrace it fully will they take it personally what is going to how's it going to play out i think we we describe staten island accurately you know it's an interesting place

because there's no attraction there you know there no Six Flags, Staten Island. There's nothing there that would make you go there if you didn't have a friend or a relative or live there. I remember I was talking to Christopher Guest and he said, oh, there used to be a great guitar shop I used to go to on Staten Island in the 70s. That's the kind of place it is a lot of people work there maybe they commute to the city but the people who live there most of them don't leave that often and the people that don't live there don't go there unless like you know their friends or relatives live there so it is a it is a strange bubble but everything was super cool when we shot the movie there's a lot of blue collar people there like you know the cops and firemen and uh and nurses it's just great people there it reminded me of long island where i where i grew up i felt very at home there yeah there's some massachusetts

towns like there too that are just far enough away from boston that you probably wouldn't commute yeah but you also wouldn't commute. Yeah. But you also wouldn't go from Boston to go hang out there. And they just become these little bubbles that are really close to this much bigger city, but they don't interact in really any way. Yeah, absolutely. And Pete's been really funny making fun of Staten Island,

but he loves it. I mean, he still lives there. So it's definitely near and dear to his heart. Is Pete, I mean, Pete still lives there. So it's definitely, you know, near and dear to his heart. I mean, Pete's issues over the years have been well chronicled. But like, how concerned were you building a movie around him when you weren't, you know, weren't sure what was going on with him day to day? Well, we would just talk about it very openly

because he was a producer of the movie too. And I've worked with all sorts of people. I feel like when you're very respectful and very transparent and you tell people what is required of them, you know, for the most part, they rise to the occasion, which is what Pete did. I just said, Pete, you're the producer of this movie. There's a couple of hundred people who work for you. Like you're the producer of this movie. There's a couple hundred people who work for you. You're the boss. So you're setting the example based on how you approach this.

But one part of Pete, which is really great, he loves being responsible. He loves that people think he isn't responsible. Nothing makes him happier than showing up early every day. Hey, Chad, I'm early. Look, you didn't think I'd be early, but I'm the early guy. So he actually was really easy to work with.

But part of that is preparing someone. Here's what is expected of you. Here's the job. And people are making a big investment in you. So you need to take it very seriously. And he did. He couldn't have worked harder and the movie's so personal that i always felt like it's a real gift for him to share his life and the story and his pain and try to make a movie that hopefully is meaningful to people i mean he did something

that i think it's kind of incredible because all of us when we make movies our first movies are like heavy and i always say that to pete I go, nobody makes The King of Staten Island right from the top of their career. We all make like eight goofy movies before we try to make the more substantial one. And I think he did a remarkable job, especially as a writer. Did you feel like at this point in your career

you needed to make a movie that was a little more, I don't know, heavy? It's not so much that I wanted to make something that was a little more substantial. I just, I wanted to do something different. And I felt like, okay, I told a certain kind of story. I talked about relationships and coming of age stories. And I wanted to make a movie about sacrifice. And that word just kept And I wanted to make a movie about sacrifice. And that word just kept coming into my mind for years. Like, sacrifice. Like, what do you expect Judd to never write about?

Sacrifice. You know, people who risk their lives for other people. And I wrote a couple of other screenplays. And I never felt like I understood it enough or cracked it. But I knew that was the space I wanted to be in. And when Pete started showing interest in coming up with a fictionalized movie that was inspired by parts of his life, I realized, oh, this is it. This is what I've been preparing for. Because a lot of the movie is about what happens after, you know, a very brave person gives

his life to help other people. How does it affect their family? How do they process, you know, the grief from that? How does it affect his ability to know what kind of job he wants and how to get off the couch and stop smoking pot? Like, how do you not just go into a depression and and have a really tough life and you know those are pretty those are ideas that you rarely hear about in in movies and you know it makes for a movie that's both very funny

but it's it's directly addressing grief and how people climb out of that. Well, you're dipping into Pete's experience, much like when you made the 40-year-old virgin, Steve Carell's virginity in real life, I know was really good. That's on the rewatchable schedule this summer. I love it. It's the 15-year anniversary coming up. 15 years is a long time. It happened fast. What do you remember from that movie?

So give us a little backstory so I have material for the rewatchables. Well, the main thing I remember is I was a producer on Anchorman and I was on the set watching everybody shoot and they're all killers. They couldn't be funnier, but Steve Carell was just crushing it. And McKay would, Adam McKay would feed him lines, but then sometimes he would just go, give me another, give me another, give me another. And Carell's improvisations were just incredible he was

so funny that the whole cast who were also killing were kind of in awe of what was happening with Brick and and one day I just said to him did you ever think about being the lead of a movie

and I don't think he had really thought that that was possible at that stage in his life. I think he thought he was a funny supporting guy or a sketch player. I don't think he was chasing that at all. And I said, I think you'd be great as a lead. Do you have any ideas? And a couple of days later, he walked up to me and he had two ideas. And one of them, he said, was based on a sketch that he had played around with but never really developed about a 40-year-old virgin at a poker game and he's telling sex stories and slowly everyone realizes that they're all bullshit right and the line that he

pitched me was he kept saying you know like when you touch a woman's breast, it feels like a bag of sand and you put your hand down her pants and there's all that baby powder. And it was so stupid, but it made me laugh so hard. And I hate to say it, I totally related to it. Just the shame, because it really is about shame. Being embarrassed that you've never connected with someone in that way. And then you start thinking, maybe there's something wrong with me. And even though it's a silly movie, I did understand all the emotions behind it. And then Steve and I, you know, talked about it and said, what if we made a high comedy, but really made this character credible?

This is a real person. This is what he would be feeling at this stage. It's interesting with that movie and a lot of the movies from that decade, you now have this generation of people who are now, I don't know, 16 to 25 and those become their movies the same way that, you know, for us, like when we were growing up, it's like the animal house and caddyshack and all those things now it's that whole generation um really

from i don't know oh three to oh nine it's just a murderer's row when you look back it's it's kind of unbelievable and then the amount of talent that was available to be in the movies it was like this perfect storm of filmmakers and actors and ideas. Yes, we had to get older. Someone put up a grid of all of those movies on Twitter the other day. And it was wild. It was like everybody's movies,

like all of Will's movies, all of Ben Stiller's movies, all of Vince Vaughn's movies, all of Jim Carrey's movies, all of Sandler's movies, all the Ben Stiller's movies, all the Vince Vaughn movies, all the Jim Carrey movies, all the Sandler's movies. And it was just a grid of little boxes of all of them. And on some level, you're just proud of everybody because we were all just knuckleheads hoping to be allowed to do anything. Yeah. So now that most of us are in our 50s and we look back and go, wow, we did a lot of stuff. And in a moment like this when people are really having a hard time,

stuck at home, you really feel like, I'm glad there's something for them that is going to give them a break and make them happy. I really feel the value of the silliness. Because I know when I'm having a rough time, I might go, I think I'm going to watch,

you know, something about Mary right now, or, you know, or the movies that I loved from that period that I had nothing to do with that. I know like I'm going to have the best two hours of my life looking at that because sometimes you just think,

God, we're all just such idiots. What is the point of all this? And now you realize, oh, it makes people really happy. Yeah. The two kind of pandemic viewings in my house are comedies and movies set on locations like Bora Bora in Hawaii, where you just get to escape somewhere. You can watch... Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a good one. It's in Hawaii. You get to go to Hawaii and stay at a resort even though you can't leave your house. Exactly. Yeah, you know,

Sandler's got those great movies. He's always said, let's go make a movie in a fun place. Yeah, he kind of invented that. I know. I invented the, can you shoot the movie on your own block? And Sandler was like, can you shoot the movie at a place where you want to spend your summer? Bora Bora.

All right. So July 12th, King of Staten Island. It's very good, like all your movies. So I don't need to do too much pimping. But I'm excited for Pete because I've always liked him. I don't know him, but I've never met him. There's some celebrities out there that you just kind of instinctively root for. I'm excited for Pete because I've always liked him. I don't know him. I've never met him. I'm just saying he's just as, there's some celebrities out there that you just kind of instinctively root for and you don't really know why.

And I've always liked him. I've always felt like he was one of those guys. So. Yeah, no, he's a, he's a good guy. He deserves all the accolades.

Hopefully he'll get. And I'm still concerned about the pizza cover-up story. I feel like there's a lot more to be learned about it. Maybe he should invent one. Maybe he should invent a pizza cover-up story to help promote the movie. We need something like that. Now, can you invite someone on this podcast

who is on that team, like someone who didn't get a lot of playing time and just see if you could trick them into finding out the truth. Yes. I'm going to put that on my summer list. What's your iPad battery right now? I'm at nine. I'm okay. Oh, wow. We really did this.

It's incredible. Yeah. You were at 29 when we started. I just thought you were going to zip away. Jed, thanks for giving us all the content today. Of course. I filled a lot. I feel like I sold a lot of ads. And I'll talk to you later.

All right. Thanks to Jalen Rose. Thanks to Jed Apatow. Thanks to Chris Ryan and Joe House. We will see you again on Sunday night. You might want to bone up on the 2007 NBA draft because we will be diving headfirst into it. Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe. Make good choices. See you down the road. I don't have a few years

with him on the wayside I'm a bruised son of a I don't have a few years