The Bill Simmons Podcast - Joker and Booker Dominate Opening Night, Plus Doc Rivers Breaks Down the NBA Season

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons reacts to the Lakers' loss to the Nuggets, and the Suns' narrow victory over the Warriors on the NBA's opening night (2:48). Bill then talks with Doc Rivers about his first offseason away from an NBA team in decades, the Celtics' busy offseason, first-year coach Adrian Griffin in Milwaukee, the Nuggets' trying to be repeat champions, what makes the Heat special, LeBron James's 21st NBA season, the James Harden saga, the young and hungry Thunder, Victor Wembanyama, and more (19:59). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Doc Rivers Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, reactions to NBA opening night and Doc Rivers next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this. It's game day. All the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day,

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Gambling problem called Win 100 Gambler or visit RG-help.com. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich. It came out 30 years ago. It is a classic, classic DC thriller. Me and Chris Ryan, we broke it down. Got a horror movie coming next week.

Yeah, it's time. Halloween's coming. My favorite holiday of the year. Is Halloween a holiday? I guess it's not because we have to work. Well, it's my favorite special day of the year. I love Halloween. So get ready for a horror movie next week on the Rewatchables. Prestige TV is going to be coming back next month too. We have a bunch of big shows that are on their way back. But if you watch Fall of the House of Usher, Van Lathan and Joanna Robinson, they broke that one down on the Prestige TV feed this week. Basketball, so it's starting. By the time you hear this, we'll have had two games,

but the Ringer basketball plan, so you can check The Mismatch with Kevin O'Connor and Chris Vernon. The Ringer NBA Show. That's Sunday and Wednesdays. Group chat with Barrier and Waz and Mahoney. And then we have real ones with Logan and Raja. That's Monday and Thursday. Howard Beck's going to be on the Monday episode.

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Plus, you know, Tay Frazier, no stranger to NBA content on the One Shining podcast feed and on Through the Ringer. So that's all of our NBA stuff. Check out theringer.com. I thought we had an awesome preseason of pieces. I love the NBA rankings. We did the ringer. So that's all of our NBA stuff. Check out the ringer.com. I thought we had an awesome preseason of pieces. I love the NBA rankings. We did the top 100.

So I hope you have the ringer.com bookmarked. Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to be reacting at the top to the two NBA games we had tonight, both Western Conference clashes. Great to have basketball back. And then our guy, Doc Rivers, he is going to be popping on this podcast a lot

during the season. We're going to talk about that in one second. This is a really fun podcast. Can't wait. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, taping this. It is 10 o'clock Pacific time. I just watched five straight hours of basketball. It was wonderful. I had such a great time. It's so nice to have basketball back. I had the Phillies game on at the same time.

It was just great. I had even inies game on at the same time. It was just great. I had even in the other TV, I put Godfather 2 was on Pluto. Had that one going as well. It's just a wonderful night on the wall of TVs. I'm going to play a little game of I knew, I didn't know with the two games we saw tonight. We'll start with Suns-Warriors because that was the second one. I knew that Devin Booker was an MVP candidate. In

fact, if you remember, I was telling people, this is the bet. This is the long shot bet. He was 22 to one before the season. You figure they don't have a point guard this year. He's going to have the ball more. He was already at 27 points a game guy. He'll take the leap maybe if they're a contender, the whole thing. Well, tonight he was 32, eight and six. He was the best guy on the floor. He put 37 minutes, six turnovers, whatever. Created a bunch of great shots for them down the stretch. And just, if you only watch one basketball game all year and just watch that game, you'd be like,

oh, he's clearly the best guy in this game. Obviously he's not, but tonight he was. I wasn't surprised because if you think about MVP, usually it's the usual suspects, Jokic and Giannis, I think would be, they had the best odds. They were the most likely. Then a lot of people like Tatum, but I always thought the Booker odds were out of whack, especially if Phoenix was really good. Now, Phoenix is 1-0. We're super happy about what we saw from them today, and I'll talk about a bunch of stuff.

But the big thing with them is the durability. How many games are they going to get from Nurkic? How many games are they going to get from 35-year-old KD? Bradley Bill didn't play tonight. He didn't make it to game one. So, you know, on the one hand, it looks great right now. But on the other hand, if guys keep dropping and disappearing, who knows? I just know that Booker's MVP should

be better. So they go to 14 and one on FanDuel and we'll probably be in single figures by next week. I didn't know that I'd be looking up historical comps for him because Van Lathan texted me and said, who's the historical comp for Devin Booker? And then I got completely sidetracked and I was on basketball reference and I'm looking around. I came up with this TMC Warriors era, Mitch Richmond, younger Mitch Richmond really had some hops, um, really crafty, like, you know, 18 footers, some threes athletic. And, uh, and I think some late two thousands Kobe, you know, that, that kind of Kobe 3.0 version where it's a little more grounded. It was a little more of a surgical assassin.

I would say those are the two comps for him. And just like a whiff of JoJo White. That would be the other one I would throw in. Yeah, I'm going for the old people on that reference. Anyway, thanks, Van, for sidetracking me for 15 minutes tonight. I knew the Warriors would miss Draymond Green, that they would miss his playmaking,

they would miss his defense, you know, not rocket science. I thought he was either the best or the second best defensive player last year. I didn't know that I'd like the Chris Paul experience a little less than I expected. Now, we're going to give this time. These guys are still trying to figure out how to play with each other.

It was a lot of dribbling from him, from a Warriors team that loves to have constant movement and just the ball kind of flipping around and everything kind of playing off Curry. It reminded me a little bit of that first Durant season with Curry when there were times when Curry just kind of seemed to disappear. He also got in foul trouble. But it did make me wonder because you have him and Curry out there together. You're pretty small. You're not awesome defensively. Then you have Clay. He doesn't rebound either. And go figure, they get out rebounded 60 to 49 today. But it just made me wonder when everyone's back three, four or five months from now,

who's finishing games for them? Because I don't feel like you can have Chris Paul and Clay Thompson out there with Curry and with Wiggins. And now I have room for only Draymond or Looney. Then there's the Kaminga piece. Does he keep coming on? I just don't feel like he's going to be finishing games for them. And how's he going to handle that? I know he's 38 years old, but it did get my brain racing. Cause you'll hear when we talked to Doc Rivers in a second, I got progressively higher on this Warriors team as, as the preseason went along. And then I watched tonight and they just seem small and a tiny bit old, especially Clay. Speaking of Clay, I knew the biggest concern with the Warriors

this season would be the rebounding. I didn't know they would get their asses kicked by Nurkic and Okoge and Drew Eubanks. The Phoenix Senators had 22 rebounds today, which was depressing. I also knew Chris Paul was 38 years old. I didn't know it would look like he didn't totally have his legs in game one.

He was 0 for 6 from 3 and uh missed some big threes and I just wonder like Kaminga Moody look like they're in a much better place everyone's saying the right things about both of those guys and they need both of them to step up if this team like Barkley said they weren't a contender after the game I feel like they're a contender I'm taking them seriously because of Curry, but maybe they're below Denver and the Lakers and a healthy Phoenix. We'll see if Phoenix can stay healthy. But I do wonder, is CP3 on this team in February?

Would they package him with Kaminga and CP3? You think of all these other teams that have just said, fuck it, and they don't care about their first-round picks. Phoenix didn't care about their first-round picks with Durant. You look at Milwaukee, they basically mortgaged the entire decade just to have a Giannis and Dame team. They have no picks left. Minnesota mortgaged everything for Gobert and Golden State has gotten really cute and tried to do that double heiress thing.

Curry's 35. We don't know how many more years we have with him at the Curry level we're accustomed to. Will they look at this with the Chris Paul expiring, one or two of the young guys? Can they get a bigger impact guy? What do their five guys look like at the end? It's Draymond, it's Curry, it's Wiggins. I guess it's Clay.

Then is CP3 the fifth guy is it Looney it's a hard one this is going to be a hard team to coach this year I knew Durant was 35 years old

and had been in the NBA since 2007 I didn't know he looked like he was 35 years old today it was 7 for 22 was short on some shots. This was a continuation

of a couple weird playoff games and Suns games he had after the trade. He just had a lot of wear and tear on him. And it's something I'm watching. Like he might have 55 points in the next game. I wouldn't be surprised.

But, you know, I think what happens as you get older and you get older, and we're going to see this with Clay too, and who knows, we might even see it with Curry. Mid-30s, you can still hit that great game once a week and maybe even one and a half times a week, but not three times a week.

Like Booker, what we saw tonight, that's just Booker. That's what he's going to do 75%, 80% of the season. If they ran a little older, some of those shots were going sideways and short and I'm just watching that one because he's still one of the 15-20 best players in the league.

Probably 20. And when he has it going, he's in the top 10-12. But how often can he get it going? And how often are they going to need him? Maybe they're not going to need him as much as we thought with how good Booker looked. So I also didn't know I might be eating crow in this Nurkic trade, which I hated. Said repeatedly, not a huge fan of Nurkic. Looked pretty good tonight. He's banging around,

setting screens, rolling on high screens. Got annihilated on a couple switches. Chris Paul dusted him a couple times. But it looked better than I thought, especially him and Eubanks together. Now this is a perfect matchup for them because the Warriors aren't exactly a team with dominant big men.

Will he play more than 45 games? I'd say it's probably 40, 60 that he would, but certainly better than I expected tonight. Grayson Allen was terrible. Nasir Little didn't do very much. I still think Aiton, I still think they should have kept him and figured out what they had,

but it was an encouraging first game. I know I'm going to get a text from Eddie Johnson tomorrow. I can feel it. I know it's going to be a really sarcastic text. So try not to overreact too much to this game. I know I'm going to get a text from Eddie Johnson tomorrow. I can feel it. I know it's going to be really sarcastic text. So try not to overreact too much to this game. The big takeaway for me is just this could be like a Booker moving into the top four, top five type of territory this season. I'm just keeping my eye on that. All right. Other game, Nuggets-Lakers. I knew Nicole Jokic was the best player in the league. He put up, what, 29-12-13 today when they pulled away in the fourth quarter.

He was involved in every single play. Nobody has figured out yet how to stop him when he's just playing in 20 feet from the basket, top of the key, and he's either doing handoffs or high posts, like trying to find cutters, or he's just saying, you know what,

you guys go away. I'm just going to do the twirling, rotating, running hook thing, or I'm going to pull back and shoot. Like the Lakers saw it. They got swept last year by this team. You would have thought they would have had some strategies in place. Nope, they did not. He is still the best player in the league. And people were like, no, Giannis is going to take the title back. If Jokic is going to play like this, I just think, yeah, I don't know what level Giannis would have to go to to grab the, I mean, obviously have to win the title, but what would he have to do? Like 32, 15, and 12? Jokic feels like he's going to have a triple-double every night. I also knew, now I'm not allowed to bet on awards because I have a vote on the awards. If I was allowed

to bet on the awards, I would have put a Booker MVP bet. I am allowed to bet on the individual stuff like the scoring title, assist title, stuff like that. I bet on when I was in Boston, I bet on Jokic to win the assist title at plus 500. And the theory was James Harden, he won it last year. God only knows what's going to happen with him this year. Trae Young playing off the ball more. He's around 10 a game. Maybe that dips by an assist. Halliburton, I don't know. Can he get to 10? Lamello, maybe. Crappy team. And I just thought Jokic really probably could average 10 assists a game this year.

And you watch tonight. It just seems like he just has his whole team so well figured out that I actually think he should be the favorite to win that personally. I didn't know that the Lakers might be going with this 29 minutes a game thing this season with LeBron. Because Darvin Hamm said after the game, it was like, was that an accident? He played 29 minutes? Like, no, not really. So it's almost like he's 39 years old and he's been in the league 21 years and they're trying to be careful with him. Oh wait, he is 39 years old.

He looked pretty good today. He's still, he's just turned into Carl Malone. He's like, Doc and I talked about it later. He's just turned into a more creative, intelligent, basketball savvy, Carl Malone's body, just with a different brain put into it. But if you're worried, if you're a Laker fan, and I don't think you should be worried because the Nuggets are the best team in the league. And I think the Lakers, I have the four of the Lakers, the Nuggets, the Bucks, Celtics,

then the Heat right there, the Suns if they're healthy in April, May, June, and then maybe the Warriors. That would be the group I would have. Lakers are still there. They're fine. But LeBron played 29 minutes today, and D'Angelo Russell played 36, and that is a huge red flag to me

because I wasn't sure D'Angelo Russell was going to even be on this team in February. We'll see. I think it's smart. You want LeBron healthy in April, May, and June. 29 minutes a game is fine. This team's deep. I thought Reeves, they should have been running more stuff for him tonight. I look forward. I don't know what's going on with his haircut exactly. Other than that, the Team USA experience was great for him. I would like to see him more involved if they're going to do LeBron and stagger the minutes and try to figure out how to, how to leverage Reeves.

They're playing a lot of guys tonight. They're just throwing shit against the wall. It seemed like, um, but I knew the Lakers would regret talking shit about Denver this summer. Nobody really seemed to remember the reasons for it, you know, because I think they felt like Mike Malone got a little chirpy. But the reason he got chirpy was because they swept the Lakers, and right after the game, LeBron hijacked it by doing this whole

I might retire thing. And I think it pissed the Nuggets off because they were just like, we just beat these guys. We swept them. We earned their respect. People should be talking about us. This is what I think Mike Malone felt like. And then LeBron, nobody on the planet thought he was going to retire. So he threw that out there and it was almost like he threw it out there to steal attention from them. And I think it made them mad. And then it somehow made the Lakers bad that the Nuggets were chirping. It's interesting that when the Warriors lost

to the Cavaliers in 2016 and they blew the 3-1 lead. Remember LeBron had that Halloween party with all the Cavs and it had like the jokes about there was 3-1 tombstones and all these things like making fun of the Warriors for blowing the lead. So I don't know. You can't have that one both ways. But AD said on Media Day,

which was like, I don't know, three weeks ago, that it was very motivating to them. Again, I don't know what was motivating because it really seems like the Lakers have talked five times more than Nuggets, really, since the series where they got swept. And by they, I mean the Lakers. They got swept.

Why are they talking at all? AD was saying it was motivating for them. And, of course, he stunk. And he did not score in the second half. And it motivated him for about an hour. And by the end of the game, the Nuggets fans were chanting, who's your daddy at them?

The old Yankees Pedro chant. And it wasn't a great look for the Lakers. I got to be honest. You talk that much shit, you got to back it up. And I think they forgot that they were talking shit to the team with the best guy in the league. That team's going to be awesome. I think their over that they were talking shit to the team with the best guy in the league. That team's going to be awesome.

I think their over-under was 52. And you just think the concern was, oh, what are we getting from their bench? They look fine. And Jokic is amazing. And he's still the most fun guy to watch in the league, at least for me. But really fun night of basketball.

Good night for the league, at least for me. But really fun night of basketball. Good night for the league. Putting up four teams, but we have all these other entertaining teams too. I just feel like from a talent standpoint, the league is in the best shape it's been. And I had a really good time tonight watching basketball. Sorry, Phillies fans. I have Philly fans in my life who are blaming me that because I talked on Sunday's pod about how Philly was becoming the new Boston, they think I intentionally jinxed Philly to blow those next two games, which they did. I did not do that. Unfortunately, I don't have powers like that. And if I did have powers like that, I would be wagering on them.

And I would have said, I'm going to do this tonight. I'm going to bet on the Diamondbacks. I had money in the Phillies and honestly Diamondbacks Rangers I don't know if that's too exciting for a guy like me who lives in Los Angeles and roots for the Red Sox I don't know if I'm going to get too pumped

about Diamondbacks Rangers my apologies but yeah great TV night nothing better than October. And when we come back, we're going to be talking to our new guy, Doc Rivers. Oh yeah.

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This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me. I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey, and it's on prime all season long. Watch prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays.

The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on prime. All right. Doc Rivers is here. We have a little bit of an announcement. You're going to be doing some podcasts with us. You're like a real talking head media person now. You're back. We got you back.

I'm back. It took me a while. It took me, what, 24 good years to come back? Solidly, at least. So I'm back doing it. I'm really looking forward to it. So you had, this is the first summer since when that you didn't coach, 2004? Oh gosh. Yeah, probably. I think you're right. That's a long time, Bill.

Yeah, because you went to Orlando, you went Boston, then you went right to the Clippers, and then you went right to Philly, right? Yeah, I went from Orlando to Boston to the Clippers to Philly. I've done 20-whatever straight training camps. The only one that's done that is me and Pop. 21, 22, 23. I think it's 23 or 24 straight training camps. That's crazy. What did you miss about not being in the mix this year?

Or did you not miss anything? You know, it's funny. I'm sure I missed something. You know, like I love coaching. I'm good at it. I enjoyed it. Having said that, you know, you don't know you need a break sometimes, Bill,

until you have a break. And I did things this summer. You know, I remember I was in Ireland, okay, golfing. And I get about, I think you even emailed. I get like 10 Texas, 15 Texas, because James Harden made the comment about Daryl Morey. And I read them all. And then I go and grab my severing iron, and I'm standing over there, and I'm thinking, this is not all bad.

This is pretty good over here. So, you know, that's the stuff you don't miss. You obviously miss the camaraderie, and you miss your coaching staff, and you miss things like that. You miss some of the players, but you don't miss some of the other stuff. And this has been a really refreshing summer. I've had more talks with coaches that I, you know, talks that I would never have with a lot of coaches.

A lot of coaches reached out. So why wouldn't you have them? Because there's like a competitive thing or you're afraid to share info? What is it? A little bit of all those. You know, some of it is coaches wouldn't reach out to you because you're in the same division same conference um some of the coaches that you have friendships with would but even them uh are asking way more stuff uh and it's been fun it's been fun

you know as much as i give i you learn too because i asked a lot of questions back you know i'm just not a giver i'm like come i give i you learn too because i ask a lot of questions back you know i'm just not a giver i'm like come on give me some stuff too um you know there's an old adage and i don't know what coach said it 100 years ago uh but you know when you're sitting there with your own individual team bill and you think man we got attitudes we got this we got that you know never underestimate the crap on other teams yeah right it's so true though and and hearing guys talk you know there's a lot of good stuff out there but then the little few but even good teams i'm talking elite teams when they're sharing you're like oh i didn't know that i thought that was just us. You know what it's like? It's like how

everybody has a dysfunctional family, but they think they're the only one with a dysfunctional family and that everybody else's family is normal. And then you get under the hood with somebody else's family. It's like, oh, your family's weird too. Oh, it's not just me. Yeah, and you're like, this is good news. So, for instance,

when you're talking about helping other teams you were pretty instrumental with getting sam cassell to boston yeah a team that you know you that broke your heart in may i mean that wasn't that long ago you had a 3-2 lead in that series sorry to bring that up you came within four minutes it seems like you're getting the next round and then two months later you're helping them hire sam Cassell, your friend. Yeah. Well, first of all, it was Boston. That was easy.

Brad and I have a terrific relationship. I have a relationship with all the owners, you know, so that one wasn't hard. Sam had a chance to go to, I think, two or three teams, Bill. And I really pushed that one. I just thought it was a great fit. I thought for Joe, it was a really good fit as well because Joe's a young coach. I was a young coach, and I really leaned on my veteran coaches when I first started. I want to say I had two head coaches on my staff when I took my job in Orlando, and I thought it was invaluable.

But it's also interesting that you have to do your own thing. I spent some time talking to Joe as well, which I thought was really good. And you know, one of the things just sharing with him saying, you have to trust your own instincts, even though you may have more knowledgeable people at times around you, it's still your team. And there's times that you're going to have to listen and trust. And then there's times you have to go with your own feel and instinct. And I think Joe does that. I think if you want to be a good coach, you better do that.

You know, I remember my first year coaching. We were supposed to be awful. Like, I mean, really bad. I think someone predicted us to be the worst team in basketball history uh and we had we started out oh and three i think oh and two and i don't remember exactly but we had like a four or five day break and i came to practice said you know what i'm going to redo our entire offense and the two head coaches they were on the staff said you don't do that and i said what do you mean he staff said, you don't do that. And I said,

what do you mean? He said, you just, you can't do that. We had the entire training camp. Right. And I said, yeah, but we've also traded like seven of the guys that we had at camp and this doesn't fit. And they just said, you can't. I said, well, I'm going to do it. And Bill, I swear it turned our season around. I mean, we were one game away from the playoffs. And if we don't do that, we would have continued to lose because we were running an offense that just didn't fit what we had. And so those are the type of things that like Joe and all young coaches have to figure out on their own. So sometimes almost being young and dumb as a coach is a good thing because you're looking at things without the experience. That makes sense to me. I mean, you could see it on the other sideline. I don't want to say it was a dysfunctional Celtics

team, but it was a pretty weird season where they lose their head coach right before the year. They lose Will Hardy to Utah. They lose Damon Stoudemire halfway through the season. Missoula gets thrown into all of this and he's got to figure stuff out on the fly. He's got relationships with some of the players as the young assistant. Now he's the head coach. Now he's got to figure out how to deal with different personalities. And it didn't seem right. And I got to say though, the summer they had where they trade Marcus, they trade Grant Williams, Brogdon's gone, Rob Williams is gone, but especially Grant Williams and Smart, it really seemed like they were doubling down on Joe and being like, all right, well, we

were dysfunctional last year. We're removing all the excuses from you. We're giving you Sam Cassell. We're bringing in all these different coaches, Charles Lee. We're bringing in Jeff Van Gundy as a consultant. Like, there are no excuses now. This is your team. Here are the car keys.

So now we're going to know, right? Yeah. And listen, when you think about what we're going to know, right? Yeah. And listen, when you think about what he went through last year, he did a hell of a job. I mean, think about this. In the middle of the summer, he was thinking, maybe I can be the summer league coach next year. You know, and then all of a sudden, he's the head coach of the team. To be thrown into that and then to have Damon leave your staff, uh, to have all the other unrest,

I thought he did a remarkable job under, it wasn't like he was taking, he was taking the team that had a chance to win a title. So the pressure and all that was on. And you know what people want to estimate? And I, and I'm predicting this, I don't know this,

but dealing with the media every day for someone who had never done it is hard. And you usually fail that test in your first couple of years. Um, you know, especially if you weren't a player, right? Like at least you were a player. So you had a taste of it from at least that side. Yeah. You've had a taste of it and you've, and as a player, you've kind of had your day, so it doesn't affect you as much if you know what i'm saying yeah uh and then you know even me i had i was in orlando you know some media but boston my gosh so i guess and uh you know i don't know if people thought he did a good job media wise or not i hear not for the most part. I guarantee it'll be better this year. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't

great, but I think, I don't know. Obviously, part of my job is to be critical or to praise somebody either way and try to be fair. And I thought he was in an unfair situation, but I also think there were a lot of mistakes. And it's like, what's the line of commenting on what I see, which seems to be a pretty dysfunctional team on the one hand, but on the other hand, they, you know, came really close to making the finals. So how bad was it? Yeah, no, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad, but they did have issues. I mean, Marcus Smart, uh, at times wasn't happy and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, Grant had his ups and downs. Uh, they lost a lot though. You know, they gained a lot and they lost a lot. It'll be really interesting to watch them this year.

I have the game tomorrow night, which I'm looking forward to. But, you know, getting Holiday, oh, my gosh. Like, if you couldn't have picked, in my opinion, a more perfect person for the team because he's such a veteran. You know, I do think they're going to miss some of Smart's leadership, as crazy as that sounds. Like, Drew, he's a solid veteran. Like, he's one of those plug-and-play guys that you can put in.

But he's not a guy that's going to be getting up and yelling and telling guys what to do. And Smart really was the only guy from what you hear to do that, maybe sometimes too much. But it does help to have a voice in your locker room. It really does. And so I do think they'll miss that a little bit. It seemed like sifting through the breadcrumbs of why they did that,

it did seem like his voice was actually almost too big. And they even said that. They really wanted Tatum and Brown to kind of be the leaders of the team. And Smart was looking at those guys as his little brother from day one. And sometimes you can't break out of that. Even as somebody ascends and their role gets bigger, you still look at them as like the little brother. And I do think they were conscious of that. No doubt.

The only thing I would say to that is either you are a leader or you're not, you know, and I believe that, um, uh, now Tatum and Brown are so young and, you know, Tatum's the guy to me.

He is clearly taking the steps, right? He's top five, top seven, top ten, whatever list you want to put in. He's in it. He's established himself as a consistent great player overall. Brown will be the guy that has to take the next step. Now, as far as leadership, that's different. And you think about it, they have Porzingis now, who I think is a fantastic sign for them.

Stretches the floor, gives them more room. Geez, if I'm a defender, I'm like, no, don't do this. Now we got the five standing out at the three-point line. Holiday, another great three-point shooter. But Taylor and Brown are used to all the shots. They really are. And now you have a Przingis who's going to take more shots, right? You have

Holliday that's going to take some shots. And, you know, for the Celtics, it's going to come down to, to me, is if you guys can sacrifice enough to win. Because, you know, everyone's not going to be able to take the same amount of shots that they took in years previous.

You went through that in the 07-08 team. Yeah. Pierce and Ray Allen both had to give up shots. That was it. Hey, you're going to shoot four or five less times a game, and that's what we're going to be this year. Yeah, now Holiday you can consider would be Garnett in a lot of ways

because he's going to do like when I say plug and play, he is the most important plug and play guy in the league maybe because he can do it anywhere with any team, with any system, does his job, supports his teammates. So that will work for Zingas, but it's still different, and people don't get it. When you take three or four shots from anybody, it can bother them. It can be different.

So it'll be interesting how it works out. I think it's going to work great. You can see it in preseason. Well, he's playing with more pace, so maybe he thinks the pace will end up everybody will get the same amount of shots anyway. Also, we gave Jalen Brown $300 million to feel good about having three less shots a game. Yeah, it is easier to accept.

He's going to wipe his tears with $20 bills. He'll be all right. Hey, if you were playing the Celtics, like let's say you came back with the Philly team, same team, basically the team they have now. Let's even pretend Harden's playing. We'll get to him later. And you're looking at how do I attack this Celtics team?

And they're shooting all over the place. And it's like, hey, man, if Porzingis is in the corner, you can't come off him too far because he's seven foot four and he's going to just shoot open threes over you. And like, what are you trying to basically say? All right, we'll give them this because I don't want to give them this. And if Tatum has the ball in the low post,

we got to double him because once he figures out he can score in the low post, he's going to kill us. Don't let Porzingis. What are you trying to take away, basically? Well, also, again, I think this is one of the most underappreciated parts of Porzingis. You can't switch a small guy on him.

Like, you really can't. We tried it once in Washington, in one of our Washington games, and it was a disaster. He just turned and shoots. He's so long that he just turns and shoots on you. So that affects you as well. But the bottom line is the two things i think you have to pressure them up the floor you have to make them use clock as much as you can um you have to get to the foul line against them uh because that slows them down and then you have to run them off the three you have

to make them constantly take make the extra pass because when they they're, you know, last year, I think, what were they, 39-1 or something when they shot above 40 from the three? But when they shot under 40, they were like 26 and 24. So clearly the three-point line is what they do well. I've even heard Joe already this summer talking about they have to get more shot attempts.

That's why they're playing at a more of a pace they have to create more turnovers i think getting holiday will help that uh they're pressuring i don't know if you've watched of course you've watched them why would i even say that um oh i've been watching oh yeah i like what they're doing they did it in nick one of the preseason games where they pressured a ton uh you know running jumps i think that's great i think that team should do that more overall the league yeah um so those are a couple things uh you have to do uh and you have to attack like we always saw we gotta attack one of their guys you know and really put him under attack um tatum abram because if you can get one of those guys off the floor, one of those guys

in early foul trouble, the whole game cages for them. The holiday way combo is the one I'm the most excited just from a regular season standpoint just to watch because I just don't think other guys like playing those two. They're two of

the four best defensive guards in the league and then they'll have them together, and you think these guys come to town, whether it's Dame or Curry or Darius Garland, pick a guard, and at least he's going to be like, oh, shit, I got these guys tonight. Not going to be a lot of easy minutes for me in this one.

Can we talk first-year coach thing? Yes. Because Griffin on the B is the first year coach. This is something Steve Kerr told me a while ago. He was just like the first, the first year coach. And you alluded to it earlier when we talked about with Joe, like that first year, you're just like underwater and any piece of advice that works, you're like, it's like, you know, getting a saltine when you're in the desert, you're just so happy and you're just so worried you're going to screw it up and all the different things with the media and trying to massage the players and the chemistry. And there's a million things going on. So here's Milwaukee now

with a new coach, Adrian Griffin, who loses Terry Stotts, who, who resigned last week. Really weird story. That was weird. Yeah. Like, I don't know if I've heard of a story like that. Have you? I don't know if I've ever heard of that. I don't know what that was about yet. I've heard. Heard versions. Yeah.

That was really weird. That does not help. It also just doesn't help as far as player confidence. They see that going on and they're like, what's going on? Is the guy leaving because he doesn't like what the head coach is doing?

It just, I didn't like the look. And also that was Dame's guy. Dame had coached him for, or been coached by him for a few years there and liked him. So if you're going to pick apart Milwaukee, the new coach piece is one piece, right? And the big spotlight of Giannis and Dame, and we're on a window here and we got to do this.

And then the defense would be the other thing. Which one, as you look at it, are you more concerned about for them? I would say defense. I would, because of the position that they lost on defense. You know, Drew guarded everybody, one, two, threes. And now, you know, it's funny. I was looking at Maxie, who I obviously love, and he had some good games against Milwaukee, and he had some struggles against Milwaukee. And the struggles were because of one dude, Holiday.

You know, and now that guy's gone. And so with his speed, I was like, he's going to have a field day. He's going to be able to attack them now. For me, it's not the new coach because Griff has been in the league for so long.

And even though he hasn't been a head coach, he's been around enough, if you know what I mean, that he'll be fine. To me, it'll be more, can they have the same buy-in defensively? Because as good as Lopez is, and as good as Giannis is, but not as consistent of a great defender as he used to be because he's doing more stuff, the key will be Dame and how they're going to try to attack him.

Because they are. Everyone will. And that'll be the key for me. Can we talk about this? Because I kept bringing this up this summer. And then people, everyone thinks you have an agenda with everything you say when you have a podcast like this. You're just saying that because he's not going to the Celtics. I'm like, I watch basketball.

Teams hunt Dame. And we just haven't seen it in the playoffs for four years because he hasn't been in the playoffs. And now he's in his mid-30s. And I feel like basketball, we talked about it after the finals when we were talking about the Denver-Miami. Basketball has turned into this advanced chess of whatever your weakness is, I'm just coming after that weakness for seven games like and if you don't fix this weakness i'm gonna pick the scab pick the scab pick the scab

and i just don't think he's a good defensive player and as good as he says you can't protect it past a certain point yeah and that's the way it's always been in a lot of ways just more so of it now uh because you do have more individual players now. But you know, it's funny, you know, we used to say, what are you, in the regular season, you play eight or nine, in the playoffs, you play eight, you rely on seven, you trust six, you know, and what happens is that, because what teams do, they look at your team, and it doesn't happen in regular season, you can get away with it every once in a while, someone will come up with a game plan, you know,

for one game that affects you. But in the playoffs, they're going to find whatever you're weak at. It's just going to happen. And either you have one or two options. You can take that weakness off the floor, or you have to try to play around that weakness and give it enough support to win. And that's just the way it's going to be on every playoff series. You try to find whatever. You know, with us, with the Celtics, we tried to attack the basket a lot

and then create stuff. You know, they're going to do that even more because Rob Williams is gone. Bill Porzingis is an underrated shot blocker. With Milwaukee, the one area you never attacked was Holiday. You can make a case. The reason Miami beat Milwaukee is because they actually attacked their best, you know, in war. With Butler, yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you attack the strength and you can take that down, then you're in great shape.

That's what Miami basically did, you know. So, yeah, that's going to be an issue, but they'll work on it all year. Here's the one thing the Milwaukee staff knows, exactly what we're talking about, and they know it right now. So even with me last year with James, defensively, we knew what people were going to do before the season started, right? And so we really worked on something. We knew Maxie and James defensively were the two areas people would attack right away.

And so we worked on ways of getting around that all season so we'd be better prepared for it. Yeah, I remember three years ago in the bubble, Kemba Walker became the hunted one in the playoffs and it literally cost them the finals. They couldn't figure out any situation where if a team had multiple creators, they kept flipping picks and flipping stuff until Kemba was on the wrong guy

and then that's who they went to. It makes coaching miserable. It really does because you are in your mind thinking, man, I may have to take him a walk off the floor. I can one that was kind of quietly the most effective. But it was a lineup where people had to come off the floor that were used to playing big minutes. Well, Bill, people don't realize. You remember the game we came back and won against the Lakers? That was with Rondo and Perk off the floor. We had Eddie House and James Posey.

Then we lose game five, which we could have closed out. Scott Foster. Scott Foster special. Nope. No comments. But I had pressure on me not to start Rondo for game six. Yeah. I mean, from inside the building pressure.

Right. Here are the lineups. Look at our plus minus with these five. Yeah. And so obviously we didn't do that. And Rondo had the game of his life, which is why you stick with your guys as long as you can, because you know what they can do. But it's a, it's a tough call and and you can be right, and you can be wrong, and that's just part of it. I'm really interested in the defense and then the swing guys they have,

which I think are below average, if you're just going to compare all their swing guys to the other 29 teams. But then they have Giannis. They just signed him. Two-year extension. Yeah. You know, he sent out some sonarar signals and then they make the dame trade

um and now he's back for at least two more years which i you and i are aligned on this one i like when guys stay in the same city it's more fun for a podcast if we think guys are gonna get traded but i like that curry's gonna retire as a warrior and i like that yokage will be in denver and it's it's great for the league yeah you, it's great for all leagues. That's why in football you don't see... It's rare that Aaron Rodgers leaves the Packers. Joe Montana

leaves the 49ers. But they both do them when they're like 50. It's not as dramatic. But it just brings loyalty. Growing up, I had guys on the wall by my bed, and you could put a staple in it. They're going to stay there.

Now you better use Velcro. I mean, you're taking them down and moving them on. Things have changed. And it may be better. I don't know. But I do love when the stars say, you know what? I'm going to stay here and make this team great. I've always liked that.

Yeah, me too. All right, let's take a break, and I'm going to play a little game with you called Four Words or Less. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring,

he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you can still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. Four words or less.

First one, repeating as a champ. Give us the landmines for Denver. What are they looking at? They climbed the mountain. Jokic didn't care. We don't even know. We're taping this before the game tonight. Who even knows if I look at his ring, he's just ready to play the next 82.

Repeating as a champ, what are the three biggest landmines in your opinion? Well, I think their bench has taken a hit. So that would be one. Secondly, will be complacency. Third is they are the target. So you think they're the target? Because I feel like

nobody's talking about them and we've already moved to the Lakers and the Warriors and Damian Yannis and the Celtics and there was this graphic that ESPN did or TNT did about Tuesday night, the NBA starts and it was four guys, but Jokic wasn't one of the four guys, even though he's one of the guys playing. So I feel like there's a little disrespect thing already happening.

Yeah. But see, this is, this is what I've always known. They are the target as far as every player and coach in the NBA. Right. Trust me on that.

Like LeBron knows about Phoenix. He knows about it. LeBron, there's one team he knows he has to beat. Golden State, Steve Kerr,

we were talking to him last week and the first thing he brought up was the Denver Nuggets. So the league knows. The media and all of us, we don us, we want to see Phoenix and the Lakers and the Clippers and Golden State. But there's a team in Denver that every team in the

NBA knows that's who we have to be first. And so to me, they are a target. I am picking them over the Celtics to win the finals this year. And I thought long and hard about the case for the Lakers and a Celtics Lakers finals, which we have not had since 2010 and has been a staple of the league really since the, uh, the, I think 1960 was the first one.

And, you know, we just had that HBO winning time show. I was like, man, that'd be amazing if it was Celtics Lakers, LeBron trying to win his fifth. Yeah. And I just kept thinking about the playoffs last year. And I was like, I'm not picking against Jokic. Like that dude's not even 30 yet. And Murray's

going to be better than he was last year. And even if the supporting cast I'm with you, you know, Bruce Brown, that's going to hurt. We'll see if Christian Brown can fill in some of it, but you can also January, February, you can also grab one or two dudes. And you know this. Who's not going to want to play with Jokic other than Bones Highland? I would say 375 people would want to play with him.

So they'll be able to steal somebody chasing a ring, right? Yeah, and they don't need but one. You don't need that many extra guys. But right now, I'm concerned by it a little bit, especially on the long haul. But complacency, I'm telling you, it's hard. Like, these guys have been on parades all summer. You know, they've each got to take the trophy back to their hometown, ride down the road in the car, you know, and now they come back.

I mean, Michael Jordan told me this. He said, I asked him after our first championship, like, what do I have to look forward to? He said, the championship overall. I said, what do you mean? He's like, now these guys, of all, they want more. Each guy's going to want more. You got to get them back into their roles as quickly

as possible. And so playing with Jokic, though, I do believe is easier because he's such, he's a starter who wants to give up the ball. So I do think that helps him a little bit. You know, theic, though, I do believe is easier because he's such – he's the starter who wants to give up the ball. So I do think that helps him a little bit. You know, the West, though, Bill, I don't know, man. I still think Denver. I agree with you.

I think Denver's the best team. Phoenix is loaded. Yeah. They really are loaded. The Eric Gordon-Bradley-Bill part of that, that's huge for them. You know, the Clippers, you just keep waiting. Don't say it. Come on.

I'm telling you, you keep waiting. Don't do it. Don't put that out. You know how it's going to play out. Well, I don't know, but you're right. But they're so deep, Bill. They're so deep. You look at them.

The one thing I do agree with a lot of people is the West has retaken over the conferences. Unfortunately, I keep following the bad conferences. I go to the East, and the East is a better conference for a couple years. Now I think that switch in the West is powerful. I have Denver won. I really like the Lakers, and I think they're going to be better than people think. I don't like them personally, but

I just like the team. Golden State is the crazy one to me. As we got closer, we did a big over-unders pod last week. I picked them over. I wish I had gone harder on it because they won 44 last year and it was a season that started

with the leader of their team punching their six man in the face, right? And that's just how it started and how it went through. They had injuries, all kinds, you know, just it was like the year from hell, right? Wiggins missed half the year. Right. They had a wise man trade. They trade for Peyton. He gets hurt. Like what went right for them last

year and they won 44. So how are they not going to win 50 plus Curry? Like, I don't know. I think he really cares about this shit. He doesn't have a lot of these left. He's 35. You know him you're, you're in the extended fam. I think we kind of sleep on him thinking about the big picture stuff. I just think he's going to have a huge year. I'm in on them. You feel the same? I do. I don't think people appreciate how hard

Curry works. I think the key, though, Bill, is Klay Thompson has to be a little better. I think this is the year. you know, he's had a year and a half now from surgery and all that stuff. I think this is the year that he takes his step back, not to where he was. I don't know if he can ever get there. But then you have Wiggins to me.

And I think, you know, now I'm in the minority. I think Chris Paul will be a huge help because I'm with you. I agree with you. Yeah. They are so different when Draymond Green is off the floor. Like you can guard them because the passing is different. Now they have another elite passer. So to me,

they're going to play Draymond Green in stretches and then Chris Paul in stretches. One of those two will always be on the floor. So they'll always have a great playmaker on the floor. And I think that's going to make a big difference for them offensively. I thought it was a smart trade. It's funny hearing people, and you coached him for years, people are like,

I don't know how he's going to fit in. I think we're good with Chris Paul assessing a basketball situation and figuring out how to fit in. I think he's going to be okay. It's like a great actor. Chris is no dummy. He knows in his defense, in every think he's going to be okay. It's like a great actor. Chris is no dummy. He's no dummy.

He knows, and in his defense, in every place he's been, he literally has had to be the leader. Yep. This place, not true, right? So he gets that. He's no dummy, so it'll work out. It'll work out fine. And they needed to do something. Alright, more

forwards or less. This is two words. Riley 101. You texted this to me. Can you explain to the audience what Riley 101 is? Because they did not get Dame Lillard. People are like, oh man,

is that team even going to, they might be a playing team. Oh, they're out. Meanwhile, they came within a Miss Butler three of making three of the last four finals. They still have Butler and Bam. They still have their infrastructure. They still have, I think he's the best coach in the league.

He's no worse than top three. And they have this whole chip on their shoulder culture. Heroes pissed off. I already know what the fuck's going to happen with this team, but can you explain Riley one-on-one to me? Yeah. It's us against the world. He preaches it like like, Bill, literally every day.

By not getting Dave, may have played in their favor in some ways. Like, now it's really, look, even Jimmy, the first day of camp, when no one thinks we're going to be any good, they're hearing it every day. Riley has Eric, and Eric is doing it. They are

going to be such a tight group. And chemistry wins, man. It just does. And people, you can add all this talent. There's things that have not changed in sports, definitely in basketball. If you don't have great chemistry, that doesn't mean you get along. That's different. I'm meaning chemistry as far as on the floor chemistry.

And you play together. You give up yourself to the team you're not winning yeah and the Miami Heat they do that better than everybody else and they do it every year I've had as a coach like I've had years where I did it I had it I always think that first Clipper year we had it uh until that one six-minute period. It was like a minute and a half stretch against Oklahoma. Oh, right. Yeah. Game four. Yeah. That broke it for us, and we

never got it back. You can see it. But when you get it, you can go anywhere with a group of guys. And I've done it a lot, and there's times that I haven't been able to do it. Those times that I haven't, I don't care how good we are. You are not going to win, period.

So what do you think they're doing that everybody else isn't doing? Is it just the type of guys they're targeting? Or just knowing that those guys can fit in the culture? You think it's that simple? It's two groups. It's one type of guys that are targeting. They're willing to take more risks than, let's say, San Antonio. San Antonio targets, and they're not taking any risks. They've had a couple, though, but overall, they're just not

going to do it. But then it's their culture that they can absorb. When we were in Boston, once we won, we felt like, ah, we can absorb a couple of guys. Stephon Marbury, come on in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But every time you do it, it takes you further and further away from what you are. And it puts more stress on the guys like the Garnett's of the world who are trying to get, you know, just overall it affects.

So I would say it's culture. It's amazing. I've been, what, in the league 30, 40 years, Bill. And I think the one of the most underrated things in basketball and the NBA is a solid culture. If you don't have it, you're probably not going to win. And you'll be amazed how many front office guys just don't understand that. They don't get it. They think, let me just go get talent and we'll do it. It usually doesn't work. It just doesn't.

And you had your best chance with the Clippers, but you also had this insane ownership situation that then blew up in year three of that. But even before it blew up, the Grim Reaper sitting courtside every game and waltzing into the locker room.

And it was just weird. It was a weird variable to introduce to an NBA season. It was so strange and weird. I will say that, you know, Steve overall wants you, he allows you to try to build your own culture. He's very involved. Post-Stirling, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he's very involved. Post Sterling, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So he's very involved. Sterling, it's funny. I think I talked to him 10 times, but just his antics. Dancing at courtside with his girlfriend when his wife is out of town. Some of the stuff that happened there you know i remember it was vivica's birthday right and he's dancing with her and he spins her

like doing a timeout and i i told my coaches to look over there and they look it was doing a time out in a regular seat they look and i, I want you guys to know this. If he's going to treat his wife that way, we have no chance. And we start laughing. It was true. I meant it. It was true. Yeah, people don't even know like one-tenth of all those stories.

Like him just coming in the locker room with random people. You knew when you took the job, you had an idea, but there's no way you really knew everything. There's no way. I will honestly say, and I don't know if I've said it a couple times to people, there's no way I'd leave Boston if I had known that. I mean, come on.

I left, at the time, I left the most solid organization. Yeah. And I went to the most solid organization. Yeah. And I went to the complete worst organization thinking, I can turn this around. I really did. I convinced myself of that. And I would say within about two weeks, I knew, I said, oh boy.

Right. This is way worse than you can ever imagine from the outside. I knew because I had had the season tickets since like 04 for them. And I just knew a lot of people. I knew a lot of people that worked for the team. And they would tell the stories that I would always be like, that can't be true. They're like, no, this happened on Tuesday. And they're just like, oh my God, you can't write this.

But this happened three weeks ago. I'm like, oh my God. And yeah, that was a guy and they couldn't do anything about it. That was the craziest thing. It was like having somebody buy a house next to you

and just be insane and you can't get rid of the guy. Ruining the whole neighborhood. Yeah. You know, I'm sure that's what David Stern and Alan thought. We got this one guy

and he's ruining our entire neighborhood and we can't do anything about it. He literally had to self-explode himself, implode himself for them to get him out of the league. Well, unfortunately, he picked the postseason when you guys had a chance to win the title for that to happen. Next four words or less. LeBron James, year 21. This is his 21st year, and you were in the league coaching, I think, for all of the other years, except for maybe one.

Did you think anybody could ever even average 20 points a game in their 21st year in the league that wasn't like 7'7"? No. What he has done is extraordinary, Bill. I never meant to word. Michael Jordan is the greatest NBA basketball player to ever lace

it up, in my opinion. LeBron James will have the greatest NBA career. It's not even close. I mean, his career's not over, which is nuts. Like Jabbar, yeah, you can play 20 years. You're seven feet tall.

You had a shot that no one else has ever been able to do. And even in Jabbar's last year, you still couldn't do anything about it. LeBron is still, like, you know, top five, top ten athlete in the league. Yeah. It's crazy. Think about LeBron and Karl Malone. I think this is right. LeBron weighs two pounds more

than Karl Malone. Just visually think of the speed that LeBron plays with running with the weight of Karl Malone. It's just amazing. His best part of his game is his brain. Well, yeah. Carl Malone didn't have

one-tenth of that. This is why I kept circling whether I wanted to pick the Lakers because I was so impressed by them in the playoffs, how physical they were. I know they got swept, but they were just such a bitch to play because he's so powerful.

This strength game that he had that he just didn't have when you guys were battling him in the late 2000s. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't even post up. I remember game one in our Cleveland series. The first play of the game was a post-up play. And he scored and I turned to Tibbs like, uh-oh. Right. Did he figure it out?

And he never did it again. Like, literally, he never did it again. You know, the Lakers are their size. Their size is a factor. And when they play size and speed, and I always tell this to teams, teams with size that can run, it's like a snowball rolling downhill. You can't stop it. So I watched them in an exhibition game.

I did the game. If they played the pace they played that night all year, they're a problem. They're a major problem. Am I too high on Reeves? Because I think he's like, not only is he the third best guy in that team, but I think that's a guy who could be the third best guy

in a title team potentially. But I think I'm, am I too high on him or is it too early? Or are you in? I don't think you're too high. I actually said he's going to be an all-star one year. Maybe not this year, but one year. He has the other stuff that makes great players. He has all the

intangibles and he's got a swag and a fearless attitude that he had coming in the league. And that is something, most swags in our league are fake. They just are. They are half of the guys that this guy is real. His swag is real.

And that's going to be, he's a problem, man. He's a good player. He's a pesky defender. He's not a great defender. But he gives a shit. He tries. Yeah. And he loves physical play defender. But he gives a shit. He tries. Yeah. Yeah.

And he loves physical play, which is unusual for a guard. Yeah, I'm a big fan. Are you still a Bears fan or did you renounce them? No, I'm a Bears fan. So did you see this guy they played last week, Tyson Bajan? Yeah. So he was a little Austin Reeves-ish where he's this div-two kid. Everyone's like, oh, this guy's going to suck.

And then he kind of carried himself. And he ran for a first down. And he's pointing to the crowd. It's like, who the fuck is this guy? He's this rookie from Div 2. But some guys just have it. And I felt that way with Reeves the whole time. I was like, who is this guy?

Why is he so confident? I don't get it. My brother called me and said, we have a new birdie. We have a new birdie. I told him to settle down. No, we don't. The Bears are tough, though, man. Boy, I hate

to say this, but I really hope they can get the first two picks in the draft. They have an opportunity to do that. That can change their franchise. It would really be interesting. Yeah, it's weird. The NFL, they don't think that way. The way they do it, like the NBA, it's like,

oh man, we could get Wemba Nyama. Have you seen the highlights? And it's like, all right, let's rest everybody. All right, you're sitting tonight. And NFL, I guess it's probably too hard to do that. It's too violent.

It's too physical. All right, we'll take one more break then I'm going to throw some more forwards or less at you. This next segment is brought to you by Google Pixel, the only phone engineered by Google and the official fan phone

of the NBA and WNBA. With all-star features, Pixel 8 Pro has all the fun tools fans can actually rally around, like Audio Magic Eraser, lets you cut out the background noise so that you can capture the sound of every swish and dish, loud and clear.

I wish we had Audio Magic Eraser for some of my podcasts when I predicted that Giannis was going to leave the Bucs. Let's see, what underrated upgrade did we have in the NBA this season? I know drew holiday going into the Celtics like that to me, when we're talking phone upgrades, basketball upgrades, I think about drew holiday and Derek white guarding every guard on the, uh, every good guard in the league. That's an upgrade for fans who want an experience that's truly built different.

You got to get the new pixel eight or pixel a pro I'm a pro guy. If the pros next to the phone, I'm a pro guy. If the pro's next to the phone, I'm in. Learn more about the official fan phone of the NBA, googlestore.com forward slash Pixel NBA. Audio magic eraser requires Google Photos app may not work on all audio elements. Three words, the hardened saga. You saw this one come in probably June, July, and it's played out. I think we could have predicted all the beats. I don't even like asking about this

because I feel like I saw you in ESPN a couple weeks ago and you took like seven straight Philly questions. And I just think there's 30 teams in the league. I don't want to spend too much time on Philly, but at the same time, it felt like this was always destined to be a horrible situation. Do you see any road where it isn't?

No, unless they move them, which I think they almost have to. I always look at silver linings. You have to as a coach. The silver lining is Maxie could have a hell of a year this year, you know, uh,

because if James is not going to be there, I mean, Maxie will be there and this will be the first time he's able to actually be the second guy. So that's the silver lining. Well, and then also you got athletic wings and maybe you can change your identity a little bit without them.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you look at the games with them without, we were different in that. And some of those, mean, you look at the games with and without. We were different in some of those. We are clearly better with James.

Yeah. No mistake about that, especially first half of the year. But, man, it's a tough one. It really is. And the tough part for the Sixers is there's no takers.

Yeah. That's the part that people are missing. Like, if there are a lot of teams out there and bidding, then you can probably get exactly what you want. But right now, and I don't know this, but it seems like the only team that has a little interest are the Clippers. And so that really puts the organization in a really tough way.

It really does. And so they're going to either have to do that or sign him, and they're never going to sign him to what he wants. You can't sign him at this point. I don't see how you do that. Well, then he can do the thing. Because a year ago. Right.

You know what I mean? And yet, you know, he thought he was going to get that. And so, you know, it makes it tough. So what would you tell the people of Philadelphia about this? Our Philadelphia listeners. What would you say? What do they have to look forward

to this season? I think they, listen, if they do a trade, they're going to be really good. You have Joe Embiid on your team. Matty is ready, Bill.

He is ready. I thought, you know, Sam Cassell said it all last year to me. Like, he's ready now, but, you know, we got two guys. And so, and I believe that. So, I do think if they make the right trade and allow Maxie to be Maxie, he's ready, and that makes them a really good team. Yeah, they're over or under in Vegas. I think it was 49 and a half.

And it's dropped now to like 47 and a half. It's dropped two wins, which is a lot. And their playoff odds have dropped. And I think people are staring at this going. And I don't think they're going to be as good as they were. You guys, what were you, 46 and 19 down the stretch last year? I think it was the best record for the last three-fourths of the season. I don't think you'll be that good again, but Amas on the East,

now I'm like, oh, man, maybe they will be pretty good with or without James. It's just a question of how far is he going to go to sabotage it. Listen, they're going to get to the second round, and then if healthy, they got Joel Embiid. That's by three years there. You knew you were going to get there. Unfortunately, Joel was never healthy. But if healthy and no other stuff, you know, if you know what I mean.

Like if James is there and in or James is gone, then you have a shot. But if you have the saga going on, plus not health, you have no chance. Have you coached a team that had an ongoing saga like that where you just didn't know what your roster was going to be three months from now, but you're just dealing with the day-to-day and the questions and constantly, and what about James?

How are you going to do? And it's just the soap opera that never ends. How do you handle it? Bill, you don't remember Ben Simmons? But he was gone, though. You knew he wasn't coming back. I guess that is fair, but the Harden's kind of, he could pop back at any time.

Ben Simmons was like, that dude's in London. He's not playing. Harden is tougher because he may say I have to play because I want to get paid. Which he will. At day 28, he's going to do that. Yeah, he's going to do that. What do you do? For Nick, that's tough. You're going to play him. You're not going to bench him.

That's why it has to be figured out before that happens. One way or the other, it has to be figured out. Are you surprised by any of this? No, not at all. You can see it coming. I mean, I think everybody can see it coming. But honestly, I will say this. I actually thought that

he would be taken care of. And right when he wasn't, you knew that's when I said, yeah, this is going to be a problem. Well, that leads me to be a problem. You know? Well, that leads me to my next four words or less. Ben Simmons comeback season.

There's some people who are believing in this. I am not one of them. I am a, you're going to have to prove it to me like over multiple weeks and months before I start buying the stock back. Um, but he is saying all the right things. I things. I fundamentally don't know if he likes playing basketball and he hasn't proven to us that he has. And you had a situation with him a few years ago

where not only did he did his weird holdout, which I still don't totally understand the point of, but it almost seemed like he was good with just not being involved with basketball at all, where you've had, you know, Portland's leveraging Dame Lillard during the summer. And they're like, all right, fundamentally, ultimately, we know this guy is not going to hold out because he loves basketball too much. Ben Simmons was the opposite. Do you believe that he might love basketball now? Well, I'm not going to disagree a word that you said, but I will say this,

um, you know, he, I think if they use him correctly, I think it's, I don't know if there's a more important player to be used correctly for them to play well than Ben. If you put them in situations where he has to be a score,

it's not going to work. If you put them in situations where he has to be a score, it's not going to work. If you put him in situations where he can create score, he can get downhill. I said it on something recently. The whole key for Ben is free throws. It's not the jump shot. If Ben has confidence in shooting free throws, then he becomes powerful again. People don't realize when you're scared to shoot a free throw, you're scared to drive. You're scared to do anything because you don't want to get hit. When you want to get to the free throw line and now you're attacking

all the time and a downhill Ben Simmons is a problem. The question is, can he get back to that level? Also, the other question is the playoffs version of him can you win in the playoffs if he's scared to shoot and if he's scared to get fouled can you even play him at that point and i'm just always going to believe no no and you're right

especially the but if he's scared to shoot is one thing scared to get fouled is is just gigantic think about this you can't even put him in a pick and roll. You can't put him in anything. But if he can get his free throws right, then that changes the narrative on him, in my opinion. I think that's the only thing he needs to improve. And then the second question is, can he be healthy? You don't think physically he's the same?

I don't. I didn't see it he's the same? I don't. I didn't see it last year. Now I did look the first time they played the Sixers. I think he had like nine shots. I know that sounds crazy, but that's an important thing. Have you seen any of the Zion footage? Because everyone's talking about he looks pretty good. To me, he looks big.

It just looks like he's carrying too much weight. And I don't know if he's filling out because he's talking about he looks pretty good. To me, he looks big. It just looks like he's carrying too much weight. And I don't know if he's filling out because he's starting to get older and he's headed toward his mid-20s. But I don't know. I mean, you're older than I am and you've been in the league longer than just about anybody.

But I just, I don't like when guys who are in the air carry weight. It just makes me nervous. And I just feel like he's going to get hurt. He looks like Zion. I don't see a change. I do. He looks athletic.

He looks quicker if that's possible. Um, you know, people forget, right. That was our game. He got injured, uh,

last year. And at that time, I think they had the best record in the West. Uh, and I do think people do forget that a little bit. They, they, they were playing great, uh, early in the year. And then they had the best record in the West. And I do think people do forget that a little bit. They were playing great early in the year, and then they had all this stuff. So, you know, Bill, I worry about him for the exact same reason. You know, John Stockton made that comment.

His first year, rookie year, I think he tried to dunk, and he came down on someone's foot, and he decided, I'm going to play horizontal for the rest of my career i'm not gonna try to jump you know uh here's a guy that is flying through the air carrying 300 plus pounds you know yeah i i worry about him i just worry about his body and if it can hold up and he has a discipline to stay and continue to work on his body. And, and usually, you know, when guys have a weight problem,

stuff like that, it's rarely solved. Yeah. If you look at the history of our game. And so if he can solve that, uh, then there'll be great. But that's the question.

It's weird that like right now we're in this time where there's a bunch of talented players who are all unable to stay out of their own way for whatever reason. It could be weight. It could be whatever has happened with Ben Simmons the last couple of years. It could be James Harden. It could be what's going on with Ja. But when you came into the league, this was such a big part of the league. This was such a big part of the league that I grew up with.

And a lot of it was cocaine related because cocaine was such a dangerous drug at the time. But you just watch these guys throw away their careers for drugs or they'd get one foot injury and it would last three years or they'd hurt their knee and they were basically done. Or like Andrew Toney hurts his foot, he's gone. And then the 90s happened and all the money came in and that just pushed people in these weird directions that we had never seen before. They're 22, they think they're hot shit and they're not.

And now we're in this other era in the 2020s that I don't even know how to define it. But we have all these talented dudes and some of them, I don't know, like have we seen the best of Zion already? Like I don't even know, we might have. I don't know that, I hope not seen the best of Zion already? Like, I don't even know. We might have. I don't know that.

I hope not. I do think AAU has something to do with a lot of these young injuries. I really do. We didn't have AAU growing up. When I played, we had the park. Yeah, right. We just played at the park. But I always look through, like, Austin's eyes,

and I watch them play five games in a day, you know, and they play all summer. Uh, and there seems like there's a more stress related injuries, you know? Uh, so I do think that, and I wish like NBA or somebody could just grab the AU and start teaching like they teach in Europe and teach guys a pass and shoot and move without the ball. Uh, I think we do need to be taught that more in this country. And it's not being taught. And I think that needs to change. Also think these guys all have their own identity now. You know, it's a factor.

Instagram and Twitter and having your own stuff. It's, I mean, listen, I played my whole career without a darn cell phone for the most part. We talked to each other. Now, you see guys on the bus texting each other and laughing. Oh, that's weird. I mean, you don't even hear them sometimes. It's just different. And guys are really, they own all these new brands.

I have my own brand. I got to protect my brand. That stuff's important. Sometimes I wonder, does that hurt competitiveness? John Thompson Sr., before he passed, we were watching a game together, and he said, you know what? You remember when you played, everyone played one-on-ones before the game? That's how we warmed up.

Me, Dominique, Kevin Willis, Spud, we would all line up and play one-on-ones, and we played hard. He said, you play these guys now. no one wants to really play in a one-on-one. I'm not playing that hard. If I lose, I wasn't really trying because it may hurt their brand, you know, but the winners will, you know, that's the one thing like the same guys. So in some ways, the league has changed. In some ways, it hasn't changed at all. It's that same group of alpha guys that are still dominating the league. And they, like Michael, and I hate using him. Michael wanted to win. That was it. And he was, Larry Bird wanted to win. Larry Bird hated people because they beat him.

Right. You know, Pat Riley, we couldn't pick up anyone off the floor. We started a team fight against Charlotte one night because Rolando Blackman

was picking up Larry Johnson and he remembered halfway it's a $500 fine. So he let him go. And both bitches cleared. Like, you actually didn't like your opponent. Well, then there was Isaiah and the Pistons who took all that stuff to like the nth level. Yeah.

I mean, listen, you listen to Isaiah talk now. I'm like, let it go. He still hasn't let it go. I mean, he can't. I don't know when the last time I've heard Isaiah Thomas say a good thing about Michael Jordan. It's just, it's hilarious. Yeah, they're like old professional wrestlers

who are retired wrestlers still talking about steel cage matches. You know, I'm glad you mentioned Dominique because I was thinking, I don't think anybody would have been helped more by the Instagram, TikTok era

than like a 22-year-old Dominique, the greatest in-game dunker of all time. Oh, just coming in, Dominique with this, just think what he would have made at Georgia.

Not saying he didn't make a lot at Georgia. He still made it. He's doing okay. He would have done even better. Yeah. Two more for you. How about OKC Young and Hungry?

Are you buying? Are you buying? I have OKC. That's like my big, this is going to be the leap for them. Are you in on that? I'm not, but I love the team. And I think they're going to be really good. They'll make the playoffs.

But, you know, they're still young. And in some ways now, you're not going to go to OKC thinking you got to win. You know? Right. So it's going to change a little bit the way teams are mentally playing them. You know, Chet's good. I mean, he's really good. So Shea is a star.

Yeah. So they have is a star. Yeah. So they do. They have the makings of something. I think Giddey, he has to have a big year for them. So you're thinking like 45 win range for them? Yeah. Yeah. I think they'll be in that area.

And that's pretty good. That's a big lead. I'm going higher. That's my, I think that's my Sacramento Kings for this year. The team that's doing better than people think. I'm like, whoa, these guys. I think they're the these guys team. What do you think about Sacramento?

Will they keep rising or will they go the other way now? Feels like the same. Just because the West will be better, but their team will be a little better. So somewhere in the mid-40s. But you've seen this where sometimes all hell breaks loose in a conference and a team that's like

a 43-win team wins 49. Doesn't mean they're a 49-win team. So I want to see with them, but I want to, this Vizenkov, I want to see

what he does with them and I want to see if Keegan Murray's better for them. Did you, when you played them last year, what'd you think of them? Well,

they were hard to play. We beat them both times. We beat them one time without, time in Sacramento without Joel or James. Right. And we won that game. But they are a mess to play with, especially in the regular season. Their pace is – you just don't play that pace against teams that play at that pace every day.

Right. So they're very hard to play. Murray is the key. That kid, if you look at the first 20 games to the last 60 games, it was amazing how quickly he got better. And so it'll be interesting where he goes now this year. Yeah, does he

have a jump? Alright, I gotta ask you about Wemby. Have you seen the clips? Have you seen him in person? What have been your what's your Wemby? Have you seen the clips? Have you seen him in person? What's your Wemby experience so far? I've talked to Pop, but I've not seen him in person. He's right now, Bill, if you turn the TV on,

you're flipping around and you stop and he's in a game, you're not turning again. Yeah, you're watching. I don't know if you saw that. I watched the Golden State game. I did. I watched it live. He had a two-minute stretch. I don't know if you saw that. I watched the Golden State game. Oh, I did. I watched it live. He had a two-minute stretch. I didn't even know what happened.

I blacked out. Listen, when you start blocking three-point shots. Klay Thompson. Klay and Steph may be the quickest shooters in the league. It's rare. I don't even know what the stats. Youiggins, like, once, it's rare. I bet, you know, I don't even know what the stats,

you should look it up. How many three-point shots are blocked? Oh my God. It can't be, it's got to be less than like a hundred a year, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And this guy is doing it every night he's doing it. So when you're shooting now and you see him coming, it's, it's in your brain.

The whole league, it's in their brain already. whole league is in their brain already. He can score. He can really shoot the ball. And the nights that he's really making threes, he becomes unguardable. He looks really comfortable, doesn't he, offensively? Since the summer to now, I was the most surprised by that. He's in no rush. He's taking his time.

You know, I remember when I coached Al Jefferson, remember Al when he first got in the league, everything was quick. And I used to say, Al, the guy guard you, I swear to God, he's not going to grow. He's going to be shorter than you in five seconds. Take your time. You know, and when Al started doing that, it was over. You know, he's already doing that he's already playing at a great pace and let's just listen he couldn't have gone to a better place

yeah he really could for a lot of reasons Tony Parker from France you know there's so many good reasons and it's so good for the league that I'm really hoping you know my only fear is health because of his size. Yeah. And the even see, it's just hard for him to get out of the way when guys die for a loose ball and he's got to like move his body. You played, you were in the league when Manute showed up that first year. Yeah.

And it was like, what's going on? This guy's blocking five blocks a game and everybody's just throwing moon shots over him to try. Like, do you remember that? Oh God, god bill him and him and mark eaton too uh but yeah but more more bow i remember many times like i had i went around a guard he's behind me bold so i got the layup and you lay it ago and all of a sudden out of nowhere and it would it bothered your game like you didn't like playing against Washington because of him you know and this kid is doing this with the offense uh he's a great passer people are talking about his passing so he's uh man they're gonna play him at that high elbow at times

and what do you do people are gonna be cutting around he can turn around and shoot he can just think about when he has a bone elbow he's all he can always around and shoot. Just think about it. When he has the ball in the elbow, he can always shoot and turn. What are you going to do about it? Right. You know? Wow. It's going to be fun to watch.

He also has the quality you mentioned earlier. He's really competitive. Very competitive. That Warriors game, he was like, I'm playing Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, and I'm going to put on a show in this game. I'm really excited. And he did it. You know, I was talking to Austin last week, and Clay Thompson, and I'm going to put on a show in this game. I'm really excited. And he did it.

You know, I was talking to Austin last week, and he said, you know, everybody's missing by winning. I said, what's that? He's competitive. He's competitive. He's got the gene. Like, he wants to beat people. You can see it. Even the first rookie game, he didn't play well.

Did you see his mind? Like, you can feel his mindset in that second game. Like, oh, no, no, no. I'm well. Did you see his mind? You can build his mindset in that second game. Like, oh no, I'm going to show you who I am. I love guys like that. Before we go, did you come close to coaching this summer or no? You were done, Philly was done.

The Phoenix stuff, how much of that was true? It was true. We talked a while. I met with the ownership. But at the end of the day, I just think, you know, as I said, every day I was out, I Phoenix situation that I thought was interesting. You and Eddie Johnson and Isaiah. What age did you guys know each other? How old were you? Like 11? Oh, yeah. Maybe even earlier.

I think I played Isaiah. He played at Resurrection. I played at St. Elalia, though I was not Catholic. There was a school called St. Elalia. Yeah, you had to go to mass once a month. You did that. You could play on their basketball team, and that's how I got to play.

So, yeah, I think I saw Isaiah the first time I was fifth grade. We played against each other, and I was like, wow, who is this kid? Was he like a little competitive bastard back then? Like he was as an adult? He was the same dude that he is right now. What was Eddie Johnson's game as a 13-year-old? Just money, 20-footers? Yeah. Great score.

You know, it was unusual because he could shoot. Most kids growing out of Chicago, they really couldn't shoot. We played outside. You drove to the basket. And then we get this guy, Eddie Johnson, making jump shots. We were like, whoa, this is unusual. You know, think about Isaiah was an average shooter. You know, he got better.

I was average at best. I got better. Daryl Walker. You can go down the list. Not a lot of great shooting out of Chicago. No, I mean, Isaiah was I think like top three in three-point percentage one year, and it was like 31%.

The percentages were so bad, but your generation, nobody cared. Derrick Rose, we all attacked. We just attacked the basket. And now, shoot, you go to a game at Provides and they're shooting 10 feet behind the three. Steph Curry has changed the game as much as Magic Johnson changed the game.

And that's dramatic. So you're going to pop on here, I don't know, every three weeks or so during the season. You're going to pop on Austin's podcast a couple times, maybe do a recital. How many games are you doing for ESPN? Well, it varies because you're contracted, but you know how they do it. They have to contract it for

21 just for the playoffs. I'm going to end up probably doing 30 regular season games. Not bad. Popping around different, most of the bigger ones, right? Either the Friday or the Sunday games? Yeah, the Friday, Sunday. This is one of the only weeks that

I'm doing two in a week. I'm doing the Golden State SAC game. What's great, Bill, is I don't go East again. Thanksgiving, I come back to New York. Other than that, it's LA, Phoenix, Sacramento, and I do one

San Antonio game. Nice. How's the golf? How many rounds a week are we up to? About three a week. Three a week? Yeah. When I can get to four, it's glorious, but three a week. All right. Larry David promised he'd come on with us for one of these podcasts.

We'll see if he keeps his word. He's texted me three times twice since we've been on. He wants something, so I'll find out what the hell it is. All right. Good to see you. I'm glad you're doing pods with us. I'm psyched to hear you on the games. You do a great job.

It's good to have you in our lives as a media guy. I'm glad to have you back. Yeah, it's really funny. Bill, I'm going to call you and you show me how to set this whole thing up. I will. Absolutely.

All right. All right. Good to see you, Doc. Take care. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Doc Rivers. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti as well. Don't forget about the rewatchables

in the line of fire. That is up. You can listen to it right after you finish this podcast. I'm going to be back on Thursday with football and a little basketball as well. Looking forward to it. See you then. On the wayside I'm a Bruce O'Leary I don't have Must be 21 plus and present in select states.

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