The Bill Simmons Podcast - KD in Limbo, All-NBA Arguments, and the Dangers of Sports Specialization With Kevin O'Connor, Jonathan Tjarks, and 'Range' Author David Epstein | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Kevin O'Connor and Jonathan Tjarks to discuss the All-NBA teams, the Warriors with and without KD, Bucks-Raptors, what's sure to be a wild NBA offseason, fake trades, and more (4:45). Then Bill sits down with David Epstein, author of 'Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,' to talk about the benefits of delaying specialization in young athletes, looking at training and practicing differently, testing for talent, PEDs, HGH, and more (1:09:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the BS Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network brought to you by DAZN, where you can stream over 100 fight nights a year without the pain of pay-per-view. Great fighters like Canelo, Triple G, Anthony Joshua, Bellator, a baseball whip around show called Change Up. Everything is live on demand. Getting set up is easy. Download the DAZN app. Go to DAZN.com to sign up.

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Give me a brother. Check out statefarm.com today to find an agent in your neighborhood. State Farm, here to help life go right. We're also brought to you by theringer.com, the world's greatest website, where we are trying to figure out a bunch of stuff in writing and in podcasts about where the NBA playoffs are going, what's going to happen with this crazy KD situation. We're going to talk about this a little later with Jerks and KOC, as well as wrapping up Game of Thrones, which is officially in the books. And we are done with it now. We did the live show on Twitter today,

which you can rewatch the last Hashtag Talk the Thrones show. And then the last binge mode for Game of Thrones went up today. If you want to hear Jason and Mallory hash out everything that they thought happened and then what it meant for the big picture and the series as a whole. Hey, Binge Mode is not going away. We're figuring out the next thing. There's going to be a next thing.

Oh yeah. You wait. We'll have an announcement for that. We also announced during that show that we are doing a Big Little Lies after show. And that starts on June 9th. The show starts the series two. I can't speak. Season two of Big Little Lies is going to be June 9th on HBO. And our after show is going to be hosted by the Ringers, Amanda Dobbins. And our friend, Ringer satellite, uh, just in our universe, even though she works for ESPN, Mina Kimes. So yeah, Amanda Dobbins and Mina Kimes

hosting big little live, which will be on right after big little lies ends for those seven episodes. And then a couple of bonus episodes. We're going to have some bonus guests as well. So really fun, as always, to collaborate with people outside our little universe who also feel like they kind of belong in our universe. So welcome aboard, Mina, even if it's for eight weeks. Thanks to ESPN for letting us do that as well. All right, coming up, we are going to talk to Kevin O'Connor and Jonathan Charks about the all-NBA stuff

that gets announced today, as well as the playoffs and what do the Warriors do with this KD thing. And then David Epstein, author who wrote a really good book called Range that I have a lot of thoughts on. He's coming up as well. And by the way, no podcast on Sunday night or Monday. I'm at a soccer tournament. Sorry. I rarely do this, but this is a big soccer tournament. So if you want to hear a podcast from me, we are putting up the rewatchables Sunday

night, the hangover. We're going to put that up at 12.01 p.m. Actually, 12.01 a.m. I guess that would be Monday morning, but that's going to be Memorial Day, The Hangover. One of the most fun rewatchables pods we did. Not at the table, Carlos. And the rewatchables 1999 actually just went up

on Luminary exclusive to them. The Insider, which we all felt like was one of the most underrated movies of that whole decade and one of the great journalism movies ever and the last great Pacino year. So you can listen to both of those. And the BS pod will probably come back, I think, Tuesday. So you'll survive.

You'll be fine. Coming up, KOC and Charks first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this on a Thursday late morning. Jonathan Sharks from The Ringer is here. Kevin O'Connor from The Ringer is here. We're going to talk about the All-NBA teams, the playoffs, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

But first, I have one big question for you guys. I'm just going to throw this out here. Would it shock you if we never saw KD as a warrior again? Mark this down, Kyle, for Twitter breakout. Really? Not at all. That would shock me. These last 48 hours for the first time getting signals that actually that injury might be worse.

Oh, the injury's worse. The injury's worse than they've let on. And we're now heading toward a situation where it actually doesn't make sense for him to come back. Because I feel like against the Bucs, it would be close if they would need him. Against the Raptors, the way they're getting injured right now,

they could probably win without KD. Shams Sharani reported before we got on this podcast, which was pretty much, I'm assuming, what we've been hearing, that he's going to miss the beginning of the finals. Oh, I didn't see that. Oh, I didn't even see that. So Shams reported that just about before we started, that KD is likely to miss the beginning of the finals. Oh, I didn't see that. Oh, I didn't even see that. So Shams reported that just about before we started

that KD is likely to miss the start of the NBA finals. Warriors hope he can return later in the series. And that's pretty identical to what I've heard recently, that the injury is more serious than they've let on and that he may not return at all, especially if it's a short series. And like you said, maybe it makes sense for him to get this rest

instead of pushing in and risking further injury. So think about it from the KD angle. If they're up to nothing, they win the first two games in Milwaukee and goes to game three and go and say, KD's like, guys, good news. I'm ready. And they've just won seven straight.

And let's say they lose game three and everybody's like that fucking asshole fuck that guy and he's a dick i love if that happened so so funny you can't really do that really the only scenarios where he can come back is if it's oh two or one one which it won't be but it could be it's possible if it's oh two then it's like i'm coming back obviously i'll play hurt if it's one one it's better but if I'm him, I'm not sure I want to come back before the team loses, especially if I'm really

hurt, which I think he's really hurt. He is. I still see Warriors going up 1-1 at least after the first two games. You would think. Broke Lopez and Marc Gasol can't stop that pick and roll. They just can't. The strain. Russel and I talked about it the other night.

Strain is a tear. If it's pulled, it's different. If it's a strain, that really means it's a tear and it's either a tiny tear, a bigger tear, or an actual full tear.

And for him, it's like grade one, grade two, grade three. They've never really been clear about which grade it was, but I think it's worse than they're letting on. He's been gone for two weeks now. This is not a strained calf.

It's the type of thing where it's like, we didn't know LeBron had a hand injury until after the finals were over. And with KD, it's like, we don't know the full extent of it. We don't know all the details here. I love it. Conspiracy Bill. I'm not sure if he's a conspiracy.

Kev is a conspiracy Bill I mean we never hear full details 09 09 South's KG oh yeah it's like yeah he's coming back yeah it's a knee thing

he's got and they it was like some weird name for the knee thing it's like yeah no he'll be back that's the it's like yeah

it's February he's not back yet where is he no no it's well Martin now it's and it just kept going

and he never came back there's a Glenn Davis against the Orlando Magic in the playoffs here right never came back so do you the Glenn Davis against the Orlando Magic in the playoffs here, right? Never came back. So do you think if K doesn't come back it means he's more likely to go?

Like if they win without him? He's more likely to go? Do you think it would make him more likely to leave Golden State? Oh, fuck yeah. I think he's gone. I think he's gone no matter what. I look at it like,

man, that team was so much fun to play with. This is awesome. They're winning without me. I'm going to stay here and win more championships. But I guess it doesn't really matter anymore the Warriors winning

one two three nine games without KD and winning the title without him and then him leaving would be unbelievable and looking just as potent offensively right I mean it's not just like they're getting W's they're like looking still the weirdest thing that's I think

the weirdest thing up till now is when the Bulls went 55 and 27 without MJ and really came, you know, not that far away from making the finals with the team that didn't have Michael Jordan on it. This would be the new weirdest thing. I will say, let's not forget that last four games against Portland,

they'll play a much better defense in the finals than whoever it is. I think they won't score as easily as they did in the conference finals against Toronto or Milwaukee. Definitely. That's a big part of it, though. I will say with Golden State's offense, it's interesting

with their pick and roll. The reason why Portland is blitzing and trapping that Steph Curry screen with Draymond is because Kevin Durant's not on the floor. There's Livingston or Iguodala or McKinney guys that you're more willing to help off of when you're going to trap, but with KD, you're

just going to switch that, and there's not the Draymond short roll option that you have. So it's like, that's one reason why the offense looks so different and why it's just as dynamic. I don't think it's any better or worse with KD. It's just different. So, I mean, I do think having KD gives you that option, end of game score, obviously. You can't underscore the whole, this happens in basketball

where a team loses somebody and everybody else kind of bands together and you have to step it up. And there's all sorts of shit going on. It's all been really beneficial to them. And Clay and Steph can handle bigger roles than they have on this team, right? With Katie, they get more offense. Guess what? Steph is like one of the 10 best playoff players ever.

And it's like, yeah, you get to take more shots and you have the ball more. Like it's going to be good for him. It's not going to be a situation where his production craters. It happened right away in that game five where they all did step up. Second he went down.

So you think over under game two and a half, when do we see KD again in the finals? You go over or under? I'd go over. You'd go over. So you'd say three or above? What about you, Charks? I think it'll be

one and one. I think I'll come back in game three. That's my... So over, yeah. Yeah, I'll go over then. Alright, let's talk about the All-NBA teams. The All-NBA teams just came out, and a little fascinating wrinkle here, because there's some financial incentives for some of these dudes. Monstrous incentives. It's crazy how much money we're talking about.

First team, four Warner surprise, Giannis, Curry, Paul George, James Harden. Fifth one, Jokic versus Embiid was a nice little battle. I actually voted for Embiid, but Jokic got it. I voted for Jokic over him. You voted for Jokic over him. I did Jokic for a third MVP, but I did Embiid for first team. Yeah. I feel like Jokic was more valuable to his team. I mean, the whole team I injured this year, he kind of carried them. They're built around him. Whereas Philly without Embiid,

they've got other pieces. But I can see in terms of just two-way ability in the regular season, Embiid's defense. It's all about how you interpret the two things, right? I always looked at all NBA every year like just performance. It's that V word, valuable. That's not for interpretation. Yeah, and valuable for the performance. It's that V word, valuable. That's not for interpretation.

Yeah, and valuable for the MVP. It's like, you know, what was the impact that they had on their team? Did their team succeed or fail specifically based on this person? So I feel like that's a little, like the Embiid advanced metric stuff and the offensive production he had and all that. And his rim protection, that like individual stuff that

gave the nod to me. So I basically split the vote between them by doing that. Now I feel like I just should have voted for Jokic. Yeah. I think with Jokic, the overall offensive impact with the playmaking ability, the passing, the shooting, bringing the ball up the floor. Western Conference. Western Conference, and the fact that he also was a solid defender. He wasn't an elite defender or potential defensive player of the year like Embiid, but he was still passable. He was good. So I think in that sense, Jokic got my first team vote,

and he was third on my MVP ballot. See, what I wonder is, like, is Paul George better than Kevin Durant? Like, what are we doing here? KD played 78 games this year. He was incredible. I know. It's a regular season award. Yeah.

I actually thought Paul George was better than Kevin Durant this year. I did because I thought he had a bigger burden on a much worse team. And I thought defensively he was a little bit better. And then offensively, he was really clutch. And I always look at it. I just try to look at this season i don't have any baggage from the previous seasons and then if it's like if it's like basically even then i start thinking about all right how much did that team win and then also like the legacy of the player that's the only time i'll bring it in and the kd thing the biggest

thing to this is like did paul ge George do enough to steal his first team spot and I actually felt like he did I think so too I had George first team over Durant and he played hurt I'd say his play tailed off pretty strong

after he got hurt because he was hurt he tore his rotator cuff if we're talking regular season value in production KD was there almost every night

I mean he was so good this year Steph got hurt this year KD kind of stepped in a little bit in that remember that game against Kawhi in Toronto we had like 50 points at that overtime game I mean, he was so good this year. Steph got hurt this year. Katie kind of stepped in a little bit in that. Remember that game against Kawhi in Toronto? We had like 50 points at that overtime game.

He's really good. He had an incredible run this year. And I get why he's upset. He's like, I'm amazing. What are y'all even doing here? I know. And I think I even did a podcast with him where he goes crazy about this all-NBA stuff. But it's like, look, we're supposed to vote on the regular season. That's it.

If you want to also include the playoffs, then we can wait till after the season and then do everything all at once. But that's not the point. That's why somebody like LeBron, I hate hearing the argument about, well, LeBron should have nine MVPs. It's like, no, he shouldn't.

It's a regular season award. And Rizzo and I have talked about this a lot recently. The different, the chasm now between the regular season and the playoffs feels bigger than ever. Why do you guys think? Let's start with you, Jerks. I mean, I think the biggest thing is just like, in the playoffs, it's all about matchups,

it's all about finding weaknesses, two-way ability. In the regular season, you know, it's A to games, like big men especially. You just kind of let these things slide in the regular season. Who cares? But in the playoffs, it's like, can I find the mismatch? Can I attack it?

It's so much more specialized, so much more tailored to each individual team. There's game planning. There's game planning from day to day for a single opponent where you're exploiting every single weakness and you're trying to highlight every single strength that you have on your own team.

You're running your best plays. You're making adjustments from game to game against a single opponent so for i mean we've seen this in the playoffs with someone like pascal siakam who had a tremendous regular season exploded on the scene most improved player without a doubt in my mind but with siakam in the postseason we've seen what he still has to work on is spot up three-point shooting still needs to improve he's still an average three-point shooter so the sixers put joe ellen bead on him had him sag off and protect the rim then in this round round, the Bucks have sagged off Siakam as well. And

you know, Raptors have counter-adjusted by having Siakam cut off ball. They've played him a little bit less, but it just shows the difference in regular season play where sometimes, especially with Siakam, like effort has been one of the things that's his elite strength. But in the postseason, everybody's giving an effort. So it's like game planning, it's effort, and that's also just about exploding weaknesses. This has been the playoffs of sagging. So much sagging

in these playoffs. A lot of guys getting the Tony Allen treatment. It reminds me of what's happened in baseball where I was watching a game the Red Sox playing last night and the Blue Jays were up and they had a chance to win the game in like the 10 Sox playing last night, and the Blue Jays were up, and they had a chance to win the game in the 10th inning. And somebody came up, and they moved Mookie Betts basically to a fifth infield spot.

And everybody's like, he's not hitting it to left field or wherever they moved him from. We're seeing the same thing. The shift in baseball, we've seen the sagging is crazier than it's ever been. Toronto in game four was basically like, we're just, we're every other guard can take a shot.

We don't care. Like we are stopping Giannis, Eric Bledsoe, knock yourself out. We'll give you that all day. Siakam, that's been the whole playoffs for him. But maybe this happens every year,

but I just noticed it. What's funny is like you say baseball, I feel like now like big men have become like number four starters. Like in the regular season, you got to burn these guys out, use innings, who cares. In the playoffs though, and in baseball, it's like we got these bullpen guys. In a playoff game, we're throwing one inning, two innings,

and you're out because we're maximizing every possession basically. How much of that has to do with Golden State being Golden State though? I mean, like we saw a lot of big men go far in the playoffs, Jokic and Bede. I mean, if that ball bounces a little bit differently, we. Jokic and Bede. I mean, if that ball bounces a little bit differently, we have, you know, Jokic and Bede

both in the conference finals. Sure. The game's best young big men. And, you know, not to mention, like, some of the recent draft classes like Towns and Aiton and so on and so forth.

Guys that are at some point maybe could be on winning teams, maybe not. But there's a lot of good young bigs in the league. Centers are coming back,

says KOC. I mean, like, Towns had a great season with Minnesota, and he was a hard cut on my LNB, and I know you had him off yours too. I think the way it looks- KOC's been strong for me because I think it's a lot easier to succeed

when you're on a team that's not going anywhere. I would say like- We differ a lot on that. I know, we do. We're a team, yeah. We do. I would try to turn to centers. I think the way it's changing now,

it's like if you're a center you've got to offer like max offensive value because so it's like yeah Jokic is so invaluable because he's like playing like Stephen Harden almost

where like he gets away with his defense because he scores so many points that evens it out I think that's the shift that big men are coming in the next few years

is like dominant big men got to be scoring 25-30 points a game again to really make their value in the playoffs I look at now like I throw out positions in my head when we get to the playoffs and it's like, who can create a shot for themselves and somebody else?

Does the team have two guys who can do this? And Toronto has one. They have Kawhi and Lowry sometimes, but really just Kawhi. That's why Philly was so dangerous. And I kept, they were like the sleeping giants of the playoffs because they really had two and a half guys who could create a shot if you count Simmons,

at least with a head of steam. I thought you were counting Harris. No, I'm not counting Harris. But I look at somebody, like when Boston's trying to decide what to do with Tatum, is he ever going to get to a point where he could be a guy who can create a shot for himself or somebody else in a playoff series? And how do you know after two years with the age he's at and the little check marks he's hit?

It's such a tough call. It's like, do you want to roll the dice and trade this guy for Anthony Davis? In two years from now, he's going to put all of this together and be one of these guys that only like eight of them exist. And 80 is still only 26, though. So like with that conversation, it's not like 80 is 32 years old. No, but it's more of a will he resign. But is that even like an issue anymore? I mean, is that even going to happen?

80 is staying in New Orleans now, right? Pretty much. It sounds like. I mean, based on what I've heard. Yeah. I mean, if you have Zion and Drew, why not go for it? Yeah, I mean, based off what I've heard, they at least intend to keep this core and go into the season.

Yeah, because that's what they should be saying. Yeah, of course. If I'm like, yeah, I'm never selling my house. Nope. Can't make an offer for my house. No way. It's also what they should do. I'm still selling my house if somebody comes in and makes an offer.

That's crazy. It's what they should do if they can, though. They're playing it perfectly. Of course. I still think they're absolutely going to trade him. See, I'm not sure they are. I feel like

if you've got Drew Holiday, Anthony Davis, and Zion Williamson on the same team, why do you have a franchise? Let's go for it. If he's leaving, he's leaving.

Danny Chow and I were talking about this the other night. That's a potential elite defensive team with those three on there in terms of positional The talent,

the top three players? Unbelievable. never mind. And I think the only question is offensively with Zion and AD, how much can those two guys space the floor in regards to what your point is with centers and the diminishing value? But this core is something that they should try to keep. And you're right, maybe

they're an offer that's overwhelming. You're talking about this holistically, though. If he wants to leave, that's it. Sure, but if you go into the season and you're winning games and he's like, you know what? I see the potential here and I want to stay. Which is why they should wait until February to do this. Yes.

But he is the most valued right now. There's four teams that are going to be in an arms race basically to get him. See, here's what I'm thinking. If you have Zion Williamson, what are the odds you'll ever have a player as good as Anthony Davis next to him in the next nine years? Pretty close to zero. Right? I would say zero.

Yeah. I don't see how they could, whatever they get in a trade, the only reason it makes sense is if you know he's leaving in a year. And that's it. You just have to basically cash in for 85 cents on the dollar.

I'm saying even if you know he's leaving, I might still just go for it. Are we sure? Especially if KD leaves Golden State and it's more wide open. The problem though is for what they could get for him and you have Zion now under control

for seven years and you have like this really unique historically, you know, window where you can turn this guy into all these young players and picks that you know is going to leave. You have to do it.

You can't risk not doing it. Now, if they really think he might stay, I would play it out till February because I feel like that Lakers deal is still going to be sitting there, whatever it is. I think most of these deals would still be on the table.

Yeah, for sure. Anthony Davis. And also, I think- The Boston one's not as appealing, though, because they would have already made all the picks by then, right? Maybe, but I think for New Orleans, there's also value in seeing these rookies come into the league.

So if the number four pick, let's just say, is, I don't know, Darius Garland, right? You get to actually see this guy perform for a couple of months in the NBA. So maybe potentially you get a little bit less in terms of value in a deal. But maybe you get more confidence in the deal you're actually making. So you're making a smarter decision by waiting. Do you like RJ Barrett? I'm not a big RJ guy. I like RJ. KFC and I are

aligned. I tried to tell you about Reddish in November. You didn't listen to me. I like Reddish still. I know you don't like him at all now, do you? I think with Reddish, it's like with RJ, you and I talked about this yesterday on a draft, on a corner three pod that'll air next week. Nice play, KFC. Well done. Look at this guy. But with Reddish, it's like you and I are aligned this yesterday on a draft, on a corner three-point that'll air next week. Nice play, Cassidy. Well done.

Look at this guy. But with Reddish, it's like you and I are aligned. And so I think with him, it's like there's a 3 and D road for him to be a good three-point shooter who can defend multiple positions. And he has the playmaking ability that he didn't show at Duke. Are we filming NBA support group right now? I mean, Reddish, you know what's funny. I know it's his fifth team.

Look, here's the thing. It's like Reddish for the first time in his whole life was the third wheel behind Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett, two guys who don't space the floor well. So I'm not making excuses for Reddish just stinking at Duke. However, projecting forward, there's 3 and E potential with a road to be a little bit more because of his ball.

It's funny you said the support thing because to me, he's Rodney Hood. Like he's been around the league for a while. Everyone's like, man, he's so game. It's funny you said the support thing because to me, he's Rodney Hood. Like, he's been around the league for a while and everyone's like, man, he's so talented. He'll figure it out one day.

Jeff Green. Yeah, but, and those guys have had value in the playoffs. If he only like tried harder. Because like the talent is there. Like, he watched for just like five minutes.

Like, he's very talented. I'm done. I turned 50 this year. I'm done believing in those guys. I like the dude. Hey, Rodney Hood won a playoff series

like a week ago. I like the dude. He would carry Claxton. Oh, Claxton's great. He's my late round guy. He might not be late. My late first round guy. He might be moving up.

Guess what? Claxton tries. If I'm drafting anybody over 6'8", just try. And like with Nick Claxton, it's interesting. At Georgia, he basically ran the offense. He was like a 6'11 point guard for that team. And it's like he's not going to be doing that in the NBA, but I think it's important, regardless of your position in

today's league. The versatility. The versatility and the ability to make plays off the dribble. You can't just spot up and shoot and then be a nobody driving to the rim or making a pass off the dribble. You have to be able to make those secondary plays. We saw with Capella. If you're a big man who can't dribble, there's a ceiling on you in a big-time playoff series.

Poor Capella. I like Claxton. I'm hoping for him at 22. He's good. All right. Wait, going backwards. All NBA second team, Durant, Joel Embiid, Kawhi, Dame. Kyrie gets the second spot. Wait, Dame was second team?

Who was the first team guard besides Harden? Harden and Curry. Okay, cool. So I voted for Westbrook just because I penalized Kyrie one team, even though statistically he had the best resume. But I actually watched the Celtics season and lived through it. And I was like, I can't- Live through is the right word.

I can't say you were one of the 10 best players in the league. I just refuse. So Westbrook, who was really abysmal from a shooting standpoint the first two months and then got better as the year went along. But he just played so hard the whole year. He's frustrating. He drives me crazy. I talked about it a million times, but I just think he's a better teammate.

See, to me, I'd rather have Beal. I feel like Beal was the guy who kind of got lost in the mix here. He had a great season. That leads us to the third team. Gobert, Blake Griffin, Westbrook. Kemba gets that six-guard guard spot which we'll talk about I mean so much and then everybody

folded and voted for LeBron is it really folded? I voted LeBron happily it's a fold who's a six forward how do you reward LeBron for that Lakers season what's the point of basketball what do you mean reward him though? He went to

a young team that was on its way up last year and made and the team got worse and the AD thing, which his agent and one of his best friends from since high school started this whole AD thing that completely destroyed their team. How does he not get penalized

for that? Sure. Because he was 28, 7 and 7 on a 32 their team. How does he not get penalized for that? Sure. Because he was 28, 7 and 7 on a 32 win team. Congratulations. Pretty much that. Did you see him play defense all year? I think the defense, my buddy, Ben Taylor made a great video on YouTube about. He didn't try.

About LeBron's defense. And he tried a lot harder than he's perceived as. Oh, stop. He did. He did. He is perceived as someone who had a lazy defensive year, and he had lazy moments for sure. However, LeBron also had moments with defensive versatility. He's still a great rebounder,

and he still put in an effort on a lot of nights. Second nights of the back-to-back, maybe he took it off, but that's because he was such an offensive force for that team. And by the way, with, like, LaMarcus Aldridge, I understand the argument, like, the Lakers didn't make the playoffs, but this season, LeBron James and the Lakers were plus 2.1 points per 100 possessions when LeBron was on the floor, minus 5.8 without him. Then with the Spurs, they were plus 1.2 with Aldridge, plus 1.6 without him.

So the Lakers were better with LeBron on the floor than the Spurs were all season. So I hate things like that. Yeah, I'm just saying, but like, if it's over and over again, they build like this complete roster in their system and they have a great coach and they can plug people in and out, depending on who it is. The Lakers were all built around,

like we're being held hostage by LeBron's talents. And oh, it's LeBron. Oh my God, we're all playing with the greatest player of all time. This is amazing. And everybody in that team got worse. Who got better this year? I believe, if I remember correctly on your pod

about the All-NBA teams, one of the arguments was they just didn't make the playoffs. I didn't have any non-playoff guys. That made it easier for me. Who was your fifth and sixth forwards? So I had Griffin and I had Aldridge. And then for center, I really wanted to vote Towns,

but I stuck to the no playoffs thing so I put Gobert over Towns and I put Donovan Mitchell over Beal I had Gobert as well but with LeBron though Mitchell's stats I think the last

they were 32-11 last 43 games before they threw away game 82 and he was like 27-5-5, like 45-41, 82 splits shooting. He was really good for them. I wouldn't have had him in my fifth team All-NBA if there were a fifth team. What? Because we look at it differently. Yeah, we do.

Definitely. I care about winning and you just care about stats. You think Devin Booker's going to be good. Here's the thing. I had Beal. KFC believes in Devin Booker. I had Beal on my... The biggest loser

the last three years. I had Beal on my third team and I think Holiday, Walker, Conley, Thompson, Simmons. They were all arguments for that on those guys. All those were arguments

over Mitchell. I think... I understand the winning aspect. All Mitchell did was just be the best player in a 50-win team. But I feel like if you plugged in Beal

or Kemba or Holiday in that Utah team, they would still roll. We can't. I'm not sure you're penalizing Kemba forba or Holiday in that Utah team, they would still roll. We can't. I'm sorry, you're penalizing Kemba for his team. That was his team. That's actually true. His basketball is a team sport,

and you have five guys. If your team doesn't win in the East, I can't put you on an All-NBA team. I'm sorry. The East was terrible. I just can't. That's fair, but I feel like Kemba did everything he could to power those guys. There was only so much he could really do realistically

given the talent around him. I don't think Bradley Beal chose to be on a wizard scene with John Wall getting hurt, though. It's a casualty. I feel bad. It's like, sure, you can ignore the numbers, but I don't think you should, especially when it comes to, like,

splitting hairs like this. Like, Bradley Beal this season was a better playmaker than Donovan Mitchell. He was great. Averaging 10.7 potential assists assists 13.9 points created per assist compared to Mitchell at 10.9 and 8.5 respectively like Mitchell was great to end the season however Beal was great all season long significantly better as a playmaker I don't know about never mind never mind like with Mitchell far more inefficient as a scorer.

Scoring efficiency matters here. It's like, yes, he won, but the scoring efficiency matters. He was the only scorer on his team. Who else was going to score? Joe Ingles? And Beal was as well. And I do think Mitchell had a better supporting cast, though. This is one of my favorite stats. I just dug this up.

Utah won 50 games and Washington won 32. This is, I just crunched this. I went to an advanced metric site. So Utah won 18 more games than Washington. I guess the way I would look at it is I feel like what drove winning for them was Quinn Snyder, Rudy Gobert, their system, their veterans around

Mitchell. He was kind of like the driver of a car they built around him. Whereas like Beal and Kemper had like jalopies and they're like pedaling with bicycles. He's not of like the driver of a car they built around him. Whereas like Beale and Kemper had like jalopies and they're like pedaling with motor bicycles. He's starting to drive in a car. So I get what you're coming from, but I do feel like if I had to choose, I guess, what are you voting for? I like to me

right now, I'd rather have Kemper, Beale, Donovan Mitchell, which is not knock on Mitchell. Those guys are really good. They're veterans in their prime. So we have two different strategies. You just look at it agnostically each time i don't know if i used the word agnostically correctly there sounds good um that's great yeah i actually went into it like if you didn't make the playoffs i'm not voting for you but the reason i did that was because i thought the league was really loaded this year

it was and i needed some way to um kind of discern the impact of certain people. And I also think, first of all, the stats with this stuff, everybody just looks at offense, which drives me nuts. Like the Devin Booker thing specifically. I think people really thought Devin Booker had a great year last year, including somebody in this room right now. And I'm like, all right, he took a lot of shots for a really bad team. He didn't make anybody better. He had a good offensive year considering. He did. He really had a of shots for a really bad team. He didn't make anybody better. He had a good offensive year considering.

He did. He really had a big jump in playmaking this year. He did. I mean, he's a young guy and a terrible team. Who got better? Why are they terrible, though? They've had seven lottery picks in the last five years. I mean, just pull up a list of the Phoenix Suns roster,

and that's why they're terrible. It's not because of Devin Booker. They've had, what, four coaches in three? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why the Phoenix Suns are terrible, and it's not because of Devin Booker. I wouldn't have put Booker, like I said earlier, I wouldn't have put Mitchell on my fifth team.

I wouldn't have put Booker on that team either. There's a lot of great guards this year that we're deserving of. Mitchell is somebody who's definitely in the conversation. I just can't find many arguments for him over Bradley Beal or Kemba Walker or even someone like Clay Thompson for that matter I think with Mitchell someday

he'll be an All-NBA guy I loved him in the draft I still love him now as a young player he's for me right now but I don't think he's there now it's crazy like normally it's just like

kind of like bar room talk but the implications of this conversation are like just league altering for all these franchises I know for Kemba

and Beal yeah it's incredible I hate that it is so, Mandil. Yeah, it's incredible. I hate that it is so much. Yeah, I don't like it either. Because then I just stick to the same, I don't know, I have the same rules each year for this stuff. And I actually, as I've said, I actually care about the NBA teams

because when I was writing my book, it was really one of the only ways you could kind of figure out who was good in a given year. I think with somebody like Booker, for example, that team went 19 and 63. De'Aaron Fox and Sacramento, that team went 39 and 43, right? I think if you compared rosters just in a vacuum, you wouldn't really say Sacramento was more talented than Phoenix, would you?

I think they have a lot of good players on their team. Bogdanovich. But Phoenix, they fit better together for sure. The fit was better. All right, so why was the fit better? Who was the centrifugal force of that fit? I think it was

really, it was like spread, pick, and roll with Juerger. And they have Fox, Bogdanovich, Buddy Heald. They have like a

rim-running big man. Actually, Bielitsa was probably. Played at a fast pace. I mean, they just had a system they had.

Everyone had their roles assigned. Whereas Phoenix, there was really no system or roles. Yeah, because the

system was Devin Booker's our best player and he's going to have to do everything and this is the way player, and he's going to have to do everything, and this is the way it goes, and he's going to go for 70 points today. Booker was also hurt for a part of the season as well. He was.

That was one of the reasons. Booker wasn't even, to me, in the conversation for All-NBA. I'm surprised he wasn't all. One thing I'm curious about, as I'm an All-NBA, if you're Charlotte, are you paying Kemba that Supermax? What do you even do at that point?

It's so much money. I just wouldn't, but I don't know? What do you even do at that point? It's so much money. I just wouldn't, but I don't know what you'd tell your fans at that point. He's the only thing they ever had. Somebody sent me a screen grab of all their contracts a couple weeks ago, and I read it to Russillo in one of the pods we did, and it's like staggering. They have $85 million

committed to all guys who will never make an All-Star team again. If you had Kemba to that, what are you getting? You're getting another season like you had this year, where you go 38-44. You get more than one more season of what you had this year. The other option is tearing it down when they tore down to get MKG and have five years of 19 wins.

That's hard to sell your fans, too. There is such a typical position. This is something I wrote about in March, when the Hornets were maybe not making the playoffs or not. Cause one of the arguments I had in there was like, if they make the playoffs, maybe voters will be more likely to give Kemba the edge over the other guys in this conversation for that sixth spot.

And that's obviously what happened. I don't know if I had to do the playoffs, but he's there. But for Charlotte now it's like, you're locking yourself into this core that is not a playoff team and as little versatility and Kemba Walker is as great as he was this season, there's stretches where you need more from him. There's stretches where he was extremely inefficient himself

on the offensive end of the floor. Never mind his defensive limitations, to go back to the playoff conversation we had, that would really pop up for the Hornets if they ever made it to the second or third round. Teams would pick on him constantly. I feel like like Charlotte, that's probably not a big concern. It's about getting there, but that's the problem. It's, but it's like you said, Bill, what do you tell your fans if you just let him walk?

The one thing I will say though, is I do think a lot of Hornets fans would understand if he left. I'm not sure if they would understand if the team let him go. So, I mean, it's going to be tough. And then if you're Kemba, do you take the bag or do you try to play with another star somewhere else? I don't know. I think Kemba's gone.

He's gone? I do. Well, he's from New York, which is underrated. You think? I think he's from the Bronx. I think I've heard that somewhere over the years. Knicks for him? I feel like KD and Kemba is the most logical combo.

And then Kyrie. And Kyrie to Brooklyn. Interesting. And then Russell goes. So, if you're Brooklyn, would you rather have Kemba is the most logical combo. And then Kyrie. And Kyrie to Brooklyn. Interesting. And then Russell goes to Brooklyn. So would you rather, if you're Brooklyn, would you rather have Kemba or Kyrie if you're the Nets?

I think if I'm the Nets, I'd rather have Kyrie. If I'm the Knicks, I would rather put Kemba with KD because he's stable. Culture? He's just stable, great guy,

perfect second guy for a guy like KD. He's a guy that would be more willing to face the media. Right. He's been in big games. He's never been in a great situation before. He's a normal human being. He probably balances out KD well. Kemba's a really good guy.

With Kyrie, you have that possibility of on December 2nd, before practice, him going, well, obviously I'm not getting enough shots or like some weird Kyrie thing. And then all of a sudden it becomes this three-day story in New York. There will be no three-day stories. Yeah, but I feel like, can you see him like being telling like

Karis LeVert and Jared Allen, like, well, you know, guys, I mean, y'all do X, Y, and Z. Seriously. I mean, if I was running Brooklyn after watching what Kyrie did in Boston, I would be really afraid to have him as my leader of young players. I actually think the Lakers is probably the smartest fit for him. For the Lakers to go after him? No, for Kyrie.

Yeah. With the infrastructure, with LeBron, it makes sense. But so I do wonder if in the back of Kyrie's head, he still wants his quote-unquote own team. He just had it. He just lived that life for two years. I wonder Kyrie's head, he still wants his quote unquote own team. He just had it. I wonder if in his mind, he still wants that. See, I wonder. I feel like that whole thing this year was him being like,

man, LeBron had a point after all. Maybe this isn't that cool. Maybe I can just get buckets for someone else somewhere else. I wonder. Wait, let's take a break. And I want to talk about this Kyrie thing. Let's take a break to talk about Helix. They create personalized mattresses to fit your unique needs.

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but you will. They're offering right now $125 off all mattress orders for our listeners at helixsleep.com slash BS, helixsleep.com slash BS for up to $125 off. Check it out. On the Kyrie thing, you were in Boston for the last five weeks or so, and you were in the middle of all the Kyrie whispering and all that stuff. Let's cross the Celtics off for a second, because who the hell knows? I don't think they're going to bring him back, but you just never know with this stuff. From the stuff you heard, even stuff you couldn't report,

or just anecdotes, inside stories, stuff like that, would you feel good as the GM of another team committing to him as a franchise guy? You're getting into somebody who's up and down every day, a roller coaster. You're not sure if he's going to be the standoffish type who's not even acknowledging a coach in an elevator standing next to him.

You're not sure if he's going to be the guy who's in full support of his teammates and to the media or somebody who's going to, you know, passive aggressively talk about his younger teammates. So like you have to know what you're getting into. And I think everybody would. With that said, I think if you're a team like the Nets,

where you have a nice young core and like they're ready to take a leap to the playoffs, Kyrie still is a player who makes your team better. And that's just something you have to deal with all that drama. And like that goes for the Celtics too. I do think you should try to bring back Kyrie if you can, especially because it's like, if you resign him, you can always trade him in six months. I'm just saying you retain the asset, the trade value there, instead of just letting him walk. What if Kyrie said no trade clause and I'll come back? Then no, no, thank you. I hear what KOC is saying. I think this is a number two guy. This is a guy who needs to come in, do his thing and leave and have no one really worrying

about it because somebody else is handling the off the court stuff that runs running a team right him and LeBron basically

like Kyrie does his own thing he's his own he's his own unique guy there's one more thing with Kyrie and Brooklyn that I think we can't discount he's really interesting day to day

and they're not interesting that's true he's content and they're the number two team and if KD is on the Knicks hashtag content yeah if KD's on the Knicks. Hashtag content. Yeah.

If KD's on the Knicks, what do you do to stand out? Well, you have Kyrie. Kyrie is a brilliant player to watch day to day. He does really strange things. He's up and down. And he's kind of captivating. I personally didn't want it

because I wanted the Celtics season to go well. And they still wouldn't be drawing nearly attention as the Knicks. So it'd be good for Kyrie too because they would still be under the shadow of the Knicks

but still be interesting two Nets fans he could do the whole thing Boston's too small I needed to be in a bigger city and blah blah blah it would definitely add a different level

to the Nets-Celtics rivalry with these draft picks and those trades it'd be kind of crazy it'd be sort of a full circle it'd be a very full circle yeah I was very unhappy

just with the all NBA process this year I thought it was really frustrating and like I was really hoping the Kings would make the 8 seed

because I really wanted to vote for Fox even though he was like what 17 and 8 but I just loved the impact that he had on that team on both ends

I loved how hard he played his defense his leadership oh yeah his culture setting right that's a big part of it. And that's when, you know,

obviously the Devin Booker thing, we have no idea if he's going to be a really good player or not. Well, he already is. Well, he's really not though. They went 19 and 63. His offense is really good though.

This isn't baseball though, KFC. This isn't like Mike Trout on a lineup with eight schmucks. The thing with Booker though is like he is, like I don't want to go too long on the Suns, but like he has developed into an on-ball player.

But what he is at his core, what he was in high school and in college is a guy who runs off screens, an off-ball guy who can attack closeouts and create a little bit for other guys. He's developed into this player that we see today where he's a ball-dominant guy. So it's like when he's surrounded by better teammates, I think we're going to see more of that offensive versatility that we don't see right now with his current core. See, here's my question with Booker.

What KOC is saying is true, but I feel like part of the reason they didn't take Luka last year, because Booker's like, I'm the guy now. I'm not going back to that off-ball role. I like having the ball in my hands. I'm like this point forward.

Could Booker have adjusted that? Right? I think he could have, but I don't know if he would have wanted to. Maybe he's like, I'm going to get my stats right now. I think there are a couple factors in that. I think Ryan McDonough just really loved DeAndre Ayton

with the fit with Bevan Booker. And I think also with Robert Sarver, there was a factor there with the Arizona connections. But I think Booker and Doncic could have worked. And if you're drafting a guy that you think is worse than somebody else because your star player is like, no, then that's a whole different issue. But I'm not sure that's what it was.

God, it's like everything you would want if you're building a team. It's perfect. Two guys who can create a shot. Luka and Booker, that'd have been amazing. It would have been perfect. I was, I couldn't believe that didn't happen. And they had his coach.

They had his European coach running the team. And now they fired that coach. Yeah. Within a year. I mean, you know, when we watch what's happening with the Warriors and just how much fun they are without KD, even though KD was the best player in the league when he got hurt,

it's still at the core. They have three guys who can create shots. KD was almost like it was an embarrassment of riches to the point that sometimes it was to the detriment of the team. I still feel like you need at least two, and that's why I can't figure out this Milwaukee Toronto series. I now can't figure it out. I thought for sure Milwaukee was going to win game four.

I was actually shocked. And how limited they were as that game went on, I didn't feel like that was a fluke. I really felt like, and you said this on your Verno podcast, I think, did you do that before game four? I believe so. Game four, did you do that before game four? I believe so. Game four, game five's tonight. So it was.

At some point, you expressed concern about Milwaukee's half-court offense. It was before it, yes. So it was before the game. So we recorded Monday night for the Tuesday night game.

And I felt the same way because, man, that half-court offense, when it really slows down and people start getting tight, I need two guys who can grade a shot. And I'm not sure

they had the second guy. To me, the guy is Middleton. I think he's really the guy to watch the rest of the I need two guys who can grade a shot. And I'm not sure they have the second guy. To me, the guy is Middleton. I think he's really the guy to watch the rest of the series. He's definitely up and down series. He has to be consistent 25 points. He had a good game four.

Yeah, but he had some really bad. He got going in game four. He's the guy to me because he gives them that second guy. Like, I think in terms of the top guys, I'd rather have Middleton

than Lowry or Siakam right now. Looking for my second, as a second star in the series. This still comes down to Giannis, though. Ever since Toronto put Kawhi down to Giannis, though. Ever since Toronto put Kawhi Leonard on Giannis, and ever since they've been doubling and sometimes tripling on his drives by helping off guys like Eric Bledsoe, who are horrific catch-and-shoot

three-point shooters, that has made things so difficult for Giannis to do what he does, getting to the basket, drawing fouls, getting to the free-throw line, never mind the playmaking opportunities that come from his drives. I think for Giannis, they need to figure out a way to get him going. Maybe putting him on the posts a little bit, posting him against Kawhi Leonard instead of having him attack from the perimeter. I didn't understand why they weren't doing that. I thought Giannis in the post is one of the most frightening things I saw all season.

Because he's really strong now. It's weird how they haven't gone to it. Especially if you put him on the left block and he can swing in toward the lane with the Spider-Man arm. It's kind strong now. It's weird how they haven't gone to it. Especially if you put him on the left block and he can swing in toward the lane with the Spider-Man arm. I don't know if he can post Kawhi, though. Kawhi is his own unique defensive. Yeah, I mean, like... What about injured Kawhi?

Kawhi's a far... He's still strong, though. Kawhi's not moving as strong. Kawhi's a far superior perimeter defender, though, than he is a post defender. He's still a good post defender, but not what he is moving laterally on the perimeter with his big hands and long arms.

I think you can take advantage of that a little bit more. And maybe having Giannis' back to the basket or facing up closer to the rim creates more opportunities for him to kick out to those three-point shooters who the team is going to be helping out with. See, my thing is I would think I'd want to put Giannis and more pick and rolls both ways to get Kawhi off him a little bit. Get a third defender and then kick the ball out. And then it goes down to like, can Bledsoe make shots or is it like George Hill and Malcolm Brogdon coming in?

And you and I both are in full agreement with that and like putting Giannis as an on-ball screener, having him short roll to the rim. Granted, Toronto maybe switches those screens, but that's what you want. Then you get somebody else on Giannis. And if they don't switch,

that's something Kawhi is not exactly used to doing is being a guy defending the screener in a pick and roll situation. Whether they switch or whether they drop, I think for the Bucs, that's something this season in the playoffs and long-term,

putting Giannis as a screener maximizes his potential. And that to me brings it back to Middleton because I think he's their best guard. So to me, I want Middleton having the ball, Giannis creating for him, that two-man game creates either shots for Giannis or an open three for someone else. I think that's how they get out of the series.

I watched game four with Rosillo and I didn't understand why Milwaukee just didn't go gigantic and just play, do what you're saying basically and have Giannis and Middleton be the ball handlers, spread them out with tall people. Like a DJ Wilson on the floor. Just throw out the ball handlers, spread them out with tall people. Like a DJ Wilson on the floor.

Just throw out the guards completely because none of your guards are playing well. You shouldn't feel like you have to play guards. The greatest thing about Giannis is he's queen in the chess board like the way LeBron was, where you can basically play him anywhere. And it's like, hey, Giannis, we're literally playing you a point guard. Now you're going to guard Kyle Lowry. Like he could do it. Yeah. So like Toronto was going small to try to screw up the matchups and make Milwaukee play more guards. And it worked because Milwaukee stupidly kept playing more guards. And it's like,

Hey, all right, we'll put three bad guards out there for you and get our asses kicked. Well, I want to see the other version of that. I mean, to me, so like,

it's like your fourth and fifth players. Like who's, I think for sure at the end of the game you'll have Brogdon, Giannis, Middleton. It's who's other guys. Right. But Brogdon, I think...

Brogdon's still big, strong. Yeah. I really like Brogdon. He just didn't have it in game four. So they had to figure out what to do. Bledsoe, I would just

cut them. He has to have a quick trigger with Bledsoe because he really was struggling the last two games. That guy is... If he's playing bad, get him out of there.

KFC, what would you do with that extension? Would you invisible ink it? Yeah, I hope they did use invisible ink. March 1st signing him four years, $70 million.

We thought it was a good idea when it happened. Well, yeah, because he was an all-defensive team player this season. He was great defensively, but that's the difference

between the regular season and the postseason. So it's like for Bledsoe, I think it's a fine deal, but now we're looking at it with this knowledge in the playoffs of. So it's like for Bledsoe, like, I think it's a fine deal, but now we're looking at it, you know, with this knowledge in the playoffs of how he's just,

shit the bed. And it's like, well, maybe they would have been better off having $20 million in cap space. Because they've got to pay a lot of guys this summer. They've got a ton of guys.

Everyone's up pretty much in that team. Brooke Lopez is going to get paid somewhere. For sure. I am in the camp the more I thought about this. And I like the extension when they did it

just because it seemed like they saved 15 to 20 million. There's just so many point guards now. You think like this summer, like let's say Toronto loses in six and Kawhi leaves. You can basically get Kyle Lowry for free this summer. They'll definitely get off that contract and rebuild. Conley, I think is available for 50 cents in the dollar. Kyrie is a free agent.

D'Angelo Russell, if Kyrie goes to Brooklyn, he's suddenly available. We also have RJ Barrett, Ja Morant, and Garland all coming in the draft as top four picks, all people who could be the creator guard. At some point, there's too many point guards who could run a team. And I'm not sure I'd want to lock down the second level of Butzo guys. Yeah, I mean, that sort of touches on the all-NBA discussion where it's like you could put together five, six teams and have a good roster. The league is deep at every position, but especially the guard spot

where there's just so many guys getting snubbed. And that's only going to get stronger over time with all the influx of guards coming into the league and the younger guys continuing to get better. It's easy to find a point guard. I hate Stoudamire Mitchell. I love Mitchell.

He loves Booker. He's got his lanes. I love it. I love Mitchell. I've loved him since pre-draft. Let me read you some of these stats from 1984. I'm sorry, 1983.

24 points a game, six assists a game, 48% shooting, 80% free throw, four rebounds a game. Was that player good? Yeah. No, it wasn't.

It was Reggie Theus, career loser. Sometimes you can put up stats on a bad team. I'm just saying, sometimes you can put up stats and not be a winning player. But you need more context Sometimes you can put up stats. We weren't even alive when that was brought up. I'm just saying, sometimes you can put up stats. You can put up stats and not be a winning player.

But you need more context than just stats, though. It's like stats aren't everything, of course. That goes without saying. I'm fully in agreement there, but you can't look at stats without context. And that's one of the issues, I think, with players have, with media players have, with fans just talking about numbers.

You need context with any stat. Or you need just to look at wins and losses. I'm curious. 1963 seems pretty telling to me. How do the players feel about this all-NBA voting, you think? How their faith is so tied into the media voting? Well, I think they probably feel like, what if somebody has an agenda with me? This person doesn't watch.

Even somebody like me, where I decide, I'm just voting for playoff guys this year. Is that a fair way to do it? I don't know. That's just what I decided was a fair way to do it because there were so many guys. If I was like Bradley Beeler, Kemba Walker, I'm buttering the media up.

We're talking $50 million that I'm losing. I'm sure LeBron's going to love you putting LaMarcus Aldridge on third team over him. LeBron played 55 games. There's only two other guys in the history of the league who have been an all-NBA team and were on a team

that lost and didn't make the playoffs and they only played two-thirds of the season. And that Anthony Davis trade, I'm sorry. That ruined their season. It really did. All of those guys got worse after that.

It turned complete chaos. Kawhi played only five more games, only 103 more minutes, though. Is it really that big of a difference? But I've been on the record in years past as like when you get around two thirds, it's really hard for me unless you have a compelling case.

What I'm curious is like, what do you think LeBron, like how does LeBron change his game next year? What's his next play? If he doesn't get Davis, like what's the move for LeBron at this point? Hope and pray you get somebody in 2020. Is he going to go after Jimmy Butler this summer?

Or Kemba? I don't know what he does. It's hard to pass on another year when you have LeBron James. There's some Chris Paul lingering. Oh, I like that. That's interesting. That's something I'm fascinated by.

The idea of flipping four and Lonzo. Oh, I think Houston would do it for sure. Oh, I don't even think you'd need to throw in four. To get Chris Paul. That big ass contract. I think Lonzo

for Chris Paul. Lonzo might even be too much. Lonzo would be a cool fit in Mike Tantelli's office. He would. I would love that. I would love Lonzo. It's one of my favorite

fake trades. I'm totally here for that. Does the cap work out? They could do that one-to-one. It would depend on what they do in free agency. If they have the cap space to absorb Chris Paul's contract, it would work, but

you would want to sign a guy, so you need to find somebody's salary to make it work. That's a tough salary to match, though. They could renounce just about everybody, and I think the only guys they'd have on the books are LeBron and Kuzma and Ingram. They could do it. To create the space for a free

agent or absorbing Paul. But if you want to sign a guy and trade for Chris Paul, it would be a little bit more difficult. I think if it happened, it's because they struck out on eight other guys. Yes, exactly. The two most fun fake trades are that one and Ben Simmons for McCollum. Trades that will not happen, but are just really fun. I hate that trade.

Which for who? For really both teams. Really? I feel like it makes both teams better. But for Philly, I don I hate that trade. Which for him? For Philly, both teams. Really? I feel like it makes both teams better. But for Philly, I don't like that trade. I think Ben Simmons,

I always joke about how he shoots with the wrong hand. You don't joke about it, KFC. I'm serious about it. It's not a joke. You write thesis statements. You're serious about

Devin Booker is the best player in the league and Ben Simmons shoots with the wrong hand. Which he does. He absolutely does. He shoots over 70% of his non-jump shots using his right hand.

I actually don't even think he shoots anymore. He took four shots in a game seven. I guess he uses his right hand. He thought about shooting a couple times. But Simmons, it's like, with Joel Embiid, he's your number one player if you're the Sixers. However, Embiid is somebody who is fragile. He has proven not to be durable in the past,

and at 25 years old, he moved around like he was 45 sometimes. And with Ben Simmons, if you're talking about the best fit for him as a player, it's like a Giannis-esque role. And he's not going to get that with Philly, but to me, Philly, Ben Simmons is superstar insurance. If anything horrible ever

happens to Joel Embiid, at least you have Ben Simmons to be the next guy that you can build around. Because C.J. McCollum, as good as he is as a player... I don't see it. But see, here's the question, KFC. I just don't... I haven't seen enough since dating back to the Boston Series last year. And I was in the

camp of, that guy's going to be a superstar. And you start with that Boston Series, you go through this whole season this year. I don't think he hit any of the checkpoints I wanted to hit. Not one of them. I mean, see, to me, for Simmons, his game is so unique. It has to be in a very specific role.

Like, if he played with Dame, it'd be incredible. That would be great. If he could be the role man off a great pick and roll point guard, that would be like... That's one of the things, though. But KOC doesn't like this trade.

No, no, no. You and I both have written about Ben Simmons as a short role or a screen guy. But I'm saying, if you're Portland right, you'd do that trade. Oh, that'd be great. Because it's like, theoretically, Ben. You and I both have written about Ben Simmons as a short roll or a screen guy. But I'm saying if you're Portland right, you'd do that trade. Oh, that'd be great because it's like, theoretically, Ben Simmons being your Draymond

is fascinating because you get a guy who can switch every position on defense, screen, short roll, finish with athleticism, pass off the roll, goes without saying. However, Ben Simmons had that quote to Zach Lowe saying how that's not a role that he wants to play. He still wants to be a guy on the ball. So you need to have a guy who's fully committed

and buys into that role. And Simmons has not shown that. And that's where my concern is with Ben. And I would be open to trading him if I'm the Sixers. But not for CJ? Not for CJ, no. And I'm not sure for what, to be honest with you. It's hard to find a trade that makes a lot of sense.

I mean, you're not getting more value than CJ, I don't think. Do you think there's Clippers potential for him if they strike out on everybody? For who? Benson. For who you're trading for the Clippers, though. Because I think the Clippers have to come out of this summer with a name. I would pretty much bet anything.

It's Kawhi. Would you trade? But if Kawhi, for some reason, Toronto sneaks by Milwaukee these next two games, Milwaukee completely falls apart. Toronto makes the finals. Durant doesn't come back, which we didn't even talk about that.

And they'd go like six games, seven games. Maybe they even win. The longer they go, it makes it tougher for him to leave. What would you trade if you're the Clippers though? We talking Shea Gildas Alexander in there? Well, didn't those teams just make a trade? I mean, they can trade Shaman back to Philly. Shaman is a trade piece?

Yeah, I mean like... That would be pretty funny. I actually think the Clippers are smart enough not to be like the old Lou Gorman Red Sox mentality. We got to get out

and come out of this with a star. I don't think they feel that at all. They wouldn't do that. But Simmons... I would love to see Simmons somewhere else. I wouldn't mind seeing that. I would love to see him

on a different team. I think so too. I mean, like the Embiid-Simmons core works clearly. They were in a game seven and the ball bounces a little differently. They're in the Eastern Conference Finals. But the fit still isn't perfect. Oh, that's really interesting.

Tatum-Simmons? Tatum would be a better fit with Embiid for sure. And then Simmons in Boston if Kyrie leaves. Then we let Kyrie go. And then we go Simmons, Hayward, Jalen Brown, whoever the picks are, Horford and put the team in Simmons' hands. That would be awesome for content. Just for content

alone. Think of the content for us. Well, think about it. Having my son Ben Simmons and Celtic Ben Simmons in my life. I'd have so many Ben Simmonses at stake. Oh my, that would be fascinating.. You like Ben Simmons for Tatum. I would do it, yeah. You would do it for both? Yeah, I think so.

Kyle, would you do it? Yeah, let's get it done. It's not enough. Kyle's on board. I'll take the scorer and Tatum long term. But I'm saying if you're Philly, would you do it? Simmons for Tatum? If I'm Philly? Take Tatum for Simmons. Yeah. I think it makes sense for both teams. I would rather have Tatum if I'm Boston.

I'm super happy. Oh, okay. I went on a deep dive of free throw attempts for guys who averaged at least 14 points a game in their first two years and shot 45% and trying to figure out if there was some sort of... Oh, yeah. I remember that.

You dropped it on Slack. Yeah, I put it in the NBA Slack. Because I'm convinced that scoring forwards need to show early that they get to the line to really get to the highest possible level. And he just hasn't. He was like, it was like 3.1 a game last year. And the comps were really interesting.

The best possible comp was Glenn Rice. That was interesting one to me when you said that. Yeah. He was incredible for a couple of years there. It's more like the Mike Mitchellitchell types guys who scored but they weren't really like difference makers and the part that worries me is just they were adamant all year with him go to the line go to the line go to the line and he just wasn't do we know that for sure like yes coaches were on him all year long i think i think they were showing videos um i think

over and over again they're explaining to him all the different benefits that came from going to the rim. I think with Tatum, Paul George is one of the popular comparisons for him. Yeah. And Tatum, like Paul George, Paul George didn't get to the line a lot earlier in his career either.

And that was always one of my criticisms of George when he was in Indiana. He wasn't a guy who could consistently take it to the next level and get to the basket and become like a 25 point per game plus score consistently. With Tatum, that's going to have to be the hurdle. It wasn't really until this past year and a half or so that George has made that leap to become a guy who gets to the line.

To me, George is way more athletic than Tatum. I wouldn't see George as a passable path for him. He is more athletic. I would agree. I would think for Tatum, you'd want him to be more of a Paul Pierce, Chris Middleton, point forward type as a ceiling. He's got five successes a day. KSC said the first three years for Paul George, free throw attempts, 1.7, 2.8, 3.5.

Last year, it was 7.0. The free throw rate was fairly similar to it. I feel like that's a better Jalen Brown path, Paul George. I don't think the shooting or handling or fluidity is there. I'm a Celtics fan, and that's what I'm hoping for. Don't ruin this for me, Paul George. I don't think the shooting or handling or fluidity is there. I'm a Celtics fan and that's what I'm hoping for. Don't ruin this for me, Kelsey. You try to raise his trade value from a pure statistical standpoint, he's hit a lot of the same chain marks.

I do. I thought what Jalen did the last four months was really, really encouraging. I mean, he really had to fight through a lot of adversity this year. He really did. Getting benched, coming back from that, that was impressive a year for him. Tatum, though, I mean,

I don't think he's gotten enough credit for his improvements on the defensive end or as a passer, though. That's fair. Yes, his scoring, it's only year two, still only 21 years old, but his defense has improved dramatically since his time in college and as has his passing.

I think those are two positive indicators for him moving forward. So you would keep these two together unless Davis was involved? Tatum and Brown? I mean, it depends on what else is on the table for trades. I'd be open to

trading Jalen. You would? I would keep Tatum, though. Jalen Brown last 42 games 14-5 49% shooting 39% from three. Jalen Brown last 42 games 14 and 5 49% shooting 39% from 3 2.8 free throw

percentage of that stretch 68 yeah I mean I think with Brown I remember pre draft I like doing Boston sports TV people were calling Brown a non shooter and I was like no Ben Simmons is a non shooter Brown is just an average shooter and I still don't buy Brown

as more than an above-average shooter. I think the free-throw percentage is pretty indicative of that. Would you do Hayward in 14 and 20 for Conley? That's intriguing. And then this is the assuming Kyrie walks.

Assuming Kyrie walks. Conley's making 32 and a half. I think Memphis 34 and a half second year. For sure, probably. I think you need to, I think regardless of the trade you need to try to consolidate those picks somehow you can't add

three more rookies to this roster already, you can't do that they've already put rookies in situations where if they're not playing Yabasele might actually have been good on a different team at this point you don't play for two years what are you

the situation's everything for all the I also really like Semi and I think oh Ojele yeah if they had traded Marcus Morris in February and just given Semi

their minutes and crossed their fingers it might have been better for a variety of reasons yeah I don't know I we say this every summer but I really feel like

this is the summer when all hell's gonna break loose well we gotta get content out there we gotta sell it's unbelievable and I think this is just the way it's gonna go for the rest of our lives as fans because these shorter contracts and the whole player empowerment thing is just this is where we're going I hope so

as a content creator it'd be great quickly on these series, could you see a path where Milwaukee loses game five, game six, and we just go what the hell just happened? I think so. I think what we saw these past two games, I mean,

I thought Milwaukee would come out making adjustments in that game four like you did and win it, but they made zero. They made none. I'll be watching tonight how they adjust Giannis' role. And if Toronto continues containing him, I could easily see. I think Milwaukee also won, though.

That's still my guess. I do, too. I think Milwaukee wins, but it's going to take seven. And I can't believe it. And by the way, in a one-gamer, then you're really going, you're looking down your bench and you're like, it's the situation Portland and Denver are in, right? Where you just kind of

look down and you go, all right, I trust those four guys. I mean, yeah, those game sevens. I can't find anybody else. It's a different animal for sure. I love it. They're my favorites. The Philly thing was great. Philly was like, I got, I trust these five guys. Mike Scott.

Mike Scott a little bit. Boban. It's nut crunch time. And that was the conversation with Tron on the first two games, though. And then suddenly, Norman Powell is playing well. Van Fleet has a great game.

Right, that's their home court because it's pretty big for Milwaukee. Yeah, and we'll see how that pans out in game five. That's why I think, like, Milwaukee is a different team at home. Even though they scuffed that first Boston game,

I think that was a fluke for a variety of reasons but for the most part it's a younger team that should be better at home um and it'll we always say this but this is 100 the case this will be a best player in the in the series series like never wasn't yokage was the best player they didn't win this one feels like at some point it's just going to be Kawhi versus Giannis. That's what I wanted about Kawhi's health. They have three games in five days. He's been reaching down to that right quad

pretty damn often during games. And that's the quad that's been bothering him since 2016, not just last season. So for that, he said he's not hurt. He said he's just fine. And he has to do so much for that. He has to guard Giannis and score like 35 points a game efficiently.

That's a huge burden. I think it's legitimately dumb that they do it this way where you go every other night in the conference finals which is the hardest basketball you can play. Yeah, for sure.

But in round one they're spacing shit out and teams aren't playing for four games. The first round should be really congested and it should be every other night.

Let's get through that because you're going to have sweeps and five gamers. I guess for TV, they want it every night. But I think you're right. Definitely, the basketball is hurt by that. Why not?

By doing it every single night. I'm not a ratings expert with Brian Curtis. Understanding what nights get less ratings. But I would assume it would make sense to take one night off

and give teams more space, more time for off days and maximize the product. So, you know, situations like Kawhi. Well, you look at Houston Golden State last year, right? And like one injury, that's part of the series. It changes everything. I have two more things and then we're done.

If I had to do it over again, I think I would have voted for Bradley Beal. Okay. I got stuck with the no playoffs thing. So Mitch will fit in. So you agree with the no playoffs thing. So Mitchell fit in. So you agree with me? No, I felt bad because... Beal's agent is crying right now.

Beal's agent is looking at that voting like, oh my gosh. No, my commission... The whole Supermax thing, I really feel like if I had really... If I had thought about that for more than 20 seconds, I would have been like, what if I'm the vote that cost

him the Supermax, which is a terrible position to be in. A lot of responsibility you two have. I don't think it should make a difference with the contracts. I hate the fact that MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, All-NBA makes any difference in the contracts a player can receive. It shouldn't. Yeah, that might be changed next year.

It should not make a difference. I think it's right to have media in some form determining the awards. I think from a performance standpoint, he was one of the best six guards, but the team was 32-50 and that matters to me. I know Wild got hurt.

They traded Oubre, which was stupid. But, I don't know. In the East, to win 32 games, what are we saying at that point? So I just couldn't do it. But now I'm like, shit. See, I wonder, I'm thinking about Bradley Beal.

His two coaches in the NBA have been Randy Whitman and Scott Brooks. That's rough. I mean, he'd be my number one. For the Lakers, I would pay 130 cents on the dollar. I'd love to see that. You don't feel any regret for Aldridge?

Inefficient post-scorer who can't face the floor? I don't care. I don't know how that team was a top six team in the West, and it was him and DeRozan that were their two guys in every fourth quarter I watched. I just think LeBron was pretty clearly the guy. Well, you've already established you don't care about wins and losses. It's fine.

Last thing. Net rating is more important. Last thing. Are we sure LeBron's a Laker next year? Are we positive? last thing net rating is more important last thing are we sure LeBron's a Laker next year are we positive yeah we're 100% positive he's on the Lakers

I'm never 100% positive about any player unless like you're the best player in the league which he's pretty close to being the best player in the league if he's still not already

I think big picture the Lakers have had so much uncertainty. They really wouldn't want to start over again. It'd be a bad look for the franchise to dump LeBron after one year. I can't see them doing that. And what do you trade him for?

What if he asks for a trade? He's on a three-year deal. I don't think he's going to ask for a trade. Okay. So you're 100% sure? 99.9999. I'm going to say yeah. He's coming back.

Do you think Devin Booker will ever play in a playoff game? Yes. Well, the question will be on the Suns or another team. Yeah. He's coming back. Do you think Devin Booker will ever play in a playoff game? Yes. Well, the question will be on the Suns or another team. That's the question. Just for the record, for the aggregators out there,

as Zach Lowe would say, I think Devin Booker is really talented. But at some point, your team has to win something. How did he do in Kentucky? He was good. He was a shooting special.

What happened to that team though? He took a backseat role. He was a seventh man. It was weird. Really? He was a seventh man on that team to that team though? He took a backseat role. He was like a seventh man. It was weird. Really? He was a seventh man on that team. Did that team win though? I can't remember.

They make the title? Title game? Oh, well, they lost in the Final Four. Yeah. Lost in the Final Four. Who did they lose to again that year? Wisconsin. Wisconsin.

That was the Kaminsky. That's right. Would you rather have Fox or Brooker? Fox because of the defensive edge. I think Brooker's offense is underrated, though. I do like watching you guys. Y'all's a little dynamic here. It's fun to watch you two.

It's pretty close for me. It's close. We have to keep a standings of our battles. I already, Mo Bamba for me is already win. I signed myself up for a win. I love it. Cam Reddish is already win. Come on. Nobody gets roped into a one hour workout like KOC.

It's like, oh man, that guy is hitting incredible threes with nobody guarding him. You love those workouts. You're going to leave're gonna be the new you're gonna leave us to become the new Drew Hanlon I don't think so

KFC's gonna be throwing workouts for the players hey if Ben sends you to the other hand KFC you'll be the rebounder yeah

sometimes that's all it is Sharks KFC when are you doing your pod we already did our pods this week yeah we're doing a video

shot for this for a mock draft we're recording a mock draft today with John Gonzalez nice to have you guys let's take a break talk about ZipRecruiter having a high sports IQ

super important it's certainly one of the reasons I've succeeded my high sports IQ it's off the charts it's mental level I'm kidding but there are some athletes that their IQ has been one of the biggest parts of their game It's off the charts. It's mental level. I'm kidding. But there are some athletes that their IQ has been one of the biggest parts of their game.

Like my favorite athlete ever, Larry Bird. Well, when it comes to hiring, you don't need a high hiring IQ. You just need ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is powerful technology, scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience for your job. The tech doesn't stop there. It even learns what kind of candidates you like and invites more to apply. ZipRecruiter is so effective. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site within the first day. And my listeners can try it for free.

Yeah. Go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS. ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. All right, David Epstein is here. He wrote a book called Range, which is your second book. The first one was about sports genes. And it's funny, when you see the cover of the first book in the bookstore, you think it's about actual chromosomes, but it's actually not. It's about what makes an athlete great, basically,

which is a topic I think about a lot. So I've wanted to have you on forever. And range is especially interesting to me as a soccer parent, which club soccer has gone into this direction of it's so time consuming. You can't play other sports. And yet in the back of my head,

I still have what Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan told me four years ago when I do a podcast with them. And both of them were like, yeah, we didn't just play soccer. Like Abby played three sports. Alex Morgan was like a softball player. Didn't even play club soccer until she was like 16. And yet the mentality of sports parents is that you got to get in early. You got to like specialize in it and just do it all the time and don't play anything else. So let's start there

because that was basically the first chapter of your book was Federer versus Tiger and the two paths. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that that Alex Morgan didn't play club till 16 because I was just looking at stats from Dinamo Zagreb,

the club, the academy that produces like all the players that were on Croatia's national team. Yeah. And everyone thinks like, well, they're developing these great players. Only one of those players came there before they were 16. They're recruiting those players, not making them. Yeah. But like you said, when I started writing about, you know, the first chapter of range, this so-called Roger versus Tiger problem, as Malcolm and I were sort of framing it when we debated.

The Tiger Woods, everyone knows that story of early specialization or at least absorbed the gist. And that's been sort of the model we've extrapolated from for all other sports, right? It's become this like early specialization kind of cottage industry for like a gigantic cottage. And the Roger Federer model where he played a ton of different sports, mother was a tennis coach, refused to coach him, actually forced him to continue playing badminton, basketball, soccer long after his peers were specialized. And I basically wanted to see which one of these is the norm. And when you look across, you know, research that tracks athletes in different sports, what you see is that the Roger pattern is the ubiquitous one. Athletes play a range of sports

they gain broad general skills uh the so-called sampling period they learn about their abilities their interests and they delay specializing that's that's the norm and so that was kind of how i got interested in you mentioned being a soccer parent when i started writing about this one of the first things that happened was soccer enthusiasts were like maybe you're crappy like American sports, but like not soccer, basically was the response. So I made very sure to go look at what research existed in soccer. And it turns out it's the same. And right after Germany won the World Cup,

this paper came out showing that the players that went to the national team played more different sports. Didn't matter if they were on a formal team, but they played more different sports. They had more unstructured play all the way up until they were 22 than players who were at lower levels, basically. So it does show up,

but people don't really accept it very well. I was shocked when Abby was talking about how passionate she was that everybody should play everything for as long as they possibly can. And she was saying, one thing that was, I think it was in your book, but

the biggest point she made was like how the other sports helped her with certain skills in the sports she settled on. Like she was saying, one of the reasons she was so great at headers was because when she played basketball, she was really good at reboundings and trying to figure out what the ricochet off the rim was and the angles and just kind of reading when a ball was in the air, what was going to happen. And she was like, that's why I was good at headers. Cause I was a good rebounder. And I was like, I don't know. I don't not positive. That's true. But that makes sense to me. That's actually really interesting that that's her intuition. Cause I think athletes are often their intuition about how they do what they do is often wrong. But that that's like kind of dead on

with what scientists would say, where if you play multiple different, you know, in their lingo, invasion sports, which means you're trying to get past someone or trying to get a ball past them, whether that's soccer, football, volleyball, whatever, it turns out that you then need less time to learn any new skills in other sports that are like that. And it seems like this is actually something, you know, once I kind of get out of sports and range that there's a kind of knowledge called using procedures where you can teach techniques or so-called closed skills that someone can execute. This doesn't matter if someone's learning math or soccer. But what you really want is the person to learn how to match a strategy to a problem, not just how to execute a procedure. Because what you

want, as the skill acquisition scientists call it, is transfer. The ability to take this knowledge and these skills and apply it to stuff you've never seen before. And as the levels go up, that's what you're having to do. And so this multi-sport diversification, this variable challenges and playing in different size pitches and different surfaces creates these general models, these sort of frameworks that allow you to match strategies to problems. And then you can learn all those technical skills more easily later. Well, you had a piece in the book about soccer parents going to soccer experts and being like, I want my kid to be like that kid. And the people telling them, well, then they should play a lot of sports. But basically the parents are like, no, I want them to be like that person now. And it's

like this give and take where there's just two people having separate conversations. Exactly. That was this world-class coach and scientist who said his big problem now is people come to him, look at some of the players he's helped develop, and say, I want my kid doing what that player is doing now, not I want my kid doing what that player was doing when they were 12. Right, the skill sessions they're doing when they're 22 versus when they were 12. Right. The skills that the skill sessions are doing when they're 22. Right. Right. And you can. Versus when they were seven. Exactly.

And you could teach them these, you know, closed skills or these sort of techniques or how to run plays and they might win at eight and nine. But it's pretty clear, I think now that the way to, to get the best 10 year old team has nothing to do with the way to develop the best 20 year old athlete, basically. I think the most frustrating thing for me, you know thing for me, I have a kid, my daughter can basically, she could play three sports and have a great time doing it. The problem with a sport like soccer is to be on one of the best clubs, which is when you're really going to get good. Those clubs play all the time. And you don't really have a choice. You have to

practice four days a week because that's what the team's doing. And that's what's been established as the way to succeed. And that's how you have to break in. So you don't have to, my daughter basically doesn't have time to do another sport the right way. She would have loved to have played too, but it's impossible to also do that and schoolwork. And I wonder like from, you know, soccer is usually like, especially out here in Southern California, it's 10 and a half months a year. I wonder if there's no going back from that now. Because I think that's just the way it is. It's become a cottage industry and privates and how much a club team costs and then how much the tournaments are.

And people are just spending it. And now there's economic incentives to keep it that way. And there's no way it stops. That's right. Like when I was living in Brooklyn until recently, there was a U6 travel soccer team that met across the street. That's insane. U6 is insane.

It's not because they couldn't find good enough competition in a city of 9 million people, right? Yeah. This doesn't have anything. This had everything to do with the adults' financial incentives, not with the kids' development. And so this is where what we know about optimal development

is really bumping into like these other incentive structures. And if a coach's incentive is to win the eight-year-old championships or whatever, 10-year-old, 12-year-old, then they should specialize those kids. But I think when you look at like what France started decades ago,

where they said, okay, we're gonna have kids exposed early, but lots of unstructured play, different surfaces, even different balls, different size and number of players and different challenges. So they get the kids in the pipeline. But because I think playing multiple sports is really just a proxy for varying the challenges that you're facing, right? And so they diversified their pipeline, said, let's get kids in from all kinds of different backgrounds. And they have the coaches.

This one guy who helped design the system named Ludovic Debreu says there's no remote control. And what he means is the coaches shouldn't be micromanaging because it's this unstructured play where you actually develop that kind of creativity that you can execute at a much faster level that you need when you move up higher levels. So I think if you look at a place like France, you see that they've found some medium where they've managed to still have kids being exposed and even in development pretty early, but incorporate the best of what sports science shows us. The thing is, they have like a much more

continuous pipeline going from youth up to elite. And we don't have that at all in the US. What we have is a huge number of athletes in the pipeline. And some good ones come out just by filtering, but we don't have a good system. Yeah. My daughter's coach, who's just awesome, we just lucked out, this guy, Jacob Tatella, he is really passionate about mixing up the practices. So we do a lot of futsal, which American teams don't do, but the South American teams do a ton of going to the beach and practicing like bicycle kicks and just everything to kind of shake them out of the monotony of the same practice every single time, which seems like it makes sense, right? I mean, you could even go further. You were talking, you have this whole thing in the book that I thought was fascinating about when people memorize patterns, which you can do in sports, right?

Yeah, yeah. Like a high school basketball team can memorize the patterns of what to do on a press and be really good and basically cheat the system. Right, right. But if you threw them out of that, they would just be an average basketball player, right? And soccer is a lot like that too because we noticed like some of the teams we play in Southern California that are really good, they have like pattern offense where it's like the ball goes here,

kids do these two things every time and you can kind of shut it down after a while because they're basically running the same thing. And it's really hard to jog people out of that, which I think is one of the problems with how we have soccer in America now is like it's all pattern development and it's not actually like people playing and athletes like interacting, all that stuff. Exactly. I mean, if I had to pick like one theme of range, both inside and out of sports that I was writing about,

it would be that there are things that can cause you to win or have very quick performance in the short term that systematically undermine your development in the long term. And that's like exactly what you're talking about. You feel like basketball is like that too? Like where you have the AAU system, which kind of rewards people who have the ball all the time, but yet doesn't reward the kind of team, like the team play we're seeing with the Warriors right now without KD. Yeah. The ball movement and things like that, you just can't really have an AAU. It rewards a different style, like the James

Harden style. That's right. And I mean, AAU now, I think it's like, they're second grade national championships. They don't have that because it's good for development, right? With kids like throwing one-handed shots. Right. They have it because like, those are customers. And if they aren't on the second grade team, they can't be on the third grade team. And a lot of these AAU teams now,

they're not popping up for kids. They're popping up around kids. Like there's like a kid who's good and the team starts assembling around them. So, you know, again, the good thing we have is a huge pipeline. So we can get away with a lot of inefficiencies. But, you know, I don't think it's good. I think even at the NBA level, people are so afraid of breaking things that they often don't implement some of the best. You know, like there are guys in the NBA that are like taping ankles and getting paid like three times as much as they will the next job down.

So if like you try to develop someone too much and they get hurt, you're in trouble. But I think even looking at KD, like when he went to Golden State, all of a sudden he's seeing, facing these different kinds of challenges where he has to facilitate or he has to like be the backup point guard. And I think that was this so-called mixed practice for him, and I think it's actually made him, even at that level, a much more complete and interesting player. You talked a lot about patterns, not just in sports,

but outside of sports too, and how that's one of the reasons in a sport like tennis, it's not just that they have unbelievable hand-eye coordination, but they've played so many hundreds of thousands of the same type of points that they can just recognize the things ahead of time. So you listed, which I had never seen this clip about Albert Pujols,

how this guy's one of the best hitters the last 50 years, but couldn't figure out how to hit Jenny Finch. That's right. And she struck him out because it was this different pattern that he couldn't recognize. But can you explain that? Because I thought that was really fascinating.

I mean, this was a question I had where when I saw a softball pitcher pitching to baseball players, and I, you know, just like kind of tried to calculate quickly, like, all right, this ball's going like 60 from 43 feet. That's like longer than the fastballs these guys are used to seeing. Why can't they hit it if they have reaction speed

fast enough to hit a 100-mile-per-hour fastball? They can't hit a 60-mile-per-hour softball, and it's bigger. It turns out they don't have reaction speed fast enough to hit that. Like their minimum reaction speed is 200 milliseconds, fifth of a second. That's the time it takes just to see that a ball their minimum reaction speed is 200 milliseconds, fifth of a second. That's the time it takes just to see that a ball's in front of you, that information to cross the synapses to the back of your brain, and for you to initiate muscular action, not to swing, just to initiate. That's half the total flight time of the pitch. And we don't even have a visual system

capable of tracking an object as its angular position changes that fast, gets close to our head. So that advice, like keep your eye on the ball, it's nonsense, can't do it. Like kids could close their eyes when the ball was halfway in. If it weren't like psychologically upsetting, it wouldn't affect them at all. And so what the players learn how to do is judge movements of the torso, rotation of the shoulder, orientation of the arm, the flicker of the pitch, which is the flashing pattern that the seams make as it spins. They group that into a so-called chunk, what sports scientists call a chunk. That's like one data signal. As soon as the ball's out of the hand, it says, go in here or there, swing or don't swing. And they have to make that decision right away. So when they're faced with

this underhand throw, unfamiliar rotation of the joints, unfamiliar spin of the ball, unfamiliar movements of the torso, they're totally stripped of this information that makes them appear to have superhuman reflexes when actually they're just picking up these cues to see what's coming ahead of time. I was thinking about that part because I read the book the last two days about watching Seth Curry guard Steph Curry. And he's obviously not as good of an athlete as Steph. He's not as good of a basketball player. But there was this one game when he was guarding him where like seven times he knew what Steph was going to do before he did it. And I've never seen somebody kind of guess ahead of time what weird thing Steph was going to do from 30 feet and just be there and like either stripping him or getting in his way.

And I was thinking like, it makes total sense. They probably played a million times when they were kids, when they were in high school. And it's just like ingrained in his head, oh, he does these nine things. That's right. That's why you need, that's another reason why even at the elite level, you have to have this incredibly variable challenges that you're facing all the time, because that forces you to be more variable and you don't get into situations like that, right? Where other people aren't able to anticipate your patterns as well. I think we see things like in baseball sometimes

with some of the Japanese pitchers, like they come over and have weird windups and they're blowing the lights out their first year and then they systematically get worse and worse and worse every year. Yeah. Because people adjust to that challenge. Do you feel like, because we've talked a lot on this podcast

over the last couple of months about somebody like Houston, even somebody like Milwaukee, where they have this specific offensive system that's weird, built around one great player. And they kind of do the same thing a lot. But if you haven't seen it that much, it works really well. But over the course of two weeks, when you keep seeing it, you kind of figure it out. And it seems like that's what's happened to Houston the last couple of years where the longer the series goes, the tougher it is for them to get stuff done.

Yeah. Which makes me think like, Russell and I talk about this all the time about the difference now between the regular season and the playoffs. And in the regular season, if you're basically attaching yourself to this system, that might not be a good idea for a seven game series with, with the, with the way people can learn patterns. Yeah. I mean, I'm speculating, but that makes a ton of sense to me because, you know, I see why you want to do that. If your player is as good as James Harden, you know, maybe he can overcome some of that stuff. But, but I think just like seeing the same picture again, and we see, see this in all these sports that require these so-called anticipatory skills, where you have to

react faster than you could if you were just like waiting to see what happens, that familiarity is, is going to work against you if you're the ones running that system. So I think- It was like Red Sox and Rivera was another one. They played him 19 times a year. They played him in the 03 and 04 playoffs. And after a while, they, I mean, they didn't, they weren't crushing him, but they had way more success against him than anybody else. Yeah. Yeah.

So, so I think absolutely like that's a problem for the playoffs. If you can't, you know, if you have this system that people are getting used to, it's like seeing the same picture more and more and more. It's a good thing for basketball because I still vote for ball movement and old school teamwork. Like I was really invested in the no KD Warriors because it was like, oh yeah,

this is an old school way of playing basketball that I love even though they're taking a lot of threes. Yeah. And I mean, it still works obviously.

Do you think sports parents are going to get mad when they read this about the specialization part? I think some will. How dare this guy comes in, tells us we're doing this right? I think again,

the soccer community, like they did with the sports gene, my first book, will with range see it and say like, no, not us. So I made sure to put two full pages of citations with a whole bunch of soccer studies

back there just for them this time. I think some will be relieved though, because I think what the science is telling us is the best development in some ways is easier on the kid and the parent. So I think some will be angry, but some might say like, you know, whether again, people with financial interests for, you know, force kids to do things that they shouldn't be doing or deselect them earlier than they should.

That's a different question. But I think some parents will be relieved and some will, the same way when I was writing about the 10,000 hour rule, will be really upset because it's part of their identity or whatever. The problem is competition is still the best way to get better. And I'm convinced that's why younger brothers and younger sisters always have an advantage. They're trying to catch up to the older siblings and getting their asses kicked by them when they're four and five and six, but they're always trying to catch up. And, you know, soccer is the same way where you just get better when you're playing,

you know, like we have one of the best, I think 10 or 12 teams, Southern California. When we play the other best teams, sometimes it takes us, it takes our team like, you know, 20 minutes to catch up with the speed of, and the talent of the other team. And then you kind of get there. And I think at some point that the competition part matters, which then that becomes this vicious cycle of, well, the only way to play those teams is to put in all this work to become one of those teams. But now we're into

the specialization thing. Exactly. And, and that's, and there's nothing wrong with competition. Competition is great. It's just a question of what other stuff you're doing and what kind of development that competition is causing. Like if it's causing you to run all these plays and do these things that are sort of hampering the creative aspect. That's why I think the French development system has gotten this down. They have competitions, but they're varying the size.

The fucking French. I hate when they figure stuff out. Yeah, I mean, it's not cool, but it seems like they did. And they have lots of competitions, but even the times are different. And they don't really do a lot with the competitions other than use them for development, right? It doesn't qualify you to play something else. So they really diversify that pipeline in a way that works well. Ultimately, it's about competition, of course.

Let's take a break. We're going to talk about some other stuff. Let's take a break. Let's talk about Belvedere, produced in one of the world's longest running distilleries, Belvedere Vodka, the world's finest all-natural vodka, part of a 600-year Polish vodka-making tradition. Belvedere, made with non-GMO Polish rye, pure water, no additives recognized for quality, named the ISC World Vodka Producer of the Year in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Enjoy a delicious cocktail with Belvedere vodka today. And remember to always drink responsibly. One of the things you talked about in the book was people that do the same thing over and over again, sports, non-sports,

and some of the weird examples of when that gets thrown off and now you have to use instinct because the situation is completely different than what you've been trained for. Some people still just gravitate toward what the training was instead of just like getting the common instinct. Like you used like a really sad example about firefighters yeah where when they're when a fire goes in what direction they don't realize is going to happen in the in a forest and at some point you just have to go i gotta drop all my tools and just hightail it out of here they keep the tools because they're just trained to keep their equipment yeah that's it that's very late in the book um yeah i mean and that's and you know one of the responses to that has been now to start

doing this so-called variable training with them or this interleaving where they have to face like improvisational situations, basically, to try to like loosen them up from those patterns, basically. So that's like the new. It's kind of impossible though, right? I think it's going to be very, very difficult. I think so. And then you talk about doctors, same thing, like they're supposed to follow the same steps every single thing they do. But then if something pops up. It's like all this, I was looking through these databases of airline, commercial airline disasters, and it's always the same thing. It's basically some unfamiliar situation comes up and they decide just to go with the thing that they always do, basically. Even when simple actions would save them.

That was one of the craziest stats. i almost couldn't believe this was true you said like out of all the major airline crashes 73 it was with the staff that had worked together for the first time yeah i was like what the fuck and you know yeah they should announce that before you get on the plane no that's right hey fyi this is the first time we've all worked together oh great right right can i have a cocktail that's right you want to yeah if you want to know like yeah that's right. Hey, FYI, this is the first time we've all worked together. Oh, great. Right, right. Can I have a cocktail? That's right. Yeah, if you want to know, yeah, that's what you should ask when you're walking by. Be like, hey, first time together? And one of the things that happens then is when the team is unfamiliar with each other, they're even more likely to stick to a rigid original plan than they are to improvise with each other. So it exacerbates this problem of falling into the same old patterns, basically.

You didn't put this in the book, but I think the Sully Salinger thing was a good example of the opposite, right? Totally. Where something's going wrong and he just improvises on the fly because he had all this experience accumulated from over the years. And he's like, actually, we'll do this. Yeah. But the book probably said not to do that. Yeah. But he was like, look, I just got to land the plane.

I'm doing this. That's right. And he had experience. I mean, he was like a military pilot before, right? And so they face like a whole bunch of, you know, challenges where they have to improv before they get to where they are as commercial airline pilots. One thing you didn't talk about as much with even the sports, non-sports stuff here with the specialization and the whole range of everything was burnout.

Yeah. And like, did you think about doing a chapter about that? I did think about it, except I wanted to stay, I also thought about doing, you know, injury, burnout and injury, because sometimes they're related. Like there was this cool data, I was looking at Cirque du Soleil's physiologist gave me, where they had their performers,

a bunch of former Olympians, learn the basics of several other performers disciplines. Yeah. Just to see what would happen, not because they were going to perform it. And they found it lowered their injury rates by like a third. They measure their injuries compared to Canadian gymnastics. And so we don't exactly know why, but there's some protective effect of doing multiple disciplines. They weren't doing less of their original, well, a little bit less. And so I thought about writing about injury and I thought about writing about burnout, but I decided based on my past experience with feedback from parents to focus on skill development and say, I'm not just trying to make you feel good, you know, for your kids' mental health or, you know, their physical health. This is actually the way to go for skill development. I thought that a little bit in the chapter about music and range. I mentioned these studies where when kids aren't just like, they don't just practice a ton. They go through a sampling period like athletes.

And when they find an instrument and genre they like, they ramp that practice up like crazy. So it's almost like they find their fit and then take off. And most of them, when they quit in these studies, report a mismatch between the instrument they want to play and the one they actually play. And so I think the burnout's a lot easier to happen if you're not matched well with what you're doing. You think Kyle's going to get burned out? He's produced like 10,000 podcasts over the last two years. I'd love to see a number on that.

I don't think so. His color commentary, I think. He seems pretty good. He seems pretty healthy. Good job, Kyle. Yeah, I was thinking the burnout thing, because Marinovich is obviously the most famous example. Yeah. But there's been other stuff.

And I think figure skaters, gymnastics, a lot of tennis players. Yeah, yeah. The kind of lonelier by yourself sports, I think, are a little more dangerous. That's why I always wanted my kids to play on teams and not do stuff individually because I think the solo stuff worries me. Tennis is a super interesting one because, and this might be something to think

about with like your daughter a little bit, where there there's this famous study of Swedish tennis players, some of whom went on to become top 10 in the world. And what it found was that when kids would develop in these sort of more organic ways, you know, playing different types of games. And when someone would identify them as being good and having potential, they would then get moved right into what they called a more restrictive environment, where now they're told drilling, drilling, drilling,

and especially for girls. Like if someone identified a girl as talented, then they immediately took them out of that environment and said, I know what to do with you. And almost all of them quit by the time they were 18, almost every single one. What was the thing you had in there about the, oh, it was the, was it the Army or the Navy or the?

Or the Air Force Academy. They're all in there at one point or another. About them trying to get people basically to break them. So they either quit or stay. Yeah, yeah. But then too many people are quitting. So they decided to give them monetary stuff to convince them to stay. But all the people who would have stayed anyway just took the money.

And anybody who would have quit anyway didn't take the money. Yeah, that was a half billion dollar taxpayer. That was hilarious. Accidentally. This was writing about this psychological concept of grit that some teams like test for now. It's a survey. 12 questions. Half of them ask you about

your resilience and half ask about your so-called consistency of interests. And the most famous study was done at West Point, US Military Academy, looking at cadets who got through beast barracks, which is like the rigorous physical and emotional orientation six weeks long, you know, where high school students transition into officers and training. And what these researchers found, most famously Angela Duckworth, was that grit was a better predictor of who would make it through BEAST than were these traditional measures like tests and athleticism and all this other stuff. And so there's been all this emphasis on grit. That's what we're looking for. But then if you look at those cadets who make it through BEAST, they then get through the military academy. And then later on,

starting since about the 1990s, almost half of them drop out of the military on the day that they are allowed. And that's been getting more and more and more and more. And turns out it's because like, as we've moved to a knowledge economy, basically, so what you were mentioning is to keep them, this, this high ranking general said we should defund West Point because it's teaching, uh, officers to get out of the military, which of course it isn't. So they tried to throw money at them and all the people who were going to leave left and the ones who were going to stay took their half billion dollars collectively. And it turned out that since we've had this knowledge economy and you can move around jobs and take your skills and go do something else, the highest potential candidates were just doing that. And so the army started to have a little more success. So it wasn't that they lost their grit or whatever,

like sometimes you learn things about yourself in your early 20s and decide to change. So they've started having success with this thing called talent-based branching where they let people sample just like the athletes, just like the musicians. They let them sample a bunch of different stuff. They pair them with a coach and they say, let's reflect on, you know, did you like that? Were you good at it? And then they try something else and they keep zigzagging until they maximize, you know, this concept I talk about in range match quality, the degree of fit between your interests and ability and what you do. So they found that creating a talent market was much more effective than throwing money at people. And the grit thing was a personal thing for you, which you wrote about in both books, how you were

a below average track star heading into college. You walk onto a team and by the end, you're one of the best guys on the team. Yeah, yeah. Below average track star. That's a good one. But yeah, no, I was a walk-on in college and I was like literally the worst person on the team and stuck with it and ended up as, you know,

the university record holder and won this award for the athlete who achieved significant athletic success in the face of unusual challenge and difficulty. Which like my unusual challenge and difficulty was like just that I sucked at first. You sucked. Right, exactly. And you know, and I'm small.

So I'm sure they looked at me and were like, what, this guy. Yeah. But it's pretty funny because like I didn't score that high on the grit test because my interests are always changing, right? Yeah. Like I go from Sports Illustrated, ProPublica, like I used to be a science grad student. So it's like that would seem to testify that I have some kind of grit, but I still don't score well in the survey because I have a lot of interests.

I am fascinated by grit and I become more and more fascinated every year by it during the NBA draft. Okay. Because every year people get roped into the same dudes that it's like, man, he looked great in the workout. A lot of threes. And then it's like, yeah, in the game tape, you of threes and then it's like in the game tape

you know effort's a problem but other than that you know if he can just turn that switch on it's all the tools are there and it's like that guy usually doesn't make it and it's the people who it's like man that guy's a dog man that guy fights god what a competitor

those guys make it and you go through and look at the best 15 guys in the league and all of those dudes are people that play really hard. Now you can miss sometimes with, sometimes I think people are grit late boomers. Harden's biggest thing coming out of college was, yeah, that guy floats in and out of games. Doesn't care. Sometimes he cares. Sometimes he doesn't, doesn't have it. he's not tough enough yeah I don't know why he became tougher but that's why

these guys keep getting picked because of the James Harden's every once in a while that foot bit but then if you go back and read about

James Harden's life I think he had a lot of grit to get through like his childhood and all the shit that he went through so I don't know

how do you figure that out if you're an NBA GM that's interesting because something you mentioned is actually a profound point there, which is grit is not the stable characteristic people think of it as. We actually change this concept. I don't know if you remember from Range called the end of history illusion, where we all recognize we've changed our personality traits a lot in the past, but then think we're not going to change much in the future. And that turns out not to be true.

And so predicting grit going forward, I think is a really difficult thing to do. But if you're at the draft and you're saying effort is a problem for this guy, that's obviously not a good sign. But I think- Especially with big guys. Especially with big guys.

Rasil and I were talking about this recently. It's like, if you're over 6'8", and you don't try that hard, I'm crossing you off my draft board. I just, and if you prove me wrong, so be it, but I'm going to be right more times than wrong on that one. But if you're like the guy who's undersized by an inch and a half, but you really give a shit and you're fighting for everything. Now you might be PJ Tucker for me. Yeah. And I'd rather, I'd rather

roll the dice with that. You know, and you'll never get this stuff perfect, but I think like you said, you can go back and look at like a lot of the antecedents of Harden's performance. And maybe you could have a better idea of that this is in there somewhere. You're not going to be perfect. Like there is no perfect predicting personality change. That's one of these things why it's difficult. But I think we could, you know, we could do better and focus less on those measurables. You know, they're important, of course. But I think there's this, like this

McNamara fallacy, you know, his name for the secretary of defense in Vietnam, who judged if we were winning the war based on our body count versus the other guy's body count. And that was it. And it's the same as the draft. It's like, you decide things are important because you measure them. You don't measure them because you're important, right? So, because they're important. So, some of these less easy to measure things, I still think we could do a better job of trying to get a little bit of a signal. Well, and you make a good point in the book about there's no right or wrong with anything. There's no 100%, 0%.

It's like you're trying, and this is what advanced metrics becomes like too, where you're trying to guess the more likely scenario for point A or point B for anything. And one of the important things with that is like things might change. And if something proves you wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean you were always wrong. It just means in this instance, these set of circumstances happened and shoved it in the wrong direction. But overall, you might be more right than wrong.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Which is what people should care about, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you look at like what the Astros did to revamp their team, they had some huge misses, JD Martinez, right? Yeah. But they stuck to a good decision process, I think. And so they got more right than wrong, even though that's a huge miss for them.

But I think that's, you know, even in simple things like blackjack, if you play perfectly, you win a few more hands, you know, per hundred, that kind of thing. So you just have to have a better decision process and, and not get too hung up when you do inevitably miss because you will. What was the biggest surprise as you did this book, the thing that shocked you the most? Probably in that chapter called learning fast and slow, that there were all these incredibly well-known techniques for learning that I hadn't really heard of. And it doesn't seem like most teachers or coaches have heard of that, that make you slow down progress in the short term, but set you up for the best long-term development, basically these things that make, so it's, it's so deeply counterintuitive that you can

do something that causes improvement right now, right before your eyes, and somehow that is not building the scaffolding for someone's longer-term development. So like the single most surprising study to me was this one at the U.S. Air Force Academy where you can do these crazy experiments because kids come in and they're for math classes and they are randomized to teachers and then re-randomized the next class and re-randomized again. And what they found was that the teachers who were the best at getting their students to overachieve in calculus one, basically, systematically undermine them for their future classes. So they would then underperform going forward. And it was basically because they were teaching these like narrow procedural sets of

skills. And so then when it came to transfer, which is what you want to apply to situations you've never seen before, those students were at a disadvantage. This is something that's going on now with math, including at my daughter's school, which I really disagreed with. It teaches them to do math following this specific system. And I was always like an ad libber with math. And I was always really good at math, but like, all right, just figure, how do you solve the problem? You know, and use whatever method works for you for that time. I never, that never made sense to me. Yeah, no, that's right. It's this difference between using,

and it's totally analogous to sports. It's the same thing. This difference between executing procedures and so-called making connections knowledge where you can actually wield your skills for situations you haven't seen before. And that's what you really care about, whether it's math or sports.

The short-term success over long-term gain, going back to soccer, is our biggest problem with soccer in America where these, especially at the higher levels, the clubs are doing things that can help them win a tournament when kids are 10, 11, 12, 13. But they're learning all these things

that long-term aren't really going to help somebody. And that's, they're not. And that's why we end up in these tournaments where you just see, you know, especially on the men's side. The men's side is way worse than I think the women's side in this respect. Yeah, definitely.

And I mean, we have a huge advantage on the women's side also because if you go around the world, like most countries, women just don't have good opportunities like they do here. So I think that's a huge advantage for us here over the rest of the world by a lot. But you're absolutely right. I mean, you mentioned futsal, right? That's what most of the players, most of the best players ever are growing up on.

And it's like a different game every day. Balls, small, stays on the ground. Quick reaction. Yeah. They're playing in like a foam booth or they're playing on the sand or they're playing on the cobblestone. So like sort of the same game, but it's really mixing up that challenge. And then they go to the academies of 15 and 16, and the academies are like, we produce all the guys with the highest transfer fees. They're like,

no, they came here when they're 15. One of the things you, you know, I would say the big lesson in the book for me, which I felt pretty strongly about just in general in my life, is that there's no right path to anything. And if you're going in a bunch of different directions, sometimes that's a really good thing. And especially if you're succeeding at what you're doing, you should still want to learn how to do other things. And if you fail, it's okay. And keep pushing, keep trying,

keep trying to add things to what you do. That's certainly something I've really been passionate about with my own, everything I've tried to do professionally in the last 15 years, like always at least trying to do something else. For sure. I mean, honestly, like when I was, you know, at SI and you were at ESPN, like it was pretty apparent from where I was sitting that you could have like sat on your ass and printed money basically.

And instead you were like, you know, trying to do Grantland and trying to do other stuff and doing this. And I had an HBO show that failed. Yeah. Like it's okay. I learned stuff from it. And then you go on to the next thing. But I feel like if you're not doing that,

you can eventually stagnate, you know? That's like one of the, because I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself, quotes that stuck with me the most was this woman, Herminia Ibarra, who studies how people maximize that match quality, their fit with what they're doing. And this quote stuck in my head was, you learn who you are in practice, not in theory. She says, we have this idea, like this commencement speech idea that you can just

introspect and decide what you should be doing and go forth and do it. Where in fact, your insight into yourself is constrained by, you know, your roster of previous experiences and you have to try stuff, reflect on it, zigzag and keep doing that until you get to a niche where sort of you uniquely can be successful and fulfilled. I was fortunate because when we were creating 30 for 30 and that whole thing, and I was kind of on a real team for the first time, I was able to see the value of all of these people, like collectively we're making each other better. As a writer, you're by yourself all the time. Yeah. You know, even doing a podcast, you're by yourself all the time or you just with you and the guests,

but the guest is always changing. It's really you. And the third, third thing was really valuable for me because it was the first time I saw, Oh yeah. Like I can have half of an idea and somebody can flip it better, which is something that I guess the first real time I saw that was when i worked for kimmel show because you could see it in the writer's room where somebody would have half of an idea and then somebody else would make it whole so that kind

of stuck with me then 30 30 happened and you start to realize the value of you really can't reach your potential and they're surrounded by other people who are really good which has been that led to grantland and that led to what we're trying to do now, where the more good people you have around you is just, you're going to be better. Yeah. Cause otherwise I think- Remember that KD. Talking to you. You know, I think our natural tendency is to settle into like good enough. Right. And there's a great analogy from, I didn include this in in either of my books but i used to read through some of the speed typing literature you know how you get faster at typing and it's like we all get pretty fast and then you settle it good enough and if you want to get faster you

basically have to set a metronome a little faster match that speed no matter how many mistakes you make and you keep ticking it up and it's a great analogy because we will whatever we're doing we'll settle into good enough in that same way if you're not like interacting with people who are pushing you and stretching you in different ways well that's like learning a foreign language my one of my biggest mistakes i took like seven years of spanish but i never went to another country and got forced into a situation of having to you know speak spanish for three months where there's no alternative and it's like you have to survive by talking this yeah And by the time I was 25, I couldn't remember half spent. And then by the time I was 30, it's like, I can't, and now I

can't talk anything, understand it, whatever. But it was my fault because I should have gone somewhere. But yeah. Yeah. That's the learning you want to learning like a baby. You throw people in, get immersed, teach the grammar later. And that's what we want to do with sports to throw people in, let them problem solve, try, fail, delay the grammar part, which is like the technical skills. Can we talk about the marshmallow test? We can talk about the marshmallow test. This could wake Kyle up. Kyle, how late were you up last night?

I'll tell you about it later. Okay. But wait, one other thing about your career that I think is interesting, if you mind me to give some insight, is one of the topics in range is analogical problem solving, like using analogies from different domains. And one thing I've noticed is it seems like you're really interested in team chemistry, whether that's a basketball team or like a band that breaks up. And it's super interesting to hear how those like that interest kind of you use it to cross domain.

So I think that's like served you well also these, these multiple interests that bleed into each other basically. Yeah. It's something we put a lot of thought into when we were developing The Ringer. Like, there has to be an inherent unselfishness with the team. And people have to feel like if the whole enterprise is succeeding, they're succeeding versus like, the worst way to do it is, if I succeed, then that's good. And I don't care what happens with everybody else.

You don't want people to think that way. You know, that was one thing. And then the other thing is you want people to feel like you might bring them into the universe and hire them, but then you don't know where it's going to go. And we've had people, I think like Mallory is a great example. Mallory is an editor and that was it. And she was a great editor.

We never thought she'd be on a podcast. And then it was like, she went on a couple of podcasts. She was good. That leads to Binge Mode. And now she's one of the best people we have for speaking. I never would have guessed that. But if you don't create an infrastructure

that allows people to kind of meander whatever direction they're going to go, then, you know, which is a lot of what your book was about. That's the talent-based branching. That's what like the army is figuring out that you have to let people have some of this lateral mobility or they and you can't figure out what they're going to do if it's just this up or out structure.

She worked with me at SI too. It's awesome to see her blow up basically. Let's take one more break and then I want to talk about the marshmallow test. PDs and the marshmallow test. Just a quick break to remind you about the rewatchables. We have one coming up Memorial Day, Monday, The Hangover. It's happening.

I'm not doing a podcast on Sunday night or Monday. So this is all you get, but boy, is it a good alternative. It's me, Sean Fennessey, Chris Ryan, breaking down the best comedy of the last 10 years. So you can hear that on our rewatchables feed. And if you love the rewatchables podcast, don't forget toy, Chris Ryan, Breaking Down, the best comedy of the last 10 years. So you can hear that on our Rewatchables feed. And if you love the Rewatchables podcast, don't forget to check out our spinoff series, Rewatchable 1999, which is only on Luminary.

But we did The Insider this week. And if you haven't subscribed to those and you like The Rewatchables, I would highly encourage you to check those out. But yeah, The Insider, one of the most underrated movies of the 1990s. and you like the rewatchables, I would highly encourage you to check those out. But yeah, The Insider, one of the most underrated movies of the 1990s and Pacino's last great year, really. So that's all coming up.

But The Hangover, Monday, Memorial Day, on the rewatchables feed. Check that out. All right, let's go back to David Epstein. Quickly, the marshmallow test, just because I want to know, Kyle, listen to this. Wake up for like two seconds. I'm up, I'm up, I'm up. So explain the marshmallow test, just because I want to know. Kyle, listen to this. Wake up for like two seconds.

I'm up, I'm up, I'm up. So explain the marshmallow test quickly. There's this famous test where kids are sat in a room when they're like four years old. Marshmallow's placed in front of them. The experimenter says, I'm leaving. Won't tell you. If you can eat this marshmallow, but if you don't, when I come back, you'll get a second marshmallow.

And the kid doesn't know how long they have to wait. And the idea is that their self-restraint predicts a lot of outcomes later in life. So they're just staring at that marshmallow. Yeah. It's hilarious. And some kids immediately start picking at it. Yeah. Sniffing it. One kid will just grab it, eat it right away. The other kid will stare at it for five minutes, then eat it. Another kid will eat half of it. And then there's the kid that's just like, when that guy comes back, I'm getting two marshmallows. And just as they could be there for seven years. I mean, a couple of the kids, they'll grab it right away, like throw the plate and start looking around the room for other stuff, you know? But yeah, then there's the kids who are like, they're looking at it. They're trying

to turn their head. They're trying to distract themselves. They're yelling. They're singing. Sometimes the boys start hitting themselves in the face. Kyle, what would you have done? I would have taken that shit right away. Yeah, but it's become this like this, you know. So this is a predictor now of the people who take the marshmallow right away.

What happens? Kyle. I might want to change my answer. Here it is, Kyle. Well, supposedly, you know, they end up with worse health, more likely to be addicted to drugs, doing worse financially, all these sorts of bad life outcomes, you know, lower education. Spot on, dude. They end up on the side of the Color Commentary podcast. That was just last day for Kyle. Yeah.

But so you can go online. You can see parents doing this to their own kids, right? And there's even like, there's a hilarious one online that's like, at the end you realize it's about like abstinence. And it's like, if you don't eat the marshmallow, you're going, you know, in the afterlife, there's good things waiting. So it's just like proliferated in all these crazy ways. But the study actually did not say what parents think, this stuff that it's like a crystal ball, right? There was some effect, but even when it's like a crystal ball, right? There was some effect, but even when it's been repeated, that's been smaller. But what it was really about

was that you could actually teach kids really easy strategies to figure out how to like not eat the marshmallow. Yeah, well now I'm sure more people know about it. I would say the people that don't eat the marshmallow either are super stubborn. It's like, oh, that guy doesn't think, that guy thinks I'm gonna eat the marshmallow,

I'm not doing it or like really obedient right or like have childhood diabetes and their parents like don't hdhpds really quickly yeah this is something i feel like if you did a third book i could see you diving into you you've danced around it now in two books yeah in different ways but this would be the third book i would guess guess. Yeah. I mean, I did, you know, the way I caught on it at SI was basically co-writing the story that outed Alex Rodriguez. Yes. We should talk about that. So I did a lot of PED writing and sort of got a little fatigue from it. And so like left it for the book, but it is a very interesting world. It's fertile. For sure. It's very fertile. It's very fertile. And the stuff's getting better

now. And there's really no way to know if anyone's doing anything unless they somehow get caught like what A-Rod did where you end up in some clinic and the clinic gets busted and your name gets tied in. Oh yeah. That was like the second or third time he got caught. Yeah. Fourth time. But yeah, but I mean, in some sports people don don't care, right? Like, I think two of our last four Super Bowl MVPs have had suspensions, but like football fans don't even really know that.

So that's the Edelman shock. I know. Yeah, I thought about it. I thought about it before I said it. Living dangerously. But yeah, no, it's interesting. And I think in the major pro sports,

I think the best correlate of how many doping scandals you have in your sport is how hard you are looking for them, not how many people are actually doping. I would say basketball, if that's a scale one to 10, basketball is probably a one for how hard they're looking. Yeah, it's probably low. It's probably low. And people say-

Basketball, the one sport where just none of the best players have ever tried PEDs. It's what a miracle. I can't believe it. And you know, people will say, well, it's a skill sport, but like steroids, for example, are all chemical analogs of testosterone.

They're all like testosterone. And so any sport where men have an advantage, they would help. Weightlifting. Any sport. Sprinting. All the sports. Basketball, like male basketball players

have advantage over female basketball players. But the HGH is a recovery drug. And that's the part that is so hilarious when they say, well, you know, in basketball, they wouldn't need HGH. It's like, they would totally need HGH. What are you talking about? If you have whatever injury and you're trying to get back faster, you take HGH to come back faster. Yeah. I mean, I can tell you like when one store I worked on at SI

was going back to the 90s and I got my hands on a dealer's ledger and it had a whole bunch of college basketball programs in it right so the idea that this like is a thing that miraculously

basketball players don't have incentive to do like I think that makes yeah there's a whole steroids era in the NBA in the 90s that it's just kind of

never been really celebrated correctly. I don't know if celebrated is the right word. Probably not. If you watch some of the games from that, then you know. Yeah. The guys are bigger. Let's say it that way. Yeah.

I think from like 89 to 99 in every sport, there was definitely a steroids renaissance. Yeah. I think the drugs got a little better and just more people renaissance. Yeah. I think that drugs got a little better and just more people were doing them. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I think there, yeah, I think there's no question about it. I mean, Barry Bonds, his head got bigger. His head did get bigger. It got larger. It usually doesn't happen

at that age. But yeah, I wonder, the question for me is if like a major, major, major NBA star tested positive for something, would they toss the sample and just say to themselves, let's make sure

and then go back a second or a third time until they got the sample they wanted? Or would they want to risk like a massive hit to their business? Yeah, that's right. Like what's the incentive to catch somebody, right? If you're the NBA, there's no incentive. Right, right.

Because you can end up like the sports where it's been, you know, disastrous. Like, even in, this is sort of an aside, but I remember looking at some, like,

data for minor league baseball where they don't have a players' union, so they have more random testing than in the majors. And players who had tested positive

and been suspended were still more likely to move to the next level of baseball than players who had never tested and been suspended were still more likely to move to the next level of baseball than players who had never tested positive. So if you, if you know, your incentive is still to do it, even if you're going to get caught because you still move up. And I think that's sort of where we are in a lot of sports. And it's not when testing is really, really limited and not that random and frequent, it's not that easy to get caught. I just think like, HGH not legal, Tommy John surgery legal.

Yeah. Like, it's such a slippery slope for me when you can put a dead person's ligament in your arm and that's fine. Yeah. You know? Even encouraged, yeah. You could take,

you could get diagnosed as having ADD. Yeah. You know, medically diagnosed, I have to take this and take Ritalin. Yeah. But if you're not diagnosed, that now becomes illegal. And it's just so poorly governed and so hypocritical in so many different ways that Messi took HGH like his entire childhood, right? I'm super curious if we like, you know, is he like an Anthony Davis where if we

raise these little guys who are learning little guy skills and shot them full of HGH, would we get more messies? I'm really curious because he's the only experiment that we know of that we have like that. You mentioned in range the Yao Ming getting basically mated with another giant Chinese basketball player. It was an arranged marriage basically and to see what would happen and how tall their kids would be. Yeah. I mean, they don't say arranged, but it was like people were encouraged for like several generations, you know, who were on the National Basketball Federation. They definitely didn't meet on Tinder. No.

Chinese Tinder. Seven foot Tinder. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. But your point about HGH is, you know, HGH, when steroids in the 90s became controlled substances, there were like scientists testifying saying, let's not tar HGH with the same brush because we don't know anything about it yet. And so Congress kind of moved it into this law that, this trafficking law that like steroids

came out of. And basically interpretation of the law has been that it's like even more restricted than most steroids. And I think that's basically an accident of how the law worked and that it wasn't meant to be that way and that it ended up more restricted than it should have been. It's funny in football, people don't care anymore. People really, really, really care in baseball or they did for years. Now maybe they're numb to it. And in football, the Ray Lewis thing was incredible. I remember writing about it, really going

all in on it in 2012 and 13. Like just how this deer antler spray. And that was a story I did with George Dorman. Yeah, it was just ludicrous. It was like, what are we doing? I mean, I was in the locker room there. I remember I have some great tape of someone in the Ravens yelling at me. And I went in and Ray wasn't supposed to be talking because he was injured or something.

And I'm like, that's not my rule. Like, I don't care. And I had his, you know, I had like copies of his personal check to that deer antler spray company, like pictures of it on my phone and sort of like, you know, what do you have to say about this, this company? You went to Ray Lewis? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the locker room. Were you scared for your life? They were playing the Giants. No, I mean, like if he punched me in the face, like that'd be, I'd totally use that in the story. That story would have been me. We had no idea that story was going to come out on Superbowl media day, right? We couldn't have predicted the Ravens were going to be in the Super Bowl that year. So that wasn't really planned. That's true. They were underdogs that year.

And that company, though, we got a lot of flack because they were saying, oh, this product for these reasons couldn't actually contain insulin-like growth factor, which is the thing that they advertise people want. And then there was like independent testing to show that it did have some of that anyway. Were you surprised by just how many athletes that we wondered if they might be using PEDs? Coincidentally, their wives were the ones using the PEDs? I thought that was amazing.

How did that happen? I'm not so surprised because I think like athletes are such a tiny fraction of this PED market. It's people who want to look better.

That's the real market. Athletes are like advertisements for those people, but really it's people who want to look better. I almost the real market. Athletes are like advertisements for those people, but really it's people who want to look better. I almost did it. I almost did it for a whole Grantland thing. Oh, really? And I did all the research on it. Yeah. When I started playing basketball again, I was going to be like, I'm going to really take this.

Wait, aren't you starting to play basketball again, again? Well, this is when I might actually do it when I turn 50. But I did the research on it and I didn't like how the stuff about like if you had cancer in your body, it could actually spur the cancer on a little bit. And that was a little alarming, to say the least. Yeah. I mean, there may be like an adaptive reason why we have less growth hormone as we get older, when you're more likely to get cancer. So I think I would be wary of that. You know, if you wanted to do something, like I'm not saying you should do this, but I would go with like low doses of testosterone rather than human growth hormone.

Oh, like go Cuban style? That's a big Mark Cuban thing. I think he does ads for it. Does he? He's been very passionate about like low doses of testosterone. The thing is, I think you have to, once you decide to do it, you just have to keep doing it.

Because then if you come off it, I think it fucks you up. You can come off. There's ways to come off. And if you do a low dose, it wouldn't be a big deal. I'm not saying you should do this. I think it fucks you up. You can come off. There's ways to come off. And if you do a low dose, it wouldn't be a big deal. I'm not saying you should do this. I think it's like vastly overused.

Oh, I'm considering all options. Okay. But you know, like prescriptions for men like in their 40s have like quintupled over the last decade for this stuff.

Like, so we might get to a point where this is like normal for middle-aged men and athletes, but athletes aren't allowed to do it, which might be kind of a weird situation. Yeah.

I miss it the most of anything. Testosterone? No, pick up basketball. Gotcha. I have dreams about it. I really do. It's my favorite thing to do. You should do it again.

You can do it. I love the camaraderie of it. I love the teamwork. I just enjoy it. And so I still have dreams about playing. So I'm going to have to make one more run. I'm making a run right now. Okay.

I'll have to talk to Alex and see. Did you ever think in a million years that he would become like a quote? I'm still not sure how likable he is,

but that he, the things would shift for him like it has. I could not have envisioned the way it went, you know, after like Katie Couric. I thought that stuff

would stick, stick in people's heads. I mean, he's almost, I'm not going to call him a pathological liar, but he definitely was a serial liar. I mean, somebody told me that Katie Couric video

was used in a class about like, for like intelligence analysts to say like, here's where you look at someone who's like good at lying basically. Yeah. Yeah, no, I didn't see this. He was the Barry Bonds of lying? I don't know.

He just, he lied over and over again and got caught multiple times and got suspended for an entire year. And then everybody's like, cool, put him on Sunday Night Baseball. I'm like, what? I mean, he is a good commentator, you know? And then, and then at one point it turned out he had like a prescription that baseball let him have for testosterone. Right?

Like, so, like, I mean, you know, I don't begrudge him doing any of that stuff. I think that breaking that story was a good trade for both teams, kind of. Yeah. Maybe cured him a little bit of his perfectionist syndrome and, you know. Well, it's great for Red Sox fans because they've only won one World Series this century. Now it's totally tainted. Yeah. Unlike the super clean Red Sox World Series that we have.

Exactly. Yeah. Unfortunately, I was living in New York and not Boston at the time. Yeah. Squeaky clean for Red Sox World Series that we have exactly yeah unfortunately I was living in New York squeaky clean yeah squeaky clean for Red Sox for us

yeah I think that would be an interesting I know you were probably burned out on it for a while but I think the

there's so many ways to go with it and just in general that some things are okay to improve your performance but others aren't, is one of the most fascinating topics to me right now. Yeah.

It's a very difficult line. And for sure, there are things that are banned. Going to Germany and shooting shit in your knee is okay. Yeah. Like recycled blood that gets shot back into your knee. That's okay. And who knows, when they're going to Germany, it's not even just that like platelet-rich plasma stuff

because you could get that here. So if they're going to Germany, they're going for things that probably aren't approved here. That's not a probably. They're not approved here. That's why they have to go to Germany. Right. So that kind of like medical tourism stuff,

that's not a good symbol either to have. If you're going to another country for anything, that's, there's a red flag. Yeah. It's, if we don't have it here, red flag.

Yep. Agreed. All right. Well, I look forward to all the, all the stuff you have coming. Thank you very much. I don't know what's next.

I know you're on a little book tour here. I don't really know what's next either. I mean, Range comes out Tuesday. I think that'll, you know, that and my three month old will keep me busy for a little while, but I'm going to, I'm going to

abide by my book and like, uh, not worry too much about knowing exactly what's next. That's good. That's good advice. It's called range. You can pre-order it. It comes out, uh, on Tuesday, David Epstein. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks to David Epstein. Thanks to Jonathan Charks and Kevin O'Connor. Thanks to the NEF. Try to Jonathan Charks and Kevin O'Connor. Thanks to the NEF. Try to stay out of trouble since we're not doing a podcast this Sunday night. Jesus, stay out of trouble. And thanks to DAZN. And we will be back probably Tuesday rangers. Hopefully nothing crazy will happen. And if there, if something absolutely bonkers happens, I'll do an emergency podcast from my hotel room at my daughter's soccer tournament.

But otherwise we will, we will see you on Tuesday here at the BS pod. I don't have feelings within. On the wayside, let her run. Say, I don't have feelings within.