The Bill Simmons Podcast - Joker’s Out, and Boston Might Be Next. Plus, an MLB Cocktail Party and 'Survivor 50' With Rob Mahoney, Billy Gil, and Jason Concepcion.

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Rob Mahoney LIVE on Netflix after the Timberwolves eliminate the Nuggets to recap the Thursday NBA playoff slate and preview the remaining Round 1 matchups (1:07). Then, Billy Gil joins to talk about the five biggest MLB cocktail topics of the last five weeks (01:04:55). Finally, Jason Concepcion hops on to catch up on ‘Survivor 50’ and to make predictions for the show (01:41:58). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Rob Mahoney, Billy Gil, and Jason Concepcion Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Jonathan Frias The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call 8887-7-7-7 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. The Bill Simmons podcast live on Netflix. We're doing the first hour live. Anyway, Rob Bohonians here. So I have new rewatchables coming on Monday. There's something about Mary we're doing. You have the Ringer MBA show. I do.

And then multiple episodes a week and then the Prestige TV podcast as well. Rob, I invited you to discuss what turned out to be. One of the most bizarre nights of basketball we've had in the playoffs in some time. It started out with the Knicks being up by 50 points in the first half of a game. The Celtics just completely falling apart in Philadelphia. We might have another Jason Tatum injury and then Nicola Yokej getting bounced. And what was it for you, the Jada McDaniels game or the T.J. Shannon game? I think it's got to be the Jada McDaniels game with all due respect to Terrence Shannon.

I think McDaniels played 45 minutes, 32 and 10, and snatched Ramallah's soul. So we'll start there. They have no I.O. Didn't know he wasn't playing until today. No, uh, aunt, obviously. And no DiFincenzo. And they're like seven point underdogs, I think, seven and a half after I. I.O. went out.

And just a classic, awesome playoff home win where they just, everybody showed up. Is it fair? Is it two sports talking to say? It looked like they actually wanted it a little bit more. Would you go that far? Well, I mean, let's lay it out. Like, the Nuggets had the best player in the series, even before Anthony Edwards got hurt.

They had an all-NBA caliber guard in Jamal Murray, who did not show up for this particular game or was smothered out of it by Jaden McDaniels. They had one of the runners-up for six men of the year. They had a deeper roster in theory, at least versus the version of the Timberwolves that was down four rotation players by the end. I think you could say they wanted it more,

I think you could say the wolves were like more committed to the way that they execute and were executing more relentlessly. And we usually think of that defensively, right? But when you watch Jade McDaniels go around every handoff, every ball screen for 45 minutes, when you watch Rudy Gobert and the intensity he played with all throughout this series, call it what you want. They like flat out played these guys. And the Nuggets don't have any excuses for losing a series like this. Could not get over the hump either.

It felt like it was one point, two points, three points, seven points, eight. back to two, back to three, and they could never get the basket that got it over. They had their, it's 98, 95, four minutes left. Murray wide open three misses. They get the ball back. Murray hits the backboard, Nuggets rebound. Then Jones has a wide open three at 330.

He misses. And then at 1097, they clear out for Shannon. And they've been targeting Murray all game. They've been going left the whole game. It didn't matter if it was Shannon and McDaniels. Everybody's just going left, left, left. I don't know if there was some hole in the offensive line for the nuggets that the pass rush for the tip rules are exploring.

And Shannon just, he can't shoot. He's playing five feet off him, blows by him anyway, gets a three-point play in that feels like that flipped the game. This is why you got to love playoff basketball, though. You just never know. You never know when you're going to have the Terrence Shannon game. You never know when Jada McDaniels is going to be the best player in the floor in a game that has Nicola Yokic in it.

And if you're Minnesota, you got Aunt coming back, hopefully next, what, next week you think? Hopefully. I mean, hopefully soon. And it seems optimistic he'll at least be able to play in that next round series. And then I owe probably coming back. Yeah. So obviously not coming back.

Although it was nice to see him on the sidelines playing the role of Paul Walker and varsity blues cheering the guys on. Well, and the whole team showing up in his jersey. I thought that was a really nice touch. Yeah, it was there was. So it was an interesting one because I thought the line was going to be way lower. I think it ended up at least seven. But to me, this was like a 50-50 game until I heard about the Iowa injury.

And then I was like, well, I don't have enough players. How are they going to do this? And then you think part of what they're doing, the McDaniels throttling Murray and doing 94 feet with him, like, how is he going to do that if he has to play 45 minutes? Well, he actually did it. So we talk about the leap guys that we have in round one every, every playoffs. Have we had a better leap guy than him? I think this is the guy. Than McDaniels?

Yeah. I think every year we have the one guy who's like, whoa, I guess you're a star now. And it feels like he's actually a star now. Well, I would say not even the leap, but if you want to go back even further into the regular season, his long-term development over the course of this year as a ball handler and as a mid-range score,

that's been kind of germinating this whole time. Yeah. He was never in the mix for most improved player, nor should he have been. Like, he didn't make that kind of jump. But in terms of the most important developments in the entire league, it's kind of hard to argue that this was so critical. given everything that the wolves had stripped away from them in this series.

And if they didn't have a J. and McDaniels who could handle the ball, they're not going to win this game. And so he handles, he delivers, he puts up 30, like tough contested shots. What a fucking awesome game from him.

And also just throttles Murray. Yeah. And then on top of everything else, backs up all the shit talking he did for two weeks. Over and over again. Shit talk the nuggets. Went at Joker and was not afraid of him, unlike some other guys who when they see,

Joker get the crazy eyes. He was laughing it off. It kind of set the tone for them. Yeah. So you have him and you have Ant and now, I mean, Anne has to be out of his mind. This is like,

they made conference finals last two years in a row. This was a pretty major upset. I mean, they were, I forget what the odds were heading into game five. But I think the nuggets were like minus 400, minus 500,

something like that. It just felt like this series had flipped. And then, you know, I got to ask this about Denver. In a weird way, was the Gordon injury bigger than any other injury in the series? You realize all the stuff that he did for them and all the deficiencies that he massed that as soon as you took it out, they just couldn't replace it. It's a huge deal.

Aaron Gordon has basically always had an outsized place in terms of importance with the Nuggets, and they are not the same team without him. But the wolves are not the same team without him. Anthony Edwards. You're like losing the driver of your entire offense and then your second most athletic guard. And then Iodosumu has the Iodosumu game and that he gets hurt. Like I'm already can't wait for like what other fan base tricks themselves into thinking

that they have a Terrant Shannon like fourth string guy on their bench. City Sussoco is going to pop off for 30 for us in a must win playoff game. Like this stuff just doesn't happen. And so yes, Aaron Gordon being out for the latter part of the series, not getting paid Watson back for the series at all. those things matter. But the wolves just had bigger hurdles. And that's where I just have a hard time giving the nuggets any rope here,

including Nicola Yokic, who I thought played well individually in this game. But his job is to anchor this offense. And this offense, with the nuggets getting bounced, is going to go out with a worse offensive rating than like the Houston Rockets this year. So whatever you may think about like, you know, IMEU doka's coaching and flow, the nuggets weren't able to muster anything better than that with one of the best players in the world. at the center of it. Yeah, and he saved a little, the last two games,

because I thought he was really good in game five, obviously. And then the second half he played today was, we're not going down like this kind of half. Yeah. And honestly, it only felt like Cam Johnson was joining him for a lot of that half. And then even Cam Johnson kind of ran out of gas. But Spencer Jones was okay as a two-way guy, but it was not an inspiring Denver effort.

There's a lot of questions that I guess we're going to have to start asking over the summer. They're going to provide a lot of podcast content for us, Rob. I'm very grateful. Maybe that was their goal this year. Maybe that's what they had to offer for us. But, you know, they're kind of stuck with this roster. And when you run the last time we were talking about, you know, Gordon heading into year 13 with some miles on him and some body damage. And Murray with a giant contract, Joker with a giant contract, not a lot of flexibility. Christian Brown of three points with a giant contract. Yeah. Yeah, that extent, the ill-fated Christian Brown extension, so not a lot of maneuverability for this team.

And they're in a conference that has OKC in San Antonio and Minnesota, a team that has a chance to make three straight conference finals plus some other teams coming. Who knows if Dallas is going to be really good in two years? Sure. It feels like we hit the finish line with this nucleus. I don't see a world where this bounces back because this is bad. I could see it living on a little bit just because the alternative options are so hard to navigate in terms of making a dramatic change this summer.

But you're right, they did not have it. They didn't have the extra gear. Watching Shannon come in and just look five steps faster than basically any nugget on the floor, like that's worrying stuff despite whatever their injury circumstances may be. And I think when you look at this team in the series, you're right. From the moment it went down, the nuggets were the favorite, felt like the favorite. But you watch this game, and I feel like the real indicator of whose favorite is like, which team is in the other team's head?

And I never got the sense that the wolves were afraid of the nuggets at all in this game. Meanwhile, you saw nuggets across the roster smoking layups. Jamal Murray threw a runner off the side of the backboard because he was so afraid of Rudy Gober's contest. So it's like that was the battleground. And Minnesota had it. They dictated terms. Denver never really felt like they had enough answers even when they did have more bodies. Yeah, sometimes a team just feels like they have the other team's number.

Minnesota certainly carried themselves that way. Even the altercation when who's the guy who tried to fight Joe? Clark, yeah. Yeah, just inexplicably tried to goad him into a hockey fight. And Nasreed comes from behind and gives him the big shove and, like, it felt like 10 guys

that were ready to fight and I'd Joker smart. They realized like, oh, they're trying to rope me into this. But that was their attitude, the whole series. They're kind of like, fuck you, dude. We don't care how good you are.

We think we can be tougher and better than you. And that's why we love them, honestly. Like, it's one of the best things about the wolves is they do just want to say, fuck you to everybody.

There was one other thing. that happened in this game. Somebody else we have not given our flowers, too. Zombie Mike Conley. Hell yeah. Out of nowhere came. I think he's missing like part of his neck and maybe like three fingers and might have gangrene in his right leg.

But he zombed it up, hit a couple big shots. Took a couple, he took at least one charge. He almost got away. Drew some offensive fouls. Came up with loose balls. It was just kind of in the mix. Absolutely. Doing old school zombie Mike Conley things.

And they needed that too. How many minutes did he play? He played 26 minutes. Oh, my Lord. And they played like a really tight eight-man rotation where they could not have afforded to give him Mike Conley minutes anywhere else. Like, they really needed him to be that competitive.

So credit to Mike, who just shows up, was almost not on the Timberwolves. Remember, he could bounce around at the trade deadline, end up winding back here as a result of a buyout, and they really needed him. That weird rule that nobody knew existed. I remember flagging it. A couple of things we flagged during this season.

I'm like, huh, I wonder if that'll end up matter in the, You can trade a guy and then if you get waived by that team and the second team trade and all of a sudden you come back. And then that game 82, which we thought in the moment, like, wow, I guess Denver is not afraid of Minnesota. And Minnesota was certainly delighted by that. So I would say better Minnesota loss, better Minnesota win than a worse Denver loss, but a terrible Denver loss regardless. But I don't want to take away a lot from Minnesota because all the injuries they had. to win this series anyway

to do it in six, not in seven? I thought that was crazy. This has to be one of the best Minnesota moments ever. Like for the Timberl's franchise, right? This has to rank up there with 2004 and beating Joker a couple years ago. This is up there with anything.

I mean, the roller coaster just in terms of the hope that seemed to be there and seemed to disappear and seem to vanish with Dante Divencenz's ruptured Achilles. It's just been such a total tumultuous series. And for it to end with,

you know, Jade McDaniels is a guy who's like not going to carry a franchise, but it's very clear at this point he can win you a playoff series and win you a game like this one with the two-way effort, like became a superstar for a week,

for a moment, for a game, like for just enough to really dominate this thing. And between, for him and Gobert to kind of pretty definitively be among the best players

in this series, regardless of who was in or out of it. Yeah. I mean, just an incredible turn of events from Minnesota. Well, then thank,

think about their last 10 months. So last summer, really trying to get Durant, right? And I don't know who was in that trade, but I assume it would have been either Gobert or Randall. I think Randall was the rumored one often. With at least, McDaniels wouldn't have been in, I don't think. But at least like a couple of the guys we saw tonight were probably in that trade. And then they were in the honest mix pretty famously in February.

And I thought it affected their team a little bit after the deadline because the reports were that they were in it. They were trading all of these guys and all these different places. And in that case, I think McDaniels probably would have been involved. He would have been one of the guys. Yeah, because they would have needed enough picks and assets to come back. That doesn't happen. I thought that affected them, at least for a little while after deadline.

I have no evidence other than just watching them play. They seemed a little spook by that. We've watched him go up and down all year, but it always felt like their ceiling was really good. Denver was a little different where they started out great. They were 500 for basically 39 games and then finished the year really great. I think they won 13 straight. They sold me, I believe, but I also believed in a team that was going to have a healthy Aaron Gordon. So Gordon does, let's say everybody stays healthy.

So we get Gordon, we have no injuries at all and we play this series. What do you think the result is just out of curiosity? I mean, based on the way it went, I still would pick the wolf. I think it has as much to do with who's out there and more about how are they responding to the runs by the other team and the moments of adversity. The Nuggets just did not have a lot of wind in their sales at any point in the series.

And that gets harder when guys are out of the lineup and you feel like you don't have options. But I don't know, Minnesota just seemed to find that. Like they had an endless reserve of that sort of inspiration and energy. And it's like that seems like a fuzzy, ephemeral, intangible thing until you watch a team like the wolves punk the Nuggets over and over and over. Yeah, I became, what had Minnesota, they lost game one and then they won game two, right?

Isn't that what happened? That game two, I'm looking back. Yeah. Why does that feel like a year ago? Feels like a year ago. Game two was the one where I felt concerned for Denver because I thought Minnesota had a it was the same way I felt actually after Celtics Philly on Tuesday night. I felt like Minnesota had a recipe that was a recipe that made sense.

Once they, once it clicked for them, we just have to hound Murray. Yeah. Let's try to wear him down. Let's try to beat up Joker. And let's really, really, really wear these guys down and see if that, that works. It worked. Murray was who had a pretty good statistical series for the most part. But the fourth quarter stuff wasn't great.

But then tonight he finally wore down. So McDaniels, MVP of the series. I have no problem with that. And if not that, why not give it to Rudy Gobert? I think they both deserve it. Yeah, Gobert. it always felt like on the verge of of getting 3,000 like a minute and falling out

and elbows flying, but he was able to to lend the plane for them. I thought Joker had figured him out a little bit more in the last two games. Like, kind of figured out the geometry of going against him and had a little more success,

but it was still always a challenge. Always a challenge. Yeah, he was able to get to his floater, I think a little more easily over these last two games, getting into post-ups more comfortably where he didn't feel just like absolutely smothered by Gobert. They were an alarming number of times in those first couple of games

where he would get deep post position, try one of his fakes, try one of his pivots, not get anywhere, and just have to pass out not to create an advantage, but just like, I'm about to get a three-second violation. We got a bail in this possession. Rudy was sensational. Like, there's so many other forks in the road in addition to the ones you talked about

with like Janus and KD, like almost trades and whatnot. Like, how many times have we just gone around the keros? sell with like, do they need to break up their big man rotation? Do they need to invest in different kinds of players? Can they afford to have Rudy Gobert and Julius Randall and Nas Reid on the same team when playing all three of them together was one of the

critical moments of this game? It's amazing how many wolves found ways to redeem themselves in addition to trading for IOTUSU with the deadline and I don't think they win game five without him. Holding on to Terrence Shannon who was supposed to be a big part of their plans in the

preseason never quite panned out. some injury stuff, but sat on the bench and didn't get moved. And if they had, maybe they don't win a game like this. So many things had to break their way, but they broke their way because they were patient with a lot of the right guys. Yeah, Connolly, his only really bad move was the Dillingham pick. Yeah. And traded in the future first for Dillingham.

But he was able to spin him into Dissoumoo. So in a weird way, he salvaged it. I remember joking at the time, they gave up so much for Gobert. And I just hated the trade. I hated it. I still kind of can't believe how much they gave up. But I remember when they relate, it was somebody like Wojj who clearly was being fed from the Timberwolves.

And it was something like, it was very important for the Timberwolves that they kept Jaded McDaniels in the deal. And I remember joking about that in a pile like, yeah, thank God you kept him. And meanwhile, I just want MVP in a series. So I guess I'll take the belated loss on that one.

Got to. Joker, big picture. Yeah. This is now starting to feel a little Moses, Malone, 1978 to 1983-ish, of somebody who was either the best or the second best player in the league year after year for a really long stretch. In Moses' case, it was, I think it was probably five. It was 79.83 where he was just the best guy in the league.

Only won one title that last year in Philly made the finals in 81, and that's it. Joker wins one title and that's it. Like a couple conference finals, and there's other reasons. It's like Murray basically misses two years. But you think about first Janus, then Joker, with the one title, and it felt like there was going to be more. I remember talking to Doc in 2003 after the finals, like, could this be a little dynasty? These guys are young.

How many can they win? We felt that way a little bit with Janus, too, and this is just a league now. Yeah. You could win one title and you're done. Look at the Celtics right now. They win in 24. Feels like they're going to have, and then all of a sudden you might be getting pushed to the side.

So is this just the league now? Do we have too many good players? I mean, I think it's always been something that's easy to take for granted, especially when you're a younger team, the idea that, oh, we still have this much of a prime window ahead of us, we're going to get back. Like, we have the right players, we're going to get back. Contracts pull teams apart, injuries, pull teams down. There's just like too many variables to ever think that you're just going to get back, which is part of why when you see a team that's anywhere close, you just have to go for it literally every time you can. Even if that means giving up some of the picks that you hold really,

tightly, you know, giving up some of the guys that you drafted on your team that you still believe in, but just may not be there for the right moment when you desperately need an upgrade on the wing or whatever. And I think, especially at this moment right now, if you're not the Thunder or the Spurs, it's just really hard to look at the next couple of years and feel super bullish, super optimistic about exactly where you are right now. Like, you have to do work. You have to keep improving. And that's kind of the most dizzying part about the Nugget situation is even if they got everybody back, even if they made some marginal upgrades, probably still wouldn't be enough. It wasn't enough to beat the wolves without Anthony Edwards.

Yeah, and you guys get a little older, too, and you can start to feel it in a series, right? Minnesota, still with the younger legs. And if you were talking about which teams upside, would you just rather want for the next couple years, this greatest Joker, as you would take Minnesota at this point, especially if they can, you know, they have the right to, you know, pay D'SUMU, I don't know what the rules are with how much they can give him. Will that just immediately send them over the tax? Will they have to cut some stuff?

But I assume they're going to make a big effort to keep him. And if they can keep him and McDaniels and then Gobert and Randall on smaller contracts with Ant as the franchise guy, that might be sustainable. I mean, it's already... The rest of the decade. It's pretty good. It's already been among the most bankable things in the West. Like you talked about, you know, looking back at the Rudy Gobert trade,

if you want to think about this as like the Rudy Gobert era of the Minnesota Timberwolves, led by Anthony Edwards, of course, but since they traded for Gobert, they lost to the Nuggets in the first round, happens to play a really good team. Back-to-back Western Conference finals, and now you just beat the Nuggets with Nicola Yokic and what was supposed to be a contender packing

right in front of everybody. So who are you betting on to be a more consistent Western Conference contender than this outside of that Thunder Spurs range? They're right here, and they consistently just turn up and beat people and push great teams to their limits, just kind of proving to be who the wolves are. And a team that, as we've talked about for years and years,

was being built to beat Denver specifically, a little like the Knicks with the Celtics, which barring the Celtics clubs. Yeah, we should get into that. Wow. As if it wasn't bad enough that the Celtics stunk, I could feel it coming from game five. I really was worried after game five when we talked about in the pot.

I thought there were some, it was not your typical loss at home where you just, oh, we just didn't make our threes. It's fine. It happens. This was like, their offense fell apart in the second half and Philly had a lot of confidence.

And Paul George was outplaying Jalen Brown, which he did again tonight. So I was concerned about today. Tatum left the game and was having issues with his good leg. And they were like, is it a cramp? Is there a strain? What is it?

He was asked after the game if he, He's fine and he said yes. I flagged it immediately and his lift was gone from the moment it happened. He took a few shots. I'm sure there you could find the clips on social, but he took a few shots at least three and was in there. And he just was at a different speed from the moment something was wrong. And then the game got out of hand so they smartly pulled them.

If he even has a slight strange, I'm sitting him in game seven. That's a wrap for me. You cannot fuck with the Tatum part of the season. And that to me is, if he's even 96% I'm out. You're sitting and we'll try to win without you. We did it all year. And maybe we'll have you for round two. What would you do?

I would not play him. But I just want to acknowledge, I really appreciate what you did here, which is the Celtics got this game handed to them. And how quickly you pivoted the narrative to like, oh, my God, Jason Tatum's leg. What are we to do? But this was, they got their asses kicked. They did. They protected home.

They were underdogs. I want to talk about how good they were. but coming out of that, it's like, oh my God, Tatum's hurt again. Yeah. And it's the other calf. Like, this loss was bad enough. Now I'm on Twitter, Googling Strain Calf, cramp.

I'm texting people. Like, this was just, this game was a three-hour nightmare. It was a nightmare for the Celtics. I mean, Tatum did look different in the first half. I thought he was more successful, certainly. Had some, like, really smooth drives, some really good pull-up jumpers, was not quite the same guy. But even then, I mean, Philly's,

perimeter defense and their wings in this series have just been sensational. Like Kelly Ubrey on like guarding Jalen Brown mostly but switching over. Paul George Jesus Christ like playoff P in his fullest effect maybe ever. The combination of those guys plus just all the interchangeable parts where

it's been so telling that every time a Tatum or a brown wants to get ahead of steam and transition wants to like take advantage of those moments where these smothering wings might not be on them. Quentin Grimes just slides over. V.J. Edgecombe just slides over. Justin Anderson just slides over. They just have so many of these guys, like just an endless pit of good wings

who they can plug and play. And it's proven really difficult for Boston to do basically anything with. The worst part of everything you said is that Paul George outplayed both guys in this game. Yes, straight up. And Paul George has been really good this whole series.

We've talked about it. Every pot I've done, I thought this was the best game he's played tonight. He was 2021 Paul George offensively a few times. Defensively, I thought he threw. I think they've just, just throttled Brown. I mean, Brown was terrible tonight.

And I didn't think he was very good in game five either. The stats were a little deceiving. I thought even the shots he made weren't great shots. Got yet another offensive foul. But I thought, you know, this was a guy that during the season was scoring on everybody and getting the shots he wanted on every good defender in the league from Lou Doord on down. And in this series, cannot seem to get the shot he wants

against any perimeter guy on Philadelphia. And they seem really confident on it. I tweeted something at halftime about, I just couldn't believe how bad the Celtics were in that first half where it was all the things you're worried about if you're a Celtic fan going in, where it's like Derek White looks a little rickety. We're going too slow.

We're walking it up. Hate that. Missoula has now quit on the bench. I think in the first half, Pritcher was the only guy that had any bench points. None of the other. This whole bench mob, these guys that would swing these games, just punted on that. Playing Tatum and Brown big minutes.

Well, what happens? Tatum may have gotten hurt in the third quarter. He's playing 42 and 40 minute games this year. I think he was averaging 40 minutes a game or 38 a game or something like that. What about a Nemesh, Kada may not have control of his limbs? I had dumb Kada fouls written down. Is Vooch terrible? I think has been lurking as a question with Celtic fans.

And he's basically been unplayable. And then on top of it, like this bad version of Jalen Brown, that just hasn't been there all season, all of a sudden shows up. So it was another legitimate win. Here's a stat for you, Rob. Please. Lowest scoring quarters the Celtics have had all season.

14 in the second quarter against New York on October 24th. 13 in the third quarter against Milwaukee in December 11th. 11 in the fourth quarter of game 5 and 14 in the third quarter today. Yikes. Two of the worst quarters they've had, two of the four worst quarters they've had all season happened in the last two games. And they had a stretch of the second half of game five

into the entire first half of game six where they just got their ass kicked for a full game leading into the third quarter. So, you know, I know game seven's at home, but I don't like the way they're playing. I think Philly has a ton of confidence. And Bates a variable. I don't, I didn't think he was nearly as effective in this game

as he was in the last game. And I thought actually, like, If he had shot better, they could have won that game by 30. But he's still impactful. You're still thinking about him. And I guess would you say the gamble of playing him game four and basically plunking on that game because they couldn't figure out how to incorporate him,

I guess, has paid off, right? Well, I mean, they had to ease into it, clearly. Yeah. Figure out how to manage their offense, firing on all cylinders at once with and beat involved. I think, I mean, introducing him in mid-series has given the whole dynamic a really interesting jolt. Because, right, usually when you're a favored team, by the end of it, I mean, we're going to talk about what happened with the Knicks and the Hawks, for example, you see the superior team kind of like tightening its grip overall.

They learn which players they need to play. They learn which buttons they need to push. And by the end, they feel like they're in control. But throwing it and B like changed everything about how the series is played, who is guarded, where, like how the Celtics are aligned. And you could see it in this game where even though he isn't scoring well, he's getting guys in foul trouble. He's baiting the Celtics into overreaction with double. teams. He gives the Sixers a good way to steady their offense where they don't have to just like go through Maxi so much or go through Paul George so much. They can actually kind of counterbalance this stuff. And I also think he was a huge help keeping the Celtics off the offensive glass where through three quarters, they basically had like two or three offensive rebounds. And Boston is not a team that can really survive that way. Yeah. And it's funny because that I always felt like it was a weakness with Embed, especially as you got older, is you could

crash the boards on them and get all these second chance to I think they had one offensive rebound. Was it the entire game or just in the first half? They picked them up in like, they picked them up in garbage time, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're down nine and a half time. One offensive rebound.

Yikes. All right, the Philly piece of this. Maxy's been the best player in the series. And I remember Zach and I in a most intriguing players in the playoffs pod that we did that seemingly happened about 20 years ago because we've had so many playoff games. And Maxie was the one I picked for like the leap. Like could this happen?

The guy's relentless. He feels like he's faster than anybody in the Celtics. He even when if you look up, he has four points, all of a sudden he'll have 10 points in like four minutes. Clearly seems like the leader of the team. He's been great in the home games. And if they win in game seven in Boston, which is conceivable with the way the soothics are playing,

I think it starts there. I think that to me it's a Maxi, Paul George, and then whatever you get from Embed is a bonus. Yeah, I mean, again, I really don't think we can say enough great things about Paul George, but with Maxi, the ease with which he toggles between attacking on ball, like really, really aggressively, and also just spacing out to let other people shine.

It's a really unique combination. Like, that kind of speed and that kind of shooting just don't come together in the same package very often. And he doesn't even necessarily need to be Steph Curry flying around the floor, like doing all this offball movement. Just his gravity on the weak side is a really, really powerful thing, especially because if you do kick to him, I don't care how well you contest or close out.

He's going to blow by you on the counter drive. And so he just gives the Sixers so many options. And he feels more and more powerful as all these other guys are being established. The better Paul George plays, the more dangerous Maxi becomes. The more Embed is a real threat. Then, oh, my God, what are we supposed to do with type of? Tyrese as a result. So they've proven to be like a really formidable combination.

And the other thing to just kind of keep doing what you're doing when you introduce this crazy and bead variable and the usage rate for him and it hasn't affected his stuff at all. Yeah, I had him my last Ringer 100 that we handed it. I had him 16th. I think it's really tough to keep him out of the top 10 best players in the league at this point. Like I don't, you know, I don't know when we turn on our next list, but it just, if you're watching all these guys against each other. We're missing a couple guys that are in the playoffs, like Hawaii and people like that,

but it's just hard for me to believe Maxi is not in the top 10 now. Even this season, I mean, he was an All-N-Ba second-team guy. Like, rock-solid all year long for all of the weird lulls that the Sixers had in their seasons with injuries and suspensions and whatnot, he was the constant piece of it. And, I mean, I think his buoyancy, too, as a personality is a really important part of this. Like, if you're going to have that kind of year, you do need a guy who can just help keep people, help keep people's spirits up, and Duel and Bede is not necessarily that.

Paul George is not necessarily that. I think he and Vijay just gave this team an energy and a shot in the arm at some of the precise moments over the course of the year where they really needed it. And certainly in these playoffs, the more I think about this series, the more I think about game two. That's the one that Boston,

everyone with that team should have in their nightmares if they do end up losing this series because they lost it and they lost it because they didn't take the Sixers very seriously enough. they just didn't play their game and work hard enough. That was an effort loss. And if they lose this series because they let up one too many effort losses

early, that's the kind of thing that sticks with you. Lazy, a lot of threes. It was all the same shit that sunk them last year. Today I actually, today was a little more concerning because I thought they actually played hard and I thought they just played

harder and wanted it more. The CTA piece of it, they're relying on these guys that made sense in the regular and now you're throwing Kate against Joelle and Bid and just seems like he doesn't have control of his limbs half the time. I feel like we zoomed past the most important part, which is like on a scale of one to life alert, like how are you doing?

What is your current mental state? Not great. I was, I'm telling you, I was after game five, I was, and then the next day and talking to people and texting with my super nervous dad,

we just were really concerned after that game. Because it felt like the team had lost its identity. Like we were talking about Minnesota's identity before. They just kept it even with these injuries. And they just, we're going to ball pressure and we're going to attack and we're going to have a chip on our shoulder. Boston, the big part of their identity was this bench. And the bench mob coming in and the bench shifting games and being able, you know, their whole season, it's Jalen and White and Pritchard are the three reliable scorers.

Very rarely were all three of them good in the same game. and sometimes only one of them was good in the game. But the bench was able to switch stuff. And it was interesting in the second half when they kind of punted. And he finally played Garza, Shireman, Pritchard, Harper, and Walsh. A lineup that I would have played every game. Guys that have played together for stretches over and over again. You can't play those guys together in actual playoff minutes.

I would have played them. You can't do it. Here's what you can't do. Played Jason Tatum 42 minutes in a playoff game. That's a problem. Coming off of Torn Achilles. Agreed. Like at some point, obviously that wouldn't be the five,

but that, what you have, where you either put Brown in there or one of them or, I don't know. I honestly would have thrown that out and just said, mucked the game up for four minutes versus some of the stuff we were watching. That lineup actually almost,

it felt like they were going to bring them back. They were down 12. I was like, oh, my God. They're going to do it. But Ron Harper is somebody that I actually think you could have made a case should have played a little. Walsh, definitely. should be playing more. Like, no question. I think he's the one guy that's given Maxie real trouble.

And then Shireman, he just punted on in the playoffs. And I don't understand it. I said this, every pot I've done. I don't understand he was coming on as like the super sub for them. And they just basically punted on his minutes. And I don't really get it. The stuff Maz is done in this series, I don't really understand. They're not playing through the guards enough. They stopped doing the little picks at the top for the guards. And it's just all this face-up one-on-one stuff or the two forwards. It's like watching battering rams. It's a really ugly offense. And this wasn't how they played this season, Rob.

I think it's some of the stuff that's baked into the, just like the construction of the team in its current form. And then some of it being Tatum and Brown's worst habits coming home to Bruce, all swirling together in the worst possible way. Against the defense, we should add again, it's just like equipped to switch a lot of these actions. Ready for everything. If you did want to run, you know, like a little bit more of a guard-heavy offense,

a little bit more ball screen oriented, like it's not like, The Sixers couldn't handle that for the most part. I think they're pretty well suited for it. And Maxie's defense, I think, is we've seen MaxieGuard bigger guys and fight people. You know, the trade deadline, they traded Simons for Vucebich. And Simons was really important for this team as this super sub off the bench. He didn't always have it, but he would sometimes. But he was a good monkey wrench guy.

Like a better version of what Bones Island has been doing on Minnesota. And there were quarters that he would swing. And they lost that. And they feel like they're a guard short. And the reasoning was, what we think Vouch, we have more center depth. Obviously, there was tax stuff. But really, it was a money trade. And they were keeping their fingers crossed that Vooch still had any gas in the tank.

And he just doesn't. And there has been no sign for the moment they got him that he can help them. And I thought he was unplayable tonight. And I don't even know if we're going to see him that much in game seven. So you go from Simons, who's this wild card. Oh, White doesn't have it. oh, this guy's sitting three is to Vucci just it's just a groaner. I don't think any of his shots are going in.

I mean, that's another benefit for Philly in terms of just having Embed on the floor in this series. Is it just changes the way that Boston has to think about its rotations. And you feel, if you're Joe Missoula, feel compelled to put Vooch out there, just like we have to have a size appropriate body to hurl in front of Joelle Embedde. Because, I mean, just who knows what would happen to Luca Garza if he had to do that for 30 minutes? Right.

Versus if it's just Andrejoum. drummond and a dembona out there. You can get away with all sorts of other lineups. You can play small. You can play different. You can play variations of what already works for them and you don't feel so reliant on vuches. I thought Philly should

have and could have won game three. And Boston had to make a couple really big shots to stave them off. And there was some veteran playoff experience. But Philly has figured out this series from game two on what to do. And you have the Celtics now. It's a game seven.

This would be the ninth Sixers Celtics game seven, Rob. Is that true? Yeah. Celtics won in 59, 65, and 68. Sixers won in Philly in 77. Tough loss for young Bill Simmons. 83 to 77. 1981, Celtics come back from 3-1.

I was there. 1982, Celtics come back from 3-1 again, and the Sixers win game 7. I was also there. 2012 was that weird Derek Rose year when he got hurt. And we ended up with Philly and Boston in the, I think it was round two. And that was Rajan Rondo's greatest shooting game ever. Celtics win that. And then 2023, when the Celts were down 3-2, they went in Philly in Game 6.

Tatum is a big game. Then they killed them Philly in Game 7. So this is our ninth one. And if I'm Philly, I feel like I can win the game. Like 100%. They definitely should feel that. way. Harder on the road. I mean, it's still going to be a task, but I think you're spot on that they have really seized onto a couple of really key strategic things in the series. Plus,

we'll see whatever becomes of Jason Tatum's leg and how ready he is to go and be the best version of himself. But Philly has everything they need to win. Clearly, they can really put the screws to the Celtics. Whether they can do it again game over game, like, look, this stuff is hard, but an incredible showing by them just to put themselves in this position to begin with. What do you think the line is just out of curiosity? I would bet it's Celtics, but fairly slim, maybe like three and a half, four and a half points. It's seven and a half. Seven and a half.

Incredibly too high. I would make this a four point game because, you know, we've just seen this pretty huge sample size. There was the outlier-pritchard game in game four plus some B coming back into that. But I thought the one mood the Celtics had, and I would have been interested to see if they did in the second half today. but then Tatum got hurt was, what about Tatum at the five? Shooters everywhere. What's making Bede work?

It's not like the centers are playing well to begin with. Let's just see what this looks like, but we never got to see it. And if Tatum's healthy, I wonder if we'll see that. Like, are you just better off playing him at the five than Vucevich for those minutes and playing with guards and shooters?

And that's it. I think it would have been worth a look, especially because Embedom is not super immobile right now. Not to the extent that he has been over the last couple of years when he's played, but you can drive around him defensively. You can roll around him defensively. And so, yeah, I would have liked to see that version

of the Celtics, give it a go, but I don't think that's very realistic to ask of Tatum at this point. Do you realize that the Celtics blow game seven at home? This will be 2003 against Miami, pretty big favorites in that series. Yeah. 25 last year against the Knicks,

pretty big favorites in that series. And then this series, series, they were favorites all the time. I think they were like minus 1,800 after game 4, minus 2,200. So this would be a title and three just dramatic, devastating collapses in the last four years of the Joe Bazoula era. And I don't know what to make of it. Well, and it will have officially transcended, like, whatever Miami complex exists, right?

Like, this is no longer a Heat Celtics thing. This is just a Celtics thing. I fear for you. I fear for you and everyone in your circle, Bill. It does not seem like a good thing to have to live with if it does come to that. Let me add this component, Rob. You have children. I do not have children.

You don't have a child yet? No. All right, I have a 21-year-old child on Saturday. Okay. My daughter turns 21 years old. Yep. On May 2nd, I am not doing a podcast on May 2nd after that game, win or lose. So I'm just saying that now.

I'm not going to have a podcast until Sunday. I can't decide if my daughter turning 21 that day and we're going to be with her is a good sign or a bad sign for the Celtics. She loves the Celtics, by the way. I feel like it's a good sign, but I don't know. I'm going to say it's an irrelevant sign and you'll talk yourself into some divine meaning

in either of it. Nothing's irrelevant, Rob. Nothing's irrelevant. Well, this is a good thread, though. Do you have any particular Game 7 superstitions? Do you approach a game like this any differently than any other Celtics playoff game? Yes.

I asked my mom, who's 100% Italian, will make a little shrine thing for good luck. And I only ask her for specific kind of sports moments. What is in the shrine? She's got a whole weird Italian thing. So I'm going to have to, might have to shrine it up. I mean, if Tatum doesn't play,

this might kind of solve itself unless we get like this crazy Baylor-Shireman game or something. I really am imagining the closet shrine with like the burning candles, the Baylor-Shireman portrait in the middle. Like I think, you know, you really got to go all out for an occasion like this. Well, I also have the karma piece of it. Like I can't be like, oh, that dinner we were going to have for your birthday. Like I can't, we got to just stay in and watch the game.

I'm going to have to do whatever she wants, obey all father-daughter rules. Yep. And let her control the process in a way that she feels good about because that will help the Celtics. I'm going to do my part. Karma-wise, I'm doing my part. I don't want to blame myself years later. At first, I thought you were just being a good dad, but no, it's just so you can get the karma so the Celtics will win. Yeah, I want her to be happy on her birthday.

Okay, okay. It can be both. Yeah. This is just a nightmare. First of all, if they lose to Philly, that's three home losses in a seven-game series to a team that was a play-in team. And then we're in a situation. Zach Lowe asked us on his podcast, like, Who's going to win the East?

The Orlando Magic. Is that the answer? I don't know. Well, actually, I think we have our clearest indication yet of the answer, and it's in the last game that we haven't discussed tonight. Yeah, the Knicks turned it on. I mean. And I thought they solved that landing in Game 5.

I thought that was an easy bet tonight. They were like minus two and a half. I didn't think they would be up by 50 points in the first half. No. But they're running out all cylinders, and it feels like they're the only team that would actually have a chance. to land one or two punches on the spurs or thunder. I don't know if they would beat either team,

but they could at least get some jabs in and maybe a couple right crosses. Well, this high gear that they showed is just better than anything we've seen in the entire Eastern Conference, maybe all year. Like, maybe even above and beyond what the pistons were in the regular season

or the, you know, the shiniest version of the Celtics. Like, this was an incredibly impressive win, a historic win in a bunch of different ways. I didn't know. You could show this kind of violence on TV anymore. Like just getting this kind of lead and holding it. And every time I seem to check back on the game, it was just getting worse and worse and worse for Atlanta.

It's hard to not be blown away by how good the Knicks can be when they have it altogether. And after this, I think they've certainly deserved the benefit of the doubt as far as when they're able to do that. Is it possible the regular season just doesn't matter? You can't say that. And that we just because we get podcast content out of it for six and a half months, we're convinced these little signs and this means this. That means that. The one thing that I think mattered all season was San Antonio rising to the occasion

against Oklahoma City. That felt like, okay, this is significant. We didn't think these guys were real yet. They are real now and they feel like they can beat this team. And this is a thing now that's happening. Other than that, are we just on a roller coaster ride with the up and down? Look at like Orlando and Minnesota. The two most frustrated teams in each conference are now teams you could conceivably

see just, I don't know how far either of them are going to go, but I can see them keep going. And then you look at the team like the Knicks that over and over again, we've wondered, what's wrong with this team? Do they like each other? Oh my God. They're going to blow it up after the, after they get bounced. Then now they look great. So can you just turn it on in basketball now, like out of nowhere for two weeks and then all of a sudden come together? Because it seems like that's the case. I think if the magic could have turned it on, they would have turned it on in that play end game. Like, I think there's, there's, there's, more in play than that.

It's a solid point. Here's what it is. Years ago, the big picture stuff used to tell the whole story. Whoever wins a ton of games in the regular season that's going to translate pretty seamlessly to the playoffs, like the dominant teams are the dominant teams

or the dominant teams. Now I think you really have to pay attention. I think it's so much more than who is the first, second, and third seat in each conference. It's where are those meaningful steps forward for a guy like Jaden McDaniels? Where are the literal vulnerabilities

where it's like, man, it just seems like when push comes to show, this team doesn't have enough spacing or doesn't have enough size. Like when you look at this one matchup, when you look at OKC versus San Antonio, for example, like what does that tell us about both teams? I just think the lessons of the regular season require more and more of a magnifying glass to find.

But they're there. It's just not as big and in flashing lights as it used to be. Yeah, the Celtics thing really roped up to me, especially the Jalen part, who was just really good all season. And now can't seem to score against any guy and the Sixers. Here's another topic

from the Knicks Hawks. I know OJ. Annanobi isn't the best forward in the league, but if you just watch round one, you would think he was, and then you would think

Paul George was the second best forward in the league. So that's, I guess, one of the round one story lines, but this is the best he's ever played.

He was incredible tonight. I thought he was the MVP of the series. I think he is the MVP of the series. Well, Kat gives him

a good, argument there too as well. Like the triple doubles, the playmaking, like towns, even his defense, all proved to be really important. That's what it is for me. Like the Knicks offense got whatever it wanted in this game. You don't get up by 50 points without doing that. But their defense was just like soul crushing in the first half in terms of breaking down everything that Atlanta does. And they had and running after they got turned the ball over. They're off. And OG was a huge part of that. Right. He's creating turnovers. He's getting stops. He's getting out on the break and getting easier and easier shots. And then even when they guard him, he's hitting threes over these wings who are like

good defenders, but not OG and Ananoi-sized. And so they had no answer for him really at any point in the series. And he is the exact kind of problem in that Aaron Gordon shaped mold where it's like, if you don't have a counter for this kind of player, he's just going to make your life a living hell over seven games. I think they have to be the favorite to win these now. I'm going to look at the odds. That feels more than fair. After you go on a 67 to 13 run in a game against a good team. They're not the favorite. They're not. On Fandall, they're plus 128, and the Celtics are minus

102. Oh, and the calves are minus 172. I don't get it. Oh, wait. And then for the fine, yeah, they're not the, they're plus 310 to make the finals. So they're plus 128 to make the next round, plus 310

to make the finals, and 16 to 1 to win it. I would by far, if your life dependent on it, the next have to be the pick from what we've seen so far, especially if we don't know what we're getting with the Southwax. Right, which I want to acknowledge, like it's a crazy thing to say,

given the season they had and the conversations we've been having about the Knicks all year, where I think they've been under a lot of scrutiny, some by their own doing, in terms of how they would respond to adversity. And now we know they lost two games by one point, came out with a monster win, and then a historically monster win,

in which they put up, I think the biggest winning margin, like the biggest lead of any game in the best, 61 points. Yeah, 61 is the biggest lead of any playoff game in the play-by-play era, and then ended up with one of the most decisive close-out games ever. So, yeah, I think they got it. Well, that's why you got to live in playoffs, Rob.

Like, after Friday, we're like, oh, my God, Saturday in Atlanta, game four. We'll see what happens to the next. They might be blowing it up. And now all of a sudden, three days later, it's like, how are they not the favorite of the conference? What's happening? I thought they were awesome today. And they were really fun to watch.

They were. And I think, you know, as a Celtics fan, I look at some of the athleticism and how creaky the Celtics kind of looked. They're just not getting really fast break points at all. And then you watch that Knicks team flying around and making plays on defense. It's not looking good for the Celtics. This is where we go like, you know, Tatum came back. We got under the tax. To world victory.

Now this something we're going to figure it out. Do they hang a banner for getting under the tax? What do they do for that? I don't know. I have to ask Bill Chisholm. I hesitate to bring this up, but I'm not going to have another podcast until Sunday. Okay. I do wonder what happens with Jalen long term if they lose this series.

In terms of what the team will do or like what will happen to him internally? No, I wonder does he become a trade possibility? And I don't say that like to be aggregated or to start Reddit threads, anything like that. I'm just, I really genuinely wonder where last year, they lost that Nick series before Tatum got hurt. They were going to lose that series. Tatum got hurt at the end of a game. They were going to be down 3-1 and they were going to lose that series. They weren't going to come back from that, I don't think.

So you basically, you flame out in that series and then you flame out in this round one, too, and you have two guys making a combined $120 million. And it's looked pretty rocky the past couple years in the playoffs. I just wonder, would they look at this as a chance to reset? I have no idea. I have no inside information. But I think it has to at least be a conversation, right? I'm fine with the conversation,

but I still think he's closer to the guy he was in the regular season than he is to the version that's getting walled up right now. Yeah, I'm not talking about like, oh, we got to bail on him. I'm just talking about big picture. He just played his 10th year. Yeah. He was awesome. He's going to be a first team all NBA.

Is this the highest we could possibly sell? Oh, sure. Could we rebuild around Tatum, Pritchard, some of these other guys we have, try to get a haulback, try to reset our salary, maybe go after a free agent or another piece. And I think it's at least going to be a topic if they blow a 3-1 lead to the seven seed.

Look, if you blow that lead and lose all these home games under this circumstance, even with all of the caveats about, oh, this is supposed to be a gap year, oh, Jason Tatum is still not fully himself yet. All of that's fine. You should still win a series like this. I still would want to bet the future of my team

on Tatum and Brown. Like that's still a core that I believe in. It's still a pairing that I think works as long as those guys want to make it work. And some of it is just

the alternatives, right? Like it's much easier said than done to go out and find a better fitting component part or to bet on someone like Peyton Pritchard who has great games, but then have like 14 points

on 16 shots in this one where they desperately needed more scoring. So there are a lot of good but limited players on the Celtics roster who need help and need to play better than they did tonight.

Changing the core of it, I don't think solves the problems and they just need to keep adding pieces around the edges, I think, more than anything. This is where I give my annual disclaimer or not annual, my guaranteed disclaimer every time this topic comes up. I do not want them to trade either guy. Please keep them together. I like rooting for them.

I want them to finish their careers in Boston. I'm just worried that this will become a topic. And I think it's at least worthy of a topic of like, hey, what do we have here? We just had two devastating playoff losses at a row. And I think you have the conversations and you land on, Tatum came back in March. Yes. You know, Jalen had a huge burden.

Obviously, we're down in the playoffs. Let's try to build a better team around them and let's come back full, full scale next year. We've had an incredible amount of success with this. That is the correct answer for how to handle this. I just don't know with the new owner. Who knows? I think the question is almost, it's always, like, does this work well enough to suit our needs?

Does this work well enough to beat the best teams in the league? More than it ever is like, oh, this needs to be blown up immediately. Like, an interrogation of seasons that go sideways, every team in the league that loses in this fashion should be doing that. We're talking about the nuggets in the same way for the same reason, right? It's like if you need answers as to why you lost a series, you should start by looking at the players on the floor and the coaches who coach them. Is there something in these component parts that doesn't make sense in the way that we need it to? Yeah, what happens with that's another team

that's going to have to have that conversation? We take the Yoko-Jemarie Gordon thing as far as we could take it. And now what do we do? We'll see. The Celtics could easily win by 15. Do you have any, I know you did this on Ringer NBA already, but Pistons Magic, Pistons favorite in this one, they got a superhuman performance from Cade,

at home and barely won. And that was without Franz. I don't know if Franz is coming back or not. I think the Magic are going to win game six. I don't think the Pistons have enough, and I don't think Cade can do that two more times. So I just think the Magic are going to win this series. Do you disagree with that?

I think the Magic are going to win the series, but I think they do need Franz back at some point. Like, if not for six, then for seven. The defense on Kate is super important, and he's just been so much better at. than even, you know, like a hardworking role player like Jamal Kane or like a good, lively athlete like Anthony Black. It's just not the same thing.

Do we get zombie Jonathan Isaac? Is he alive? Where is he? I think he's also still on the injury report, I mean perpetually, but I think including right now. Can Mike Connolly's doctor go see him? Cavaliers, Raptors. I just feel like this goes seven.

I pick Cavs and Six. My only two series picks were Knicks and Six, which hit and Cavs and Six. and yet I think the Raptors will win this game. What do you think? I think the Cavs might have it, not because they're... Tell me why. I don't think they're so much better. I just think that they've gotten just enough progression from their bigs

as far as being actual contributors to these games now. It's like, okay, now there is a balance to the roster and to the lineup that makes sense. And so if you're getting Evan Mowgli to play like an actual big, which they did, Jared Allen to play good interior defense, which he did, and you're getting some good supplementary shooting from like, I think Sam Marriol. has been really important to this rotation.

Like Max Drus's movement, adding him to the starting lineup, I think was a step in the right direction. And also, like, who knows what Brandon Ingram status is going to be. Like, the Raptors are another team

who are short on bodies, still don't have a manual quickly. Scotty Barnes got dinged up in that game, too. He did not look himself at all afterwards either, and they, like, really need him to be hyper-aggressive. So I think there's, like,

a little bit too much of an accumulation. Okay. Lakers Rockets. Who knows? I have no feeling on Cavs Raptors. I'd probably lean raptors. I don't think I would bet on that. I've kind of stayed away from that series in general.

I think the Rockets are going to beat the Lakers. And I think this is destiny to go seven. And I just has that feeling. But I do feel like the Rockets found some sort of something with their young guys. And especially Jabari Smith, like, okay, I guess I'll try to have to make some field goals now. He was really good enough. And Thompson was a maniac. And Shangoon was fine.

and I just think it's this Lakers team some of the stuff they did with them strategically you know, Kinnard did the C.J. McCollum he had a couple good games and as the series went along, he died. I just think it's going to be really hard for the Wakers to get the right kind of offense. So it feels like seven.

I think seven is fair. I mean, this is kind of a test of do you believe in the attrition of a seven game series because it looks like the Lakers are just getting kind of like gradually worn down bit by bit by the athleticism and the activity of Houston's defense. And by the end of it, who knows what

LeBron is even going to have left? Who knows how comfortable Austin Reeves is going to be as he's still kind of finding his legs? And so if you believe in that kind of like cumulative thing over a playoff series versus the any game, anything can happen, sort of like gunslinger mentality, that kind of tells you who you think is going to win it.

I just like, in my heart of hearts, I don't trust the rockets. I don't trust the rockets. And so it's like I acknowledge all of the ways that this is weighing down the Lakers and they do not look like a team that's in control and they certainly look like a team that's giving up a lot of just like speed and power and physicality

and size basically across the lineup. I do think the Lakers will win. I think it will be ugly. I just don't trust the Rockets' collective execution. Minus three and a half favorites in that one. And then I guess six or Southlake. So we're down. We're down to four series.

This was still a lot of basketball. I know. A lot of deep series of the first round. Yeah, usually by the time we get there. So for the playoffs, big picture, the Minnesota, oh, my God, San Antonio is a minus 3,000 favorite against Minnesota. Yeah. I mean, can't come back fast enough.

Like, they're just desperately going to need everybody they've got. What's the Gobert Wembe? I can't remember. What's their relationship? They played on France together. Yeah. But Wembe kind of, Gober got a little buried on one of those teams, I remember. I think it's still pretty cordial.

I think it's like a big brother kind of relationship. a little bit. I'd like it to be a little frost here. Well, I mean, look, Gobert's a proud guy. It doesn't take a lot to get under his skin, and he tends to show up when things do. So I hope things do go that way. I need a new favorite player for the playoffs.

I'll get back to you on who I pick, a favorite non-Seltic. If we lose the Celtics and Joker, and we don't have Steph Curry, I'm just a man adrift at that point. I think if they lose to the Sixers, you should just have to root for Kelly Ubre the rest of the way. Like, you should just have to adopt a Sixers.

I, you know, they are, really fun to watch. This is one of the more bizarre basketball stories we've had. We did the best, the worst contracts drafted March. And Embed and Paul George were the two worst contracts. They're the first two picks. And by the way, not controversial at all. It really felt that way. Yeah. And now both of those guys, I mean, the Paul George coming back from the 25 game, we're still not sure what he did suspension. Yeah. And immediately reverting to 2021 Paul George, I don't fully understand. But it's a thing that's happening. It is one of the reasons why the basketball playoffs have been so strange.

I'd go a step further. I don't even think it's just like reverting to the Paul George that we know and admired and inversions past. Like there is something about the way that he does a little bit of everything that makes this like weird hodgepodge Sixers team make some kind of sense. Like I just don't think they function really without him. And you could see it even as in that stretch where he was out. And it's he's not OKC MVP, Paul George.

He's not even quite like the score he was with the Clippers. But it's like the connecting passes, the defense, the competitive. like the contested rebounding. He's like a supercharged Warriors Andre Iguodala at this point. And it's like that's a really valuable player to have. Well, and also being able to run plays for him and he's actually getting good

shots and scoring. So we, if they win game seven, is Darry is he back? Winner of the playoffs? Is Mori back? He's like, I told you. Maxie, Paul, Georgia, Bid. I told you guys. I can't wait for the victory laps. Really all of this playoff round.

Like, there's just so much crow to be eaten all around, including by guys like us. So I look forward to it. Well, if Embed can come back from appendicitis and play Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and play big minutes and do a lot of different stuff, that would be not even one of the three most incredible things that's happened in this playoffs because we had zombie Mike Conley and Jada McDaniels and whatever else happened tonight. All right, Rob Mahoney, when are we going to hear you on Ringer MBA again and see you?

We'll be on Ringer NBA Monday morning talking about the weekends game. So looking forward to it. I mean, hopefully, you know, get some game seven actions coming on Sunday as well, in addition to the Saturday ones. All right. And I'll text you what happens on my daughter's 21st. Please do. What ends up?

Hopefully I don't end up in a gutter somewhere. I mean, 10 shots, wondering what happened in the Celtics. Rob, thanks for staying out. We're going to take a break. Come back with Billy Gill, talking about baseball. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fanduel. If you bet the Kentucky Derby on FanDwell, which you should, you can bet on all your other favorite sports.

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tailgate the biggest hit show of 2026. Before we go to baseball, because we're going to wrap up the month in baseball, April. I guess it technically started in March. I asked last week, why did people go to the NFL draft and got a bunch of different responses? I'm just going to cold call you on this one. 320,000 people in Pittsburgh. It's free. There's food and drink.

It's a big cluster fuck. And you get to watch some guys pick. Would you ever do this? I maybe once. I think they said for the weekend it was like 800,000 for the three days, right? I don't know the people who go on day three. Like there's the people that I guess day two, maybe, but day three Mike Vrable didn't even show up to.

So like why are fans in Pittsburgh showing up to day three of the draft? You know who showed up? Michael Keaton came out and made a pick. Pittsburgh fan. Yeah, Batman was out there day three. Maybe that's why you go. You just don't know what's going to happen. I don't like that.

I don't like that for Michael Keaton. Yeah, go first round, Mike. Yeah, I mean, first round, okay, like, you know, the commissioner does the big picks, but you can't be more than day two if you're Michael Keaton. Once they say day three, it's like, no, thank you. Yeah, that's a pass. All right, baseball, really kind of fun crazy season so far. Do you want to go with the teams that are in complete shambles?

Because I asked you to a top five. Actually, no, no, no. You know what? I'm turning this over to you. I asked you to do a top five list. I was going to say to do glass half four or glass half empty with some of the teams. But let's do the list and then whatever's left we'll talk about after. So you're going to do a list.

Top five biggest things. I said top five most hugest things that have happened last five weeks. Yeah. This is what has happened with our baseball discussions and previews so far. It's a little vague. So first one I treated kind of like a cocktail party. Whereas like if this is a cocktail party, to where baseball comes up for whatever reason. These are topics that you could talk to.

Last one, I was just nerding about the world baseball classic. This one I thought, you know what? This is a thing this weekend. You have a big celebration, a wedding or something, maybe. You see people you haven't talked to in a while. You know, they're sports fans. Let's go back to the cocktail party. Let's just talk about the things that are going on. You don't have to be paying too close attention to baseball. You just throw out these stories and they're like, wow, this person is really in on what's happening this season in baseball so far. Okay. So you want to go one to five or do you want to go five to one? Let's go one to five. I mean, these aren't, these aren't necessarily like a top 10. Like this is like the biggest story. That's the worst story. These are just five things

that are going on. And you can kind of rank them in your own importance based on who you're talking to based on the demographic, the area you're in what you think they might find interesting. So this is just, this is just for you. This is a little appetizer. You like pick it up, get this, then regurgitated to your friend. So the first one, I mean, this is a big one that's been happening

this week. Fireings. I mean, it's April. We have two managerial firings already. Including one of the weirdest managerial slash coach

firings in the history of Boston sports since I've been following any of my teams, firing Alex Cora, two games into a three game series in Baltimore after they had a blowout win. I just don't understand

the timing of it at all, why they didn't just wait until after the series. The thing is, I mean, you would know better than I would. You're watching all the Red Sox fans. You're a Red Sox fan. Obviously, they're not happy there. They've been chanting sell the team on John Henry's there in the stand. So something was going to change, but it was not, I think, what anyone was hoping for would change or especially not the manager that thought they would fire.

So they fire Alex Gore. He has obviously a great track record. He had, this is technically his second stint with the Red Sox because he has the first. one and then they had the whole Apple Watch situation where he was suspended for a year and they parted ways and they hired poor Ron Reneky and then after a season and the fake suspension was over. Ron Renekie was gone and they brought Alex back immediately. I think that the best summary of this was by the anonymous alum of the Red Sox, which I'm sure you saw, which was, it's like shitting your pants and changing your shirt. That seems to be kind of the attitude.

so far with how this hire went. I don't know if you saw the pictures that went out there, but then, you know, Veritech was one of the coaches that was let go. They picked them up in like these charter vans. The charter's van said coaches for hire because they were, you know, coach vans or whatever,

which is like not intentional. He then gave the thumbs down, which Veritech like this says, be careful, you know, you've been part of this family for 30 years. There's rumors that they're just reassigning you. You'll be back.

Let's not upset anyone too much and cost yourself a future position. So I, Cora wasn't awesome the last five years. He was fine, but you know, he won in 2018, which is also eight years ago. I also don't think he was the problem. The problem is the roster. What's been interesting is all the stories and stuff that's come out after. And it really just seems to me like the GM's not that good, but spends a lot of time with the owner. And they've had like signings or young guys or young guys they've gotten behind who haven't done well or a couple pitchers.

So they've traded pitchers away like Kyle Harrison this year, who's now really good. on the Brewers. So if you're in job protection mode and you're the GM, you're just throwing the coaching staff under the bus. You're like, I told you Kyle Harrison was going to be good. I don't know what we were doing with him. I had to trade him before he wasn't asking him. Now he's good, but he should have been good here.

And I just think he undermined the manager and the coaches. Because they got rid of all the hitting coaches, but kept the pitching because the pitching's been a little more reliable. And it just sucks because the GM is a role. robot. Nobody likes them. And the team just feels rudderless. And I don't know why John Henry even wants to own it. Nobody thinks he's doing a good job anymore. Well, that takes us to our next managerial firing, which was the Phillies, which I think was also surprising. And Alex Corr is connected to that because they offered Alex Cora that job after they fired Rob Thompson, which is

kind of weird. And he said, no, I'm going to take time, which is probably good because then he doesn't have to just end up right back and managing the Phillies, which are struggling. They're one of the the two teams that has a 10 plus game losing street this season along with the Mets. And then who do they hire? They go to their bench coach, Don Mattingly. The hit man. Don Mattingly. I'm not a fan of Don Maddenly.

I'm not a fan of Don Mattingly, bench coached last year of the Toronto Blue Jays. I'm surprised honestly that he hasn't managed since he managed the Marlins a couple of years ago and he's just been bench coaching ever since. But Donnie Baseball was asked before the season if he was interested in managing again and he threw out the generic oh, you know, I don't have the energy to keep managing. I'm just, you know, I don't, I don't still have it in me. And then Dave Dombrowski said, hey, Donnie Baseball, you want to manage this team? He said, absolutely. And then they asked him in the press conference, like, hey, what happened there?

Because we asked you before the season if you had any interest in managing again. And you kind of hinted at it and said, you didn't have the energy to do this anymore. And he's like, yeah, Rob was here, so I didn't want to kind of ruffle any feathers. So I just kind of said that thing. But I'm good. I'm good to manage. Then he wins the first game. Wow.

And they're like, did you give any big speeches to the guys, did you rally the troops? What'd you say? And then he was just kind of like, congratulations. It's just another game. Like, we're supposed to be winning these. Like, what do you want me to say to them?

You know, so, Donnie baseball. Well, you think like when you came on before the year, we were talking about all of these big market teams that had a chance to be good and how an unusual spot it was for baseball, right? Big cities, big marquee players.

and it just felt like it was going to be an awesome season. Then the season starts, Red Sox suck, Mets suck, Phillies suck. Darje just start out okay, but certainly not a threat to win 120. But that's just baseball. I didn't follow what was going wrong with the Phillies, but it seems like, it seems like mirror image of what was happening with the Red Sox. Just complete disappointment. They've been disappointing, another disappointing, not a managerial firing yet,

but on the hot seat and probably will be fired soon as Carl's been doze of the Mets. They lose 12, 10 and 20 this season. He's had his two seasons that he's managed been winning season, but they had that epic collapse last year. They've gotten off on the wrong foot this year. He had a couple days ago a situation where he

got ejected. He was like just going out of his way to bump the umpire. I love those. The Mets pitcher. The Mets pitcher goes and fields a ball that's right on the line, throws it into the, it didn't go into the stand, it stayed in the play, but just like swipes at it with his glove to try to shoe it foul. It's called fair.

Three pirates end up scoring on the play because they, instead of going after the ball, just decide to argue with the home plate umpires. So the pirates just keep rounding the bases and scoring. Mendoza comes out. He's screaming. He's chest to chest, like actually like physically bumping the umpires. He gets ejected. I think he knows he's on his way out.

Yeah. He's like, I got to do something here. I got to show some fight. I like it. Yeah, I do too. Honestly, that's the one thing about replay, not APS. We'll get to that later on. That's the one thing I miss about replay is the managers getting ejected because you can't

really argue anything. And if you go out and you argue something that's reviewed, you immediately get wrong. So there's no theatrics anymore. I miss that. How's our dude in San Francisco who came from college and had five team meetings in the first eight days or whatever? I said they're like 500, right? Well, we thought that he was not going to make it out of week one. And they already started going and they were like kind of putting out like the PR like, no, trust this guy.

They're four games under right now. They're last in the West. I mean, the problem with being last in the West is you have the Dodgers there. Yeah. You have a better looking Rockies who are at the bottom, too, and the Padres are going to be contenders. So it's definitely a tough division for him to be in. I mean, you went to a game this year, right?

I did. Has there been comedy with him now, or is it just kind of depressing? It's just been, like, nothing that stands out that's like, wow, this guy really doesn't know what he's doing. It's just. He wasn't offering his players NIL money or anything. Okay. No.

And honestly, I think that he might, and we talked about this the last time, He may be the one that gets Buster Posi fired, which is kind of like, then he'll be double-hated because Buster Posi is so beloved by the Giants fans out there. I hate him too. I have my baseball. He's not a fan of Buster Posy. I like baseball bays.

He ruined the catching position. He ruined the play at the plate because he had to go and he had to get trucked by Scott Cousins. And then he injured his leg. And then they just changed all the rules for catchers forever. Then you had like three seasons where you needed to give the runner a lane. And you had no idea like, well, does he have a lane? Does he not have a lane? They were calling guys safe at home plate

that never even touched the base because it was ruled that they didn't have a lane and they didn't even try to slide. Like Buster Posey, one of the people who has ruined baseball, but we'll digress and not get into that today. Also, think of all the fights he cost us. I mean, the guy barreling in a catcher was a top three baseball fight starter.

I mean, guy barreling into the catcher was one of the greatest playoff baseball moments ever when it was the Giants against the Marlins down here, pudge Rodriguez JT Snow hits him, he holds on to the ball. Oh, yeah. He pulls it out, ends the NLDS, which is like, of all the series is like the whatever series, right? Now there's all these wild card rounds, so NLDS is a little bit better. But the NLDS always kind of felt like these are the day games that you get out of the way early on.

No one's really paying attention. So good stuff to bet on that's it. All right. So we got managerifying. What's your next thing? Are juiced balls back in baseball? A lot of home runs this year. You have eight guys, I believe, who already.

have 10 home runs. You have Aaron Judge with 12. You have Morikami with 12. Mike Trout, by the way, is back. Anyone who wrote off Mike Trout and said, you know what, this guy may be the greatest of all time until his teammate Shoio Tani came and he's definitely the greatest all time. We kind of forgot about Mike Trout and he's

just been existing out there in Anaheim. He gets hurt every year. Well, that's the thing. But he's healthy this year. Already has 10 home runs on the season. Then you have like another six that have nine home runs already this season. We could have, I mean, the pace probably won't keep up. Drew Romo got called up to the White Sox the other day. I know this because he,

we picked them up on my own keeper team. Switch hit catcher home runs from each side in his first game. That's when I was like, what's going on with these balls? Okay. Where are you, not that this is the topic, but where are you on your budget for the year? Because I've got an updates throughout the year and it seems like you're constantly putting flyers out there and spending money. And we're a month in and I don't think that you're budgeting this properly. Now, we've spent 40 of our 100, but we've spent smartly, including Irigeti on the Astros for 17, which we really needed. We have Brian Bayo, who has given up 26 earn runs already this season, which is four more than anyone else in baseball and has one of the highest DRAs heading to May of any starting

pitcher, I think, this century. So needs to say, we needed some help. Was he a keeper or did you spend money on him? He sadly was a $7 keeper. and my least favorite player of 2026 because he's killing my favorite team and my A.L. Keeper team. It's a double murder. Well, which is worse for you? Do you hold grudges based on fantasy like failures?

100,000 percent. Yeah. I still hate Jose Ramirez because we had his one bad Indians year and I just still hate his guts. So I hate Jordan Walker of the Cardinals because he's been doing great and I hate him because I drafted him four seasons too early. And then I would keep him year after year

and I could keep him for two years. And then I was like, I've given up on Jordan Walker. I'm done with him. This isn't going to work out for me. And of course, this year he's coming out and he's hot. That's with Josh Jung on the Rangers who's finally lightening it up. We had him forever.

I had him for the entire 2020s. Yeah. I had James Wood last year on my team from the nationals and opted to keep Jackson Merrill instead of him because I thought, you know, this will be the year Jackson Merrill finally turns it around for the Padres. And I would be keeping him at a higher round than James Wood.

So I'm like, I'll make it up. James Wood ends up going in the first round and has like 10 home runs already. It really hurts. No, it's really painful. Yeah, you put a lot of time in these guys for your fake baseball team and they don't respect it. Well, I invested in them. I believe in them before anyone else. I believe in them more than they believe in themselves.

And then they let me down. And then when I say, you know what, it's not you, it's me. Like, let's just kind of end this. Then all of a sudden they become like the hottest person. person out there, they're dating again, rubbing to my face. This is the worst one, though. And we didn't have them. But if, you know, the guy who had Mason Miller in our league, who now goes to the National League and becomes having one of the greatest pitching seasons

of all time, that hurts even more where it's like that, that just got stolen from you. Okay. You know what? We're going to go out of order here. And we're going to bring, we're going to bring up that topic because he's on the list. There's been really good pitching this year. Like, we have all of the home runs. We were just talking about the ball being juiced. Mason Miller, he's out there for the Padres. Going back to last season has 34 and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings. It ends kind of like not in the best way this year. You have Jose Soriano who had 150 strikeouts last year,

but he had like mid-four ERA. He's like 500 record as a pitcher. Yeah. On the Angels, too. On the Angels, five and one. 0.84 ERA, third in the league and strikeouts. And under one whip just comes out. I mean, you would think it's going to catch up to him.

they'll see, you know, tape or whatever, figure out whatever it is that he's changed this year. But you have these things every year where you just have this kind of like average player just come out of nowhere. And this, if you go back to fantasy. Trevor Rogers last year. Like, where the fuck did he come from? He's another one that's dead to me because Trevor Rogers was a guy that was a Marlin back in the day. Right. And he made the all-star team as a rookie because every team needs to have an all-star.

And it's like, okay, this is like a good starter. And then he was just like a middle of road guy is like a six ERA, year in and year out. It's like, okay, whatever. He ends up on the Orioles. And then he's like a Cy Young Award winner. The only reason he doesn't win any of the actual like ERA titles or strikeouts or any of that, he wasn't in contention because he didn't start the season.

He didn't have enough innings pitch. But he was electric last year. Now he fell back to her. Well, and Shoah Otani too in terms of pitching. He's great. I don't know what else to say about it. So we have like we have some awesome starters. And we have a couple awesome closers.

But there is this middle ground. pitcher that's just getting hammered. And I think those are the guys giving up most of the home runs. The middle ground guys are the ones that are supplying. Those guys are just getting destroyed. They're supplying the maybe multiple 60 home run players this season

for us. So God bless them too, because they're in there to really kind of save the game. Honestly, they're probably more entertaining than the guys are striking everyone out. They'll get us out of the game quick and it'll be like a two hour and 15 minute game, but the other guys are the ones providing the fireworks. This episode is brought to you by Square. If

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Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. What's your next one? All right. Next thing is ABS. the greatest thing to happen to baseball since the wild card. I was trying to think back, what's the best year? I was trying to think back, what's the best year that something has happened?

Like, I think the wild card is the best thing that happened to baseball for ABS. But ABS, I mean, you have catchers who are out there embarrassing umpires. Umpires can't do anything about it. Salvador Perez seems to take joy in embarrassing

the umpires and seems to know the strike zone better than any catcher out there. Then you have the game that you were watching, the Red Sox game earlier this year, where Eugenio Suarez of the Reds, is called out looking, and then he challenges it. And they're like, no, that's a ball. Then he gets called out looking again, challenged it.

No, that's a ball. Then he flies out. But it was electric. The Homer there would have been amazing. Yeah, that would, it kind of turned the Red season around. Now the Reds are a contender. I mean, two straight ABS wins. One of the surprise teams of the season so far,

the Reds, they have a piece. It wasn't a surprise to me because watching them in that series, I was like, are these guys good? I thought the Reds was like one of those. It's like here's another pitcher thrown in 97. Well, speaking of the Reds, I don't know if that was even their biggest ABS challenge win of the season, because earlier

this week, the Reds had one of the more memorable ABS challenges of the season where they're up 7 to 2 in the ninth inning. And there's a promotion where if the Reds strike out 11 batters, the fans in the stands get free pizza. Oh, wow. So they're up five

runs, ninth inning, not a close game. All of a sudden, Reds catcher. Challenges a call. So then everyone's just waiting around because they know, we're sitting on 10 strikeouts right now. What are we going to do? The momentum, the anticipation's building.

All of a sudden, the graphic pops up on the screen. The ball comes in and you see it got a corner. There's a little red circle around the ball. Strike three. He's called out. He has to walk back. The place erupts. The crowd's going crazy because they get free pizza.

Unbelievable. I love those promotions in baseball. where it's attached to these random things that I guess insurance companies or whatever like figure out probabilities and like, yeah, how many times are going to strike out 11 hitters in a game? So they do it. Basketball does it too with the free throws

and it always seems like it gives an electric surge to the crowd. I like it too. I like the guys that this is the case, I think in Cincinnati. I like the guys who are aware of the promotion and know like, hey, especially the road guys in basketball. Because basketball is usually attached to like road free throws.

And if they miss like two in a row, You'll get like 10 chicken nuggets somewhere or something, right? So the road guy that knows, okay, this is a promotion. My team's down by 15 right now. There's two minutes left. I could just miss these two free throws when everybody chicken nuggets. What difference does it make to me? You know, I become a fan favorite.

Then the place erupts because they win the nuggets. Huge fan. Also, I don't know if you saw this theory floating out there about ABS before we go on to our final topic in our cocktail party. There's been a theory floating around Twitter where obviously, for years, catchers framing has been a big thing where you put value in the catchers who catch the ball out of the strike zone, bring it in. In our baseball preview, I was saying, you know what, I think that those guys are going to have a hard time because you can no longer be the catcher that can't hit and can't do anything, but is great at framing and tricking the

umpire. There's a theory that's been out there on Twitter and there's been some minor evidence that maybe it's in place where catchers can now do the opposite, where catchers can catch a ball in the strike zone and frame it out of the strike zone. So it gets called a strike. Wow. And they bait the hitter into wasting an ABS challenge on a ball that's a strike that when they look back, they're like, that was definitely out of the zone because the catcher has moved the glove out of the strike zone just to get them to waste their ABS challenges.

It's the next level. This is pretty good. I like ABS. When you talked about the most important things that they've changed over the years, pitch clock as I was up there. But the single most important thing ever, where it was just the two leagues and it was like Premier League, you just won the league and then you played in the World Series, whenever they thought to split that up and have division playoffs, which is I think like 1969 somewhere around there, I still like that's probably the most important decision they

ever made, right? Because the Yankees would be at 25 games in August and literally everybody else would be eliminated. There would be like seven weeks left. How do you feel, Were you a big, I mean, you're an AL guy, so you're a DH guy. I hated when they made the DH Universal thing. I love the pitchers hitting in the national league. I hated it. I thought I liked having different leagues. Well, I liked also when then you'd have like the AL hitters come. I wasn't a huge fan of Interleague play because it took a little bit away from the World Series for me, but whatever, it's fine.

But when you'd have the AL guys come and they'd have to hit in the NL parks and you'd be like, oh my God, like, this guy could actually hit. Then we lose out on the Madison Bumgarners of the world who are hitting like 8, runs a season as a pitcher. I love the Rick Sutcliffe was another good one. Yeah, there's been some good ones over the years. I don't like it. All right. What's your last one?

Final topic here for the sports cocktail party. The rookie class this year has been really good in baseball. McGonigal is like leading all these different categories in the AL or in the top two. It's insane. He has incredible. I mean, he's not a guy that's going to go out and hit you 40 home runs, at least not this year. But he has great plate discipline. I think he has walked 16 times a seven.

17 strikeouts, which is a crazy ratio. Great batting average. Great OPS. And he's one of four guys this season. And he's one of two that's active that has already signed a contract extension, which is like a very rare thing. He signed a contract extension 20 games into his service time to buy out all of his arbitration. So he signs an eight year, $150 million contract. So it's a steal.

20 games in, the Tigers are like, you know what? We got to lock this guy up. Sadly, that's what the Red Sox did with Roman Anthony, who is now in an absolute free fall. So I was going to ask you about the firing if you're down on Roman at all or if you're just kind of like, eh, this is just not the season. Roman's been a complete mess. He's been a mess in the field.

It's a big topic with all the Red Sox fans wondering what the hell happened. And I have no answers. But this was somebody I would have bet anything on that this guy had it. Same way you would bet now with McGonigo. Yeah. Last year, Anthony, before he got hurt, it was like, oh, my God, this guy's going to be in my life for 20 years. And he's just been a mess this year.

So hopefully he's just going through a funk. Well, he didn't, I don't think his was as high as 150 either, was it. No, he was like eight for a hundred. McGonigal, they were just like, we're all in. This is, he's a shortstop too, which is. Yeah. Yeah, a little more important. So they also, the other one that was signed this year was Connor Griffin,

who we talked about before the season, number one prospect, the pirates brought up. He signed a nine-year, $140 million contract with five years of service. Him so far, you know, slow start, but he's a rookie. He just turned 20. They bought him. I don't know if you saw, they bought him a bounce house that they put in the Pirates locker room. Because I think they asked skeins like, what do you buy him? And he's like, what do you get a 20-year-old, a bounce house?

And then a couple days later, there's a bounce house in there. He's only hitting 2-31, two home runs. But he has plenty of time to figure it out. Two more guys that signed contract extensions this season. Both of these have zero days service time. So the Mariners signed their show. shortstop, eight year $95 million, Cole Emerson, and the Brewer signed

their shortstop, Cooper Pratt, eight years, $50.75 million. Neither of those have played yet in the major leagues. Both of them are also kind of sneaky struggling right now in the minors, but everyone's just locking up their guys first month of the season. We had all this stuff. It's great if it works. Like in the NBA,

we would be doing this. You would do this with Cooper Flag or Dylan Harper or Connopple, like you would get the two extra years and give them more money, right? Well, the one guy that I remember, like, historically this happening with was back in 2008, Evan Longoria, who the raise locked up immediately when they called up. Do you want to guess what his contract length and amount was at that time? 2008. Probably, I'm going to say, eight years, 40 million or something?

They signed Evan Longoria, their face of the franchise player, who ended up, you know, being great. six years, $17.5 million. And that was their big move? That was their big move. I mean, listen, if anyone can sign a player for six years,

17 and a half million dollars, incredible. Well, the Red Sacks said Christian Campbell who had this awesome spring training a year ago, and they gave him eight for 60, I think.

And then he went, he had a career creator. He's in AAA now. Yeah. So they went all in on him and he can barely play. I do feel like there's a lot of all over the place.

And then you look at like the athletics who are leading the West now. And their team's just loaded with dudes. Like all these, they're like a AAA All-Star team basically, just kind of tread and water. Well, I mean, they have the small park. You have to be worried about pitching there because their pitchers can hit

because it's a small park so they're going to hit them out. But the pitchers have to pitch there so they can give those up. Did you see there was a leak potentially of what the A's new name might be in Las Vegas? What was it? So someone was out there looking at like job listings on the A's website. And this is like not confirmed obviously by any chance. But there was a guy out there looking at job listings on the A's website and found a number of job listings. And then underneath it, it said the loss, it said Las Vegas black flames.

And it and then he was like, what is that? So then he kept looking at every single job, every single job that was listed said Las Vegas black flames. What does that even mean? I don't know because I've. And when I think about a flame and fire, you think like white or red or orange. I've never heard of black flames. Why wouldn't it be like the Las Vegas hot streaks? I don't know why it can't be the Las Vegas.

Shouldn't it be something where you're on like a streak or a bender or winning money? I don't know. You know what? I was wrong. It's the black fire. Black fire? That's even weirder. So black fire is a scientific phenomenon.

phenomenon where a flame appears black or dark when a sodium-rich fire like salt and alcohol is lit. The Las Vegas black fire. This could be one of those things. Two words or one year? One word. It is two words. I don't think it's going to.

Can I give you my big takeaway for the baseball season? Because it's a really sad Red Sox season. Okay. And I'm worried that I'm not going to watch enough baseball. I don't know. Hopefully they'll come back. But they're like, they stink. They're 12 and 18.

crochet's on the DL now. It's like... But this is the perfect time. Like, this is the time for baseball to stink because everyone's distracted by the NBA playoffs. Yeah, I get it. So they did this thing last year

where they would put, they would put like this furry helmet on people after they hit a home run. Teams have these different gimmicks when you come back to the dugout and they put... So they did this year, but this team doesn't have

the same chemistry this year at all. And they don't really seem to have the same kind of leadership. and it's just like a grim. It's almost like our WBC American team, like just kind of a grim group of guys. So then they do this, somebody at a Homer and they put this big green fur helmet on him

and he goes back in, they hit him. But there's like no camaraderie with it. And it's just kind of sad. I think they should make a rule. Nobody can decide on their gimmick until May 1st. Let's buy some time. I don't think the Red Sox needed any gimmick. And when the gimmicks come,

it usually comes when, because one of the things we love about, baseball is when the team kind of has the magic, right? Where it's like, oh, shit, we got something this air. Whoa, they're doing stuff at second base and they're doing little like signals to each other. And oh, it's really happening. Nothing sadder than watching a bad baseball team. We try to hear to force gimmicks.

I fucking hate it. I wish they would just get the new manager should just been like, we're done. We're good. We're done with all of these. Is it like Wally, the mascot? Like it's like a Wally head or something? Yeah. That's what it is.

the pirates, I think, have a welder's helmet, which is kind of cool for the pirates, just because of Steel City and all that. But they're not after the best start. What about just like rigid, firm handshakes? Like somebody zags and goes back to the 1960s. They just do this to each guy that wouldn't wear? That ass like Team USA, WBC stuff, I think, right?

Weren't they like saluting or something when they were like celebrating? It's one of the reasons we lost. Plus, you didn't mention is one of your cocktail storylines, the damage from the WBC. the collateral damage of all these different dudes then culminating in a 44-year-old getting arrested for having, not arrested,

getting caught. Do you see the shortstop on one of the Latin American teams? Yeah, Alexei Ramirez, I think. Right? He was on the Cuban team. Four different types of steroids in his body? Honestly, like, if you're 44, you're out of baseball,

you're not going to come, like, who cares? What are they going to do? He's like, what can you give me? I'll take it. Yeah, are you going to suspend me for 81 games? Like, I'm not playing in your league anymore.

I'm out. I'm out. I'm working a hardware store. What's going to happen? Yeah. Is it true? I've seen multiple pictures. The Red Sucks have like a sign behind home plate. The kids eat free after every win. So the rumor that's been go or the joke that's been going around is the kids in Boston are starving because they can't win games. Yeah. Yeah. Sad time. It's tough. The thing is, there's really no hope either unless Roman Anthony gets going. Because the crochet piece losing 200 innings of a guy who every five, days would just come out and throw seven, eight innings and be awesome. But we felt that last year

he was over 200 innings. And anytime that happens with a pitcher, you're always like, uh-oh. Oh, boy. Should you come out there? Can you spin it like, well, this, you know, if there's a time to get injured, this is the time.

He's only got certain pitches in the chamber. Let's not waste him on this, like, crap season. Maybe. I mean, the good thing is, for them, like, it's not like anybody's, like, running away with the wild card or anything like that.

So we'll see. How are your marlins? There's like three wild cards now. Yeah. Marlins are fine. They're second in the east right now behind the Braes, but they're, I think, a game or two. And a big series against the Dodgers. They won two or three.

They blew the first one, too, could have swept the Dodgers. But, I mean, they're behind the Braves, but they're like six and a half back already behind the Braves. It's a bad division, but they're probably going to have to contend for the wild part. And there's a lot of good teams in the NL. So the only other cocktail thing you didn't mention was the Ben, Aaron Judge combo and whatever's going on there. So we traded Ben Rice in our Keeper League and it's just haunted him last year too.

Haunting us because he's eligible a catcher. But those guys together and then whenever Stanton can put together three straight healthy weeks. I don't know. The Yanks feel like they have a little something this year. I mean, they have offensive firepower for sure. Yeah, they're a little scary. They just need to, I mean, the Yankees just need to make it to the playoffs and then stay healthy in the playoffs. and not collapse.

Oh, I thought you were saying for us, the Yankees just need to make it the playoffs and then they will collapse. Well, no, I'm saying if you're a Yankees fan, if you're the Yankees, they just need to not collapse. Like, they'll be fine in the regular season. But for us, we know they're going to collapse on the playoffs.

Oh, I hope they collapse. Aaron Boone is another one of my baseball grudges that I hate. So, like, nothing makes me happier than when people are screaming to fire Aaron Boone. Well, how about the fact that he lasted longer than Alex Cora? The odds of that would have been like, I don't know, 10 to 1?

a year ago? Every year they want to fire him, it seems like, and he just keeps kind of sticking around. This is where I think baseball misses George Steinbrenner, honestly, because George Steinbrenner would not have been putting up with Aaron Boone all of this time. He wouldn't have been putting up with Stanton and the big contract that he had when they brought him over,

which now is like one of the best contracts in baseball. It's like $300 million for like 10 years at the time. And now he's like middle of the road salary guy, but he would have been telling him to get out there, telling me wasn't injured. Like, I kind of miss George Steinbrenner going out there and really just being a menace. Well, we also, the last cocktail party thing, the Padre is selling for $3.9 billion to billionaire

Jose Feliciano, no relation. Yeah. But it seems like that sale is going to hold. But holy shit. So baseball's doing well, right? As we head to a massive lockout that might cancel all of next season. They're doing, and we didn't even talk about Waricami, who's been incredible. Yeah, 12 homers.

who's a rookie. 12 homers. I think the concern about him was because he said a single season record for home runs a couple years ago in Japan. And the question was, is this going to translate so far? It's translate. I mean, his batting averages low, but who cares? Chase the Lodder came out and he had a great start to the season. Four homers and three games. Sal Stewart is out there with the Reds, another rookie who's great. The Reds have convinced themselves, Reds fans that they may. I do too. The Reds have convinced himself that they may have two 40, 40 players this season on the same team with him and Ellie Dela Cruz. Who Ellie Dela Cruz, another

guy who I was in on real early, that's a guy where like five years ago I was struggling. I was like draft day and I was like, oh God, who do I keep? Because our league has like a minor league roster slot that you could draft a minor league player. So I text Mike Sher and I was like, do you have any names? He's like, get this guy, Ellie

Delacruz. I'm like, perfect. Get him in like the 17th round or something. They call them up that season. God, incredible. This year I was going to lose him because you can only keep them for two seasons after you draft him. So I traded him at the deadline last year to get a number one pick for this year's draft.

And I was like, eh, last year a little bit disappointing. Like, I could afford it. I'll get a first rounder for this year's draft, which I think ended up being spent on like Pete Alonzo or something, which is a disaster. And now Ellie belongs on his team for two seasons because once you trade for a keeper, you could keep him for an additional two seasons.

So that's another guy that it's like, I want you to succeed. Now you put your stink on him. No, I like him. I like to think I discovered. him. On guys like that, that they're really, I like it. Yeah, on guys that are rookies that I draft and I put in my rookie slot, I take credit for.

Another guy, Pete Crow Armstrong. You discovered him. Yeah, Pete Crow Armstrong. Pete Crow Armstrong was another one of my minor league slot guys. And then I had him for two seasons and I was like, this guy's not going to pan out. So I let him go last season and it comes out. It's like, oh, wow, this is one of the best players in baseball.

That was a mistake. Him last year, the two worst guys I decided not to keep. Pete Crow Armstrong, Cal Raleigh, both of them on my team the year before that I could have kept. And Cal Raleigh was a free agent pickup that would have cost me a 20th round pick. And I was like, oh, God, you're just not good at evaluating talent, yeah. The Mariners seem like they were going to have a year from hell season. But I think they've rated the ship.

And they have the guy that's in our minor league system in the El Keeper League, Kate Anderson, waiting to potentially come up. I mean, their division is winnable. They could be a playoff team. They're 500. They'll be fine. We were wondering, you know, World Baseball Classic, that was looking like the biggest loser of the World Baseball Classic was the Mariners.

They were all fighting with each other, saying that they didn't care about winning the World Series. No, it really was. The signs were there. No, but I think they read the ship. They're okay. All right, Billy Gill. Good cocktail.

I like the baseball cocktail party gimmick. I did too. Just take some tidbits from us, drop them around at a wedding, bar mitzvah, graduation party, 50th birthday dinner, 30th birthday dinner, whatever. Good to see you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, Jason gets up saying. We're taping this on a Thursday afternoon before Nick's Hawks. It was too risky to do it after Nick's Hawks. You just never know with that team. Although you've got to be feeling pretty good. We don't really talk about them.

Yeah, you're feeling good right now. But yes, you never know. OJ and Obie rising up the rankings, the most popular next. Yeah, shit's happening. It's going down. The focal point. Grant theft Alvarado. Some things are happening.

Okay. Yeah. Survivor 50. Yeah. An absolute tour to force of the season. We have now nine people left. We had a two-hour episode last night that, dare I say, was one of the best episodes in the recent history of the show.

We had a Mr. Beast cameo. We had an unbelievable coin flip. You're a historian of the show. Where did that one rank on the great episodes? You know what? I mean, it's up there. It's historic, as Rizzo said, where we saw things in this episode that we've never seen before.

And I was, you know, I think with regards to the Mr. Beast cameo, like a lot of longtime Survivor fans, I had a little trepidation about that. But like he made it about the competition, which was really cool. And the twist was really interesting, you know, where they had, he brought this coin that you could flip. And if it came up the called side, the person who flipped it is say,

and gets immunity is safe. And the prize pot for everyone, for whoever wins Survivor, doubles to $2 million, they lose her out. So, you know, Devin's stepped up, and I think that was probably the right call because it seemed like Devin's was going to go home. So why not?

Great call by him. Great call for them to increase the prize pot. I've had an issue about this for a long time. This show started in 2000, and it was a million dollars. Yeah. So I don't know what inflation is from 2000 to 2000. But it feels like we could have bumped that up anyway.

It's been in between 3 and 5%. So yes, I agree with you. We should have been... Yeah, 2 mil should have been popping up. Two mil should have been the neighborhood. Not to mention we're cutting costs. Like it's a shorter game now. They're on the island for less amount of time.

Let's pump it up. Get the stakes. Get the juice flowing. And you can see that everybody was excited about it, except for Joe, who when his arch rival Devons, hit and was immune, did not even flinch.

No. Did not look excited about it. You know, it's funny. I mean, the edit can obviously shape some of this as you're watching it, but I was completely 100% convinced,

A, that Devinz was going to be the one to flip the coin. Like, that's just his personality. And then B, I agree. I really thought he was going to hit it. Like, it almost made me want to go to Vegas with him and just do roulette. To succeed at any sort of gambling like that,

you really have to have that irrational confidence and exuberance. always works in Vegas. So when he was like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do heads because my kids love Mr. Beast. And I was just like, this guy's going to fucking get this. He really is.

It was interesting, you know, because I was wondering, would anybody else try and convince somebody else to do it? I was a little surprised that Joe either didn't take it on himself or try and convince Stephanie or Jonathan,

somebody in there. their alliance to do it. Or somebody, Aubrey, somebody completely like, I guess Aubrey was their backup. So that was kind of why they were chill about it. Yeah. But, you know, because the ultimate nightmare for that alliance is Devons hits, which is what happened. Yeah, but Stephanie should have been the other one that threw herself into this.

Because if Devons hit that, she's out. I don't care that you have your steal-your-boat thing. Guess what? Now you're going to lose eight to two instead of nine-to-one. You're losing. Steph not a wartime consuliary figure. She put some things in motion, you know, throwing names out, throwing Ceres Alliance out. And then the second that leaks out is panicked.

And every move after that was like increasing the panic. I mean, even to be lectured by Rizzo at Tribal, where Rizzo's like, just stand behind it. You said it or did you say it? You put out names. Survivor people throw out names. Say you threw out the name and just stand behind it, but she couldn't even do that. When Devin's put everybody's business masterfully,

a masterstroke to put everybody's laundry out on the table and say, this is what's been going on. She couldn't handle it. Right. So she got pulled in. There were three people. She was pulled in as the fourth. And then she mose it on over to see if she could get the majority of votes.

And everybody this entire season has made the fatal mistake of trusting Surrey at some point and being like, yeah, let me see it. what Ceree thinks. And then it's like, that's it. You've just fucked yourself immediately. It's like going to see Vito Corleone and the Godfather. I have to say, this is an all-time like Devin's episode. I came away thinking, it's a shame that this is only his second time back. Yeah. And I hope I see him again and again. But Ceri, her ability to like ride out the early heat because of her status as a legend and then just kind of lay back in the cut.

and pull strings. This is what the third time she's defended Ozzy? Somebody puts an alliance member's name in her ear and she just immediately swings into action. How do they not know at this point? Here's an idea.

Don't bring a possible Ozzy boat to Sarin. It's not going to work. She's going to immediately slit your throat. It's done. It's incredible. I mean, it truly is the work of a black widow type strategist because for it to be as obvious as it is to us.

and everybody these are all historians of the game they know what she's done in the game yeah and for nobody to suspect her or to have a threat level equal to the other people who they're targeting is it's incredible it's amazing she's the type of contestant that i've always hated in this game the ones that just ride low under the radar nobody sees them they're the most dangerous ones they're never going to win a challenge and they just get underrated it over and over again. And meanwhile, she's been pulling the strings this whole season. She sees everything.

She protects her alliance. Her alliance is somehow loyal to her. Nobody backstaps her, goes after her. Nobody ever says, you know who she should get out? Surrey, she's the most dangerous person in the game. She's fucking Queen Searcy. Let's get her out. Well, I think the alliance thing is important, Bill, because that's what you need.

The reason that people want to work with her is because if you are in that day one alliance with her, as Ozzie is, as Rizzo is. it's rock solid until the moment where real decisions have to be made. I mean, she's going to the mat again and again and again to defend people. Now, the strategy behind it is wonderfully selfish. She's always thinking, like, what are the layers to get to me? If this person is out, the next person is me. Like, if Ozzy's gone, they're looking at me next.

Yeah. So I've got to protect these layers around me. but the way she goes about it, where nobody ever thinks, let's get Sri out. And Ozzy and her alliance, to your point, it's certainly not on the horizon right now that they would betray her, not right now. One of the keys to this game, it seems to be, is not to be the one that's starting the vote idea. Yes.

You really want to be the one who it gets brought to you when there's like four or five in motion and then you take that information and then use it against the people who came up with that idea. And that's the move. You never want to be the active voter-outer. You want to be like the receptor to the vote. Right. You want to be like Agassi with a great return of serve.

Totally. This is what Steph tried to argue at tribal. But I think Devons, again, this guy, he's so chaotic, but so strategic about it, willing to take big risks. The thing I loved about his put everybody's, business out there. Here's what Jonathan said. Here's what Stephanie said. He also said, and you know what, I threw Rizzo's name out, because otherwise, it's totally not credible. That's what makes what he said credible. Yeah. And they were scrambling after that.

Stephanie then tried to say, yeah, but I, I didn't, I didn't start with the name, which is like, come on. Well, her move should have been, look, there were three people sitting on the beach. Right. They came to me. And I, and I swear on my. parents' lives that they brought up Ozzy's name. Like, that's always the move. If you know you have the truth behind you, you have to basically swear on somebody back home, which I think a lot of people are afraid to do. But that's what I would have done.

I swear in my kids, I'm just having a nice little walk. I just peed in the ocean coming back in. My three friends are over there and they're like, hey, what if we voted out Ozzy? And I'm like, holy shit, is that where we are in this game? And then I brought it up to two other people. I did not start this. It was those people right there. on my kids on my kids my parents the new york nicks that's it on my dog donna on jalen brunson carl anthony

towns and the new york nicks all throw josh hard in there i did not bring up azzie's name i just i just think when you act panicked step has the it's over it her a weakness in her game and it's always been a weakness in her game is she can't lie with a straight face yeah serie kind of called it out she's she's begins getting shifty. She's looking all around. She's like... Yeah, Sarri said she didn't make eye contact with me. You know.

That's a tough thing. And Sri, it's like that Hannibal Lecter thing when he ate the nurse and his blood pressure never came up. Right. She's like that. And if you are going to tussle with her, you've got to have that level of calmness about you. And Steph really didn't. And what's interesting to me is I, is her alliance. were part of the unanimous vote to voter out.

So does that mean like the trust and honor alliance, the anti-lying alliance? We hate lying. We hate Rick Devons in his tricky ways. Does that mean it's like, it must be completely dead at this point, right? Well, that's the thing about, that's so interesting about Survivor is these,

to watch the 50 where it's a lot of the best people that have played, they have the history of the game. They, in some cases, have relationships with each other. And they know how to lie and cheat and steal and do all the stuff you do. But then you have this human element too that comes in. And it's like, we have a

letter from home. And then all of a sudden, they're fucking jelly. And then meanwhile, they're, and five seconds later, they're just these political animals trying to assassinate and crush each other. And then it's like, here's a letter from your dad. I haven't seen it for 15 days. I always get mad at this. I always say to my wife, because my wife always gets choked up during this because she gets choked up at stuff. And I'm like, I would never cry. I'm sorry. We'd probably end up, like, getting separated because you'd be upset that I didn't cry when I got my letter from me. I just wouldn't. It's not a long enough time.

This is exactly. I said the exact thing to my wife. I was like, if I was on Survivor and they were still doing the family visit, I'd just be like, hey, what's up? Game face. Like, I'm, I'll see you when I get back. Hopefully with the million. The only thing that would have made me cry if it was a letter from Patriots coach Mike Brable. Bill.

Some stuff happened. I just wanted to prepare you now for when you come back. Our season is now in Shambles. That would have made me cry. That's about it. And no family member would have gotten to me. What did you make of Joe's hatred of Rick? I've absolutely loved the rivalries that have happened,

like the absolutely inexplicable Aubrey Genevieve beef, which I don't even understand why that came from. It just like they appeared on the beach together. walked away and next thing you know they absolutely hated each other yeah joe and and rick i get and the thing i like about it is it's like a styles makes fights type of situation where rick really is yeah a master manipulator an oily guy like the fake idol hidden by the fire all the plotting and thinking ahead whereas joe is just like you know my word is bond i'm going to be a honorable guy out here i'm never going to tell a lie ever and so that makes it very compelling yeah um

But I'm also, like, frustrated by, I'm like, why did you come on this game if you just never want to lie? Yeah. And does that make it less likely he gets voted out or more? If somebody is just completely honest at all times, does that make him more of an asset to just keep around until there's like five left? And then you can just read him. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

You can just read him down. You know that, okay, well, Joe is, Joe's not going to cross his alliance. And I probably know where I stand with Joe. and if Joe catches me being tricky, he's going to come after me immediately. Yeah, I think you'd keep Joe around because of that. The challenge threat thing makes it,

complicates it, but he's very readable. I think an NBA coach should try this in the playoffs. Here's our defensive strategy. And here's what we want to do on offense. Here's what we're going to do, guys. We shoot a lot of threes tonight.

Jonathan is the one, there's these prototypes that always work on these shows. Jonathan as the big muscular guy. So then the theory is, well, he's dumb. I don't have to worry about him, but he's not dumb. He's been actually one of the smarter guys in the game. And I don't know if it's the editor, whether they're actually not seeing it. But he seems like, it really feels like him and Serrier and the most control. And then Rick Devons as the wild card, chaotic guy, seem to have the most sway over the game right now, I would say. And then the other one is Rizzo, just because he's so

happy to be there, such a fan of everybody, such a delight at all times. I could see him getting the final three because people are just like, you know what, I like that guy. I could see that, I think the way the jury is stacking up right now, Rizzo would really have to argue the hell out of the thing if he gets there because there's a generational gap that's happening. And I could see the jury being like, I don't want to hand this kid too many dollars. What are you talking about? That said, I've really been impressed by his game this season, the self-awareness. The consistency of the happiness and just he's just so honored to be there. And it feels real to me.

I don't know. Unlike, can I just say, like, why did Aubrey come on this game? She's picked it up lately. But I would, for like 70% of the episodes thus far, she looked like she got called into work on her day off and that she's here now and she's like, doesn't want to be here. She's like every time they, even like every time they go to her,

there's never, she doesn't seem gratified, never seems happy about anything that's going on is like kind of gritting her teeth through it. You actually saw her at one point like really like chint her jaw in this episode. It's a very strange contrast. And to your point about Jonathan, he is showing the strategic side that it was unclear that he had his first time

through. He saw that Ozzy and Surrier close. He called that out. And I think that was good targeting by him. Yeah. And he spotted a couple of these people. Yeah, they don't really know what to do with Aubrey as a character, to your point. So when she's doing the auction, I don't know what the auction dollars were this year, but it just seems like everybody could buy everything. And she got the mac and cheese. And she's like, this makes me think of my kids and starts getting choked up. And you can see the producers like, finally, we got something. Close in on her, her eating the mac and cheese. She might cry. What do you think would have happened if everybody would have spent their money and here comes Mr. Beast and nobody has money to bid on the,

like, would they just be, hey, sorry, Jimmy, Mr. Beast, everybody spent their money on grub worms and chocolate chip cookies. And so you got to fly back. What was the move if that it happened? What if he had had like, here's my offer. It's two straight weeks of immunity. Highest bidder wins and nobody had money left because they were buying like chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, I didn't understand really, first of all, did they have $500? Like, I don't even know if Jeff, Jeff never said what the number was. And then the move is just go in immediately on food. But my wife and I always talk about like, don't like don't get the milkshake.

You're just going to be shitting your brains out in the woods for like five days. You're going to eat rice for 20 minutes and then you're going to feel terrible for the rest of the time. You might as well, like, buy cocaine. Yeah, chocolate chip cookies is another one. I'll do the heroin and the cocaine, chef. Right. Sounds great.

The cake. Right. The churgery board was actually like a decent idea. Yeah, cake terrible. Chalkernery board, you get meat, cheese, some bread. Like, I can sustain that. But cake? Cake is crazy.

That's like 10,000 calories of pure sugar. You're going to eat that after eating rice for two weeks. It's crazy. Although, Surrey did throw up. But remember, they used to give. they used to do beers. I remember like Rupert at one point. They gave him like eight, nine, ten beers, which is...

Right. Yeah. That's crazy. Not a great idea. The other highlight of the auction was Jeff caught a whiff of Surrey. And Jeff is always coming in like from his like fancy glamping camp. So the odors of everybody really must be, he must be like, wow. Get a little strong in here.

Sorry, so we have nine left. We have Devons, Ozzie, Big John. Jonathan, Joe are the men. Surrey, Aubrey, Emily, who is my other least favorite. I just every week hoping she gets voted out. No, no real reason. Just kind of ready for her to go.

Well, you don't like the way she just gives up everybody's secrets. Yeah. As soon as they tell her. And she's got like that shifty. She's like in dead poet society. She's the guy who you know is going to turn on Nwanda. Tiffany.

Tiffany and, oh, Rizzo's the other guy too. Tiffany, I, think has had a strong comeback. I agree. But we have to do an MVP ballot with nine people left. Okay. To me, clearly, on my ballot, number one, I don't think there's the same kind of controversy of SGA versus Wembe

versus Joker. I think this is more like a LeBron James 2009 type season. Devons has been out of his mind. I think he has to be MVP. The fake idol, the fact that he pulled that off and then didn't tell anyone for two more episodes and then just casually just to fuck with Joe. It's like, yeah, I made that up. Look, it's nothing. And then how eager he was to grab the coin

flip, him interacting with Mr. Beast, the whole thing, I think he has to be MVP so far. I'm going to pitch a haircut on that. Okay. My MVP is the Devons Joe rivalry. I just, it's so exciting, right? It's almost magic. bird. It's almost that kind of thing because it's, again, it's two different approaches to the game.

One is out there, risk, crazy, chaos, plotting. The other one is like rock solid. My word is bond. You can trust me. Yeah. I'm going to leave here and live my life the same way I lived my life in the game. That's who I am. And it's just so compelling to me. Every, it's just the hatred like oozes out of them. Whenever one of them is speaking, I mean, especially Rick, whenever Devin's is saying stuff and they cut to Joe,

Joe looks like he wants to set Rick on fire. And I love it. It's so good. All right. My number two MVP is Surrey, who I just don't understand how she has this much power. I think she sat out at least four challenges.

Probably more. She just, everybody is completely indebted to her, afraid of her. and sucking up to her at all times. It's unclear why. Every time somebody crosses anybody she likes,

it's immediately over for them. And it's like watching, I don't know, like a high school class president who actually knows how to work the class and get all the shit they want and make themselves prom queen. And I don't know how she's doing it.

Yeah, to me it's like, imagine, it's like if I saw her Thompson had a jumper. imagine if she was a physical threat. Right. You know what I mean? Like, forget it. Yeah. Forget it.

The fact that she is doing this with no physical ability, nobody's sweating her in a challenge ever, and they would really have to rig it. Right. Like in Joe's first season, I'll just say, it was very notable that we never saw a puzzle with Joe until the end. They let him go on a run of five.

six challenges, no, and then finally got a puzzle and it was like, huh? Yeah. And very clearly playing to his strengths. They'd have to rig it with her. But man, if she had that part of her game, I completely agree with you. She is my second also. She is just pulling the strings and nobody's looking at it. Well, I wonder if she did have that part of the game.

She'd be more obvious as a threat. It's almost like part of what makes her a threat as she's lying there under the radar. And if you'd be like, well, she'll never win a challenge. Well, there's a window, right? Because if she can survive the first two episodes, then she's going to lay in the cut. Because the first thing you do when you get to the island and you go, let's get her. Because if she sticks around, she's too dangerous. And if she survives that part of it, and she always does, she's going to be there.

But that's what I don't understand about this season. What you just said they did to Mike White, they were like, we got to get him out. He's too manipulative. He has like these special powers. Let's let's dump them. Seriz, this is the fifth time she's been on the show. We know what this is now. This is, you know, she's like an NBA star who's had five all MBAs already.

Like we know what this is. And they're completely dumbfounded by this. Maybe Mike's, maybe Mike's big error was the fact that he came and shredded. Like he had been to Barry's boot camp and has been taking H.D.H or whatever it was. It's like, now you're like, oh, God, he's got that. He's got the skill. He's got the tools. And he's in shape.

Let's get him out of him. My number three MVP is Rizzo. I think he's a great proxy for the fans and people who really love this show and love all the twists. And, you know, one of the big gimmicks with this year is the fans have been able to decide some stuff, which, honestly, Adam Silver's got to really think about for NBA. Like the 2006-27 season. that the fans decide. Oh, this year, the one seed now has a two, two, three home court advantage. And we just add, the fans just get to run one season, I think would be the smartest thing the NBA ever did.

I would agree with you, but I'm going to, I'm going to pitch a haircut on that. I'm going to go with my third MVP is Jeff Probst. Oh. I agree with you with Rizzo. He's the prototype of the type of contestant and type of fan base that. Jeff has been openly courting for years now. He's always saying, are you 16 and 17 years old? You love Survivor.

Hey, why don't you try out? Send us a postcard. Send us your tape and we'll get you on. But it's the thing you said, his willingness to be like, okay, what's working, what's not working? What can we try? What are the super fans of this? What are the people who love this show want to see?

And how can I work that in? I think that's really smart. How about Jeff Proops for Commissioner in the NBA? I'd love to see it. I don't think anyone, and I always feel like they're VO editing him after, and then they're really not, because when they're doing these challenges and stuff, he's always in real time doing play-by-play. Like, he's like Mike Green.

So my wife, she was, she, Jeff Probs lives, I guess somewhere in L.A., but he belongs to the same tennis club as my wife. And my wife was pulling out of a parking space, and Jeff Proops was waiting for to pull out so he could pull in the parking space and she could see him. And so she told him, he was like, Jeff Probst was pulling in the pub? So I was like, was Jeff narrated in the parking space and going, and Carrie is pulling out of the parking space and here's Jeff pulling into the parking space. And he's done it in two turns.

He did it in two turns. Don't give up now, Carrie. Can you make the turn in one turn? Can you do it? And she's going to the overhead camera now and now she's looking back in the mirror. Here he is. He has pulled in. And now he's turning off his car.

Does he just practice this all day? How does he do it? Or does he just turn it on when he's on and out? It's muscle memory by now, right? I mean, you're talking 20 plus years. What a legend. Yeah, I think that's a really good third MVP choice. Well, what a season?

Who's going to win in your opinion? I would, if I had to bet, I would like to see Rick Devons win. I would like to see Rick Devons or Surrey win, but I think Devin's, in this order. Devin's Surrey long shot because of the challenge nature of the

of the competitions to come. And then Rizzo third with his negative being, I think he's really going to have to pitch it to the jury. But those three I'd like to I think could do it. I think Devons finally gets voted out because the other guys and ladies are going to realize

he's done too many great things this season and he's going to win if it gets to a jury. But I think he wins with that people's choice vote that they win the extra money for best contestant of the year. Like sometimes they'll do that. They have like the $500,000 prize for...

Right. There was a prize. Sia, the pop star Sia, used to give money to whoever she liked. I'm not sure she's doing that anymore, which made me worry about... This is Mr. Bees comes back. He loves giving money to people.

Yeah, but Mr. Bees is flowing in money. Yeah. So why doesn't he should pick up the... the slack there. So I think he wins that, but I don't think he makes the final three. I think it's going to be Surrey. I think it's going to be Rizzo and I think it's going to be Tiffany. Interesting. Because I think they have the game and everybody else figured out the best. And Tiffany can win some of these challenges and hang around. And I think the guys are all going to turn on each other, would be my guess. I think if it's Surrey, Jeff will break down in tears. Because he is,

It's been very notable the last few times she's been on the show. She notably, you know, very famously got voted out because of a crazy idol play that boomeranged on her by her allies. And when that has happened, he, this guy, he, he, he loves a Hall of Fame legend. And he gives her like a sendoff. If she wins it, ban. I mean, it's going to be, it's like Dirk 2011 or something. Like it's just one of the greatest runs we've ever seen. Just having a great season.

I'm just glad coach is out. That one. You don't like coach? I don't. I really don't. If I was on the island with coach, I would just like, we got to get this guy out. He's driving me crazy. What is it?

The haikus? Is it the Tai Chi? What specifically? What's more annoying? Like, honestly, he's in that Seagal Van Dam kind of area territory of self-parody. that he's the last one who doesn't realize it. Yeah, so I think Tiffany has been impressive. And I think with the edit, they're setting them up.

And I think the next step here is for the guys to start taking each other out. Devons. It's coming soon. Joe versus Jonathan. And maybe Rizzo's the only one that survives. But they can also have control over this with some of the challenges. If they have like, you know, when they really want to get rid of some of the guys or potentially of the guys.

They'll do like the stand on a pole and your feet can barely fit on it. And they do that one. Like there's a couple ones they can do to rig it a little bit. As I said, if they want to get Joe out, they could do it any time with some sort of puzzle that involves spelling. He'll be gone. And much respect to Joe, he seems like a very nice guy. Yeah.

If it comes to spelling, he is out. All right. I can't wait. So your pick is, you're, you're, you're, going Devin's. I'm going to go Devin's. I think it's going to be choppy waters in this very next episode. But I think if he survives it, very dangerous guy.

Legendary performance by him. What a just an all-timer. On wait a second, your new podcast with The Ringer, which has been excellent. You covered the White House dinner. And the concept of assassination attempts immediately delving into conspiracies with our own Brian Curtis, the most journalistic guy we have at the ringer. So this is a good podcast. I can't wait to listen to it.

Yeah, check it out. What does it mean for our, what does it mean for our current reality that so many people are so willing to accept that certain things like the most recent event at the White House Correspondent dinner was potentially staged? We talk about that with Curtis. He was fantastic on it.

Check it out. What's my next one going to be for my next appearance? Zodiac Killer. I've got the recent. research packet. I'm compiling it. All right. Week after week. We're just waiting for the moment to drop it. Maybe in July when some of the anniversaries of the murders comes up or sometime this summer, I can't wait.

We might have to do it there in the middle of a Nick Celtics playoff series. That's how it plans out as part of the healing process for us. Yes. I'm ready. Zodiac. Be there. All right. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you. All right. That's it for the pod. Thanks to Mahoney and Jason and the Duke.

Billy Gill, thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. New rewatchables coming for you on Monday. We did, there's something about Mary to kick off comedy month on the rewatchables. Netflix is a joke as well. You can find all the movies that we're going to do in May. They're on Netflix as well, starting on May 1st for a lot of them. I'm going to be back on Sunday with Zach Lowe after whenever the latest Sunday playoff game is.

I assume we're probably going to get a game seven on Sunday, but we will see. great weekend. Happy birthday to my daughter, and I will see you on a Sunday night. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Give them a problem, call 100 Gambor or 1-800-Gampbell or 1-800-7-700-7-7-7-7 or visit ccpgagmaging.org or M.D. Gamblinghelp at Oregon, Maryland. Hope is here. Visit Gambling helpline, ma.org, or call 800, 327-50 for 24-7 Sport in Massachusetts, or call 8778. Hope, NY, or text Hope, NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 8777-770-7867-7867.