The Bill Simmons Podcast - Luka vs. Trae, Kyrie vs. Chemistry, and Canelo vs. Kovalev With Chris Mannix, Plus Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by SI and DAZN's Chris Mannix to discuss the start of the NBA season, including the Warriors' drop-off, Trae Young, Luka Doncic, Pascal Siakam, searching for depth in the Eastern Conference, Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn, and more (2:15) before discussing the upcoming Canelo-Kovalev match for the WBO light heavyweight championship (52:15). Then Bill sits down with former Facebook executive and head of Instagram Adam Mosseri to discuss some of Facebook's criticism, how social media platforms are addressing bad actors, the upcoming 2020 election, innovating Instagram, athletes on social media, and more (1:03:22). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Sports teams face many challenges. Just look at the Nets right now. They've lasted three games with Kyrie. Now they're facing challenges. Codable co-founder Gretchen Huebner faced her own challenge. She needed to hire a game artist. Went to ZipRecruiter, posted her job, found the right person in less than two weeks.

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Hey Google, tell my son not to act like an insane person tomorrow. I guess I'm in charge of my son. Two programming notes before we get to the pod today. The Rewatchables is back late, late Wednesday night, heading into Halloween with The Shining. We recorded it on Friday, and it's almost two hours long, and it's crazy, as is the movie. So keep an eye out for that.

Also announcing something on Thursday, maybe even late Wednesday night, about something I've been working on that I'm excited to tell you about. So be ready for that as well. And we'll talk about that more on Thursday's podcast. Coming up, we have Chris Mannix talking basketball and then Canelo Kovalev, which I think is going to be a really good fight. And then the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri. It's all coming up.

This is a very good podcast. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Chris Mannix is on the line from Sports Illustrated and from DAZN, which has a big fight this weekend. Canelo fighting Kovalev. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Want to talk a little basketball first. I thought your China pieces were really good a few weeks ago, by the way. Wanted to mention that as well.

I appreciate that. This first NBA week is in the books. I think the thing people are the most surprised about is that the Warriors have not looked like the team that has been the you know, the dominant team in the last six years. I'm not sure why people were surprised that they look bad in those first two games. What were your expectations heading into the season for them? I mean, I, I thought they'd be a team in the playoff mix. I don't know if I had any idea where they would land in that mix.

You know, the thing I didn't quite take into account that we've seen early on is that the defense is terrible. I mean, they've been giving up at least, what, 120 a game in their first three games. I mean, it's wild to watch them and be that bad. But then you kind of think about it, Bill. It's like, all right, well, look at the guys they lost. I mean, Klay Thompson is an elite shooter, but he's also their

best defensive wing from last year. Kevin Durant could defend. Andre Guadalla could defend, and they're plugging in rookies and D'Angelo Russell. So that's a real concern for them. That defense isn't going to get better with the talent they have in that roster.

Throw in the fact that we know Steph and Draymond, they're going to miss games this year. I don't know how many, but they're going to miss some games this year. And I was just having this text exchange with a player that, that went up against them already this year. And he said, you know, pretty simply back, that team's not making the playoffs. And the more I think about it, I think that's realistic. I mean, that the playoffs to get in the West, I mean, what do I think that's realistic. I mean, the playoffs to

get in the West, I mean, what do you think? 48 wins, 50 wins, maybe? It's a pretty good conference. I think that they're a serious candidate to fall out of the playoff mix. I tried to make this case when Rossello and House and I did the over-under pods before the season and was accused of being a hater of the Warriors, which I don't know. I've been very complimentary over the years to the Warriors. But I just didn't understand why people didn't see the defensive part because of all the guys you just mentioned. Klay was their best perimeter defender.

Durant could guard five positions. And Iguodala is historically one of the best defenders of all time. He's a little older now. But just taking those three guys off and replacing them with the guys they replaced them with, to me, they seem like a threat to give up like Devin Booker's next 70 point game, like that kind of stuff. And you think, what was it? The second game of the year, somebody dropped 141 on them. Oklahoma city. Yeah. 141 is a crazy amount of points for a four quarter NBA game. That means you're basically

four straight 35-point quarters. It's really hard to do that. Like, even the worst teams don't give up 141. So I think, in a weird way, getting their asses kicked those first two games

reset the expectations, but also maybe lit a fire a little bit under the Draymond-Curry combo that may be like, hey, man, we're not going down like this. So maybe it'll ultimately be a good thing,

but I still don't think they have the talent. But how much of a fire can it light under them? I mean, it's not like they're not scoring. I mean, every time out, they're putting up a good number of points. It's just, they're not stopping anybody. And you can light as much a fire as you want around Steph. He's not going

to morph into a great defender. I think we've seen a progressive regression from Draymond the last couple of years that I don't think he can get back to being defensive player of the year Draymond anymore. And, and the guys that the rookies they have out there, Russell, like these guys aren't going to become plus defenders overnight. I don't think they're going to get cooked for a buck 40 in the way they did against New Orleans or even what the Pelicans put up with 123 in losing to Golden State. I mean, I think that's going to get a little bit

better, but the days of them being like a top half of the league defense, I think are over. I don't know how they can scheme their way back into being a good defense. Well, it's going to be fun. Like I'm looking at their schedule mid-November. They have four games in six days at New Orleans, at Memphis, and then at Dallas, at Utah on a Wednesday, Friday.

And that when you're not good defensively anyway, and you're relying on two guys pretty heavily, which is what they're doing now, that's when you start getting into real trouble with the schedule, where you have like the last two of a four and six, you're at Dallas and then at Utah. It's a brutal way to end that. But a team like Dallas, Porzingis and Doncic together,

and I want to talk about them now, I just feel like that team will get any shot they want. But just watching the first week, I try not to overreact, but I do look at who looks like they're a level higher than they were last year. And Doncic has really, really jumped out to me this first week where it's just, this guy has hit every checkpoint I wanted to hit.

I feel like he can go by anybody whenever he wants. And the Porzingis thing is really fun to watch. I like watching the little high screens with stuff and how he drives to the basket. And then Porzingis is doing these late cuts down the middle and he's finding them. And I think they have a chance to be really special together. Have you been able to watch them yet?

Yeah, I watched parts of two of their games this week. I'm with you. I think they're going to have this kind of modern-day Stockton Malone thing going on. Stockton Malone did kind of one thing really well with that pick and roll, and I guess the pick and pop too. But Doncic and Porzingis can do like five things really well where you're driving to the basket

or you're popping behind the three-point line, and Doncic is just kind of doing a lot of crazy acrobatic things. They're just going to be dangerous. And I know they worked out together over the summer to kind of get, start to sort of force feed some of this chemistry. And you can just see it. You can see it early on, but, but how about like you see Donchik going to the next level? The Donchik-Trey Young rivalry is going to be one of like the great rivalries of this generation because both these guys are playing out of their minds early on in ways that you kind of look at and you're like, all right, that's kind of sustainable. I can see Doncic playing like this all season long. And Trey's making like 30 footers. He's making, as one coach told me last night,

the crazy shots he wasn't making last year. So maybe that kind of levels off, but he's another guy that is going to put up like 28 to 30 points every night, almost effortlessly. So I mean, those two guys just, they're going to be something to watch the next 10 years. Yeah, it's funny. The Atlanta fans are getting a little frisky because I was very critical of the Luka trade

and I still am. I still feel like Luka is going to be an MVP in the next three to four years. I don't think Trae Young will ever be an MVP. Maybe I'm missing something. I still would rather have Luca. And for me in the moment, if I have a chance to get somebody who might be an MVP someday, I'm just always picking that guy. I don't care what somebody is offering me. I think what's cool about this situation is that Trey Young is also really, really good. And I do think Luka is going to come back to haunt Atlanta a little bit down the road in a way like,

oh man, we traded the rights to this guy and he's now a two-time MVP. But what they ended up with was pretty great. So I think we have a chance maybe to look at this down the road as one of these trades where both sides just feels really good about what they got. Cause there's something about Trey young in Atlanta that makes sense. And I can't figure it out because not since Dominique has, they had a guy that just seems to fit with the city. They've had,

they've had a lot of weird stars, right? Like they had my tumbo, you know, and Joe Johnson and just guys that weren't fun and didn't feel Atlanta-y. And now he brings like an energy to those home games. I watched the Sixers-Hawks game last night. That game was really fun to watch, you know? And I just think that team has an energy to them. So I'm glad it worked out for both teams. Yeah, Al Horford, too, another Atlanta-y

type of guy. Atlanta was a star, but not really a star down there. Steve Smith. Yeah, just not. Trey's like the closest thing to Dominique that they've had since Dominique. It's just the way he plays. I think you're right that

Doncic could be one of those two-time MVPs, and his ceiling is higher. Doncic's ceiling is the two-time MVPs. Trae Young's ceiling is like five-time scoring champion. I don't know how you balance those two off. Is one much better than the other?

Maybe you can do more with Doncic because of his size and I guess he can become a better defender and defend multiple positions, whereas Trey, I think, is always going to be kind of an average to Steph Curry-ish defender. Might be his type of ceiling.

I think you're being generous on that one. I think defensively, he's pretty bad. He's bad, but so was Steph early on. Steph was bad, too. I think there's a way he gets physically stronger. There's a way as he gets physically stronger, there's a pathway to him being average on that end of the floor, which is really all you need for him at that point. That's a good idea for Atlanta Hawks blog, a pathway to being average, the Atlanta Hawks blog. The thing with Steph Curry, at least he was 6'3".

Trey is just, he's 6'1", and he just feels little out there but again it doesn't really matter what matters is they set out to try to create this really fun team that kind of used the Golden State model which we all laughed at I know I made a lot of jokes about it but you you talk about what his ceiling is the ceiling is kind of like the best case, best case scenario ceiling would be Curry. I don't think he's going to be as good as Curry, but that would be the hope, right? That you could build a championship contender around a shooting point guard

who has, who has the ball and doesn't necessarily need it and can play off it, but can also create shots for other guys. And it's just, you know, an incredible score and, and can be off it, but can also create shots for other guys. And is just an incredible scorer and can be the best guy. This is a model that when you and I were growing up did not seem conceivable for a championship team.

You couldn't have a point guard who controlled most of your big shots. This couldn't be the model that actually won the title. The 2015 Warriors changed that. I don't know. Do you think he could be the number one actually won the title. The 2015 Warriors changed that. I don't know. Do you think he could be the number one scorer on a championship team? Oh, yeah.

I mean, you have to do what Golden State did. And the other part of Trey is that he's an otherworldly passer. Like, he is a ridiculous playmaker when he gets into that kind of mode. So that's another part of his game that you have to account for. But just like Steph, you got to surround him with the right guys.

I mean, you have to understand his defensive deficiencies and have a sturdy-ish Klay Thompson type around him. Maybe it doesn't have to be the scorer that Klay is, but he's got to be the defender that Klay is, a Draymond type, even like a Bogut in the middle to backstop everything and to clean up all those mistakes that you know are going to be there when Trey's out there. But I'm just a, I wasn't, I mean, I was down on him coming into the draft as an elite player. And you remember the first summer league. I mean, people were just leapfrogging off the Trey Young bandwagon.

Like there was, it was just like, you know, running for lifeboats off the Trey Young bandwagon like there was it was just like you know running for lifeboats off the trey young bandwagon so he he was kind of behind the eight ball especially as luca started to take off early in that year but really the second half of this last season on i mean he's he's just looked like everything you hoped he could possibly be so yeah i i think he can be the number one guy on a title team i think the one thing that they've grabbed this year has been the Sneaky League Pass Award for when they're playing 730 and it's like they're playing Miami or something. Now you're going, oh, I kind of want to watch the fourth quarter of that one. I want to see what happens. And I think Miami is another one.

I just like that team. I like watching them. And Butler has missed a couple games because he had a kid. But I think when he's back with the other pieces they added, I really liked Tyler Harrow. I just, I think he's ready right now. I've been, I was saying that before the season, I thought him as a rookie of the year, 25 to one was not completely insane. Cause I thought he was going to play. I also think they have a trade to make. Um, I've enjoyed them. Is there anybody else on your list that you've been surprised by how much you've

enjoyed watching them? Oh, Toronto. Easy. I don't know if I'm the driver of the Pascal Siakam for MVP bandwagon, but I'm at least leading it. I'm one of the first people in that line. I want to be

one of the first people in that line. I've watched all their games. I was at one of it. I'm one of the first people in that line. I want to be one of the first people in that line. I've watched all their games. I was at one of their games against Boston. I mean, this is just like, you hate to make the Kawhi comparison with Siakam, but he just has this sort of simple mindset where it's like, okay, I'm weak at X, so I'm going to spend my four months off

getting a lot better at X. So this first year, he couldn't shoot at all. Then all of a sudden, he's like, I'm going to be a corner three-point shooter, just like Kawhi did in his early years in San Antonio. This past offseason, it's like, all right, Kawhi's gone, so I've got to be kind of an above-the-break three-point shooter. And I'm watching him against Boston just flip up five consecutive above-the-break three-pointers.

And he's adding that to his game. And I'm watching him against Boston just flip up five consecutive above the break three pointers. Yeah. And and he's adding that to his game. And the guys, what, 24, 25 years old, everything you throw at him, it seems like he's capable of taking it on. He's already an elite defender. He's already great in the open floor. Like, I think if this season progresses, he's not going to average like 30 a game, which he's kind of around right now.

But could he average 25 to 27 and be, you know, a top five defensive player of the year type of guy? Yeah, he can. And if, if you have those types of credentials and if your team is good, I mean,

we forget how good that team was in the regular season without Kawhi. I mean, there was 17 and five without Kawhi in the regular season. If they wind up as like a three seed in the East, which I don't think is insane, and Siakam puts up those types of numbers, I'm telling you that he's in the conversation for MVP. When we did the over-under pods,

this was one of our best arguments because their over was 46. It seemed too low. But we also didn't know, are they going to blow this up? You know, are they, is this going to be just Masai just selling everything for parts in January? I never saw the Siakam thing coming.

Because watching these first couple games, and I watched that Celtic game like you did, it reminded me of when Jordan disappeared from the Bulls and everybody was like, ah, they're going to be terrible. And then Pippen just went up a level. And it was like, and we knew Pippen was good. I mean, he was on the dream team. I think this is a much more surprising jump, but I don't think anybody expected the Bulls to win 53 games with Pippen. But he was able to add all these things to his game and be the focal point of what was going on. It was like, oh man. And he became an MVP candidate and it's early with Siakam and you know, he's making threes now. He might start missing them next week, but it did remind me of that where everyone's writing them

off. Cause well, no Kawhi. Well, who knows? Well, they might sell off parts. And then it's like, oh yeah. Siakam might be like a second team all NBA guy. And they have to be taken seriously. And the more I look at the East versus the West, I think the East is a lot closer to the West this year than I think I was prepared to accept before the year. Remember that the big argument was, who's going to be the three seed? Is it going to be Boston? Is it going to be Indiana, Toronto, Miami? Everybody had like their team that they rode. I think Boston's good. I think Toronto's good. I think Miami's good. So that's five teams right there. We don't know what we're getting

from Indiana yet. Brooklyn, how long can they hang around? But they at least have five teams that I think are legit playoff teams. And then when you go to the West side with the Warriors falling off, maybe the conferences are closer than we thought. Am I crazy? Well, no, I don't think it's crazy to think they're closer. I do think that when you get past Milwaukee and Philly, it's a pretty big drop. I think Boston's going to be able to score, but man, unless Robert Williams develops into DeAndre Jordan this year, I don't know that they're going to be...

I mean, Cantor kind of is what he is. I'm a huge Grant Williams guy. Me too. I've watched all their games this year, and Grant Williams in the opener, I was in Philly for that, and Embiid catches him on the switch and drops a shoulder into him and it was like running into a brick wall like Grant Williams

doesn't move and I saw Marc Gasol do the same thing to him in Toronto and he didn't move like this guy he reminds me of like a more athletic version of Chuck Hayes. Like he's like 6'6", 6'7", defends well, rebounds well, uses every inch of his size pretty well. I think they got something there in Grant Williams, but it's still not enough to have any

kind of impact in the postseason. There's only two teams in the East that can make any impact in the postseason. That's Philadelphia and Toronto. I don't think you can say that in the postseason. That's, you know, Philadelphia and Toronto. I agree to say that in the West. No, Philadelphia, Milwaukee,

I mean, it's really in Milwaukee. I'm sorry, but I think Toronto potentially, I, I think that, I think their ceiling has to be raised with the way C. Occam's playing just from the eye test for the first week. I feel like he's playing as well as anybody in the league.

So if, if that's going to continue, I think we have to raise the ceiling. My point was more, I thought there was just going to be a huge disparity even with the records, where we had potentially 11 teams that might be playoff teams in the West.

And then in the East, it's like, man, can we even get to a three seed that has 48 wins? But now I think Toronto and Boston and Miami are all going to be there. And I think Miami has a trade to make too, which is the other interesting thing about them. But you mentioned- Miami always feels-

Yeah. Miami always feels they have a trade to make. And they have contracts, stuff like that. I think on the West side, yet again, I underrated San Antonio. They're just tough, man. The infrastructure, it's like the Pats. You look year after year, you're like, ah, maybe this is the year they fall off.

And then the infrastructure seems to win out. But I think they go maybe nine deep. Cause they're right now it's Denver, San Antonio, Clippers, Utah, Houston, Lakers,

Dallas with Minnesota as the, they're in the playoffs right now after three games, but I don't see that happening. And then Portland. You're not buying Minnesota yet. There's a lot of Wiggins right now. I just don't trust him. Yeah.

Do you trust him? Yeah. No, I don't trust Wiggins until I get 25 games of what he's doing. I trust that, you know, when Ryan and Gerson kind of got their teeth into this stuff this offseason, they clearly said, you know,

you're going to get like an electrical shock if you shoot a mid-range jump shot. Like they're pushing him way out beyond the three point. I think he's averaging close to six threes a game in the first part of this season. And he's not making them right now, but I think they'll take those misses from three rather than the, you know, wide variety of misses he had from two last year.

But they're good. I mean, you know, Towns is great, obviously. I think Teague's been okay. And I keep, whenever I think about, do I buy the Timberwolves? Like, this was a team we thought was going to make a run at a mid-level playoff spot last year before Tibbs and everything kind of fell apart. I mean, why can't they get back to sort of being something like that team with organic improvements from the young guys on the roster? It's,

it's obvious to me that, you know, I know towns loves Ryan Saunders. He was the one to go to bat for him from day one when the off season ended. I mean, why can't they, it all depends on Wiggins. I'm with you,

but I think that, that what they have and what they're doing is, is kind of sustainable. I can't wait until you come on the podcast again in like six to eight weeks and I can make fun of you for this when you bought in, when Wiggins seduced you. You made a couple threes. I don't think they'll let Wiggins,

they're not going to let Wiggins shoot all those twos. He might shoot like 22% from three, but he's going to jack those threes up. They're just not going to let him go mid range anymore. I will say the one thing that really has surprised me with Wiggins, whatever, this is what he's going to do. It's like the Jeff green kind of model of the tantalizing talent that you're

always going to be disappointed by, but his teammates really seem to like him. I thought it was telling after he made that last big shot in the comeback game against Miami, which I watched. I thought it was telling how everybody reacted to it. It was the reaction of a group of guys that really genuinely liked and cared about somebody they were playing with. And I thought, I don't know. Maybe he takes so much much shit maybe they notice it maybe they think it's unfair he is he is still pretty young what is he like 24 20 23 or 24 so who knows the the case for them

is that we're talking about a trade to make this is another team that has a trade to make because if you were going who is the most logical chris were going, who is the most logical Chris Paul team? This is the most logical Chris Paul team. Whether he'd want to go there, I don't know. But they could just easily, Teague's expiring, Jorgie Dang, and whatever, a conditional top 10 protected first, whatever you want to do. And you put Chris Paul in there and who knows if Towns is going to play like he's playing. That's at least

a team that would be annoying to play in the first round of the playoffs. Do you think Chris Paul stays or goes? Oh, I think he goes. Just the way Oklahoma City operates, they'll wait until they can get something for him.

They won't have like an auction and say we've got to send him out of there because they know they can't bottom out this year. They're too good to completely bottom out. I mean, Shea's really good. Gallo's there. Steven Adams is fine. Like they're not a playoff team,

but they're a team that's like, you know, competing for like the 10 spot in the West. So I think they'll wait, but I'd be surprised if he's there before February. They'll find somebody. But Minnesota, I still think Minnesota is going to sit on D'Angelo Russell. I still think they want him. They were left at the altar by this guy. They thought they had him.

They were printing D'Angelo Russell jerseys in Minnesota, and then he turns around and takes the deal with Golden State. I don't know. I don't know that Russell is long for Golden State, especially if Clay finds his way back this year. And who knows if that's going to happen. But I still think the play for the Timberwolves is Russell. Clay's not coming back this year.

I wish there was a way to wager on this. But the Warriors people, and I'm sure you've heard it too, have been so adamant behind the scenes that, no, we're keeping Russell, that it makes me suspicious. No, no, we got him to keep him. And it's like, okay, well, we'll see. I don't believe that for a second.

We'll see how that goes. And I think the fact that Teague's expiring is almost $20 million gives them a lot of flexibility. I think from an OKC standpoint, there was actually a bet before the season, will Chris Paul be on OKC for the whole season? And I think it was like minus 140 or minus 150 that he was going to stay on the team the whole season.

The Minnesota thing made me realize during the season, somebody overachieves in a way that you didn't expect and becomes a candidate. And I think that's what OKC is hoping for. And maybe it's Minnesota, you know, where it's like, oh, didn't see these guys as a suitor, but now they're 30 and 19 and Teague's not even playing that well and you can make the move.

Can we do some Celtics quick? Yeah. All right. Let's actually take the move. Can we do some Celtics quick? Yeah. All right. Let's actually take a break and then we'll talk Celtics. All right. It seems like the new buzzword these days is VPN, but what is VPN? Well, it stands for virtual private network, a technology that encrypts all the information you send through wifi. A lot of companies make VPNs, but the one I want to tell you about is Norton Secure VPN made by Norton, a brand backed by one of the world's largest civilian cyber intelligent networks with over 30 years of experience.

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Terms do apply. One thing I have liked about the Celtics, I'm glad you mentioned Grant Williams because I both hated and loved the Celtics draft. The Romeo and Langford pick, I hated when they did it. I continue to hate it. I hated that they traded out of the Fiebel spot. I really wanted them to take Fiebel at 15 or 20, but then I really liked the Grant Williams pick. And, and I, Carson Edwards is fun. I think he's the rare rational confidence guy who is already acting like he's been in the

league eight years, which is interesting. I've never really seen that before with a rookie. Like he's carrying himself like Eddie house circa 2008. I mostly like it, but at the same time, I'm like, all right, dude, the NBA season is starting. You can't take 30-foot threes. Grant Williams has been pretty much as advertised. I think what's fascinating to me about this team in the first four games is that in crunch time, they're just playing their best five, which I always like. They're playing Tatum and Brown together with Hayward, with Smart, and with Kemba for the most part. Grant Williams can creep in there for some of the fourth quarters. But for the most part, they're like, unless we're going against Embiid or Jokic,

we can go small. Tatum and Brown have enough size that it's not ludicrous. And then they're just going all slash and kick. It feels much more like a Brad Stevens team than I think last year's team did. And I don't think that's an accident. So I like the identity they have. What do you think just about the kind of vibe, the identity, the chemistry, all that stuff? Yeah. I mean, I think that it's definitely more of a brad stevens type of team um i i'm to backtrack a second i'm with you on langford i mean langford reminded me the james young pick it's like they kept saying like what he can do but he didn't do any of that in college it's like well he can be this guy he can be that guy good shooter like all right well i didn't exactly see it at a high level in college so you know we'll see um you know that's a great comparison with eddie house and carson edwards

that's i don't remember that one because that's they both go into the game and you know carson edwards had to check in early against philly in the opener and all of a sudden i see this guy that i i saw you know put up eight threes against cleveland a preseason game all of a sudden you know first shot up and within 30 seconds, he's, he's definitely a confident, confident shooter. Well, wait, hold on the Langford thing though. The, the, the weird thing about that pick was if, you know, Kemba's coming, which I think they had a pretty good idea at the end of June. And yeah, from everything I've read about Langford and watching the YouTube clips and

all of it, he just seems like somebody who needs a ball in his hands. And I don't see how that situation ever happens on the Celtics team. So that's why I really wanted them to focus on like role players, like guys like Thibel and people like that. I really honestly think they thought they were taking Tyler Harrow and then he got picked right before them and they didn't know what to do is my, my working theory. I don't know if you agree with that. Yeah. I mean, he's a, he, he's a perfect fit for what they do in, in his shooting. And I would, I would have gone Tybalt as well, because if you're the success they've had with Marcus Smart,

you know, as this kind of defensive menace and the fact that maybe if you make a deal down the line, Marcus Smart could be included in it might be good to have a Tybalt type who's like this ball hawking, you know, defensive guard, you can kind of plug into that role. So I, I, I didn't, I guess Lankford sort of looks like a guy that, that maybe if he goes all the way to what you think he's going to be, he could be kind of your everyday two guard who can score and do a little bit of everything. But I didn't think they needed that. I didn't think so.

Kemba is probably a big part of it as well, but I just, you know, I'm watching like say the Knicks game, for example, and I'm watching that game and, you know, I'm seeing,

you know, Jalen Brown do some great things off fence. Then the other end, he's, he's, they got to stick them on Julius Randall and these other big guys. And he's just getting like plowed over. And,

you know, it's fine for right now. Cause everybody's healthy and everybody's just getting plowed over. It's fine for right now because everybody's healthy and everybody feels good and all that stuff, but can you do that for 82 games and into the playoffs? I mean, can you play that small?

Because they do go Brown and Tatum, and they sprinkle in Williams, and they sprinkle in Robert Williams, and Cantor's been hurt, so he'll play a role, but I just think they're going to wear down at some point that front line without some kind of deal. I think the guy they're sitting on, really, is Clint Capella.

I mean, I think that's the guy they'd love to take a Daniel Tice contract and maybe a couple other small things and a draft pick and go get a guy like that and add him to the mix. Why would Houston trade him? Well, it's only if things go completely south down there. You know, if this whole westbrook harden thing doesn't work out oh so you're in the camp that it could go completely south i mean you don't i mean i they're they're i don't know why i'm so bullish on this it goes

against 90 things i believe in and meanwhile i'm blindly putting them in as a 55 win team but i don't know but if you take like like take the take the name I mean take the names Harden Westbrook away like if you get two guys with usage rates in the 40s like would you think they could coexist you know one of which is a non-shooter like would you would you believe that

watching them last night ultimately there's five guys on the court for each side and their two guys are, are freaking, you know, spectacular as, as many problems as I've had with Westbrook and the deification of him over the years and stuff like that.

Guess what? When, when there's three minutes left, it's nice to have him on your team. You know, he's just a phenomenal athlete who makes plays. And I think they needed, I felt this way heading into the season. I felt like they needed to get a little weirder.

I thought they were almost so predictable and kind of boring to watch. And I felt like their players were almost bored to some degree. I think he just kind of mixes it up a little bit. It's like a TV show where you bring in that actress who's just a wild card. And I think that's going to be a good vibe for the regular season. I'm with you though, when it gets to the playoffs, I'm a lot more skeptical. It's like the Vanessa Marcel 90210. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Bringing in the wild card.

Good call. Now you're talking my language. Are you more or less impressed with the Sixers as a possible finals team from what you've seen in the first month, or first week? More impressed. They're just going to be so good defensively.

Yeah, me too. Once they figure out, they got to figure out some rotations and, you know, is Tybalt the guy, their bench, you know, how do they, how does Brett Brown work the bench? But I mean, when they get more comfortable with each other defensively, there's going to be nights where like good offensive teams are being held to like 85 points.

I mean, I'm, I'm watching, you know, Josh Richardson lockdown down point guards and small forwards alike. You know, they're figuring out how to, you know, kind of play Horford and Embiid together. Simmons is out there, just a menace. I mean, I understand the whole shooting stuff, and I get it.

You've got to have Harris and maybe Korkmaz or a couple other guys make shots semi-regularly. But if you're holding teams to sub-40% shooting every night and sub-30% three-point shooting, you're going to win a lot of games or you look like crap offensively too. They're just that good on that end of the floor that I think they'll be able to lock teams down enough to win big games. I just like having a weird team. They're fucking weird.

It's one of those teams, even when they're winning in the fourth quarter, you don't feel 100% great about it because offensively, they're so disjointed, disheveled. They just don't look like any other team I'm watching on League Pass, and yet it works, but then defensively,

it all ain't And I spend most of my time watching them offensively just going, why don't they do this? Why doesn't it be post up? Why don't they run high screen? Why doesn't, why isn't their spacing better? It's just, it's, it's a frustrating team in a good way. It's like a TV show where you like watching the TV show, even though they do dumb things. I've enjoyed their games. And I think they have the highest ceiling of anyone in the East, including Milwaukee. And the Milwaukee fans, including Ben Thompson,

big Bucs fan, who gets mad because he thinks I underrate the Bucs every year. But I'm sorry. Like, I just, I think from a talent standpoint, it's just not the same. I can't believe how much the Bucs rely on Chris Middleton and Bledsoe. Still, those are their second and third best players. It's just a fact. And I don't believe in those guys. So I'm always going to gravitate toward the talent thing.

And I do think that Milwaukee misses Brogdon a little bit from the games I've seen. I do like having both Lopez's. They seem, they seem like they have more depth. Like they definitely have 10 guys who are all NBA players this year, but I just feel like the ceiling of, it feels like they're relying on, uh, on Giannis to do stuff at the end of games more than ever.

And I, I, I don't feel great about them. What do you think? What do you think about them? Yeah, I, I agree with you on Philly having a higher ceiling.

And once they get their chemistry stuff together, I think they could start to really put some wins together in the second half. I think Brogdon, to me, look, get your money by all means. But Brogdon, to me, had the perfect role in Milwaukee. Defensively, he was asked just to be a stopper on that end.

And offensively, he just, he consistently had like the fourth or fifth worst defender on him every single night. So he was able to get off because of that. And now he's in Indiana and he's totally miscast in some kind of leading role there. And I get why the Pacers went out and got him, but he is not the guy to carry your team

in the same way that Bojan Bogdanovic did when Oladipo went down. That's just not his skill set. So, you know, everybody kind of lost in a way in that situation, except for Brogdon's bank account. You know, Wesley Matthews, you know, before the injury, you know,

maybe could have been that guy. I don't think Kyle Korver is that guy, except in kind of spot duty. They miss him. They're going to need somebody either to step up on that roster or be a trade. Pat Connaughton maybe is that guy. Someone's going to have to fill that role

because that's something that's a glaring weakness for them right now. Yeah, and I think that's a really important point about Brogdon where not only are you going against the fourth, the best defender on the other team, but you're also on an offense with Giannis where Giannis becomes like Alvin Kamara or Tyreek Hill in basketball, where when he's on the court, the, the defense on the other team, they're just thinking about Giannis and he's the main focus and you can kind of slide into some cracks.

And, um, and a lot of times they're happier if you have the ball and now he's, I was watching them last night. They blew a, they blew a game late, but yeah, he's running their offense now.

Now he's going against the best guy on the other team. His stats have been pretty good. Actually. I wonder more about him physically. Can he hold up being this guy who's the guy, 37, 38 minutes a game? I'm not sure about that. Do you have any words for jazz fans and people who bet on Utah to win the title about what game can they officially panic about Mike Conley? Like is it game 12 game? I would say you gotta, you gotta get to the quarter way point. Okay.

I mean, he's been playing, like even when they made some of the coaching changes in Memphis, like he was still playing the same style. And for so many years, he was playing with like the same guys. I gotta give him a little bit of time to kind of figure out like all right so i've never played i play with tony allen forever like what's it mean to play like with donovan mitchell uh i guess rudy's a reasonable

facsimile to to mark but but that's different i mean i if if this was mike conley you know coming off that injury from a couple of years ago and he was playing like this, I'd be like, holy shit, you know, this, this is a terrible idea. And, and Mike's done, but he came back last year. Like he played really well. Didn't look like that foot injury cost him anything, or at least didn't cost him much. Uh, after last year, I just, he's too good, Bill. He's too consistent. He's too good. I think you have to get through 2025 games playing like this before i have any kind of any fear about him he has a negative pr right now i've i don't know if i've ever seen that before it's like minus 0.6 per pretty great are you are you worried about him are you worried

about them right now no but i i it's on my radar now. Because, I mean, he's looked terrible, which is fine. He might be starting out slow, whatever. But I was really interested to see how the Mitchell-Conley thing was going to work out. Because Mitchell was a guy who had the ball a lot last year. And Conley's a guy who's, you know, he's old school point guard. He has the ball. So I was interested on that part. And I wasn't prepared for Conley to actually look bad.

So I'm with you. Let's wait till 20 games, but it's now on the radar. All right, we got to talk about these Kyrie quotes really quickly, then we'll talk about Canelo. So Jackie McMullen, who is pretty wired in in the whole Kyrie universe, plus the Celtics, as you are, as I am to some degree. And we've all heard the Kyrie stories from the last two years in Boston. There's some Cleveland stories, obviously. Now he goes to Brooklyn and I had predicted the

honeymoon period, which we were in the middle of. He looked great in a couple of games. And this is like, he'll do this for 25 games and then stories will start coming out. Well, the stories started coming out after the third game. They're sprinkled in there and they became a big deal on the internet today about the mood swings, all the stuff that we heard about in Boston.

Were you surprised that this came out when it did and it clearly came out from the net side? I'm trying to figure out what the motivations were here. I have red flags and shit detectors going off all over the place right now. What was your reaction? I was surprised it came out this early.

Mood swings is just, it's always going to be a part of Kyrie's DNA. I mean, that's why when Kyrie said the stuff about last year in Boston, he said, you know, when my grandfather passed away, it changed everything. The reaction I got from people within the Celtics was like, all right, well, how does that explain

the exact same behavior he had in Cleveland? Like he was the same guy with the same type of mood swings and the same disconnect with the same type of mood swings and the same disconnect uh from the team so i was you know i i'm i'm surprised that it started this early i thought it was going to start like after caris leverte had like four straight games or like seven attempts or spencer dinwiddie was like in like one of his worst ruts of his career because that's when you start making like that's when you start making like, that's when you start saying like,

well, Levert and Dinwiddie, they're the new Tatum and Brown. Like this, this is kind of what, what happened again. The fact that we're three, four games into the season and we're already talking about something that happened over in China and the,

the mood swings. That's, that's surprising. I thought the honeymoon period would last significantly longer. And I don't know where Jackie got the information from. It does sure sound like it's coming from the net side of things. I don you know, people say like, you know, can they be better with Kyrie this season? Uh, subbing in for D'Angelo Russell, is there ceiling a little bit higher this season? Like who gives a damn about this season? Their, their best case scenario for this season is not to go into next summer, like looking like the basketball Hindenburg, just not, not being Boston again and having,

you know, Kyrie looking like a jerk and and nobody wanted to play with them and talking about having to trade a a Dinwiddie or Levert or Jared Allen just get through this season with everybody kind of liking each other and then bring Durant back and let Durant be the alpha let Kyrie go back to just playing and not worry about him being any kind of leader. Have his mood swings be secondary because everybody's focused on Durant. That to me should be the result. And already we're starting to see signs that maybe we could be in for some problems there. Well, they made such a big deal last year about the Nets culture.

And you would think they won 70 games last year. They won 42. They lost pretty quickly in the playoffs. People are like, oh, they're romanticizing the old Nets team. But it was a team that had great chemistry. Their offense was really cool, an offense that KD praised. Everybody touched it. And not even talk about this story for a second, just watching them those first three games, very similar to the Celtics offense last year.

Kyrie is so brilliant and so good, especially in the fourth quarter, that it would be stupid for him not to have the ball and it would be stupid not to clear out for him. But it just kills your team. It just makes everybody stand around and it doesn't feel like, you know, the basketball that I think succeeds. And I think when you think about what the Nets were like last year and how much they

cared about sharing the ball, all that stuff, and then it just now it's hero ball. I don't see how this works. I really don't. And the fact that this story came out this early and the little tidbits in there about, he's just not a team culture guy. Like whether you agree or disagree with where he stands on stuff,

he's gonna do his thing and he's not gonna try to fit into the bigger overall culture. Like he just beats to his own drum, which is fine. But when you're the superstar and you're making 35 million a year, whatever he makes, and they already have this culture in place and you're not buying into it totally, which it doesn't seem like he is from the story, I don't know how this plays out. And then what's Durant's role in this whole thing? He's not even

playing this year. So can you even be a leader when you're not playing? I just can't believe this is already going. I thought this would be game 43. It's game four. I don't know. It's almost like when I sit there and read that story, and you know Durant's out and he's not going to be doing interviews all that often, though he does a lot of interviews. I mean, he's pretty much everywhere at this point. You almost think that the best case scenario for settling some of this down is to have Durant do post-game interviews every game. Even though he's not playing, just have him sit in his locker and just talk

about his recovery and just keep all that attention off Kyrie in that situation because it's never going to go well if he's in some kind of leadership role and you know people you know you made the point about their record last year and this was like the argument for why it would go different for Kyrie because Kyrie wasn't re-entering a situation like it was in Boston where they went to a conference finals and Jalen and Jason kind of

broke out at the same time like Karras-is LeVert had one of the most catastrophic slash great seasons you've ever seen. Where he had that injury that looked like he was going to be brutal, and then he comes back and averages 20 in the playoffs. Dinwiddie saw his career start to take off. Jared Allen saw his career start to take off. So maybe they didn't advance deep in the playoffs,

but these are young guys that coming off last season felt like they accomplished something, both individually and as a team. So I don't think it's going to get markedly better if it's, if it's all the Kyrie show all the time out there, these guys start seeing their shot numbers go way down. You're just not going to convince me that, that everyone's going to take that,

you know, well, because they haven't accomplished what the Celtics guys accomplished. Well, and I think the other, I agree with everything you just said. And I think the other thing is when, when the mood is shifting from day to day,

the best player in the team is going to determine the mood of everything. And that's just the way it is. That's the way basketball is. That's the way it's been for 70 years. When it changes game to game, when he's not talking for a week and then all of a sudden he's giving a long press conference, when he's talking after a game and all of a sudden says something really pointed or start some sort of something and you're just dealing with it day after day, I think it's draining. I think it really drained the Celtics last year. You could, there were specific points of that season last year when things would start up and it just, you could feel the effects on the court the next game, you know? And I just think

when you're a superstar or a major star, or you're a franchise guy, whatever, part of that responsibility is, is how you handle this stuff. And he's done a bad job at handling it. And that, that was why I think everybody from Boston and everybody who watched him last year was for lack of a better word, a little bit amused by this whole Nets thing where, where they seem to think like there were no red flags at all. Obviously there were, the guy's an amazing talent.

He's amazing. I actually have watched these Nets games and have you know in a weird way kind of miss how incredible he is in the last four minutes of a game but at the same time everyone else is standing around a lot of times it doesn't lead to the result you thought it was going to lead to anyway and there's the drama all the stuff I think this is a bad sign but you know there's also another element of this is you read a story like that and you go, what else is going on with this guy? You know, and I felt this way a little bit with the Antonio Brown stuff too earlier where

the behavior was, his behavior is way more erratic and, and, uh, and damaging than Kyrie's is, but where you're looking at it, you're going, wow, I didn't, are we sure we should even be talking about this? Cause maybe there's more going on with, with him personally, and we should be staying away from this. I don't even know what our role is in a story like this. You read some of the anecdotes and that you're like, wow, is there more going on? And is this fair game even, you know what I mean? Yeah. I, I, I think it's, it's fair to, to wonder, I think it's fair to wonder. I think when you're doing autopsies of Kyrie's season last year, one thing that comes up is that there are people, players, coaches, staffers, that would describe moments where Kyrie was engaged with them and talking to them and really seeming like he wanted to be friendly or friends with them. And then 24 hours later, he's just kind of ignoring them as he's walking down a hallway.

Some of it's tough to explain without a deeper explanation, if that makes any sense. You need to learn a little bit more if you're going to truly understand some of these behavioral things he had going on the last couple of years. Let's talk about a sport with no behavioral issues whatsoever, boxing. I mentioned we're going to talk about Canelo in a second. This fall, you get a stacked

lineup of the biggest fights featuring the biggest stars in boxing like Canelo or Andy Ruiz Jr. Only on DAZN. With a DAZN subscription, you can watch Canelo versus Kovalev on November 2nd. That is Saturday. He's moving up two weight classes for the light heavyweight world title. Can Canelo clinch yet another title at the new 175-pound weight class? Chris Mannix is going to tell us what to think momentarily. You also get the Ruiz-Joshua rematch on December 7th after an unbelievable underdog win,

which culminated in a BS podcast appearance by Andy Ruiz. Now he wants to show everybody that it's not a fluke, that he's here to stay, that he is the heavyweight champ. Not only is this the best schedule in recent boxing history, but the best value too. You get everything. Every fight, original content, all live and on demand for one low price.

All you have to do is download the Zone app to start watching. Let's get back to Chris. Canelo's fighting Kovalev. Kovalev has scared the shit out of me since I was in high school, which I think is about as long as he's been fighting. But he's, you know, he's a big fucking dude with a lot of power.

And this feels to me like a slightly more dangerous fight for Canelo than maybe we're giving it credit for. What's your take? How excited are you on a scale of one to 10 for this? I'm really excited. I'm probably like eight and a half at this point. Can get even higher as we go forward. I think first, I'm more excited about this fight as a boxing fan observer that I would have before what we saw Golovkin kind of go through with, with Derevyanchenko in his last fight,

you knew he was descending. I mean, he's 37 years old and you don't improve, especially if you're a guy that's been in as many tough fights as Golovkin has been. And now Kovla has been in tough fights too, but he's 175 pounder who could whack. And that's not something Canelo has ever experienced in his life.

And I remember having a couple of conversations in the last two months with Sugar Ray Leonard and people that know Ray's career. One of the things he did that was a great accomplishment was moving up in weight to 168 pounds to take on the light heavyweight champion, Donny Lalonde. Donny. Ray won that fight, but he won that fight by knockout and it was a great performance. But you know, Ray told me that like the second he took the first, the first jab he took from Lalland, he said, Oh man, this is going to be a long night. Like he could feel every single punch that Lalland threw at him. Now he wound up being looking great. But Ray also said like the second

that fight is over, I thought like, he's like, I think it was the night the fight ended I vacated that light heavyweight title I didn't want anything to do with light heavyweight anymore it was just too tough a fight so I think Canelo could be in for something you know the way he wins is to get on the inside like he's five foot eight and Kovalev six feet you've got to get on the inside to win a fight like this you know what happens if Kovalev can keep met range a got to get on the inside to win a fight like this. You know, what happens if Kovalev can keep him at range a little bit? What happens if that jab, which is one of the best in all of boxing,

is able to be effective in a fight like this? What happens if that first right hand shakes Canelo in a fight like this? I just think, put it this way, I think there are more paths for Kovalev to win than I thought there were paths for Golovkin to win a third fight. Are you

announcing this one for DAZN, or are you on studio? I'm announcing. I'm part of the broadcast. Are you doing your scorecard again? I am, yeah. I have an idea for this. I was thinking about this during the Triple G fight. So,

you do the scorecard, right? And you're like, I saw that round 10, nine or, you know, whatever, but you know, it's around that easily could have been seen the other way too. But then other times there's like a convincing 10,

nine round where you're like, that was definitely Kovalev definitely won that. That is a 10, nine round for him or a 10, eight round. I think you guys should do color shading. I think you should be like that. I give that one a 10,

nine blue where it's like, if it's a blue, that means you're like that fucking guy won that round. I don't want to hear any, like there's no other interpretation. That was a win for that round. Or it's a white where it's like 10, nine.

Cause I had to pick who won that round, but I have no idea. And it could be interpreted the other way. I vote for codes. Give that to the zone producers. That's a great idea. Thank you. Because we do that. When you get to round nine and Brian Kenney looks over at me, he'll go to my scorecard and be like, do you have any swing rounds there? And I'll articulate that I'll either name the rounds or I'll say there were two or three rounds I thought could go either way. If you're shady, you don't have to do that. And you can kind of remember, like I write this, you know,

just to look the behind the scenes there, I use like a, this, this, this iPad that sends the scorecard directly to the truck, but I also write it down on my, my notepad. And I have like question marks or asterisks next to each one of the rounds I think are questionable. I think it's a great idea. I think that's something that an audience would appreciate, knowing that there are three or four rounds you thought could really go either way. Yeah, or even if you did the asterisk, that would be the more primitive way to do it. But yeah, I think you indicating how strongly you felt about a round, I think is a good wrinkle.

Because I was watching that fight with you and I was with you. I thought I had Triple G losing by a point, but I could also see the case for Triple G winning by a point. And I think there was a couple 115 to 111 cards for that. And I was like, all right, that's stupid. There's no way it was 115 to 111 cards for that. And I was like, all right, that's stupid. There's no way it was 115 to 111, stop. But it was either, I thought it was either six, six or seven, five, depending on how you looked at it.

But I think the codes would help because I do feel like, especially in the really close fights, usually there's six or seven where you know, and then five that are kind of left up to interpretation, which is always dangerous in boxing. But Canelo is a minus 450 favorite for this, which, and Kovalev's plus 325.

I got to say, I actually thought that would be a little lower. I feel like they are disrespecting Kovalev, and I 1000% agree with you on moving up in weight classes. I think that is so much harder and more debilitating than we give it credit for. People just like, oh yeah, he just moved up a weight class. It's like, once you're going into like the 170s,

that's different than going from like, you know, from 134 to 140 or whatever. Like, this is a whole other animal. I think Kovalev could beat him. I think he can beat him. I think there's an obvious way he does, you know, going into deep waters and just pounding this guy with the type of shots he's never had before. I think the odds are what they are because most people you talk to see a pretty clear path to victory for Canelo. I mean, Kovalev, in the last few years, has just been getting tattooed to the body.

It began in the Andre Ward fight, the second one. And you can argue, certainly, that the Ward fight, there were a couple of low blows at the end of that, but he took some body shots. It didn't take him all that well. His last fight against Anthony Yard, he almost got knocked out in that fight. This almost didn't happen.

Eighth round, he's getting beat up, and a lot of those shots are to the body. If Yard was a more experienced fighter, he might have been more effective at going to the body. He might have stopped Kovalev there. Canelo is not only a great body puncher, he's a committed body puncher. Like Golovkin, the biggest

knock I have on Golovkin as a tactician is that he doesn't go to the body all that much. He has some great knockouts to the body, but doesn't make it a point of emphasis every round to go there. Canelo does. Canelo just hunts you at that midsection. If he

can get inside, and most people expect him to, most people see him winning that way. Body shots that just put Kovalev to a knee and end the fight with a stoppage in the middle rounds. But wouldn't you say Canelo will take some licks as part of his style. You can hit him. And I think that's where he'll dish some out. He'll take some to dish some out. And I'm not sure if Kovalev, if that power is there from that first round on, and he's really dishing it out. I don't know.

I feel like this is more of a toss-up for me. I get it. I get it why Canelo's favored, but I just think it's really hard to go up a weight class. I think you'll know early if what everybody thinks is going to turn out right or if there is a chance Kovalev can turn the table. I was having breakfast with Buddy McGirt,

Kovalev's trainer this morning, and Buddy's got a lot of history in sort of taking over older fighters and formed fighters and helping them sort of get their career back on track. Did it with Gotti towards the end of his career, most notably, but he was telling me,

he's like, all he's been saying to Sergey is that every time Canelo gets on the inside and if he hurts you, just fire off that jab. Just keep throwing it because you hit him with the jab, it forces him to reset. And if you can just force him to reset and give yourself like a second, second and a half to recover, you can control the pace of this fight. I mean, Buddy's, you know, most trainers are bullish on their guys winning, but Buddy's pretty convinced that if Kovalev fights his fight, he's going to win this one. And listening to him talk, I can see

how Kovalev wins this fight. All right. I look forward to the color-coded scorecards from you on DAZN on Saturday night. Is there a good undercard that we should watch or just gravitate to the main event? The co-main there is ryan garcia who is like this super popular lightweight yeah three million instagram followers i like ryan garcia he's going up against this yeah he's going up with this kid named romero duno and if you follow boxing like about a month and a half ago two months ago garcia was he was supposed to fight somebody then his opponent fell out and duno was the guy that Golden Boy's promoter wanted to replace him with. And Garcia said no. He said no because the money wasn't right. But the way it was spun was

that Garcia was ducking Duno. And all of a sudden, Duno has turned into this... He's like the Muhammad Ali of lightweights at this point because he's the guy that Ryan Garcia ducked. But that's interesting. It's the biggest step up of Ryan Garcia's career. And he's in an interesting weight class where you got like Devin Haney, who's really good. And Teofimo Lopez is really good. And Virgil Ortiz is in and around that weight class too. That's a pretty interesting fight as the co-man. Awesome. All right. Chris Mannix, looking forward to watching it. Thanks for coming on as always. Anytime, Bill. All right. We're bringing in Adam in one second.

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and explore Michael's lifestyle content on michaelstrahan.com. All right, Adam Mosserius here, head of Instagram. Used to work at Facebook yes you wanted to come on I did I usually don't allow people who invite themselves on

but in this case I actually wanted to talk to you so it was fair well I appreciate that yeah it's like Fight Club if people ask to come on then it's like

oh what's going on here but in this case Instagram is probably my favorite platform I think Facebook is my least favorite platform. I think Facebook is my least favorite platform where you came from. Okay. Twitter is becoming my least favorite platform. Okay. But right now it's Facebook. But I love Instagram. And I think watching my kids and the way they use it and interact with their friends along with Snapchat, where their social life, 80% of it is through

FaceTime and Snapchat and Instagram, but it's not replacing human interaction because they have that too. It's all the stuff that we just never had when we were growing up. And I'm 90% jealous of it and 10% fearful of it. What's the right ratio? Ooh. Do they use TikTok, by the way? You didn't throw that in there. Oh, they love TikTok. 90% jealous, 10%. I think, I mean, I have two boys, but they're younger. They're three and one,

so they're not on social media yet. But just thinking about them becoming teenagers, I'm probably more like 80% jealous, 20% fearful. Anything that's new just presents challenges. So like how people use it is going to change, how people abuse it is going to change. And so I think a little bit of fear or a little bit of skepticism is actually healthy. But 90-10 is probably even a little bit more ironically optimistic than I am, but I am overall excited about what we do. I'm 90-10 only because I think we're doing a good job as parents limiting how often they're on it. That's key. I think if those limits weren't there and the fear of it wasn't there and somebody just being on their phone constantly or being at dinner on their phone or being... I took my daughter to the

soccer game last week. She took her phone out once. I was like, put it away. We're at this soccer playoff game. You love soccer. Like, don't look at your phone. There's no reason for you to be on your phone. This is more than entertaining enough for the next two hours. But I think some parents almost see that as like a babysitter. The phone, right? It's like, oh, great.

Now I can do my own thing for two hours. My kid's on the phone. Yeah. We have, for us, I mean mean that kids are so little um but the phone is like or just screen time is only allowed on flights um and then if they're sick but you can i mean you can also understand sometimes if you're busy you had a long day you want to have dinner with the family and the kids screaming that like using the phone as a way to distract the kid could be appealing. For me, I like the idea.

Well, the kid, the age your kids are at, definitely. Yeah, but we try to- You can hand your kid an iPad to take them out for an hour. It's great. You can watch Cars on repeat for six hours. For us, though, we try to have a rule, which is if they're going to be on it, we're on it with them. So if they're going to watch something, we watch it with them.

That way we can make sure we're not overusing it. We pretty much only use it on flights and if they're sick. What something, we watch it with them. That way we can make sure we're not overusing it. And we pretty much only use it on flights. And if they're sick, what's the time spent on Instagram? Like how, how good is your data and stuff like that? Like with age groups and screen time, all that stuff are good. So our data on how much time people spend on Instagram is pretty good. Our data on how that differs by age groups is not because we don't actually ask for people's age on Instagram. Oh yeah. That makes sense. Some people we can know because if they connect to their Facebook account and Facebook,

we do ask for age on Facebook, then we can know. But for a lot of accounts, we just don't know. So that's hard. That's harder. We can make educated guesses. So it's not like we are totally blind, but I would say the data on the age side is less, much less good than the data on just how much time do people spend generally. I think the reason I like it so much, and I've said this on the podcast before is it's the simplest social platform. Ultimately it's like, here's a picture I took and there could be other variations of it and there could be videos and whatever. But you know, when I go third, I'm just scrolling through pictures and little 12 second or 20 second audio clips or video clips. You look at what's happened

on some of the other things and you have Facebook when the news, Facebook news and all the stuff that happened in the election, the stuff like that, where I get where everybody was coming from. You're trying to create this platform that can accommodate

everybody and can push news and push all these different things and you're trying not to control what happens with it but then i think in retrospect i think everybody at facebook seemed to be like oh shit we should have should have maybe looked at this harder and thought about a little more what what's your biggest regret looking back to the mid-2010s? Yeah, so I've been at Facebook for 11 years, and I was actually in charge of newsfeed during that whole cycle. So definitely was very much in it. I think the clear biggest regret for me is just how,

I'll put it this way. When we started, we were so excited about all the good that can come from connecting people that we were understandably focused on it, but under-focused on the bad that can come from connecting people at the scale that we do. That was, for lack of a better word, just naive. And I think we were late to appreciate all of the negative consequences that can also come from connecting people. I still believe that more good comes than bad, but we were years late in trying to embrace understanding that bad. Because if you're going to design a product, you usually are so worried about, is it going to even work? Are people going to like it in the first place? But at our scale, you need to not only think about that, you need to think about how might it be abused or what how might some sort of nefarious or bad actors use it you know for harm and you have to design the

product to try to proactively address those issues and we are doing that now and that is a culture shift that takes is taking years and quite frankly like if you're asking about my biggest regret it is not advocating for that shift years earlier i had had Jack Dorsey here, I don't know, like eight, nine months ago talking about Twitter. I listened to it. Yeah, it was a little bit of the same issue, right? Where he's saying we got to do a better job. Didn't realize this was going to happen, like abuse.

Yeah, that's bad. We got to fix that. And I kept kind of asking him gently in the same way. It's like, well, it's your platform. You're in charge of it. You can fix it however you want. If people feel unsafe for whatever reason, that's ultimately you're in control of that. And I think reading some of the stuff that Facebook has said over the last, especially the last two years about like, yeah, we got to do better.

We should have seen this. Are they actually fixing it? So I think just to start, it's good to hold us accountable, not just to, can we say that we have responsibility? Can we say that we made mistakes, but what are we actually doing about it? Yeah. And I think that to have that conversation productively, you have to break it down and talk about different pieces. Just speak about it broadly, and then we can dive into whatever issue you like. I think there's really, the way I think about it, there's two different types of things we can do. There's one is trying to identify key issues. So take hate speech, for instance. You have to define it. You have to measure it. You have to build technology to

identify it. You have to remove it from the platform whenever you see it. You might have to change your policies, et cetera. This is like identifying an acute problem and addressing it. But I think you need to pair that with rethinking some of the fundamentals about how the platforms work in the first place to change how people feel about what the platform is for. So for instance, on Instagram right now, we're running an experiment in about seven countries where we just hide likes. So you can't actually,

no one can see how many likes you have except for you. That is a small change in terms of the sort of actual visual that changes in the platform, but a big change in how people feel. And so that might work, that might not, but you have to be willing to not only identify issues and address them, but rethink some of the core constructs. Otherwise, I think you're just going to be playing whack-a-mole and you're not going to make as much progress as I think you need to.

But if you're asking, are we fixing it? I think we are certainly doing much better in certain areas than other areas. So happy to dive in, but it's hard to answer that in the sort of the big, broad. Do you feel like you were late? Yes. A hundred percent. Late to, I mean, late on. Just everything.

Well, no, I think we were. I mean, late to, from a reaction standpoint. Yeah. I think we were late. I think there are issues where we were doing, we were more on top of it or the issues that we've just talked about and you've heard about less. I think we were pretty good pretty early on issues like terrorism sometimes terrorists try to use our platform to spread um not just propaganda but recruit etc we've always um been very uh tied to some of the

nasty gnarlier problems like child exploitative imagery yeah um where we were clearly late is areas like misinformation. And so that is just what it is. Now what we can do is try and figure out what we can do better and move as quickly as we can. Going into the 2020s, what has Facebook become? What is it? Because going into the 2010s, it was like, watch out for these guys. I remember going there in 2011. And the campus was way bigger and more elaborate than I expected.

And kind of the vision. I went with ESPN people. And it was like, I think right when we were creating Grantland, they were trying to convince us to promote Grantland stuff on Facebook, stuff like that. And the vision that everybody had was kind of overwhelming. Yeah. They were like, we want to be the dominant place for everything. I was like, really? You're sure you can do that?

I was like, yes, this is what our plan was. Everything. Now, 2020s, you know, they've been villainized to some degree. And I think in some cases for the right reasons. And it does seem like the audience has gotten older. So what happens in the 2020s to Facebook? Well, I can talk to Instagram more than I can talk to Facebook. I think broadly Facebook. But you were at Facebook for a long time.

You must have opinions on it. I do have opinions for sure. I just, yeah. I want to get, we have, Instagram will be the second half of the pod. Okay, great. I wanted to Facebook first because you were there for a long time. I'm happy to talk about both. I think Facebook, when we talk to people about what they like about Facebook, they often

say that they just feel like they might be surprised in some sort of positive way when they come on the platform. Because Facebook does so many different things, right? Facebook has always been about breadth in a lot of ways. Instagram in contrast has been more about doing a few things and going a bit deeper in each of those things. So I think Facebook is going to expand the things that it does. Some of the,

some of the projects will work. Some of them won't. I think we talk a lot about groups cause we're seeing a lot of momentum for people either. Oh, closed groups. Well, closed or open.

Like actually the ringers groups are super active, for instance. So sometimes that these large interest groups, so it could be the ringer, it could be cool dogs is actually a really like pretty crazy group right now. Or that's smaller, like, you know, you and your friends or it could be a fantasy football league

or it could be your family. Dating is something that Facebook is doing now and trying to connect people and that's where i forget how many countries we're in upwards of 20 now um we do a lot of work and events i think you'll see us try and create value for people in products or areas where the fact that most everyone is on the platform is of value right so if you're trying to an event, it's great that most people are on Facebook that you know, if that's the case, because then you can invite everybody you know.

But the other big thing looking towards next decade is just there's these huge trends about how people communicate and how that's shifting. More and more and more is moving to messaging and away from public feeds and stories. Privacy. Privacy. Privacy is huge. People are becoming wise to the fact that when they say something in public, it might come back later.

And so kids are growing up and they're messaging way more than they are on the phone. If you look at any group of people who came online after the shift to mobile, so like teens everywhere, but like most people in India, they message way more than they use any feed products, be it a Stories product or like a traditional vertical feed product. So I think you'll see us lean into that. Video, this is like an insatiable demand for more and more video. So I think you'll see us continue to lean into that. And then try and think through where the fact that Facebook does so many things is a benefit and not a cost and lean into that as well. Instagram, I think, is probably taking a different path. But we can talk about it in a second. Yeah.

The newsfeed part of Facebook, which you were doing forever. That was my thing. I was managing that for half a decade. So the recent controversy, which you somehow ended up in a little bit, was whether Breitbart should be a Facebook news partner. And I'm not positive how I feel about it because I do wonder with freedom of speech, which is supposed to be what we've had for the last 300 plus years. And it seems like freedom of speech has now become conditional. By the way, I'm not saying I agree with hate speech, any of that stuff. But it seems like we're in a weird time right now.

We're trying to figure out what kind of freedoms do we afford people to say how they feel? And who should be moderating that speech and where the lines are. And I don't think anybody, like I know what my personal feelings are, but I don't know if those are necessarily the feelings that should govern everything. And I don't think there's an answer. And I think it's really complicated and I don't think it's going to get solved. Like, did you, do you have any insight on does this get solved? I think things get better. I hope that actually for certain types of issues, governments and regulators decide what is okay and is not as opposed to companies. I worry about any one company making a decision about, you know, what is okay and not okay to say. For us, just-

Well, you made that point, right? You were like, your social platform, I'm not sure we should be the ones governing what speech is. And I don't think you were wrong. Although I still feel like Facebook should have responsibility. That's why it's so complicated to me. I don't really have an answer for this.

So what we're, it's complicated for sure. What we're trying to do right now is basically, and this is controversial, I understand reasonable people can disagree. But when it's unclear, we bias towards being allowing speech. Where we don't is where we think there are safety issues. There are safety issues that come from hate speech or inciting violence, et cetera. So those are where we draw the line and we take that content off the platform entirely. Sometimes we're good at it. Sometimes we're not as good at it as we should be. I actually am pretty confident we'll get pretty good at that. The question is, are those lines drawn in the right place?

And how do you have enough people to decide what's crossed the line and what's not? It's almost a supply and demand thing. You're never going to have enough people to cover all the speech that's on the platform. Yes. So you have to rely on a combination of people and technology. So I remember I was in New York and I was speaking at this conference type of thing. And a super senior person actually had a publication who I can leave anonymous just to not throw any shade his way,

asked me, like, how do you make the decision? Like, there is a beheading video. We argue about it in the morning, about whether or not that shit is worth being on our news site or not. How do you make that decision? And I said, listen, what you do is you get a group of people in a room, probably at your A1 or whatever your equivalent 9 a.m. news meeting is, and you debate the merits about this specific video. What we do is we have to define a policy.

Then we have to train tens of thousands of people to be able to implement that policy or enforce that policy accurately. And then you have to build a bunch of measures to make sure that they're making the right decisions as 99.9% of the time. We have to build technology to try to identify that that is a violent video in the first place and then prioritize that in their cues. And then you have to try to make sure that those,

what those are classifiers, but that technology is as accurate as possible to make the most out of people's time. And then you have to make sure that the people who are making these decisions all day long are in a reasonable mental state because looking at violent videos all day long is pretty taxing emotionally well there's been a lot of features about that the last two years i mean it's it's you're burning

people out in two and a half years so how do you provide the right support for them whether it's you know uh there's different types of like giving them people to talk to that kind of stuff but also can you rotate them in and out of areas um so that you can sort of spread the load a little bit? That has challenges because you really want experts because these calls are nuanced. And so it's just a very different system. You get to decide, is this okay or not to say on this podcast right now? For us, we just have to try and draw bright lines around things that are safety issues and then build these complicated apparatus to try to make sure that those decisions are enforced as accurately as possible. So nudity, I guess, would be easier because if it's like you have computer stuff and it's

like, hey, that's a dick that's coming off and you can know how to recognize a dick, probably different sizes. Yeah. It turns out it's easier to recognize a dick than a sizes yeah it turns out it's easier to recognize you can probably get like yeah i mean but i think when it's speech or when people are are navigating around what the boundaries are yeah and they figured out like oh if i do it this way and especially you all the child porn stuff is you know obviously incredibly disturbing and you see these you know they they find youtube is that a bigger problem with this where these coded videos and then it goes to other stuff and play kids play acting but they're in danger and then that leads to other stuff and yeah

and people are just getting smarter and smarter and how to be scumbags basically absolutely some are ideologically motivated. Some are financially motivated. Some are just scumbags, for lack of a better word. There are certain issues where it's easier to use technology to identify them. So nudity is just easier. You can train a classifier to recognize a dick or to recognize a nipple. That's just something you can do. It's harder.

By the way, sometimes you make mistakes, right? That happens. a nipple that's just something you can do it's harder sometimes by the way sometimes you make mistakes right yeah that happens but that is an easier technical problem than hate speech where like i might something that i might say might be hate speech but if you say it it might actually just be expression right that we can think of tons of language and words where that is you need to understand that context it's not even just necessarily who you are it might just be like are you making a joke or not, et cetera. There it's just harder. So people always put technology and people sort of, they pit them against each other.

Like, are people better or technology better? You should use people. You should use technology. I think that's missing the point. People are really good at certain things, particularly nuance. Technology is really good at other things, particularly scale. This is basically the same issue in sports with referees and challenges and all this stuff, right? Wow, man. It's getting pretty far.

It's basically the same thing, right? We're edging more and more toward challenges and technology and I don't like it as much. I think for what you're doing, I would like it probably more. Yeah, probably. If we have robots and stuff doing this over well the challenge is for me to slow the pace of the games in a way that i think is a little bit off-putting

because you already have so many commercial breaks depending on the sport that it's just it just yeah and i just can't even imagine what just be like an athlete and just like get cold all the time yeah but in general i think what you want when no matter what problem you're solving is you want to take advantage of all the tools you have available and use them for what they're good at. And so for us, people are good at nuance. So for things like hate speech, people are going to be more involved and we're going to rely less on technology, though we will try to help use, build technology to help that happen faster and more accurately. For areas where we can use technology more directly and more confidently, we're going to leverage those more.

Still, obviously, have people involved as well. I don't like it when people put those two things in opposition. I think those things need to be in collaboration. And what that collaboration looks like will depend on the issue. And that's okay. Should Facebook have a newsfeed? I think so. I think that the... Do you know so or do you think so?

I believe so. Is that a word in between the two? Yeah. The newsfeed... Is it like too much power almost? It's an immense amount of responsibility. I think we have a responsibility to create value for people. We have a responsibility to be proactive about identifying how we might be misused and adjusting

those issues. We have a responsibility to be transparent about what we do and how we do it. And I think we have done better at worse each of those three things over the years. Broadly, though, I think we bring a lot of people together. My brother lives here in LA. My sister lives in Berlin. I keep up to date with them, you know, what they post on Facebook and Twitter. Like I get to be a little closer to my siblings who are, after my boys and my wife, probably like the most important people in my life. And I get to do that because of social media. And that's not just Facebook and Instagram. But that happens too.

And I'm not pretending it doesn't. I think that, I think the good outweighs the bad. I think in the beginning we were naive about how much bad there was. And I think we're now playing catch up. Are you comfortable with Facebook's, um, ability to navigate this 2020 election? I am nervous about 2020. I am too. I think that to be comfortable and to be in a job like I'm in would just be dangerous. I think we have to worry.

I think the people that are trying to leverage our platforms to, it's usually just to like polarize. It's usually just to anger, you know, and, you know and you know just get everyone riled up and mad are really sophisticated and they are their methodologies change and they are like well-funded especially the state actors and that is terrifying and so one of our my top priority broadly for instagram is well-being and the big big thing, it's not even in 2020, we're in the election cycle now, is how do we make sure we do everything we can on elections integrity?

And we're making progress. You're seeing us announce that when we find these networks of inauthentic coordinated accounts, we're telling people about them as we take them down. I'd much rather be in a place where we're announcing those things than we're being told about that by the outside world. So there's progress there, but I'm worried about what we might not know about yet. I know we can't do this and I wish we could, but I wish going on the internet

was like having a driver's license. Yeah. I really do. I wish your social security number was tied to it. And I know we can't, I know there's no way to do this. I know it would go badly, but I just wish you think about all the damage people can do online. Arguably they can do way less damage in a car.

And we're so careful about cars, right? The worst thing you can do in a car is like drive into, I don't know, 40 people on the internet. You can drive into millions of people. And we don't care. We honestly don't. It's amazing to me.

It's like, how are we not trying to do better? So there is something to that, though. Right now, we're looking at, can we try, not have a driver's test, but can we try and make sure that we have a higher bar for knowing who someone is if they have a lot of distribution? Because maybe it's cool. You've got 100 friends or you have 100 followers on Instagram. You know, there's risk there, but that is like relatively contained. But if you're reaching millions of people, maybe we should have a higher bar for knowing

who you are and verifying that you are who you say you are. That's actually, we're actively exploring just that. That kind of thing, I think if you think it through, you can probably apply some lessons from things like driver's licenses to the specific areas within Instagram and Facebook where you have the most risk. And I think that's totally on the table. It's just crazy to me that people are so desperate to protect anonymity on the internet and that people would rebel against the concept of, yeah, if you go online, we're able to track what you do. Yeah. No, no, we can't do that. That's big brother.

Well, here's the other alternative. We're going to have another election get flipped potentially here with all the different ways people can flip this stuff. That is one of the biggest debates right now, though, is between privacy and safety. And look, I don't want to pretend like it's one-sided. We don't require actual real names on Instagram. We have pseudonymity, basically. You can decide what your handle should be. Sometimes you're in a part of the world where expressing something might not be safe to do.

That happens for journalists and lots of the world. Teens actually on Instagram often have multiple accounts because their identities are complicated. You're going through figuring out who you are. Oh, I am aware of this. I know all my daughter's accounts. She only has two. She has other friends that have like four.

Yeah, you usually have a main one. You have one for your real friends. They call it a spam account. Yeah, there your you know real friends you might have a spam they call it a spam account yeah um there's the spam it's like zoe's spam yeah there's finstas um in japan teens sometimes have these called these micro finstas so it'll be like three friends and so the three of you have your own version of instagram just the three of you that i i've heard uh mostly out of j. Sometimes you'll see it in interest accounts. And maybe you're into basketball. You just follow basketball accounts,

Hoops Nation, whatever. And then you talk about basketball as your basketball persona. And so that's a value. But not knowing who you are creates risk. So how do you balance those two things is one of the questions we're wrestling with. And we've got, I can walk you through some of our opinions there, and I'm sure some are right and some are wrong, but we're going to learn and adapt as we move forward. Well, couldn't you just make the verification thing much more complicated? Yeah. I mean, the issue with that for Facebook and for Instagram would be we'd have less users. And then when we have earnings, we can't say Instagram's gone up 17 million users this last quarter or whatever it is. One issue is certainly a risk to the business.

Another issue is there are people who might not have a driver's license or might not have access to those types of verification materials. And then you're making it harder for them to come online. But maybe that's not a bad thing. Well, I think it's maybe not a big thing here in the States. But I think in Africa, where you have a lot less driver's licenses coverage, that doesn't feel great.

And then the flip side is also, you also have to weigh how effective it's going to be. If you look at the state-sponsored actors, they have driver's licenses, they have bank accounts under fake names. They're very sophisticated. So you have to... I'm not saying that kind of thing should be off the table. You just have to be real honest about

what is the upside and what's the downside and then make the call. But I am very interested in introducing more friction where there is the most risk. I am less interested in introducing a bunch of friction for a random 15-year-old kid who wants to come online, or a small podcast or journalist who wants to make a name for themselves. Because then you're going to be, by creating that friction, you're going to empower the established at the expense of the up-and-coming. And I don't love that idea. Because the whole promise of the internet is to allow more new interesting things to to arise um the biggest criticism about

facebook this decade was being too late to react in 2016 and that and people wondering you know it's the old the cover-up is worse than the crime kind of thing where it's like when did you know and why didn't you act sooner? Looking back four years later, what's been the most unfair thing about that? Because that's the thing I probably hold against Facebook the most, but is that unfair? I think the accusation that we were behind is fair. I don't think we've tried to cover things up,

but honestly, I think we've tried to cover things up but honestly i don't think i think we're still trying to figure out how to be better at engaging so for instance when something happens like a pick a press cycle that's negative i can find 12 right yeah it's like you know have we could have we could have we could spend the rest of the hour on this what we do into like there's people at the company so we we try to figure out okay okay, wait, is this accurate or not? Because by the way, we get things that are inaccurate all the time. Then we want to make sure that we know exactly what happened. So that when we say what happened, we're accurate.

Because the worst thing we could do is respond and then be wrong about something. And so then we get into this cycle of just verifying everything. That takes too long. Now it's two or three days later that we come back out and we've been silent. And meanwhile, pick a platform, the media or Twitter, et cetera, is just like, well, these guys clearly are covering something up because they don't care. And the truth is maybe we're just trying to get it right. I personally, I don't want to say that is unfair though, because I just think that's the world that we're in now.

And by the way, we helped create that world. Yeah. So we need to figure out how to engage and engage quickly, which is why I'm—look, my Twitter is a dark place. I follow all of our loudest critics. It is like the most emotionally taxing part of my job is probably spending a bunch of time on that platform. That's not shade towards Twitter. I've designed my Twitter that way. I go on there and I say things and I might make a mistake

and I might get reamed out for it, but it's more important to engage than not. I think we're trying to learn that lesson as a company. If something happens, we should get out there and speak to it immediately. What we don't know, we should just be honest about the fact that we don't know that,

even if that's embarrassing. That is not a muscle that we had developed in the early years. And it's a muscle that we are still, if I'm honest, trying to develop now. Generally, though, I think we do a lot to try to create transparency. Like for instance, you're talking about elections in 2020. Our ad archive is by far the most transparency any platform or network does around political ads in the world. You can look up any ad around politics or even issue ads for years and see how much was spent on it, who was targeted as, who ran it, etc. That, by the way, creates a nice steady stream of negative press cycles for us. Because people go in there and they find stuff that they don't like.

And that might be uncomfortable for us, but that is fundamentally a good, healthy thing because the scrutiny is healthy. So I think that maybe to try to answer your question directly because you said what's unfair, I don't want to say this is unfair, but being on the inside, the thing that is toughest is people assume the worst of intent. They assume that all we're trying to do is make as much money as possible. And we are a business. I don't want to pretend like we're not a business. I actually think it's a good thing we're a business. It allows us to make money, hire great people,

and do better work, whether it's on safety or just creating value. But I know a lot of people who I work hard with and I work along with who are definitely trying to do the right thing. And so the assumption of ill intent is maybe not unfair, but the most difficult thing as a person actually working on these issues. Well, there's almost definitely going to be a David Fincher, Adam McKay movie about Facebook in 15 and 16. So who do you want to play you? I don't know.

Who do you want, Paul Rudd? Do you want to pick an actor now? Yeah, I mean- Because you're going to be in this movie. Can I upgrade myself? Can I be like a much more attractive me? People always say I look like Pete Sampras, which I'm not sure I'm into.

I don't know if Pete can act. Yeah, I don't know. If anyone wants to play you, let us know. I will take it. Last question, then I want to talk about Instagram. Zuckerberg, how long you work for him? 11 and a half years. Give me one thing that people would never expect about Mark Zuckerberg.

Because I think we just kind of know the persona that has been fed to us for the last however many years combined with Jesse Eisenberg. It's some weird combination of that. But how normal is he compared to how abnormal I seem to think he is from watching from afar? He's more, I mean, I don't want to say he's normal. He's not a normal guy. He's much more self-aware than people think. Yeah. He knows what he's good at and he knows what he's not good at. He works hard at getting it better at what he's not more self-aware than people think yeah um he knows what he's good at and he knows what

he's not good at he works hard at getting it better at what he's not good at like he says he jokes around about not being a uh empathetic speaker for instance but i think he's really self-aware on all of that he's is he funny yeah he has a sense of humor he's definitely he definitely has a sense of humor uh look he's i'm a humor. Look, I'm a bit of a nerd. He's a bit of a nerd. So maybe our senses of humor line up a little bit. But yeah, he's definitely funny. He's a family man.

He's got two daughters. He's super private. So he doesn't talk about that. His wife is an amazing, amazing woman. And I don't know. Knowing him personally, I feel like he's more self-aware and he's definitely funnier than you would think. But the issues that we're trying to address are serious

and sometimes it's not appropriate to bring some of that stuff out. Well, you see him in public now and he just seems like he's been beaten up. I mean, he has been beaten up. There was a cover. He definitely has. He looks like scarred emotionally. Yeah, there was a wired cover like two years ago now where they basically photoshopped a bunch of bruises

like he was in a boxing brawl and put that on the cover of Wired. Jesus. But look, he's determined. He thinks longer term than almost anyone I've ever worked with. He has incredibly high standards, and he holds all of us to those high standards. He's very, very principled. He's always said, as long as I've been at Facebook,

that when we're in press cycles, we're never as good as they say we are, and then we're never as bad as they say we are. That, I think, shows the kind of perspective he tends to have. And I think he really wants to make sure that he and his family and the people who are deep enough in the details to know the details feel good about his legacy whenever he moves on, passes away, whatever it happens to be.

But he's going to do it. Well, he's only like 24. I think he's got a lot of time left. Yeah, he's got a lot. But he thinks about that he thinks really long term and I think that's good because

look the pendulum swings back and forth and it swings fast and hard and I think he tries to keep his eye on on the long term and be true to what

his principles are and sometimes people agree with him sometimes people don't sometimes I agree with him sometimes I don't but he always hears me out so I do appreciate that I think Sometimes people agree with him. Sometimes people don't. Sometimes I agree with him. Sometimes I don't. But he always hears me out.

So I do appreciate that. I think how people feel about 2016 will be determined a lot by what happens in 2020 and whether he learned any lessons from that. The next year from him will, I think, shape a lot of whatever his legacy ends up being with this platform. Depending on who gets elected, different major shifts will happen. Not just the election, just the mechanics and all the different ways people are going to try to influence it,

how he handles that. Yeah. And if we get caught behind in a significant way, that is going to massively affect how people think about him and how people think about our company. Because by the way, those two things are too entwined to actually ever really pull apart. We're going to take a break, then talk about an Instagram. Let's talk about luminary,

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to Luminary's premium content for free when you sign up at luminary.link slash Simmonsmons after that it's only 7.99 per month luminary.link slash simmons cancel anytime terms do apply all right we're back uh during the break tommy realized that uh jake jelen hall should play in the movie so i'm gonna recall his agents we'll see how it goes as an upgrade i'm into it. You should root for Fincher to direct the movie, not Adam McKay. I think it would be more blistering with Adam McKay. Instagram. Instagram, I think, is a really satisfying platform right now.

I just like it. And then I read stuff and people go, it's going to totally change. We're blowing it up. And we're going to do this. We're going to do that. And I always get nervous when people want to change things that i'm happy with yeah so you're not going to change it too much right not going to change a thing no i see uh no i mean look our core values at instagram are you know well one of our core values is simplicity uh other two are people first in

craft and basically that just means we try and do the simple thing first. We try to do a few things and do them well. We try to do one thing really well before we move on to the next thing. And so as a result, it just changes less quickly. I think that's good, but that also worries me because the world changes really quickly. And the biggest risk for a platform as big as ours is not that a competitor necessarily comes

and does what we do better than we do, though that can definitely happen, but that what we do just becomes less relevant. So that balance between keeping Instagram what it is, but also evolving as the world evolves is a tricky one. But our strong bias, because we're small, there's not a lot of people who work there actually, by considering our scale. And we're sort of like a measure three times and cut once type of culture. Just means that we're going to change slower than other platforms might. Yeah, I get it. You want to stay a step ahead and not a step behind.

Yeah, always. But ultimately, I think TikTok, just watching the rise of that over the last year, that's kind of on your corner a little bit. Absolutely. I mean, so ByteDance, which builds TikTok, has been around for a long time. They've been competing with us for long before TikTok was popular.

They operate out of China and under a completely different set of rules. But even take that aside, this is a company that cloned Musical.ly, then made their product more retentive than Musical.ly, bought the thing that they cloned, and then renamed the thing that they cloned them. That is some serious... Yeah, that's some mafia stuff. Are you Chris on this platform?

Yeah, absolutely. That's some serious shit. And so for us, yes, their momentum is strong and their cultural relevance is strong, but you just have to take a competitor that is doing that kind of work seriously. I think competition's good. I think one of the biggest issues ESPN had last decade and the first part of this decade was not having competition.

And then eventually the competition became streaming and everything. And then all of a sudden you have to start innovating. But I think people, I've said this before on the pod, when people have a lead they like to protect the lead yeah and they don't want anything to change there's that tiktok has nudged you into oh yeah having to stay on your toes and they're not the only ones yeah snapchat too yeah well and also fundamentally you're talking about people's attention there's things there's snapchat and tiktok who are much more adjacent to what we do or directly compete with what we do.

But Fortnite, in a lot of ways, is a social network. You got a lot of young teens spending a lot of time on Fortnite talking to each other. And if the job that we're hired for is connecting with people you really care about, then that at some level competes. There's video on Instagram. You've got the explosion of all these streaming services, not only what's happened but what's coming. And look, I think it's a good thing. I think not just because

if you're in the lead, you might just try and protect your lead, but you just might become complacent. And that's not good because you have to be trying to think about how to create new types of value for people. And pressure from competition is a really effective way of getting you to think about that. But you're raking in money from ads, which is a really effective way of getting you to think about that. But you're raking in money from ads, which is a little different than I think than TikTok. Does TikTok have ads? I'm not a TikTok guy.

TikTok. It feels like your guys are making a lot more on ads than TikTok. TikTok is not trying to make a lot of money right now. TikTok is trying to grow right now. TikTok is spending, they're spending billions of dollars a year on content. They're spending hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year on content they're spending spending hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year on acquiring users they're trying to get to relevance and to scale and then there's

all sorts of ways that they can make money probably including ads um we certainly make money um on ads but i actually think revenue is a little bit of a lagging indicator of your relevance. So I'm glad we make money. It pays my paycheck. It pays my employees' paychecks. But that isn't the first thing I look at when I come into the office in the morning. I look at how much are people sharing? How much are people messaging? How much are people watching and consuming? Those things, I think think are the sort of canary in the coal mine or the bellwethers. If you wanted to make more money,

you should just make it more private who people follow and stuff like that, where you pay $10 a month, but nobody can see who you're following. Oh, like Instagram premium, Instagram prime. Instagram prime. Privacy, paid for privacy. Yeah. Yeah.

And then you'd have people like Tommy who would just immediately follow like 500 porn stars. That's what you can never finsta for. Be like, nobody can judge me now. Tommy. I'll follow who I want. Tommy's looking incredulous over here. He's like, why?

Tommy's like, what a drive-by shooting of Tommy. Why'd you drag me into this? I do think, I'm always amazed. I said this to Jack Dorsey too. I'm always amazed that the platforms aren't doing that. Yeah, the subscription model idea. Exclusivity kind of. Yeah.

Where I get some perks. Yeah. Now nobody gets to see who I'm following. They don't get to see how many likes my post got or however I want to carve it out. I can just be $10 a month. Yeah. No, I heard that. I actually listened to your podcast. I listened to the Jack one all the way through. many likes my post got or however i want to carve it out i can just be ten dollars a month yeah no i i heard that i i actually listened to your podcast i listened to the jack one all the way

through um look the the issue there is just we want to make sure that any everyone can have an awesome experience on instagram i think there are things that we could charge for i don't think we would charge for like not being able to see who you follow um if that's a good idea then maybe we should just say that just charge it to nba players just nba players just the 450 nba players 20 a month no if it's gonna be them then it's gonna be more yeah a month you can do you can follow whoever you want without fear of recourse um and they would yeah i don't know we're more focused on how so we do this a lot we try to understand okay what can make instagram better and then we try to like build the thing in a way that anybody can accrue value from it and we get to do that because we're an ad-based business and

there are pros and cons of being an ad-based business but the big pro is like you get to offer service for free to everyone um and so we we buy us in that direction but yeah they're definitely we've definitely talked about ideas like this not that one specifically it's not off the instagram dms combining with tinder like a merge yeah well dms are there's a lot of sex coming out of dms i mean dms are there's a lot dms is like a is a in a lot of ways a dating thing. Oh, it is a dating. It's basically Tinder. It gives you an excuse to reach out to someone when you might feel weird just cold texting them.

And I think that's... When I talk to teens about this, they're like, look, I got a crush. I don't have anything to say. She posted something cool. I get to say like, cool. It's an excuse to slide into our DMs and then maybe hopefully start a conversation.

People use it that way all the time. Tommy, how much DM sliding are you doing? Yeah. A lot. A lot. Tommy like nine months ago did a shirtless Instagram post and we've gotten more comedic mileage out of it

than anything but hey this is a different generation it happens you know my daughter met her boy my daughter's 14

she's had a boyfriend for like three months and I think they it started on Instagram DMs really? yeah because they had mutual friends and then it moved over

to Snapchat she's mortified I think that's how the kids go Instagram moves over to Snapchat. She's mortified somewhere right now. I think that's how the kids go. Instagram moves over to Snapchat. Yeah, or iMessage. We see that a lot, which is you'll start talking on Instagram and sometimes you'll just stay there,

but sometimes you move it over to Snap or I think more often to iMessage. Well, I know it moved over because i have her instagram account on my phone and i go through all her dms and she knows this surprise as soon as the trail goes cold i know something happened it's like oh they've stopped communicating but they're going on a date this week yeah it's like what could have happened snapchat is like i mean i think over a certain age you just can't figure it out. Like her Snapchat thing is the most secure thing in her life. I can't

go in there. I can't find the Snapchat. Yeah, I mean, they're working on it. They're trying to make it a little easier to use so that more people can use it. Good luck. I think they're doing well. Their last numbers they released were pretty positive. They are doing well, but Instagram, I mean, hit them with

a haymaker we did when you when you did the stories that was like not directly on their corner and actually probably more fun and and more relatable for somebody like me yeah and stories and is driving a lot of our growth right now so i'm i'm glad we did it i think we got a lot of flack for copying them we try to give them credit where it's due. But you try to learn from competitors. Hopefully, you can try to understand why they're being used and come up with a new way to be used for similar sort of forms of expression. Sometimes you just got to just be honest. No, that one's pretty good. It's pretty good.

We should probably do it. And so we did. Athletes, it's had a dramatic impact. Yeah. I mean, generally, you're seeing the shift of power from organizations to individuals across most verticals. But I mean, athlete empowerment is obviously one of the most poignant examples. And you get to see- On Facebook, they have bigger, I mean, they have more followers probably just because Facebook's been around longer, but it feels like Instagram is probably more of a difference maker. Yeah. Our sweet spot, I think, is with

what we call creators. So the people behind crafts. So athletes is a really good example. And you see people building up their own brands. You see people building up their own side businesses. You see this, I don't know, like in the NBA NBA Juju's got a big presence on Instagram I'm a Steelers fan sorry I know you're a Pats fan I love Juju Edelman is crushing it on Instagram right now is he really? yeah he has like some side business

I think he makes like children's books or something like he promotes a bunch of stuff on the side and his Instagram is really quite strong yeah Ronkin CBD i forgot about that that's a good one oh my god what an interesting who's the biggest one lebron uh i mean of american athletes probably lebron i need to double check but probably there's some soccer ones that are off the chart oh yeah ronaldo like yeah just nuts but in the i mean the nba is uh doing a bunch right now which i think

is good too i think look people want to see what it's like to be in someone else's shoes and like you know one thing that does really well it's like silly stuff so in the soccer world warm-ups just like someone live streaming a warm-up yeah like that is just rad because you don't get to see that you can see the the match and well soccer is a bad example because it's hard to watch a lot of matches depending what leagues you follow but you know you getting a window into something you wouldn't normally see a peek behind the curtain coco after she beat serena went live like that is gold people are so excited to see i mean well what an amazing story she's a 15 year old girl right but just like to

see that and get that raw feed straight into that amazing moment i remember steph curry as that phenomenon was starting to happen around 2014-15 yeah and people were doing his shooting drills live before games but i think it was on facebook not instagram that was the first time i was like yeah i can't believe i'm watching this, but I'm also enjoying it. The tunnel shot he does? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, people show up. I mean, they moved to Chase, but at Oracle,

people used to show up so early for the games just to watch him do that whole thing, just to see his warmup. You're kind of out on Chase a little bit. I'm warming up to it. Jesus. I'm just getting thrown under the bus. I can tell how much you missed Oracle

just in the way you said that it's not lost on me the irony here that I am a tech guy who moved to the Bay in 2005 you're the reason Oracle died and I benefit from Chase being closer to my house and it's full of a bunch of people

who look and sound a lot more like me so that irony is not lost on me but um oracle just had some amazing energy yeah and it not that well organized it was a pain to get there it smelled kind of bad food was terrible the only thing you could really use like the chicken fingers but the energy in that arena was just like your hair would like stand up on your on your edge of your like you just go nuts i remember seeing some i went to a couple i usually go to a couple games in the regular season a couple games in the playoffs and i just remember even the toys the season they won 73 games i went to the 73rd yeah because they won that game against the spurs they had no business

winning and all of a sudden we could do it because everyone thought because i think the spurs were undefeated at home um and like so maybe that's not a good example because it was a big game but man I just I felt like I couldn't go to sleep that night I'm pro Oracle but yeah it it uh it was a dump yeah and it really was just an all-time dump and the crowds were awesome it was super diverse yeah but i also think it's cool to have a downtown arena and i think if the team was really good people would be like this is awesome oh i know the problem is the team's not that good so now it's like everything feels different right they had this six-year run that's kind of flipped yeah kind of flipped well they won last night i'm

yeah i actually i'm i was selling warrior stock before the season but now i'm like buying what's the over on there like 40 it was like 48 and a half it was crazy now it's gone down yeah that's true but um what would you do differently if you were them what was like you gotta make a would you make a move would you like no you gotta ride it out this is this is what the league is all right yeah they you had an incredible six year run yeah you had really bad luck. Yeah. KD screwed them over.

Klay got hurt. And you just got to ride it out. You can't win every year. I'm into it. I'm into it. Look, I think it's healthy. Because I started following the Warriors in 05, 06. This was like the Monte Ellis, Baron Davis period.

So not winning that many games, but a lot of fun to watch. And then obviously we got really good over the last six years. But I think it's going to be healthy for the fan base to go through some ups and downs. The Celtics went through it in the late eighties. Bird got hurt. He only played six games. Oh yeah. And they barely got into the playoffs. They got killed by Detroit. The next year was also not that happy, but those two years they rebuilt the team and then they were able to have this second run with the old guys, but with these new guys they got.

And I think that's where the Warriors will end up with this. Probably a better version of it because Curry's way more in his prime than those guys were. But you can use this window to add a couple younger people and they'll get a better draft pick, all that stuff. The athletes, they find out you're the Instagram guy and they go nuts. What draft pick all that stuff yeah uh the athletes they find out you're the instagram guy and they go nuts what happens i actually haven't met that many i've been so focused on other areas i want to meet more athletes uh but i haven't met that

many athletes you meet them though and they usually when they got feedback you get a lot of feedback questions about how they could get more followers you said dms are like a dating service my dms are not a dating service my dms are not a dating my dms is like full of just like give me a blue check mark this thing's broken oh yeah it's just full of full of it's not dating it's not nearly as positive as that can you run the data to see if out of all 50 year and older white guys. If I'm in the top 10 with 304,000 Instagram followers, I feel like I've got to be in the top 20. I can't try to think.

Okay. I want to know my, my ratings over 50 white guy over 50. Who's up there. I've got to be in the top. You're way up there. You're way up there. Tommy,

am I in the top 15 white guys, 15 over Instagram followers. Who am I competing against? Politicians. Kevin Costner? No, it's politicians. Politicians. Joe Biden isn't that many.

Yeah. There's not a lot of competition. Yeah, I know. But I think that's going to be your stiffest vertical. The politicians. And then maybe some big actors. Ted Danson, probably. Ted Danson?

Why is that the first person that comes to your head? I'm thinking white hair. I don't know. It's not like Sylvester Stallone. It's Ted Danson. Joe Biden, 1.3 million followers. Well, he's kind of a big deal. That's not that many. I don't think you're talking to me.

It's either not that many or that's a ton. What are you getting from Joe Biden? Let's see. You're getting, oh, he's on the campaign trail. Yeah. Talking to old people. Yeah, there you go. Oh, so he's ahead of me too.

Damn, I might not be in the top 50. You better, but I feel like- I got to bump it up. I got to really start pushing my Instagram. You can definitely pass Ted Danson. Two things that Instagram did that I really liked in the last year. One is that you can run the minute long video because you've never wavered on you only get a minute in the

post and then it in the ends which i actually like but then now you can move it over the whole video is available you click onto it and then it opens up a new screen with the longer video i thought that was smart yeah and then cutting up the Instagram stories automatically instead of having the people cut up. I never understood that one. And then finally fixed it. It's so much easier. That was just, not doing that was dumb.

It was just two years of just, we have to cut our own Instagram 15 second videos. You know, sometimes, sometimes you move fast and you miss some things. And that was one of them. That was a miss. That seemed like that could, that could that was like just you just fix one thing all of a sudden that no works oh it did it did and the numbers suggested it did too yeah that was good plus the qual feedback so what's that give us one thing that's coming in 2020 um the thing i'm really excited about is seeing if we can make like counts private i know i keep talking about that one but that one is like the longer it takes to do the more resistance we get we get a bunch of so you think from a self-esteem standpoint that will be really helpful particularly for young people yeah

i want to feel less like a pressurized environment i want people to spend a little bit less time worrying about how many likes they have and a little bit more time connecting with their friends or just being inspired by awesome people um that is, I think if we can pull that off, I think that'll just be something I'm particularly personally proud of. I spent a lot of time with that team. Can you put something in there that Kyle's girlfriend can't do sappy Instagram picture posts about him? You don't even see those.

When was the last time she did one, Kyle? I can't even tell you. I couldn't even tell you. I now just feel bad for calling you cousin Kyle instead of nephew Kyle I liked it though you got cousins out nephew Kyle it makes you sound younger it makes him look older I don't know which one here's the other thing you need to fix is 14 year old girls

posting a selfie picture of themselves and then all the comments from their friends going gorgeous oh yeah the thirsty beautiful wow people can get a little thirsty people don't think about people think about feed when they think about instagram but actually a ton of time is spent and stories a ton of time is spent in messaging like we talked about a ton of time is spent in explore and in some of those other places particularly stories and messaging it's a little bit less i'm going to get my good angle and post and see how many

likes i can get and it's a little bit more like what's actually happening like today i came over here i you'd like you said i wanted to be on this just because i've been a fan of you for a long time i spilled coffee just straight down my shirt on that car right over here just like and i was like and i was like well that's not good so then i like it's gonna kill our instagram yeah well thank god it's a podcast so it's like nobody can see and so then i was like all right i gotta find like uh i found like one of those tide sticks and so i like i like took my shirt off and i'm like dabbing this thing because it's like bill simmons is gonna see me it looks great yeah well i know hashtag brand of content i guess yeah you're gonna see a little bit right

here but i posted that whole thing on stories because why not uh yeah that would never go in feed uh that would just would that's not that would i would never live it i'm probably not gonna live it down anyway but i would definitely not live it down if it was in feed i can't believe ted dancing has 150 000 more instagram father how do i pass him more authentic schwarzenegger does he count as an old white guy though i I feel like he's his own species almost. He's the Terminator. He's the Terminator. He's actually a robot.

He's 19 million? You got to post more. People want to see what it's like to be you. People want to see what this room looks like. Ever since I've listened to you, I always assumed you were just in like your living room, which this actually kind of feels like. I should do a whole Instagram story of what's in my office right now.

That is a good idea. Yeah, you get some. Oh, you got Andre the Giant up here? Yeah. Oh, man. I do a lot of eBay shopping still. Yeah. Even after all these years.

All right. Also, so that'll be my, I'll do an Instagram story of all the stuff in my office. Yeah, just do one by one and explain it. They probably each have a story, don't they? Yeah. They mostly do, actually. A lot of these were hard to find the posters i should i'll do this i'll do i'll do i'll do an instagram story every day i'll do one post you

gotta you gotta you gotta life-size bird and magic yeah choose your weapon choose your one that's a really hard one to find yeah do we cover everything i think we did i think we did all right i think we did this was fun adam pleasure bill such a Thanks for coming on. Sorry you spilled coffee in your shirt. No, it's all right. You can only kind of see it. All right. Thanks to Chris and Adam. Thanks to ZipCruiter.

Don't forget to go to zipcruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Norton Secure VPN, made by Norton, a brand backed by one of the world's largest civilian cyber intelligence networks with over 30 years of experience. No complicated setup. Log in once. It protects your connection. Right now, you can get Norton Secure VPN at norton.com slash vpnsimmons, starting at $3.33 a month with the annual subscription.

Be private in more places online. Norton.com slash vpnsimmons. Terms do apply. Back Thursday with one more podcast. We also have the new rewatchables with The Shining going up late Wednesday night. And an announcement about something that I am doing that we are going to mention on Thursday. So be ready for that as well. Until then. I want to see them on the way so I never want to say

I don't have feelings with them On the way so I never want to say I don't have feelings with them