The Bill Simmons Podcast - Luka’s Strange L.A. Ride, a New York Sports Drought, Lost NBA Nicknames, and a Big Mailbag With Max Kellerman

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Max Kellerman to talk about Luka Doncic’s time with the Lakers so far before diving into a discussion about the New York sports title drought (2:32). Then, they dive into a mailbag to answer questions from the listeners about NBA nicknames, boxing, and much more (46:48). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Max Kellerman Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! https://michelobultra.com/courtside MICHELOB ULTRA® COURTSIDE ’25 to ’26. No Purchase Necessary. Open to US residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1, 2025 and ends on June 30, 2026 Multiple entry periods. See Official Rules at https://michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You gotta love a good deal, whether that would be a quarterback on a short, low-risk contract who performs like a top-tier starter or Expedia's bundle and save feature, which allows you to combine flights, hotels, and cars into one package

for impressive discounts. Not just that, but if you remember, you can book an item now, add select items later, and still enjoy bundled savings. I mean, I think of this from a parent standpoint when I know that I have to go

cross-country to go see my daughter in college. And if I could bundle all the stuff to one thing when I know I'm going back anyway, now that is a winning strategy. Book now with Expedia. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall Sportsbook. We are also brought to by the Ringer Podcast Network.

I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did crazy, stupid love. Next week, we're kicking off CR month on the rewatchables. Chris Ryan, all Chris Ryan movies that Chris Ryan loves. and we're starting on March 2nd, 6 p.m. E.T. on Monday, live on Netflix. We are doing Sicario. People have been calling for this, really since we started the podcast. It's one of CR's favorite movies, me, C.R. Sean Fantasy. So we are doing Sicario. And then the next one we're going to do is

Fargo. So those are the first two. Sicario, Fargo. So catch up on both of those. You can watch Sicario, Netflix, and you can watch the rewatchables on Netflix and get it on Spotify, wherever you get your favorite podcast, which I hope is the rewatchables of this one, or any of our great ringer podcasts, including wait a second with Jason Cepseon, which we launched last week. I was the first guest. Chris Ryan is on this week. They're talking about Prince Edward and the Epstein Files. This is quite a podcast. Really excited about this one. Seems like people really like it, too. Coming up in one second, Max Kellerman, who is on Game Over with Rich Paul.

That's a podcast that we added to the Ringer podcast network a couple months ago. It's great. It's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Max and I are going to, every once in a while, we just like to get together and talk about sports for over two hours long, and then we can't believe how long we went. So we're going to talk about a whole bunch of things. I'm going to do a mailbag with Max. It's all coming up next.

First, break, our friends from Pearl Jam, and then Max Kellerman. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandul. The football season may be coming to an episode. but things are only getting started on the court, on the hardwood, on the wood, as some people call it. Fandle, the number one choice for same game parley is live betting and much more during the NBA season. Don't forget with Fandle, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the Fandual Sportsbook app right now and play your game. Max Kellerman is here, podcaster.

Right. You've done it off. Now I have, yeah. That was the last little piece was podcast. Boxing announcer, TV host. But that's all old news. Studio host. Yeah, yeah, done that.

Yeah, now podcaster. We were talking before we started about the difference in doing this stuff now. You're doing game over with us with Rich Paul. And you will tell your heart and not your heart in your Jalen Brown-Luca thing. And then I'll tell you what my thought is on that. People will sometimes say I'll have a take on the show. So Rich Paul and I went to the Lakers Celtics, Pat Riley game. We're sitting catty cornered.

Pat Riley because we're in Rich's seats, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm watching Jalen Brown and I'm watching Luca Donchich, and it is clear to me. It's clear. It's not hard to see. Jalen Brown's better than Luca Donchage. She's a better player. And I say that. And then someone sent me an article that someone said, you know, it's acted as though that's a crazy take, but they wouldn't engage with the argument. So it gets aggregated as Kellerman. Jalen is better than Luca.

Yeah, like, Kellerman's stupid, but I assure you that is not the case. I may be wrong, but it's not going to be because my logic is flawed. Trust me, it won't be because my logic's flawed. It would be maybe because,

like, the analogy is like, Isaac Newton has a formula for gravity. It describes all this phenomenon, like it describes it really well, but not perfectly, right? There's a little planet that shouldn't be quite where it is. So Einstein comes along and says, well, here's why. And then that replaces Newton because it deep, it's like a deeper level of understanding.

If I'm wrong about something, it is usually because there is a, there's something deeper going on that I haven't considered. And I love when someone can point that out, as you must know, right? Yeah. That's awesome because you deepen your understanding of things. But that's not what, what they'll do is, just say, Max is stupid, this is a crazy take. No, it's not. I'll tell you the take. Luca Donchich can get a high percentage shot for himself whenever he wants, right? So I'm super interested in this as a theme in life, right? Energy policy in the United States. Greenhouse gas is like, that's not, that's settled science. There's no real controversy over. It's manufactured controversy. Everyone understands. It's bad for the, for the atmosphere. Okay, for the ozone.

No, I got you. So Luca's saying he's an incredible offensive player. I'm trying to think how to do this succinctly. So short-term incentives, we need energy now, right? Because we have all these demands. Trump long-term incentives. And this is a phenomenon that you see all over the place. Unless you have a structure set up with long-term goals in mind,

a lot of times you'll find self-destructive behavior because short-term incentives are such that you want to. So that's like the premise. Okay. So Luke can get a high percentage shot whenever he wants, right? But it's like a running quarterback. If the got the short term incentive is get a first down, keep the chains moving. However, if you always bail and run for the first down, you will never develop as a pocket passer. Yeah. Your short term incentives hurt your long term development, right? Absent some kind of structure that says, no, no, no, wait a minute, we want you to develop this way. Luke Adanjich, because he can get a high

percentage shot whenever he wants, it has stunted his development as a player in a lot of respects, right? Because why wouldn't you do that? You want to score on this possession. But as a result, you know, guys are standing around. They're not playing with energy. They're not moving without the ball. They're not touching the ball. They're not in rhythm. They can't get hot from outside, et cetera, et cetera. And then on top of that, he complains on every call and doesn't play defense hardly ever. Like maybe the worst defender, one of the worst defenders in the game, even though he has to play some defense at least, right? Yeah, it's surprising when he has a good defensive possession.

He had a couple in that Celtics game. Yeah, it was like, oh, he actually guarded Peyton Pritchard. He did. I didn't know he could do this. He drew an offensive. Like, good for him. Jalen Brown is not as skillful as Luca Donchich. He cannot get himself a high percentage shot on every possession.

As a result, in order to be really effective, he must play the right way. And so he does. he makes the right read. He does the hard stuff if he needs to, right? He will draw contact and get the N1, not looking for the foul, but because he knows if he goes hard, he is likely to draw it.

He will hit the outside shot. He will defend the way he's supposed to. He will do all those things. And so I think a lot of fans, you look at all the things that Luca can do. Oh, my God, that's incredible. And then you look at the offensive numbers, and he must be better.

But if you watch the game and look at, at the actual effect on the team, I'd rather have Jalen Brown than Luca Dachich. I mean, partly that's dependent on the personnel and all that stuff. But right now, he's better than Luca Dajic. Now, if someone would like to engage with me in that argument and say that I'm wrong, go ahead, show me where my logic is flawed or else deepen my understanding of it. But that's not what happens. People talk, oh, it's crazy. But you're talking about looking at a player through the prism of winning, which is what I do every time I evaluate basketball. Does this person advance my chance to win?

What else is there? Well, but there is the second side, which is, no, this guy's awesome. Luca's a better player because he's a generationally great scorer, and that's what makes him better. But I always gravitate to what you just said. And like when I think about Jaylen Brown, he could fit into any situation and figure out how to be impactful. And I don't think he's as talented as Luca Donchich is.

But I think it's easier to have him involved in different type of winning teams and combinations. Whereas Luca, it's one of those, it's like a weird basketball thing where you have to build the exact team around the guy to make it work. And I actually think LeBron became a prisoner of this a little bit in the second half of his career because he liked this specific style that he played with. And then you started to have to put pieces around him to fit the style. But he made them better.

True. He used his gravity to make everyone around him better, which is why when any time a LeBron team required a role player. But it was always a certain type of player, right? It was either a big man who had his hands up. It was a wing, a 3-and-D wing. And then occasionally, like, I always thought his best type of teammate

for what he needed was that freelancer Kyrie type, right? That's what Wade was for him, the first two Miami years specifically, take some scoring burden off him. And the more you just kind of push all the chips into him creating everything, then you're really looking at a certain type of player. What he needs a crime partner?

Who doesn't do it without a crime partner? Well, like Hardin is somebody that I think they tried to build these specific teams around him of just types of guys. Dallas with Luca. Yeah. They were kind of to do that. And then they got Kyrie.

Hardin and Luca extremely similar. Yeah. They're extremely similar. The difference really is Lucas bigger. That's actually the difference when you really think about their games. Luca is Hardin 2.0. They both have cheat code stuff going on

where Hardin had that. He said. could either engage you and get you to foul him or do the step back and all that start. And it was just like, shit, how do you stop this? And Luca has the size that if you have the wrong guy and you can see him in that Boston game, the wrong type of guy, whereas then they played Orlando. Orlando is more size. It was harder for the Lakers to do that stuff.

But I think the bigger point that I agree with is that you can settle on the bad habits as an NBA star because some things are too easy. But other things you don't have to work on. He doesn't move when he does end the ball. Right. He's not an impactful defender at all. Jalen, one of the reasons that I'm not a defender at all a lot of the time. He doesn't even just, you know, a lot of times he's just not playing defense.

He's not even down the floor. But he has the instincts to do some of this stuff. He's got the genius. Yeah. As Zach said on, you know, the other day to you, he's like a basketball genius. Right. Because like Bird and Yokage, I think are two examples of guys that weren't like athletically the kind of defenders you think.

But they were both impactful in their own weird ways. Yokic still is. Like he gets steals. He jumps past. Like Byrd. Bird. Bird was for his day. Bird made all defense one year. More than one, I believe. Berg was considered back then a good defender.

Yeah, he was like a free safety. Luca, he gambled in passing lanes and stuff. But yeah, for sure. But see, you brought up Kyrie before. The reason the way I evaluated, the way you evaluated, is actually the correct way. And the other way is the incorrect way. Unless you're making the argument that when I say better, what I mean is the most transportable skills, even then, like it transports to all these different

scenarios. Even then, you just said that, and I agree, you have to build a very specific team around Luca and Jalen Brown fits into more different kinds of teams. So that argument fails, right? Yeah. The other argument is that, well, if you just isolate all the things he can do, he's more skillful. But then it becomes a question of how are you deploying those skills? So Kyrie Irving, in my view, is the most skillful player who ever lived. If you went skill for skill, he is the, but he is not the best player who ever lived, and he's not the greatest player who ever lived. He's not the winningest play,

but he's the most skillful. Now, how do you deploy those skills? And that's why he lacks, well, the size, first of all, but also the wisdom in certain respects deploy those skills the way someone like LeBron might or someone like Magic Johnson might or someone like that might or Larry Bird or someone like that. So I think that.

So when you say skill for, you mean like most pure skillful, pure skilled. If you went for it. Can he dribble with his right? How does he go to the left? You know, like, can he, how does, can he shoot?

Like, Kyrie. Can you finish with both hands? Can you double clutch finish? Like, finishing under the rim greatest of all time. Do you have a little step back shot? Do you have a pull-up shot? Do you have a counter for everything the other guy does? Step back three.

Yeah. Like Kobe might be, like Kobe was also like that, had every skill you could want, right? Yeah. But being the most skillful, which is why I think a lot of people have Kobe second to Jordan, which I believe is overrating him. Not by much, but by a little. I think he's, you know, we talked about that. He's one of the greatest players of all time,

probably not quite as good as a lot of his fans think he was because they see Michael Jordan, but oh my God, his skills are the next generation of that in certain respects. Social media feeds some of that too, because social media only feed you the best things that a guy did. And then as the years passed, it's like, Kobe, dude, it's the same thing. Another game winner. It's the same thing with music, you know?

Yeah. And music today always sucks, right? Because the only thing you remember are the hits. Leonard Skinnered in Oakland in 77. There's no fan like this. This happens in hip hop all the time. Go to any. And then there's that.

And I think you and I discussed this, maybe not on the last pod that we did. But there's also this thing where you go, you know, in the old days we had, and then you name everybody. Who do you have today? Hold on. Are you comparing this year,

2026 to 1951 to 1985 to 1997 or you comparing 2026 to the history of everything right so yeah they like

both those phenomena combined to like play the hits for Kobe and you know well and Luca will be like this 20 years from now because they'll see some of the montages and I always call them the

that guy was a problem video because it started with Jason White Chalka Williams you could cut these three minute clips of him and he looks like he's like Bob Coosie for the 2000s. You're like, oh my God. How many all NBA teams that this guy made? It's like zero. He was like incredibly great to watch.

And the league was pushing him and Vince Carter because they look different than everyone else. The thing with Luca, I've been thinking about him a lot because he, we started, we talked about it after the South of Laker game on my pod with Zach. And it was the first time they really, the Laker fans are really getting the other side of the Luca package with the whining after every call, with just not getting back on defense, all the little stuff. The stuff that Dallas got fed up with,

ironically, I don't think they should trade them, but stuff that they were getting fed up with. The counter to all of this is Dallas almost won the finals in 24 with him. Got to the team that was built around him, that I still feel like game four of the Mab's Celtic series, which I went to. And Luca fouled out with five minutes left after.

And I thought all the fouls he had in that. that game was legitimate. He was bitching about it. He was doing the, let's go. Let's do a review. They reviewed it. It was still a foul. And then there was this moment where Kyrie had a chance to stick it to the Celtics and win the game.

Sometimes with the finals, it could be game four. It could be game three. It can be game five. You're always like, this is the game that's going to decide the finals. You just kind of feel it. I still think if Dallas wins that game, they might have stolen the series. So when I think about Luke in a big picture context, we saw it.

They almost won the finals with a team built around him which means you could do it again. The irony of this Lakers team, it's the exact team you wouldn't want to build around him, right? Three guys who kind of need the ball.

Any two of them don't really know what to do if they don't have the ball combined with some of the stuff, the stage of LeBron's career. You've got to look at Polinka. I mean, like, that's who put together the team.

Let's be honest. And it is not ideally designed for sure. And what you say about Luca is true. But he made the best trade. probably the decade, but still has done a bad job with the team. We have to see how that, we have to see how that all pans out. Now, they sold the highest tie out of Davis. Yes.

The Davis was a car with 190,000 miles on it that they were like, no, no, it's running great. The warranty is like four years, 11 months, and 364 days. But yes, they returned for Luca. They didn't shop it. It didn't look like, right? Right. But the fact that they moved him, I, I kind of understand.

What you're bringing up is a really good point. In those playoffs, he looked so much more valuable than, say, Kauai Leonard. Right? Kauai Leonard looked like a one, not one dimensional in the sense he doesn't play either offense or defense, but very much a scoring wing who can play defense also

and maybe can get you into your offense, even if that's not ideal. And Luca looked like a multi, multi- multi-dimensional. guy. Yeah, exactly. And it looked like

Luca had separated himself from the Kauai's of the world. Yeah. I mean, like, that's when I was like, oh shit, Luca is that much more valuable than Kauai Leonard? Well, remember the Mavericks? They weren't favorites in the finals.

They were probably like plus 160. Everyone was picking Dallas. Boston had home court advantage. They were statistically one of the best teams. And it was just like, yeah, but Dallas has Luca. Now he's two years older than that. They're not going to do anything this year.

LeBron. LeBron's going to leave, it looks like. Okay, so this is what I mean about, like, let's, so, so can you deepen my understanding of something, right? This is the best argument to me that Luca is in a position not dissimilar to Kobe when Kobe would take all the shots. The 0506-07, Kobe. You look around and you go, this ain't it, right? Okay, this ain't it. This is the best thing for me to do is to score on this possession. because these guys can't do it.

If DeAndre Aiton doesn't want to play the way he ought to play on the team. We knew he was going to stink, though. Anybody would follow basketball. Bill, I thought it was a pretty good pickup. It was a fool's gold. It was like when people were believing in Anthony Joshua. But wait a minute, Joshua won some good fights. Sure.

DeAndre Ate made the conference finals. He did. Doesn't mean you want to measure center. But who do you get, who was available on the market? What did they get him for $7, $7,8 million? I don't know. I remember thinking, pretty good pickup.

It's not the ideal guy, but who was better on the market at that time? They didn't have a big. It was a default center. Right. I mean, the move is they should have traded, they should have worked with LeBron

to try to trade him over the summer last year and try to get a whole bunch of stuff for him, put him in a different situation. You could kind of see where this was going from day one. The other move could have been to trade Reeves. But the part I don't understand.

I talked to Laker fans about this. And it's really fun to tease them where they're like, no, no, man. This wasn't the year. This is a transition year. We're looking at when we have cap space and 27 and it's down the road. I just like, if I have one of the six best guys in the league, I'm never wasting a year. I'm on record. If I ran a team, I'm just never throwing away. He's 27. I'm never throwing away a, it's same case with Milwaukee where I thought the only defensible thing with them, like I didn't like the dame trade at all. but it was defensible because it's like we don't want to squander a yonis here like we have one of the top 20 guys of all time we're not wasting a year i think you have to ask yourself are we giving ourselves a puncher's chance or are we really one of the best teams if we make this move but if you have one of the guys you always think you have a chance right and i think that's a puncher's chance but a punch but i don't know if i'm willing to mortgage the future for a puncher's chance if i have one of those guys well if i'm in the same conference with the okay c and i'm the lakers and it's so hard to put together. I need eight guys to beat OKC.

I can't beat them with three. I'm not even thinking about OKC. Well, now we didn't know about San Antonio last summer. But now I'm in the conference with OKC and San Antonio and Yokic. It's a lot. And I have no chance with the team I have. So I'm selling pieces at this point. Luca is supposed to be a centerpiece on the level of Yokic and Wembe and SGA.

He's not. He's not. He's definitely not this year. He's a half step below those guys. And he's 27 years. old. But even if you have bad teammates, you should be able to be doing enough to convince people that, yeah, we still have one of those guys. I don't think his teammates are that bad. Like, we do the Ringer 100 where we pick the, we just rank them every month. Reeves was in the top 50. LeBron was in the, they've three the top 50 guys. But there's only one guy who plays the right way on that team. I know, but I'm just saying it's not like they don't have assets. Reaves is like Austin Reeves

plays basketball the right way. Well, Winhorse said that on TV this week about just when it's Reeves and Luca. Oh yeah, yeah, I saw that. It's a good point. I've said it to people that I talked about the Wakers with. It's like, when it's the two of them, there's chemistry. When you put LeBron in, it just starts to feel like- But I'll include Luca in the who doesn't play the right way. I don't think LeBron has been playing exactly the right way. He knows how, but he's old. I don't think Luca does almost ever. Well, LeBron's like Hopkins now. He knows exactly what he can and can't do. He's, I like when you're here because I can do boxing jokes. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to basically make this a six-round fight.

I'm going to throw away the first six rounds and then do the bow-constrictor thing. Right. And LeBron's like, I can do these three things. That's all I can do. I can do head of steam, fast break. I can do step-back threes and I can post up. Rich loves the idea of LeBron playing as the roller, like being Carl Malone. I love that idea too.

Right. A smarter Carl Malone. Right. He's the same size. Right. He's like, you know, he's 6-8-9-260. and he could shoot from the outside. I think it's so tough.

I know you've talked to Rich about this, and the three of us have talked about it. It's so tough to take somebody who is one of the best of all time at what they did and then tell them, now you're this. But this is not like,

I'm saying Carl Malone. This is like, at one point, is he the best power forward whoever lived? Like, can you be that guy? Yeah. That guy would be, and DeAndre Aiton had a quote recently

about Clint Capella, he doesn't want to be that. Yeah, but, And Rich Paul talks all the time on our part about starring in your role. Yeah. If DeAndre Aiton was willing to star in his role and LeBron was willing to star in his. But all that said, Bill, when you look at this entire roster, Reeves is the guy. Watch him on every possession, both ends of the floor.

Yeah. He's not a great defender, but he's playing defense. He's smart. He's looking to make the right play and he's just good. He's just not like, you know, six, eight and not like he can't jump out of the gym, you know, but like he's a really good player. Yeah, I was wondering if they're going to put him on the table for Janus. And I'm just wondering what's happening with L.A. in general because the Dodgers owner bought

the team. They brought Lon Rosen over his president of business. Lon Rosen, his lifetime guy is Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson had that thing with Polenko where he left and it doesn't seem like magic's involved, but there's no love loss with that. And in general, it just feels like we're moving toward some sort of post-Polinkie universe where it'd be like, Thanks for the look of trade. Andrew Friedman's involved somehow. Yeah.

Who's like the suit? That's the real reason the Dodgers are in this position. Right. It's the first thing they did. When the Red Sox hired Bill James back in 02 or whatever. Remember I was doing around the horn? I said they're going to win three of the next 10 World Series. I wish I could have believed that.

In year 10, they won the third one. Wish you had told me that because I never thought they're going to win one. Ruin my life. Because they were just out at, like, if you get the smartest guy and you have money and you're playing money ball with money, it's hard for everyone else. That could be the Lakers, though.

That's why everybody's so scared right now. Yes, because that's what the Dodgers are. And as soon as they hired Friedman, who, by the way, just put a system in place and then didn't even have to run it really, right? So when I see him involved with the Lakers, I'm like, uh-oh. Well, it's resources behind the scenes of just intelligence and analytics.

And, you know, like, who knows who they're, going to bring in, but it's clearly there's going to be some sort of shift. And they were famously, I don't want to say cheap, but I don't think they were extravagant behind the scenes. They were run by Jerry Bus's kids. It's a family business. Yeah. And for better and worse. And it was, I think, if LeBron just doesn't decide I want to live in Lowe, they just sort of had all these weird lottery picks assembled, Lonzo Ball, Julius Randall, Brandon Ingram. Yeah. They kept would have been a 40-win team for 10 years. Yeah, and probably would have added some stuff.

This episode is brought to you by Miclob Ultra. What makes basketball so exciting? All the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. The craziest thing, I mean, Wembe, stuff he's doing every game. There's two, three Wemby moments a game. We're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that. The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll,

he's going to the basket, somebody throws him Naliup, and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. it's an alley hoop, but it's not an oop. It's just kind of an alley. And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100% never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA, though.

Try Mickelopatra, the official beer partner of the NBA. And a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman. He just told me that. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win court side seats, custom merch, and more. Mickelobultra, Superior is worth playing for

enter now at Mickleau. ultra.com slash courtside. Mickelob ultra Ultra Courtside, 2526, no purchase necessary, open to U.S.

Residence 21 plus begins on October 1st, 2025 ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods, see official rules of Micklobe Ultra.com slash courtside

for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. I want to talk New York Sports quick with you. 15 years of that a title, unless you count the liberty, which I guess you

Ken. Yeah, sure. But no, let's just be honest. When you're talking about the two teams at every major sport. We're not talking about hockey. I'm sorry. Like, NHL, people got really mad at me a bunch of years ago because I said there are three major sports in the country. By the way, I'm big in boxing, right? I'm not pretending that boxing is more popular than it is at the moment. Reason I'm with Zufa is because I want it to be more popular. Hockey is a popular sport in certain circles. It is not one of, There's not a big four. There's a big three. It's baseball, basketball, and football.

And I think... Yeah, I don't even say the fourth one would be college football. Yeah, I mean, and in New York, I think you're right. In New York, the fourth one... No, the Rangers are pretty big. The Rangers, yeah, I would say so. I'd say the... Because the Rangers, they lost the Cup finals in 14 and the Kings.

They've been in three conference finals ever since. That's the most success you've had in New York. But Dolan used to hang his hat on when the Knicks sucked. So you have Jets and Giants. Giants won the last title, but no conference finals for either football team since 11. NICS have made the finals since 94

that made the Eastern Conference Finals last year. Nets, 2003. Mets, 2015 World Series. They made the NLCS in 24, and the Yankees have one title since 2009. Islanders, 2020-20 conference finals. If I had told you,

so what were we doing in 2010? You're in Sports Nation? What was your job? you're ESPN. You're doing something. I may have been at CNN and ESPN radio. So Yankees win the World Series in 2009. And I say to you in 2009,

there's only going to be one more New York title for the next 16 years and it won't be the Yankees. What would your reaction have been to that? God damn it. I wouldn't have even necessarily not believed you. There are lots of things working against New York in the modern age in sports. Number one, the city's big enough to support two teams.

Yeah. Right. Like, that's the, when people talk about salary caps and resources, New York is such a megalopolis, right? That it's, that it's, you know, it supports two teams in every sport, basically. So you've diluted the resources. Boston, which is a much smaller city, has the entire market from northern Connecticut up to Maine and doesn't share it with anyone. They have comparable resources. This is the Padres argument.

It's the only team in San Diego. They do like over $500 million in Redmond. They're not competing against anyone. Not competing. Yeah. And New York is extreme. Like, so take Los Angeles, right? In Los Angeles, like, one of the tough things about doing radio in Los Angeles,

sports radio, is when the team sucks on the East Coast, sports radio is as hot as ever. People are pissed. They want to talk about it. They like angry. It's angry sports radio. It's angry sports radio. Boston Sports Radio, the best thing that ever happened was Drake Mae sucking in the playoffs.

Right. It was like the best thing that ever happened to every show. Is he good? Does he have it? That's their like, kings and shit. He's tall enough to succeed in the NFL, right? Like that can carry you from. Tatum versus Brown is Boston Sports Nirvana. Oh my God.

It's upright. So on the west coast, in L.A., if you saw it, they'll go to the beach. They don't need you anymore, right? It's really just Dodgers, Lakers here. Yeah. And then the USCUSA football a little bit. When they're good and a little bit. But what I mean is, but in Boston, but New York has a bit of L.A.

not in the sense that they don't care a lot about sports, but New York is Wall Street and Broadway, and there's a lot of stuff going on. I get the sense that in Boston, sports, they're one sports team. They're not divided by anything. It's not the Red Sox and the is more important to them relative to everything else in their lives than the one sports team is in New York. I think Phillies like that too. I think those are the two. Chicago with the Bears, I think, is... Bears, Cubs, probably. Yeah, probably.

Even though they're large enough to support two teams in certain sports. My theory with this was always the worst of weather, the more the teams matter. Right. Which is then you go to Canada where it's like hockey is like life or death for everything. That's it. Like we won the gold medal and within a day turned into a political thing. In Canada, they lost the gold medal. They're going to be talking about it five months from now.

Right. Like, oh my God. So why didn't we keep McDavid out for the first? Why did we take them out after 33 seconds in the OT? It's so funny being in Canada and watching SportsCentra. Right? Oh, yeah. And then it's bizarreo land.

The ARB and the E are reversed. And in that little bizarreo universe, hockey leads and the NFL is buried. Right. It's NHL, NHL, NHL, little MLB. Tiny bit of basketball. It's exactly, it's, you know, bizarro land. But so that's one thing about New York Sports. The other is there is enormous pressure in New York to try to make the playoffs every year

because there's a lot of money to be made. And a lot of times if that's the incentive, you know, the Patrick Ewing years, if the Knicks made the second round of the playoffs, they made a ton of money. Just stay competitive. Yeah, but, and this ties into tanking. But is it ever in your strategic best interest to maybe wait this year, don't trade for that veteran where you're mortgaging the future? and that veteran is not even that good to begin with.

McCall Bridges? Yeah, I mean, Mikael Bridges, if he was 10%, like the Knicks are interesting. They've created a team where if everyone does their job just right, and you get a little lucky

with injuries on the other team, you could win a championship, but that's the only way. They're not, like, you know, that's what happened last year. Josh Hart has to shoot it better than he does. Mikhail Bridges has to be a little more physical than he is.

Carl Anthony Towns has to maintain his best play on both sides of the ball for two months without stop. You know, like, it's, you're just asking, they have no margin for error and maybe not even that. So what's the Yankees' excuse? Well, okay, so this goes for all the teams.

Like, you can think about when Prokerov bought the nets. It's the first thing he did. He jammed in enough talent to be, he built your dynasty in, or if you have one in Boston, right? Right. He immediately acquired enough talent. They ought to make the second round of the playoffs.

That's about it. ain't going to win a championship, but they'll make the second round of the playoffs. There's this enormous pressure in that neck of the woods to just be competitive. And in the Yankees case, same thing. They can't ever take a year off without making the playoffs, not intentionally, right? They have to be competitive every year. They have to sell the boxes and they have to, they have this, you know, the TV, you know, they care about their TV ratings and they are competing with the Mets.

But their owner is kind of poorer by the standards of a sports owner. and the percentage of revenue he spends on the team is not top 10. I wouldn't say they're business savvy. The Yankees. I think the Dodgers looked at the Far East, and they had it because they had some other stars in the 90s and 2000, so they had a sense. But they now looked at this as like,

this is our second revenue stream and our second city, right? That now we're selling everything overseas and we're selling all the stuff here with the dominant baseball team in California. and money's no object. Like, like, Otani leads to Yamamoto.

Of course. Now they're just like, they're the first stop for any Japanese baseball star who might be coming over. They're going to want to play for the Dodgers. The kids are going to grow up dreaming to play for the,

like they figured out something the Yankees probably should have figured out. And they tried. You had Matsui and people like that. Not for the first time. The Dodgers, I mean, this is very different circumstances,

but the Dodgers, once upon a time, there was an untapped pool of talent that no one understood, hey, if we just get the All-Star team from this pool of talent will just be really good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Negro

leagues, half the good players in baseball were excluded from the major leagues and the Dodgers basically, imagine if you had a time machine and you're like, you know what, if I was the GM of a team that really sucked back then, I just go to the Negro leagues. I tell everyone to, you know, go fuck themselves. I'm going to put together a

Negro League All-Star team. And we're going to beat everybody because you idiots, like, because none of the talents that eluded all over the league. That's not racist everyone was back then, though, because they were like, people won't come out. And it's like, you know what, people like winning. I don't care what decade this is. Of course. So they went out and got, they put together like a Negro League All-Star team before anyone knew what was going on. Yeah, they got Campi and Newcomb and Robinson. Come on. Just you got, you got two got, you got a second baseman and a catcher who are in the conversation for the greatest of all time at their position to this.

day. Yeah. And, and, you know, you didn't have to have a shortstop. You had a Hall of Fame or there. You didn't need a First Baseman. You had a Hall of Famer there. Or a center fielder. You had a hall of fame or there. So, like, wherever you needed help, you went out and got like a guy who is in the conversation for best ever. It's crazy. And then you have the Red Sox kicking the guys off the field, which led to, you know. Yeah. Good, good going, Boston in New York. Yeah, tough one. So the Yankees are retiring CC's number. My buddy Jacko, lifelong diehard Yankee fan. He said the only Yankee numbers that should be retired are 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 8, 15, 16, 32, and 42. So that would be Derek Jeter.

Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio. Who else did he say? Mantle. Mantle. The Dickie Barra combo at number 8. Thurman Munson. Uh-huh.

Wettie Ford, Elston Howard, and Rivera, and he's done. So that means who he thinks doesn't, shouldn't be retired. Billy Martin won. Joe Tori 6. I disagree with that. Maris, Resudo, Pasada, O'Neal. Mattingley, Stangle, Jackson, Pettick, Guidry, Bernie, and Cici.

It's the question of how many numbers are too many, and some of it gets tied into in baseball, if the guy makes the Hall of Fame, usually retire his number. This is what I would say about some of that. You could argue Posada, right? I would say the others are good arguments to retire the number.

The late 90s Yankees, the 1998 Yankees are easily the greatest baseball team of all time. I think Bernie's. I was surprised to know Bernie. I'm going there. That's exactly where. I'm going. Bernie has to be on there. Bernie Williams. Like, everyone knows

the legend of Mickey Mantle, everyone. We're old as fuck. Like, I don't know. But, like, in our generation, everyone knew Mickey Mantle. Bernie Williams was the switch. Okay, don't spare me the defensive metric arguments, everything. I'm just stating facts. He was the switch hitting,

gold glove winning, batting champion, who used to hit between 20 and 30 home runs, probably the best hitter in baseball, the best contacted her in baseball with plus power. Yeah. Who played an up the middle position for years, right?

Certainly in that conversation. Before we realized how valuable it was to spend actually your money in the middle of the field instead of the sides. Bernie Williams, if you, when he was coming up, it was night. Like, I, see you have to understand, in New York, public enemy number one for the Yankees, this may have changed for some reason after, well, not for some reason. And when the Red Sox started winning the World Series, this probably changed. But when I was a kid,

public enemy number one for a Yankees fan were the Mets. Yeah. Red Sox were two. There was a really... Well, you beat us every year. Like, why would we even be the enemy? But also because the Mets got good.

Yeah. Right. And it was the good and strawberry run where it was like, oh shit. They were bigger than the Yankees. This is like New York's town now. They sold more tickets. They had more interest.

The kids in school were wearing Mets caps. It was miserable as a Yankees fan. for high school during that. The Mets took over. Miserable for a Yankees fan. We hated it. By the way, there was a chant, the bleachers. I was a bleacher creature growing up. I was up in there all the time. And it was

at the end of this chant, where it was always, you know, a very insulting thing toward the right fielder. And at the end of the chant, you would start with Mets suck, Red Sox suck. Then you would say whoever they were

playing, so let's say it was the Rangers. The Rangers suck. Let's say Ruben Sierra was in right field for the Rangers. You'd say Root Sierra sucks. Then you would say box seats suck. Then you would say that side, in other words, the other side of the aisle of the bleachers suck. Yeah. And then anyone who's watching this who happened to be in Yankee Stadium, those years would be like, oh my God, I can't believe someone remembers this. And then you would turn around, spin around with your hand like this and say you all suck, okay? but what came first was the Mets before anything. Yankees fans hated the Mets.

So, Bill, by 1987, there's no pitching. They're just miserable. And the Mets are, they didn't win in 87, but they won in 86. They had one of the great pitching staffs of all time in 88. It looked like they were going to be good for like 10 years. And I would read in like Yankees magazine, Yankees signed this Puerto Rican kid who's like, he was like 16. or 17, and he's supposed to be, he's going to be a great lead-off hiter.

He's going to hit like 300. He's going to steal 50 bases. Bernie. Bernie Williams. But it turned out better than that. He was the switch hitting monster who hit 300 every year and led the league in hitting

and hit for power and hit dramatic. He was the best postseason player we had. And like, it was... Well, you left out the part the Red Sox thought they had him. Oh, my God. And it was miserable for me that whole time. It was more miserable for us

because it was like, this is how we're going to... finally stick to the Yankees. We're going to take one of their guys and he dick tease them, Dick tease them in the 11th hour. Yeah, that's right. Came back to the Yankees. So he got booed every time at Fenway after that. But he was so, and like to have that guy hitting cleanup like Mickey Mantle once did. To me, win four world series, his number should be retired. Gator, as much as I love the Gator, I can't see it. Pet it. Well, I could, I could argue.

Pet it with 200 plus wins for you? There was a really good article. I can't remember who wrote it on ESPN.com five years ago, maybe more, maybe 10 years ago at this point, making a Hall of Fame argument for Pettit that is so convincing. It is, it's very persuasive. He's saying if you look at everyone born between this year and this year who pitched in the major leagues, right. Okay, he's pitching through a steroid error. Durability wins, playoff stuff. Yeah, he dabbled. Yeah, all that stuff. But if you look at it, he was one of the top two or three pitchers of like, a sizable number of years. This is my, but this is my Garvey case.

Right. Where Garvey's still not in, but it's like, well, if I wanted a first baseman from 1973 to 1986. No, that's the problem. It didn't go to 86. Or 84? When did they?

Podres was 84? Yeah. But the Padres, he'd fallen off by the Padres. Like, he stopped being great. I want to say off the top of my head like 82. Like Garvey may not have had a long enough prime.

Gidre Well, Gidgian definitely didn't have long enough He didn't, but he won Gidri, if you look at his Cy Young finishes Yeah

And Gidri was never a bad pitcher Like even at the end He was still inning for inning A good guy He was a good guy He was one of the original ones Maddenly was the same thing Like probably not long enough

No, but But the Celtics have this issue With all the retired numbers we have Where there's some flimsy ones And sometimes the owners They just want to get some goodwill and it's like, we're going to retire this guy. It's going to be a great day.

You have to retire Maddingley's number. He was the most popular New York athlete between, I'm trying to think post-Mickey Mantle. Was there a guy more beloved in New York than Don Maddingly pre-Gyter? Certainly like a baseball player. He definitely was more beloved than Ewing was. If you just keep it to baseball, I don't think there was a more beloved Yankee. Thurman Munson, but I think actually Maddigley

maybe was a little, even though he didn't win the World Tour, was a little even bigger than Munson in New York. He's one of those when I think about like the Curry era versus like the Maddenly Larry Bird era,

where Curry, if he's in the 70s and 80s, he just has ankle problems and he probably plays seven years. And we're like, oh, remember that one game? He had 60 points. Yeah. But now we have all this technology

and he fixed his ankle stuff and fixed his lower. the perfect place for him. They just had a bad back and we didn't kind of know what to do with that in 1984. Same thing with bird. Bird's body just started to break down.

We had no idea how to take care of it. We had all these guys from Indiana. Couldn't. Probably like shoveling during the winters. That's the problem. So what New York team are you the most optimistic for before we hit to the mailbag? I think the Giants right now because of Harbaugh.

You know, they have, I love Jackson Dart. I think, like, I'm out. I'm one of these guys. I'm outraged when you'll see a real will. They'll be like, stop me when you get to a better quarterback than so-and-so. And they won't even mention his name. And I think Jackson Dart is 100% an elite talent quarterback.

And the question is, will he be in the right situation? And more, can he stay in the field? Can he, that's the whole thing. This is the Drake May thing last year. They were so determined to not have him take hits. You know, I actually thought he changed the way he played a little bit, mostly for the better. but you can't be reckless as a quarterback in the NFL because you're just going to

especially the heads bouncing against the back. He's got a slide. He's got to just slide dude, slide. You can't do it. Yeah. I'm with you in the Giants because you could argue terrible injury luck last year. Fourth place schedule. New coach. We've just seen it too many times. Every year there's one or two teams

that fit the recipe whereas like NBA you can't turn it around. It's a miracle if you're even the Charlotte Hornets. Where you went from like sucking to being like We might be a dangerous eight seed. That's like the arc you can have. And part of it's also just the number of games.

It's like, you know, in the end, imagine an NBA team who was hot through the first 15 games of the season. Or like through 18 games, you're hot, right? Well, that's it. Season's over. You're just won the first game of your playoff schedule, right? Right. Like that's football just not a lot of inventory. All right.

We're going to take a break and do some mailback questions. Sometimes the greatest financial victories aren't the huge flashy contracts in sports, but the mid-level moves that maximize your cab space. Just like Tax Act helps you get a great return by finding every deduction, even the small ones, to maximize your refund. And we are in the zone right now for this. In great returns presented by Tax Act,

we look back at the best decisions GMs have made to land an inexpensive player who paid huge dividends down the stretch and owners that have seen their team valuation skyrocket. Well, Kevin Durant was not inexpensive, But you remember in 2016, the Warriors, who just won 73 games. They lost Game 7 in the finals.

And at the same time, there's this crazy salary cap spike that their front office is planning for because they think maybe they have a chance to get Kevin Durant. Well, what happens? They clear enough salary cap space. They somehow got Kevin Durant. The 2017 Warriors become,

I think, the best team in the 21st century. They win again in 2018. They made the finals in 2019. It was all because they planned ahead. and made great financial decisions. Great returns. That was presented by Tax Act. This tax season, simplify your moves, maximize your refund.

Visit Taxact.com to learn more conditions apply. See Taxact.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Dovemen Plus Care. The holidays are over. We're back at work. And yeah, that winter slump hits hard. Sometimes all it takes is a small change to your routine to lift your mood. And it can be as simple as Dove Men Plus Care,

aluminum-free deodorant. With its mood-boosting sense, this deodorant stick keeps you odor-free and feeling fresh for up to 72 hours. It may not seem like much, but the difference in your confidence will be massive. Visit dove.com to learn more. This episode is brought to by Uber-Eats. It's winter, and you can now get almost anything you need for the coldest months of the year delivered with Uber-Eats. What do I mean by almost? Well, you can't get a ski slope delivered, but you can get dish slope delivered. Fair weather, no. Shredded cheddar. Yes. Snow Angel, no. Angel hair pasta. Yes, Uber Eats can get you all that along with the side of garlic bread and creme brulee to top it all off. Get almost, almost anything this winter with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets,

product availability may vary by region. See app for details. At MedCan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. All right, mailback questions. Questions from actual listeners who send into BS Podcast 33 at gmail.com. As always, I'm going to remind everybody, please no more tanking emails. I'm at my capacity.

It's a nightclub. We've closed the doors. We've blocked the front door. No more thanking. This is from Alex and Charlottesville. Okay. Is Beef Stew the best nickname in the NBA? It's not in the same category of how the aunts are nice men or cool nicknames or how big Aristotle or Timorter.

Offnight. Offnight. Offnight's the best nickname in the NBA. What's off night? Offnight. What's his name? Mitchell. That hasn't caught on, though.

Beef stew. Everyone calls Isaiah Stewart. Beefsteer. I know, but that, I know, but Offnight is his nickname. It's a pretty good. It's a pretty good nickname. But Beepstoo's your favorite. So Offnight's your favorite, but Beepstoo is the best one where it's become the guy's name.

And where the guy is, is like a kind of a deal. Yeah. So this leads me to a deeper question of what happened to basketball nicknames. I wrote down something that I love from over the years. Okay. Earl the Pearl. Yep. Jelly Bean.

Kobe Bryant's dad. Magic, obviously. It was amazing. Bad news. We had two bad news. We had Jim Bad News Barnes, then Marvin Bad News Barnes. World.

Lloyd Free was, just became World Be Free. That's right. And then he changed his name. The Iceman, George Garvin, probably the best one ever. I agree.

Leonard Truck Robinson, who just became truck. By the way, even like something simple like the X-Man. That was cool. X-Man's a good one. Mountain Man Bill Walton. Pistol Pete Marevich.

He just could have been Pete Marevich. He just could have been Pete Marevich. Clyde the glide. Boo? There were a couple boos over the years. Who? What was the guy's name? There was a boo in the 1990s.

I'm blanking. Cornbread. Cedricornbread Maxwell. Never nervous Purvis. Big Game James. And then we even had World Wide West, who's not technically a player, but he had a nickname.

Big Game James is such a great one. He should have been, I never understood. Big Games James, James. Big Games James. It should have been pluralized. Big Game James is easier to say.

Big Games James to me is it should have been but it's not. It's big game James. So the best two recent ones we've had PG-13 which I was single-handly responsible for I was ready about a call.

Boogie Cousins was amazing. Buggy Cousins. You know what? Boogie Cousins? That might be the one. It's a great one. Best one of the last 15 years. Boogie Cousins might be the one.

No, no. Cousins might be the one. It's great one. Pistol Pete is great, I agree. And the Iceman is just so cool. Trucks great. Trucks like basically, what is what would a Truck Robinson do? You know what he's going to do? He's going to grab rebounds. That's right. He's like a truck just clearing people out.

But Boogie Cousins, I think Boogie Cousins is my winner. Well, so in this era, we've moved to I don't think of it as a nickname because I think of him as Boogie Cousins. Right. We've moved to first names and initials. All right. SGA, J-dub, Luca, J-T,

Cat. Whemby. That's just kind of where we landed. Joker, it's kind of a nickname, but it's also his name. I have five guys that I think could really use a nickname. All right. Jalen Duren. Something rebound-y, something.

Big, strong, intimidating, menacing guy. Do you have a nickname for him? Well, I had some available ones that we haven't had in a while, and one of the ones I was looking at was night train. We haven't had a good night train in a while. That's true. Boogie Man is another one. Nobody's really done.

We've had it in boxing. There's good boxing nicknames. Yeah, there are. But not, and UFC will have some good ones, but not basketball. But I feel like he needs one. I think Austin Reeves would be a game changer for him. If we called him like slick, he was just like slick Reeves. Well, he had the white mom, but didn't they try that?

Something quick. Khan can nipple. He might, Khan might be good enough because, like, Clay, Clay became good enough for Clay. What he's doing as a rookie is... Conman has a negative connotation, so he can't really use that. The initials get tough with the KK that can go in bad directions.

Yes. But Khan might be fine, but I also think he could use one. Jalen Johnson, Rich Paul Client. Like, we have Triple J for Jaron Jackson, Jr. Yeah, something with J or J-square or... I don't know.

And then here's the one that I really want us to work on. And I will, no more tanking emails, but I will accept nickname emails. Stefan Castle. That's somebody that needs a nickname where it's just, his name's like Velcro or, you know, one of those names where he's just with you wherever you go, crazy glue. That's why I love off night. Off night's good. I love off night.

I was like, oh my God, that's the best name I've heard in so long. The biggest name that's sitting there for somebody is sniper. We haven't had a sniper yet. Like sniper Johnson, sniper. sniper Jackson sniper canipal I don't like how it sounds no

but sniper I think could really and shooters another one because there was a Mark Wahlberg movie shooter so it's just like if we just started calling Clay Thompson shooter I think that could have worked

but I really I really need the people to send me some good possible names I think your observation is correct that we have gone from nicknames to initials we just got lazy yeah and boxing has still like what are the best boxing nicknames though

of all time Like the executioner was a classic. The hitman. Hitman Tommy Hurts is an all-time right. The Motor City Cobra. Marvelous Marvin Hagler. I mean, he changed his name to Marvelous, but originally that was his nickname.

The Italian, Staling, Rocky Balboa. Well, that does. I'm trying to do it was the best. You know, Adrian Bronner had a good one, the problem. Oh, that's good. So the truth was one of the organic think things we've had this century, Paul Pierce. Carl Williams in the 80s, the heavyweight.

Carl, he was the initial truth. But we also had Walter the Truth Barry, which was a huge one. But then Shaq said about Paul Pierce after a game, that guy's the truth. And they're calling him the truth and it's stuck. By the way, Black Mamba started in boxing. Before Kobe was the Black Mamba,

Floyd's uncle, Roger Mayweather, who had a junior lightweight belt and a junior welterweight belt was the Black Mamba. Well, Kobe gave himself the nickname, which I don't know what your ruling is on that. It always makes being... Well, I just read on a real. The self-nicknames.

Yeah, I read it on a real. I saw it popped up on my IG. It was originally, there was some campaign they wanted to do for Michael Jordan, and he passed on the nickname. So the other thing, I think that's true. I think that is true, but the one, I remember Kobe Test drove a couple gimmicks, because he was into Apex Predator for a while. Now is the other one then kind of settled on Black Mamba, but that was like his reimbabre. mentioned the mid-2000s, which the crazy stuff about Kobe all these years later is,

as this was happening in real time, we were kind of like, what's this guy doing? This is weird? Now it's fucking cool. Mamba mentality. Yeah, it fucking worked. He was way ahead of us. Howe reminds us that AR-15 is the Reeves name? You know, I've never heard.

I've never really called that. A-R-15 was used much more last year than it has been this year. Gah has excited because he thinks mathorine can fill the hard and void for the quipers. He's a big Quipper fan over there. It's very excited for the math for your troubles. Alistar from Sydney. We get emails from all over the globe. He said on your last pod,

the debate about the merits of Darren, Darren Peterson versus AJ DeBanza. DeBanza de Banza. The Bonsa is what I'm hearing. I'm hearing DeBanza. It's going back and forth. We're going to need a ruling. Maybe Trump should have said something on Tuesday.

I'll say the opposite, whatever is it. He said, DeBanza calls himself DeBanza, but now it's DeBanza. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But anyway, during that podcast, Kyle Mann, one of my guests, casually mentioned that Peterson has a Michael Myers tattoo. And Alistar was disappointed. I wasn't more excited about it saying because I love Michael Myers. Sure.

He'd had a Neil McCauley tattoo from Heat. I probably would have had a reaction. I knew about this, which is why I didn't react. Does this make you like Peterson more or less that he has a Michael Myers tattoo? More. I think it's a little more too because it fits into his personality of like the quiet Kauai type. What it makes you think is he's coming to get you. So like if that's going to be his mentality, he's coming to get you, I like that a lot.

But I saw your reel on DeBanza. Yeah. And I agree. I think like when you're really looking at it, even if Peterson, wasn't taking himself out of games. One guy is 6-6 and the other 6-9, and the 6-foot-9 guy is super athletic. And could play either forward spot, et cetera, et cetera.

Like, I heard you say that, like, what's the downside for him? Andrew Wiggins is a pretty good player. Like better Andrew Wiggins. Or maybe it's more like a more athletic Paul George. Yeah. You know, and that's a hell of a player. What's really great about this draft,

and we talked about it a lot in the last pot is just when you, you're talking about guys with real all MBA potential. It's not just like, oh, who should we take? Odin Durant was like this where it's like, fuck. On one side, this could be the greatest scoring forward we've ever had. On the other side, this could be Patrick Ewing.

And that's when the stakes change. I always gravitate toward more of the short thing. I was in the Durant. Okay, that was one of my, I was in the minority, but I was like, Durant's going to be one of the best scoring forwards of all time. I know this is going to happen. I just watched it at Texas.

This is who he's going to be. I'd rather have that than the guy who's had multiple injuries already. Not to bring up tanking, but I, like, as I said, I said this on Game Over with Rich, with Rich, I was telling him, you know,

if I'm a Utah jazz fan, this is a special set of circumstances this year. I understand tanking is generally an issue. There's no denying that. However, this year it's less of an issue than people think because if I'm a jazz fan I'm not mad that my team is taken I've been in this spot a couple times with the Celtics I was not mad as it was happening right it depends it depends on the situation it's two months of your life do we just went through

this with the Patriots with the Drake major have is that you know there's a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood right like here it is right now if you're the Utah jazz you're not a destination for free agents or guys clamoring to be traded you have a couple a really good forwards whose games should complement each other right now. But you're spending some money on one of them. And there's considered generational talents in the draft. Two months of your life, which is the most important piece of it. But really, if you are, as long as you're one of the worst four records in the league,

you will be able to draft a hell of a player. So your job is, for any fan of the jazz, make sure to have, I don't care what happens, you better have one of the worst four records in the league, right? If you don't do that, you screwed up so royally. So I get it if I'm a jazz fan. I would get it if I'm a Wizards fan. I would get it if I'm a... Nets, definitely.

Yeah, Nets, Pacers, like, I understand. Maybe Mavericks? We might not see Cooper Flagg again. Kyrie's already said I'm out. I understand it. So if you have a league where there are 10 teams tanking, but a half a dozen of them, the fan base is like, yeah. This is not the Sixers.

who did it for five straight years and weren't any good. Their fans had Stockholm syndrome with it. They talked themselves into it. They're like, they're like, we're out thinking everybody with this strategy. If everyone, if you've set up a system of incentives again,

and you're telling everyone they're generational players in this draft and they're a handful of them, right? Like, you don't have to draft one overall. And you got teams with good nucleuses where you're looking at them, you're going, oh, actually, that's nice. Indiana is the best example.

Yeah. Indiana, you put one of these guys on their team. They're immediately scary. Yeah, I'm fast forward into another email because you were talking about Utah. This is from Eric. He says, and I haven't heard this point before, Danny Age is doing it again, and nobody has noticed yet. He's following his 07 Celtics blueprint.

Start with the star who can't win alone, Lori Mark and slash Paul Pierce. Acquire the second tier star who's a specialist, Ray Allen, Triple J. And now the third step would be trade for a megastar because you have the other two guys, plus the lottery pick. Could that be honest? The problem with this theory is there's really the KG in this scenario is Yonis, and there's no other KG.

But the only other one I can think of is Devin Booker, and I don't know why Phoenix would trade him. Janus might, like he has the kind of personality where maybe Utah's not a deal. Like he might like a nice small, quiet situation. Yeah. Better than L.A. or New York. I honestly have no feel for me neither.

What Yonis would want. Like. But according to the Disney movie that I saw. It seems he likes a small town. Right. But it's like with LeBron, I thought at some point, I remember before the decision,

I was just convinced it was going to be the Knicks because I was like, I think this guy wants to be the greatest basketball player of all time and the move is to go to the Knicks. And Dolan screwed it up and that story's been. Did I ever tell you that? I mean, I don't remember if I told you this on the one pod did last time,

but I ran into Clyde Frazier Day of the Decision on that little breakfast spot right across the street from Madison Square Garden and we had lunch together and just were like commiserating over what it just happened but I thought it was super cool

that I had lunch with Clive and Wade on the Knicks and you could have been talking about that that day well I mean really the issue there was not LeBron the issue was that people that worked for the next when Pat Riley said I want a piece of the team

and the Dolans wouldn't give it to him, but Aronson would, that's it. If Pat, if the Dolans just say, okay, here's a taste, stay here, we'll give you control of operations. Obviously, LeBron would have been a neck. They didn't think of GMs as that important back then, I don't think, in the same way. But, because I remember Red Arbach almost left for the next once when I was a kid. And then they just basically like, here's another 75 grand. It's unbelievable. It's like, it wasn't like now. You will throw money away at franchises will. still will.

Mid-level exception guy or in baseball, veteran, all right, we'll take a roll of the dice. It's $8, $10, $12 million a year. It didn't work out.

We'll eat some money and move him. But a GM, right? Like if you have Masai Ujiri or something like that, and you could see, oh, wow, he did it in Denver, he did it in Toronto.

Yeah, like, what's Brad Stevens worth to the Celtics? He just got them under the luxury tax somehow. He saved them $300 million a share. And it doesn't count against your cap or anything?

So if I'm running a franchise, that's where the money goes it's best used to an actually great executive. That's what scares me about the Lakers. Exactly. Because they know this. So I always thought it's like Leo Mazzoni

in the 80s, right? Ever Jared, right, didn't matter who they took, had a career year in Atlanta. Or the Spurs shooting coach. Or the fix Kauai. Kauai fell out of 15 because nobody thought I could shoot. Stoutland, the offensive line coach in Philadelphia, right?

So if you have that guy and if I ran a franchise and I wanted him, well, they're giving them $2 million a year already. Okay, here's 10 million. Like, here's five times. Put a zero on it. You're paying $8 million for DeAndre Aiton.

Right. Go get, go spend it. Now, not just because by reputation or he appears that way, but if a guy has a track record, if it's pretty clear that it's him, what is that worth? That people are like, well, you know,

coordinators only get that. He'd be making. more than a lot of head coaches. So much. Next question from Jay Johnson. Which team, given their history, is most likely to win the draft lottery, take Peterson, and have them become a complete bust.

The obvious candidates are the Kings or Wizards. Portland jumping up and taking the wrong guys in play, given their history. On the flip side, which team could Peterson land on most likely to have the right infrastructure to help them succeed? So I wrote down for worst. I mean, Kings is always. a worst case there.

But can't sleep on the Pelicans of the history of New Orleans basketball and them taking seemingly perfect assets and them going sideways. That's true. I think Memphis is in there and then the Wizards just because of their history.

But Sacramento, by Sacramento's lapping the field. Kings, they're like minus 500 in that argument. Nets, I'm not sure. Because the Nets, young team where they could just let him do his thing. They're the clippers. They're jinxed.

You know, like they're a jinxed franchise. Might be jinxed. Yeah. Best teams, I think, would be the Mavericks, Pacers, Hawks. Yeah. Pacers would be interesting because Halberton has the ball a lot, Nemhardt has the ball a lot, Peterson, we're not sure about what's going on with him, just in general.

Right, but one of the things we're not sure about, other than the injury stuff, is, is he a point guard probably, maybe not. Six, six. Not ideally. Not, I don't think ideal. I think ideally, he's like, like, okay, ideally. when you think of the triangle and Michael and Kobe, they weren't exactly point guards,

but they weren't exactly not point guards either. Maybe they didn't dribble the ball up the floor, but the offense really did run through them. That's where the league is starting to go. Like, you can even see the Celtics this year when they had weight and they had Pritchard and they had Simons. Yeah, combo guards. Combo guards who can kind of run offense and they can run off ball action.

But I kind of love that if your off guard is a combo guard, in fact, and then you already have a primary ball handler, like a point guard. And Halliburton doesn't need the ball all the time either. Right. Yeah. I mean, anyone with the Pacers, though the ceiling team is the MAVs.

Yeah. If you put him, that's exactly what they need. He's basically with Kyrie and then eventually they get rid of Kyrie or trade him and he takes over. By the way, Kyrie has such an opportunity here. Kyrie can elevate his historical standing.

Yeah. By so much on this MAVs team because you do want some veterans on a team. Oh, you want everyone. wanted to say not exactly the same age, you'd like some veteran presence, right? And Kyrie could rehabilitate this image as at times immature or too focused on other stuff or, or somehow causing a distraction. If he became the vet, like the good influence veteran leader on this MAV's team, if this MAV's team won two of the next four chips and Kai Rui was a big part of it,

where would he rate all time? If he wasn't. The problem for him is you're in the same conference with O.K.C. in San Antonio. And that shit's got to happen fast. But this thing about Cooper Flag, I think there's a tendency, if there's like a long, non-center white guy that he gets, like, you know, people talk about Luca with Larry Bird. They're not very much alike, actually. They're really, their games are not that similar, right? But they're white guys who are about the same height.

And talked a lot of shit. And talk a lot of shit. But Larry Bird made every. team he was ever on. So much better. I don't think there's really any similarities with them. But I think people think that. And Bert shot it a lot better too.

Bird could fit into any scenario. Like what we're talking about earlier. Yeah. So here's the thing about Cooper Flagg. I think there's a tendency to look at, and by the way, it's not even like people are twirling their mustaches. We're racist, right? It's that, it's that, you know.

Is that what racist too? Yeah, right. In the back, in the back room, they tie the girl to the tracks. and everything. Yeah, the bad guys, right? Yeah. But I do think that we're human beings. We typecast, right?

We make, we generalize. That's how we think about things. Cooper Flagg is athletic. He is a really good defensive player. He is an elite defensive player. Cooper Flagg is the guy I want on my team. You could argue more than anyone in the NBA going forward. For assets.

Yes. You could argue. Sure, but given Wemby's physiology at seven foot million... What Wemby did in the Pistons game the other day, I'm still thinking about. If Wemby stays healthy, forget it.

Because the thing with Wembe, this to me is the last level of being a great player. He cannot have a good game and still be the best guy in the game. Right. Pistons game, he kind of sucked, but he changed 20 shots on defense. And then he's the guy.

And then he's the guy who is saying, I'm playing hard in this in this All-Star game. Yeah. And as Rich Paul points out, that actually had an influence on the other guys. And he's, it was him, it was aunt,

and it was the two Detroit guys. And those four guys lifted the game. Everybody else caught up in it. I'm not, there's no argument. You want Wembe, but I'm factoring in everything, including height and how that may affect

their physical decline later on. Cooper Flagg is so good. I don't think people real, and he's not even shooting it well yet. but he probably will. And he's not 20 yet. And he's not 20 yet. That Kyrie gets healthy and now you're doing Cooper Flag next year already.

And a top 7-8 pick. That's what I'm saying. Like, that might be the spot where it's- Maybe a trade. Impossible. So when you say, hey, but these guys and those guys are in the conference, right? So are the Mavs if they get a guy like, you know. And don't forget Joker.

No question. Don't forget Ian Edwards. He's in there, too. It's funny. You talked about the cross-racial comparisons, which I've always loved, where we just compare white people to white people. Kniepple, to me, it's like when I watch him,

and he's getting better, he's like flag. He's actually been adding stuff as he went along. He also plays defense, by the way. He's way closer to Clay Thompson than I think people would see because the instinct is just to compare him to every white shooter that's ever existed. I think Clay's a great comparison.

But there's a little Havelacek, too. A little Shoechuk. There's Havelacek stuff in there, too. Avalchuk played 50 years ago. I never saw it. Like just on, you know. Moving or moving without the ball, constant movement,

just kind of knows how to play basketball, can play their position, rebounds, can affect games when he's not really shooting that well. No, if you think of Clay is just a shooter, that's the service to him. Yeah.

Like, he's, honestly, I love Clay and I think Clay's a whole family. I think he's a better version of Clay, because he can do more stuff and he rebounds. Clay, of course. was capable of getting hotter than anyone who ever lived. And Knappel might have that.

We'll see. He's had, I mean, he's made 203s already as a rookie. So Jay Johnson sends us in. Keep referencing tanking solutions. You overlooked that the MLB has solved some of this already. Any team participating in MLB revenue sharing can't participate in the lottery for three straight years. This happened to the White Sox in the 2025 draft.

They were one of the worst teams, but they picked 10th outside of the latteries because of the penalties. do they need to start thinking about financial stuff when they think about tanking? Like that could be one of them. You can't be in revenue sharing anymore if you're in the top eight of the lottery three straight years.

I've been pushing for 75% off all tickets if you fall like 25 games under 500. From that moment on, it's 75% off. Rich, that's... And season ticket holders are getting money back. That will stop if you just want to stop. We're penalizing. And then other people are saying,

oh, this is another one. he had a 5-2 format for the first round with like the one and the two seeds, the 7-8, you win the play-in, but you don't get the three home games, you get two. Hold on, hold on. Say that again? Five-two. So you get five home games, two in the road for the one and two seeds. So that there's real incentive to finish in the top six so you can get the extra home game.

But I don't think that's where the tanking becomes the issue, right? But it's just all general, all touring and trying to reward teams. Rich had an interesting point about this. what if the lottery was for the players? So DeBanza is the first pick. That means he gets the first one. So he has his choice what team he wants to talk to. See, I really like this idea.

Me too. I had a separate version of the same idea about the top five put in their pick, who their first choice is. And it's like, the top five agree. It is Darren Peterson is the number one pick. Darren, come on up here. Here are the five teams.

You get to choose. It almost becomes like a reality dating show. And he goes up and he's like, I pick the Indiana Pacers. See, that also does a thing where like, you know, the draft in the NFL is such an event. And the NBA draft is not the same kind of event, but it could be if you play with it.

That would be amazing to that way. John McGrady, this is off our Luca conversation. He said, why is the Luca versus Shea argument not at the top of first take in every debate show all the time? Since 2018, Luca was the undisputed best part of that class. Shea took his place overnight. Two years ago, Luca beat Shea and OKC in his way to the finals. Now it's Shea's league.

We talked about Luca like he was the next face of the league for six years and we have abruptly stopped. Is this Nico's fault or did the trade flip this? Can you imagine saying, you know what's going to end the run for Luca as, at least temporarily, as even being considered the next phase of the league

or the potential best player of the league, a trade to the Lakers. Right, but it feels like that's what's happened. 100%. It feels like that's bad. And I felt like when he showed up

last year, but the Laker fans loved him. And they were like, this is amazing, and you could feel it. You could feel it shipped away from LeBron, even in the stands.

Jersey's were popping up. Now we're out of the honeymoon phase and the Laker fans seem way more like what we talked about earlier. Like, is this fucking guy going to play defense? defense? Is this guy going to bitch after every call? Magic Johnson was not a great defender, but Magic did not play. He's, it's Luca's style of play and the personality that goes along with

it is becoming hard to root for. Yeah. And that's tough, that's a tough situation to be in. That was the next question I got was from Josh from Statesboro, Georgia, which asked if there'd ever been a greater group of winers than this year's Lakers mentioning not just Luca, not just LeBron, Marcus Smart, who's in that old guy. I'm not even good anymore, but I'm going to wind about everything. Reeves, and he suggests that they go after Dremont to really cement it. Well, I mean, I think a lot of what's happening in the NBA now is actually soccer culture affecting stuff because, you know, it's been going on for years at the highest levels of soccer, selling calls

and faking injury and faking fat, you know, like really, that's, and that's as the... I just want to point out guys have been bitching about calls for a long time. Not like this. Not like this, but it's single. It's unbelievable. And also here's the easiest solution. Fowl hunting, I could get rid of that. Make me commissioner for not even a day for one minute and I'll fix that stuff.

If the ref thinks you're hunting for a foul, don't call it. If you think the player's intention was to make a move in order to create contact technically, because technically he was able to make the move quick enough or fake the guy into position so then he could create contact that was the defender's fault. Don't call it. Swallow the whistle. Done. That's the end of, that's the end of the James Harden, Luca Donchich style of play, which is not fun to watch. Like, ultimately, it's a consumer product. Just legislate out the shit you don't like. And they've tried to get rid of some of it and it's worked, but there's ways to go. One more break, and then we're going to finish this. All right. Next question from Robert Hill,

doing an NCAA tournament for TV shows, what would be the four one seeds? For TV shows, all time? I think he's talking dramas because he said consensus would probably have Game of Thrones, Sopranos, wire, Breaking Bad. I wrote down,

I think the one seeds would be Sopranos, Thrones, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad. And I think the two seeds would be succession, West Wing, the wire, probably the Americans or the Shield, something like that.

And then everyone would get mad that the wire wasn't on one seed is how this would play out. To me, to me, you can't even mention other shows with The Wire. I watched The Sopranos and I thought, boy, this is like the best drama I've ever seen on TV. Yeah. And I didn't watch The Wire when it came out because every single person I knew from every walk of life said it was the greatest thing ever and it somehow turned me off to it, right? So I didn't watch it until like 10 years later. The Wire is not just the best TV ever made. it's the best TV by so far ever made.

I don't think you can include it in the tournament because it like takes the drama out. These other shows are not comparable to the wire. I would have for my actual one, see, if it was me, I'd have Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, and Thrones. Okay, I never watched Mad Men. That's one that I just didn't watch.

Those would be my four, but I don't think enough people would have the wire in there because I don't think it was as watched as people realized. No, it wasn't, but Game of Thrones. People loved it or didn't know about it? Game of Thrones can't be in there, Bill, because once they got away from the books,

which I didn't read. That wasn't their fault, though. Nevertheless, it's part of the TV show. I've been watching the sauna for a half hour every day. First two seasons are unbelievable. Unbelievable. I think people forget how, like, incredible the show was, and how they have 60 characters and 97 plots.

That was great. There's nothing like it. By the way, I got two shows that I would put above a lot of, and I thought, I thought like there's... So you don't like my theory that the wire would be the two seed caused by a 72-hour controversy, people just being flipping out. Oh yeah. I mean, like that's a great idea if you want to create controversy for sure. Yeah.

Breaking Bad, there's no denying its quality. It's like excellently made. I've found it tedious because I thought it was super predictable and because I've been conditioned to watch shows with five different storylines going on at once, 90 seconds, 90 seconds, and it was like just an up close look at really one storyline. And you knew how it was going. It's not the rewatchability as some of these other ones. Like I watched The Sopranos every two, three years now.

Right. I think I've gone all the way through four times. I've gone through the Wire three. I wouldn't do Breaking Bad a second time. I'll give you two shows that I've seen in recent years, I think, that are, I think, better than a lot of those shows. Yeah. Dark, which is, I want to say it's on Netflix.

It's a German show on Netflix. Wow, from German shows to me. Okay. Dark, but, like, dark is like, oh, wow, it's going there. Okay. Yeah. It's nothing to do with Nazis, right? But like, and actually that might be one of the criticism I have of it for a reason I won't, like, reveal because it'll ruin the show for everyone.

But it's an mind-blowing show. And the other that I had so much fun watching was The Last Kingdom. The Last Kingdom was the most fun I've had watching a show in a long time. Bailey from Lynchburg, Virginia wants to know what NBA player past or present would have benefited most from using the limitless drug. I love limitless. I've talked about this. Me too. Limitless. I added it as number 16 on my 50 most rewatchable movies of the 21st century. It caused a riot. Fifteen, it's higher than that. Sixteen, I watch it every time it's on. Limitless is, limitless is, what are people's beef? So you're a limitless head. Come in.

100%. It's fucking amazing. What are you kidding? It's the fantasy, right? You take the pill and now you have fun. Well, so for the email question, an NBA player that could have used it to clear a big mental hurdle, fix a competitive mindset problem or fix a glaring hole. And he said some examples would be Vince Carter, Shaq, Ben Simmons. So I was thinking guys who had it all, but something was missing up here. And I still think Ben Simmons was the greatest athlete I've seen on a basketball court who never put it together. And Vince Carter, who is going to be a hall of famer if he is an R-A-I-day, I can't remember. And at his peak was a 25 point of score, I also think he probably could have been

one of like the 15 best players of all time and wasn't. So I think he has to be mentioned. I don't know about that with Vince Carter. I think Vince did really well for himself. He was not, Vince Carter was a little bit and I love Vince and he was, I credit him for when Rich Paul says star in your role, like he understood, unlike to say,

with someone like Carmelo Anthony, who was an incredible ISO score. And as the league changed, maybe couldn't accept that maybe there was a different role for him now. You're talking about near the end of the career as their group. But like Vince played 20 years. Half of them. I know, but I just feel like the ceiling for Vince was so fucking high.

He had a lot of, um, Zach Levine in him in the sense that he's not going to create with the ball in his hand the way like someone like Kobe could. He, I think. So you don't think the limelisk drug for you would be Ben Simmons. No, because Ben Simmons was an emotional issue, I think, more than anything. I think he was a very smart basketball player. Well, the guy in Limitless, his emotional issue is he couldn't finish his book. That's right. That's true.

And it kind of unblocked him. Yeah, but... Ben Simmons needed an unblocking. Yeah, I think of... He was afraid to get fouled. I think of Limitless, like, a guy with all the tools, if he were a smarter player. James Wiseman? Well, there's a good one.

I mean, I'll tell you... Could James Wiseman have been the best version ever of Jay Lindurand if he had the limitless drug? If he had the limitless drug. She's 25-20s? Who is the... player, you're like, man, if that dude was just smarter or faster, processor. Can I offer you Lamar Odom?

Instead of him taking other drugs that he brags about now, he just took the limelisk drug. But Lamar wasn't a stupid player. You know, like, he just, you know. Chase Budinger? One of the great athletes who never made it? Like, Hall of Fame volleyball player and

a great basketball? I'm trying to think of like, no, I'm thinking of a guy like, and it's not that he doesn't know the game, but like someone, Kyrie Irving, who skill for skill. Oh, Kyrie Irving on the limitless drug. If you gave Kyrie Irving the kind of,

but the thing that's tough about Kyrie is he doesn't have a low basketball, he has high one. But it's more like he's not at times judicious enough about when to deploy his different. His bag is so deep that he needs to know. He needs to be, it's not an IQ thing. It's a what wisdom thing. He needs the wisdom to know which tool to take out of the bag.

when? I think that's really the thing that's stopping him from, and partly because the bag is so deep, right? Like he can do so many things. That's one of the things that's stopping him from being in the conversation among the greatest to ever live. So we've seen this in baseball with Barry Buds, who actually had his version of Limus Lus Lus's drug. What happens? His eyesight gets so good. You can't throw him a ball. He just won't swing at it. He always swings at strikes. He puts up stats that are like hilarious to look at at the baseball reference down. Of course. And he was already really talented to begin with.

He would have been a Hall of Fame left fielder without the 98 and after. Hall of Fame. He would have been, it would have been Ted Williams. It would have been, is it Ted Williams, Stan Musial, or Barry Bonds? Right. It would have been that had he never touched PEDs. So the PEDs became the Luminous Drug, pushed him up.

So if that happened for Kyrie. Well, the PED, you know what the PEDs were for Barry Bonds? So let me take it to superheroes, okay? Captain America it was. Captain America was a 98-pound weakling, right? Who took Super Soldier Serum. And what that did was it optimized the human possibilities, like the limitless drug, but physically, right?

It's kind of like if instead of a 98-pound weakling took Super Soldier Serum, what if you gave Batman's Super Soldier Serum, right? He's already, like, physically better than everyone else. And now you're putting him on the stuff that makes him the best, possible version of himself. So it'll be like Janus in 2020. We just gave him the Limelistro. Harry Bonds was putting up mid-four on bases and high six sluggings, which is like some of the best.

He was like 42. No, no, no. In his prime, which is some of the best numbers anyone's ever put up. And then in his late 30s, suddenly he woke up, same external factors, ballpark, everything same. Everything the same. He woke up one day at like 36 or 37, and his on base percentage was in the sixes.

He was slugging in the eights. It's like, come on. You're making a mockery of the game. I think there should be a baseball Hall of Fame. And I don't know how many people would be in this part of the Hall of Fame. In my basketball book, I had the Pantheon, and it was the top. It was a pyramid.

The top level was the best guys ever. in baseball, there's this whole different version of just guys that you will always remember seeing in person. Yeah. And I saw Bonds when he was just before all the PD stuff. So great. I saw him as a left fielder on the Giants just when he was great. And it was just different to watch him play left field and just,

and then come to bat and you knew he could steal second base. And it was just memorable. I felt like Ricky Henderson was like that. Oh, in 1985. Ricky Henderson in the 80s was like amazing to see Dwight Gooden was like this. Oh, as a rookie. Pedro was like this. There's certain guys that I just think standout.

Like people talk about Kofax in the previous generation. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Like Aaron Judge, right, or Shohei, obviously, both of them. Honestly, judges like that. Yeah. He's so fucking big when you're in person at the games and he comes in. It's like seeing like fucking Paul Bunyan.

Yeah, it is Paul Bunyan. Yeah. You're like, oh my God. He's in the Babe Ruth Mickey Mantle kind of lineage of, you know, physically different than ever, like bigger somehow, hitting the ball farther than everybody. I think Betts is like that. Because he's such a great player.

He's such a great base runner. He's such a great defender. You will listen. Everything he does is so different than any other player. Our kids went to school together when they were, when they were in preschool, right? And so Esther, who was, I think, in the same year as Ben,

I took her to an Angels game because the Yankees were in town. And I pointed out there, she's little, I don't know, three or maybe five or something. And I said, that is Derek Jeter and that is Mariana Rivera because Rivera came in the game. And I was like, see Mariana Rivera? Just remember that you saw him in person. Right. Because Rivera, Rivera is like I have, I think, I don't stop me if I've said this to you before, but this is from greatest hits volume two. Uh, I have levels of clutch. Like, I have levels of clutch. Like, I have, I have, like Dante's Inferno, right? And the highest level of clutch is, you know,

and then down to like, you're down to like, you are maybe the best who ever did it and under pressure, you're the worst who ever did it. James Saird. You're in that like Arod was there for a while. Peyton Manning was there for a while, right? There were guys like that. The highest level of clutch

is the Michael Jordan Mariana Rivera level. Mariana Rivera has the lowest adjusted ERA in baseball history. What did he do in the postseason? his ERA is one third of his normal ERA, which was the best ever in the postseason. It's a 0.7 in 142 innings. He was so great.

The fans who went against him and got a run on him in the ninth, remember all the parts of the inning. Right. And it's usually like a dink hit and a steal and another dinket. And it's an error, so, you know. And so, like, there are people like that.

I'm so glad I told Esther, like, that is Mariana Rivera. One thing that Mariano had, so he would be on my list too of the guys you just remember seeing, he could come into Fenway and the crowd would be going nuts and he would come out and he would just walk and have that Mariano kind of vibe. And he would kind of psych out the crowd before the inning started. You were like, oh, fuck, we're not, we're not going to get hit on this guy. He had something about him.

He's the only unanimous selection to the baseball Hall of Fame and his first ballot, right? he had something about him that was like, if you took the old man in the sea and took the passage about DiMaggio, and just you could put Rivera instead of DiMaggio, what about the great Rivera? I heard his father was a fisherman, right? Like, it's the exact,

you could just substitute DiMaggio with Mariana Rivera, and the book reads exactly the same. There's two other good things with that. One is, you mentioned Jordan. When he hits the shot, there's that awesome folks. of all the Utah fans.

There's the blown up photo. All the Utah fans faces. Just knowing they're fucked. The ball's in the air. They're all like... It's Jordan. You think it's going to not go in? Yeah.

But we weren't old enough to see Russell in person. Right. But this has been told to me many times. And it's been in documentaries and stuff. When they would introduce the players in the other team, they would all come out and stand next to each other. Now they run out. They'd do the jumps into each other.

And sometimes they don't even come out. But they would come out and they would stand all next to each other. and they would announce Russell and he would come out and just stand there with his hands behind his back and the crowd would get psyched out because he never lost.

And they would just see him and be like, fuck. In high school, what's the stat in high school? College and the pros. He played in, what was it, 21 game sevens and won every one? He won every game seven. He lost in 58. Not game seven.

Deciding games. Deciding games. Deciding games in his life. I want to say maybe he had one loss or he's undefeated. Come on. Especially when you get to a deciding game, the teams are pretty evenly matched usually.

And normally it does come down to who has the best, like, who's the guy you want on your team? Who has that guy? That's the case for him in the pan-down. Greg from Chicago, the love for the 80 hockey team, you know,

over the last couple weeks. And do you believe America has got me thinking the great sports calls of all time? He wanted me to do like a whole podcast about this or do like a bracket or something. but it did get me thinking just off top my head, no research what my favorite ones were other than do you believe in miracles.

And I think down goes Frazier is second. Down goes Frazier. Down goes Frazier is unbelievable. It's CoSell's greatest work. And he just keeps saying. He keeps screaming. He's so shocked. Down goes Frasier.

By the way, what's crazy is he did that for one knockdown. Frazier was knocked down six times in that fight, right? Poor Frasier. Yeah. The all-time bad matchup. fight. All time. It's the rock paper scissors 100%. It is, it is. Then he went back for seconds. He's like, maybe this time I'll be it. Yeah, right. Yeah, this time it won't. But like it is the, you study it when you talk rock paper scissors in boxing. When you talk styles, make fights.

Fraser Foreman. That's like the number one thing. Yeah. I don't believe what I just saw. I wrote down. I don't believe what I just saw. By the way, Lampley has a great one with Foreman when he knocked out Michael Moore. Oh, yeah. It happened. It happened. That was a great one. Great one. We'll see you tomorrow night.

It was a good one. And then Joe Buck, after game four, ALCS, or game five. I can't remember which one, but he says, we'll see you later tonight because it was past me. That's right. And it was like an homage to his dad, but also awesome. Yeah, that was awesome. Lundquist. Yes, sir!

For Nicholas. And then Havichick stole the ball and Giants win the pennant, were the two we grew up with. Have a check stole the ball, Giants win the pennant, were the two. It's so interesting to me, the Giants win the pennant, because there's a, there's one of the great American novels, Underground, right? Yep. DeLilo. It's about kind of like the loss of American innocence.

It's a thousand something pages. And the moment he uses to show like innocent America is Bobby Thompson's home run. which it later came out that they were stealing signs. I found that so interesting that like you're trying to get the perfect moment in American history pre-Watergate, pre a lot of the cynicism, or so it's told. And here it is, Bobby Thompson's home run. This is pure Americana and a kind of an innocent time. And it turns out it's total bullshit. It's everything was just like nothing ever changes.

It's the same shit. all the time. And they were stealing signs. There was no innocence. There was no purity. There was, you, like the irony of Delilo choosing Thompson's home run as the moment to make that point is, makes the novel even better for me. Well, you just saw that with the Olympic old medal. And hockey. Yeah. When we won in 1980, it was all anyone talked about for like a month and a half after. We were big underdogs, though. Well, no, but I'm saying after it happened, we were just living on a high forever. Yeah, yeah.

And it was like, Jim Craig's going to sign with the Atlanta Flames. I'm like, great. I'm now a Flames fan. And then Ken Morrow was on the Islanders. It's like, I hope they win the Cup. I love Kentmore. It was like unity and somehow. Yeah, we, I was still rooting for those guys.

Here, we won them within 24 hours. It became a political controversy. Right. Because that's just how everything has to go, apparently. Derek from Bloomington, Indiana. What current NBA player do you think would represent the USA, the best? in curling if they practiced. In curling?

Curling? Okay, hold on. So we take a great athlete. Yeah. And we're just like, for a year, you're just going to learn out of curl. I just, my, so that's where I had curry.

Hand eye, attention to detail. I would pick Steph. I think he could figure it out in a year. However, pre-2020. He's tall though, which would be. Pre-2020, fate of the universe on the line? Igwadal.

No. Yes, Steph, step, yeah. Well, I wonder, like, is there a size thing? Like, maybe it's somebody's shorter. That's a good point, too. Maybe it's like a Dame Lillard three years ago type thing. Yeah. Six-three. I mean, he's tall, but he's not like,

frequently tall. When it has to be, like, five, nine, five, eight? Like, is it like Jose Alvarado? Is Curry actually six three or is in MBA six three? No, he's taller than me. He's six one and a half, and Curry was. And Curry was, I thought Curry had an inch of me. These guys are all taller than you think.

Like, Nash, you assume is like, you know, Mighty Mouse. then you meet him. He's like a good six two and a half. Yeah, yeah. It's taller than I am. Yeah,

right. Kyrie's another one. Caii's not six feet tall, something like that, a little more. No, he's higher. I think he's like six.

Yeah, maybe six one size. Yeah. I wrote, this is the only question I made up. Okay, Max, top four boxers right now because nobody are you going to be

on my mailback. What's your max? Are we including Terrence Crawford or no, because he's technically retired right now. Don't include him because he's technically retired, even though we know he's coming back. Alexander Usik is the heavyweight champion.

My guy. You know what he does? He just wins Parles. Just put him in with any other anything. Pick a sport, anything. First of all, he's cruiserweight champion, undisputed, beat everybody. He and Evander Holyfield, two greatest cruiser rates ever. Division's been around about 50 years.

Yeah. He moves up to heavyweight, but in an era of super heavyweights, right? Like these aren't your father's heavy weights. These are 250 and 60 and 80-pound guys. And not only does he beat three of the top guys in consecutive fights, he does it twice. He beats them each twice. Never like really favored by that much in any of the fights because of the size difference. Well, certainly not against Dubai maybe, but not against Fury and Joshua.

And against Tyson Fury, it was really interesting. Fury is a great fighter. And Fury, who's 6-8-70-2-80, by the middle of that fight starts to look like he's playing with Usik. Like he's winning the fight and he's kind of playing with him and having fun. It's like this is maybe a mismatch. And Usoc comes back and fit because talk about a deep bag, Usook's bag, no matter what adjustment you make, he makes a better adjustment.

He has a cat. He's Kobe if you're trying to defend him. He has a counter for every single thing you do. These are my favorite boxers, the problem solvers. Right, every sport. This is what I love about. This is Leonard's underrated quality was shit. I got to solve this over the next half hour.

Cooper Flagg. That's why I think he's going to be so good. Whatever you throw at him, he figures it out, right? And so that's Usek. Then Shakur Stevenson, who just put on in a clinic against Defeo-Lopez, Madison Square Garden. Silence the doubters. I was never a giant, I wasn't a go-out-of-my-way to watch him, guy for Stevenson.

But that was a masterpiece. Yeah. He's like Pernell Whitaker, Floyd Mayweather, or any one of these incredible boxers who you just can't hit, so good luck beating him. So there's a guy named There's a guy named Remember this if you're into boxing or you want to be

Nowa in a way Who is Who is called the monster in Japan Who keeps going up weight classes He was tiny But he keeps going up now he's up to junior featherweight Right? So he's getting to be more still small

But not as tiny right And he keeps just dominating everybody And every weight class Can really box make adjustments, very fast-twitchy, big puncher. The lowest weight for the casual American boxing fan to get invested in. You got to feel like I could, this guy can't take, you can't feel like I can take this guy because he's too small, right?

If your average American sitting on his couch watching a fight. Junior lightweight, how low can we go? I think we can go down to featherweight. I think we go to 126 pounds. 126 ponder walks around 145 pounds and can kick. your ass, right? Like, well, when did Pacchio really become, when did he cross over? What weight class was he in when he really crossed over?

So he started at flyweight. I know. But he also like he was the lineal champ at flyweight. It's not like he just turned pro and then started moving. And then he skipped certain divisions. But I would say when he got to a hundred and featherweight, 1276 pounds is when he crossed over because he obliterated Barrera. I think people check out under that weight.

You might be right about it. Guys are just, the punches are flying. It's just hard to get a, it almost seems like a different sport. Zufa boxing. That's where we go down to is featherweight. Smart. Yeah. By the way, Zufa boxing, speaking of cruiser weights, I said, Holyfield and Usik are the two

greatest cruiser weights ever. The guy who's in the conversation for number three is Jai Opataya, who's an undefeated Australian cruiserweight. He is universally recognized as the champ. He's the Ring Magazine champ, right? But Ring Magazine does not, they're not, what they do is they recognize who is the champion. They're not sanctioning fights and stuff like that.

They're just like, oh, that guy beat everyone. He gets our belt. So what boxing has been missing is a mechanism by which the best actually fight the best. Jayopataya just signed with Zufa boxing, who I work for. And Jayopataya is defending his ring magazine, which means you're the champ, cruiserweight title, but importantly, fighting for the first ever Zoufa championship belt against this American Brandon Glanton,

who is like a Joe Frazier, Dwight Braxton, come forward and try to kill you every round type guy. And it's going to be a sensational action fight, and that's March 8th, I'll be calling it. That's next week. Yep. So who's your number four in the top four?

So four, if I had to go beyond, in a way, probably Bam Rodriguez. Bam Rodriguez is a little smaller than in a way, but is a south paw, boxer puncher who can fight his ever-loving ass off. And like in any sport bill,

what's the first thing you look for? It's not impossible to be a world-class, like elite, elite guy without this, but the fast twitchies, right? Is this guy like electrically fast? And then is he skilled and all that? He, Bam has that stuff. Plus he's tough,

plus he hits hard, the whole package. What's our best division right now? Best division in boxing? I'm still nostalgic for the super middleweight run we had in the, what was that, early 2010s? With who? Just all those dudes we had all in a row, the Kausagi, all those guys. And Kessler and Andre Ward, like the Super Sixth tournament.

All of a sudden we had like nine guys who could just beat the shit out of each other. Because this is like, this is why I was so hopeful and this is why I went with Zufa boxing. Yeah. Like I didn't not have. opportunities in boxing is boxing has always lacked the they. Who's like, you know what they should do in football? You mean the NFL. You don't mean these other leagues.

You know what they should do in basketball? You need the NBA. There's never been a they in boxing. And when you look at MMA, there's a they there. It's the UFC. Right. And so, like, I get a call from Dana White and talking to Nick Kahn. And it's like, yeah, we want to do this.

Like, let's, I think. Oh, wait a minute, for the first time, there might be a they in boxing. I want to be a part of that, right? It's usually a day, but it's like they were crooks. Right, right. They did something illegal. The closest thing that boxing's ever had to an actual day was Frankie Carbo, who was literally a mobster.

When the mob controlled boxing, that's the closest thing that boxing ever had to a day, right? So when you talk about this, the reason you remember the super middleweights is because they organized a tournament. And it was called the Super Six, and it took place over a couple years where they took the six best super middleweights in the world. But we also had six best, too. That's the other thing.

We did, but the fact that they all fought each other elevates them in your own mind because you're like, so that's what we're doing here. Right? Like you want to turn boxing. Every other sport is the Super Six every year. Every year in football, basketball, baseball, there's a tournament.

And we find out who's the best. and that's what it should be in boxing. This is a mailbag question I got, but it's perfect for you. It's from Justin R and Ann Arbor. Lifelong Pistons fan, he says. I was trying to explain the Pistons to a friend of mine. Made the connection to who Ron Holland reminds me of old dirty bastard. In the Wutang of the Pistons, he's definitely an ODB.

Not on every song, but he was in the track. You always feel him. But then what's Beefstew? I'm not sure there's actually ever been a hip-hop artist quite like Beefstew, Just think about that one. I just knew you'd have some thoughts. Old Dirty, I have more thought. First of all, Detroit, people who said, including Rich Paul, to me, when I was like,

they might be ahead of schedule. Once they beat the next door they did, I'm like, could they win the championship? He's like, they don't have a second banana. They don't. And that's been shown. It's too hard for them. It's too hard. Old Dirty was, first of all, his first album is one of the most underrated of all time.

It is an absolute classic. A classic. There's so many great songs in that album, it's insane. And Dirty is, if someone says, hey, he's my favorite hip hop artist of all time. I understand because he kind of is mine, too. Like if Old Dirty, any song that Old Dirty was on. Brunha is not good enough for the old Dirty comparison for you. Right, exactly.

Old Dirty is like, if you want to, who is he? He's like a sixth man, but your sixth man is, this is the all-time team and your sixth man is Kobe Bryant. You know, like, he's a relief, a setup man, but it's Rivera in 96. It's like Bill Walton on the 86, so it's just coming in. Yeah, he's coming in. It's like, that's not even fair. Yeah.

Yeah, old dirty was just pure adrenaline. Okay. Anthony in Pittsburgh wants to know if I have any concerns about Drake May being a victim of the Marino curse. Never getting back. Losing a Super Bowl second year, can't make it back. The only other definite victim is Kaepernick. Joe Burrow is in play.

Brock Purdy, maybe. But he says, on the flip side, the Brady blessing, if you win a Super Bowl in year two, you're destined to be a hall famer, Kurt Warner, Roplastisberger,

Mahomes. I don't believe in any of this stuff. And I think Drake May will be back. But we didn't talk about Drake May, so I wanted your take. People have certainly heard mine. I was very high on Drake May. He's kind of the guy you want.

I'm kind of my guy, Jackson Dart, by the way. I think there's some great young quarterbacks in the league. The way he lost that game, there are some games, like when the Giants played the Ravens in the Super Bowl, I would have much preferred to not have been in the Super Bowl that year. That's how I felt about this Super Bowl with the Pats. That's the... We're just easier losing in Denver. But like in this case, Kerry Collins was not the future of the Giants.

Right. That how Drake May responds to this is going to be the whole shooting match because he got the whole, what was it? It was Sam Darnold who was like, I'm seeing ghosts against the Patriots, right? Yeah. That's how he was playing. He was playing like,

I'm seeing ghosts. I just want to know if he was hurt or not. And at some point we're going to find out, but we may never find out because it was illegal if he was hurt and they didn't tell us. Right. They'll get fine. They'll lose like a third round pick. The thing about seems like a torn rotator.

like a tear in his cuff or something. But like the Seattle defense all year, it didn't jump out to me as much as the Rams did because the Rams were like a clutch third down defense or like the Texans because the Texans pass rush was insane. And it made their secondary, which was good, look even better. But when you think about the overall balance of the Seattle defense

and then the fact that the head coach is a great defensive play call, everyone wants that offensive play caller as head coach, but the Seattle has that just on the defensive side of the ball. And then they also have an offensive coordinator who's good enough that he's now going to be a head coach. And the Pats had things you could pick at like a scab. And which they did. We're going to, we notice when you do this, you're passing.

Like they said after the game they would tip off runner pass. Well, that's not good. We noticed we could attack your right side and you wouldn't have enough blockers. We notice your left tackle is moving right because he's a torn MCL. And they were just like picking it apart. Let me tell you what it reminded me of. The way Belichick would coach against young quarterbacks back in the day. Like in the Rams Super Bowl even.

Exactly. And you're like, oof, that's what it was like McDonald. It was really, that was the game was really McDonald. So you're on the fence with Drake May. It sounds like.

No, no, no. I really like him as a player. But now comes the part where we find out. Like, it's like a fighter who gets knocked out early in his career. Right.

Like in his first title shot, he gets knocked out. Does that mean, well, okay, he's hit his ceiling, or does that mean that he learns from that and comes back better, right? Mani Pacquiao lost early in his career. It's okay, you can lose early in the career. Leonard Duran won or Montreal. That's right. But, yeah, that's right.

And Leonard lost. But that was, Drake May suffered a different kind of loss than Leonard did. It was, he was dominated. He was out of his league, right? And so I want to see how he responds to that. If he responds to it well, the paths are in great shape. But, like, you got to respond to that one. That's like, that's the kind of game I wish.

If I was a Pat's fan, I wish he had not played that game. Like, I think there's enough damage from a game like that. I don't know if you learn from that or if you are demoralized by it. I'd like to see. The more I think about it, the four games in a row was probably the cumulative effect of combined him not being healthy. Right. But just getting the shit kicked out of them for eight straight halves.

What was shocking to me, and there's something. people you just get a sense that they're going to come through under pressure. I thought that about C.J. Stroud. I thought C.J. Stroud, when the chips are on the line, I like the cut of his gym. I think he was the opposite. He was awful. I know, but the weird thing with May is they weren't even using him the way they used them during the season, which is what makes me think he was hurt. They used to roll him out and he was so good at throwing the run and throwing deep on the

run. They didn't do it once. No, and you saw that throughout the playoffs, actually, where when he would make a big play, not just with his legs, but it could be like a kind of hidden big play. It's second, but it's also like second and nine, and you need to keep the chains moving, and he escapes pressure and hits the receiver,

and you go, man, that's just a Super Bowl-type play, right? Like, he made those, even when he was having bad playoff games, I saw those late in games. And I did not see that against, I did not see that against Seattle. Will W. writes, I think the WWE ESPN mix is weird. They haven't figured I had to put wrestling promos and news next to sports

like the NBA NFL wrestler interviews on SportsCenter Get Up always seems uncomfortable with the ESPN hosts in the K-Fabe They oddly try to tell a line of not acknowledging it, not participating it Do you find it weird? I do. I think it's very strange to watch wrestling on And I'm a lifelong wrestling guy.

It's weird to see it on ESPN. I can't get used to it. I know what you mean. Like Cody Rhodes was on there two days ago. It's like, let's talk about Cody Rhodes, big pay-per-view coming up. I'm like, how fuck are we doing? It would almost be better if it was like it was in the old days where it was presented with, like, without acknowledging. Like, by, by the premise was this is really happening.

This is like, pretending it was like, all things really. Then it makes more sense on ESPN. But, you know, ESPN is entertainment is the first, is the first letter. entertainment at sports, right? That's the, I think it's in a weird spot. And look, we both work there, so it's always weird to talk about it.

But I think the company in general with the content, it's in a strange spot right now. But look, you know why they take the WWE because, or they want it, because it does a great number. And it also hits youth culture.

Yeah. Well, the same reason when I was there, they never, they thought UFC was cockfighting, human cockfighting. They never were going to go near it. Okay, I was once in a meeting.

And I was friendly with Dana since Zufa bought the UFC because I was the only guy in boxing, basically, not hostile to it. Because my basic feeling, first of all, I love knowing who wins in a fight. Yeah. Right?

To show me any two, like animals, whatever, I want to know who wins in a fight, right? Turns out killer whales destroy Great Whites, by the way, not even a fight.

Don't even, if they prey on Great White's. That was a big one for me when I found that out, right? So, so I loved the UFC, you know, and originally it was high,

concept. It was who wins, the karate guy or the kung fu guy, the boxer or the wrestler. Have you ever watched those first five, six years of UFC? Of course. I watched them live. Sometimes they would, not even, the guys wouldn't even be the same weight. No, they were. There's no weight classes, no rules the whole thing. It was amazing. And then honestly, like bloodsport with Van Damme. It was, it was amazing. And then it really what it was was real wrestling, professional wrestling, like anything goes. Yeah. And then when Zufa bought it, And I also thought like, hey, this is catching on with young people. Hey, boxing crowd, instead of being hostile to it, let's use this as an entry point to, hey, you like combat sports kids?

Maybe you like to watch us too. But instead, everyone in boxing was hostile. I wasn't. Dana liked me on boxing. He's a big boxing fan. So I went to dinner with all the UFC roster, like Couture and all those guys at Il Milino in New York. The year Zoufa bought it. So what was that, 2000, 2001 or something like that?

and was like, you know, always really way into it. And I mean, ESPN, no, they'd never. ESPN, I was in a boxing meeting once in Bristol. And we were getting a whole corporate thing, which sometimes it feels like just meant to demoralize. He was like, we need to figure out a way to do like a really big number, but not spend any money. That was kind of like the message.

So I thought Dana White in the UFC They'll just They'll buy the time for me Like they forget about giving the money They just want access to the airwaves now And I tried to broker something Remember they were on

And it was no They were on Spike Yeah That was huge for them Yeah That was like that was the breakthrough When Spike had a channel But of course ESPN should have

Embraced it Way before they did It's funny because when I look back I thought especially like I thought 09 through 13 was like, I've said this over, it was an awesome time to be there. They really took chances.

They spent money. They were really committed to creative stuff. This was when I did my favorite stuff there. And in some ways they were really ahead of the game. Like soccer, I thought they were really ahead of the game. They felt like, let's get in on this and we'll try to build it.

This could be the next global sport. And they were right. And then they end up ironically losing it to Fox after they had helped build it up. UFC was the big miss, I think, for them. Because they could have got in really, really early ground floor and it would have eaten up innings. Instead, they were always fixated on baseball, making sure they had the baseball.

We got to do another baseball deal. We need the Sunday night baseball. And it wasn't matching what the habits were. Like young people weren't watching baseball the same way. And people are gravitating toward their own teams. And the concept of national baseball over the 2010s was dying. And UFC was where young. people were going and they just, they missed it.

Yeah, I mean, you have to figure out if you're ESPN, what are the shared experiences that people kind of all across the country want to watch at the same time. And a fight of one kind or another, whether that's WWE or UFC or boxing. If they know the

characters involved, they'll be interested. Baseball is an extremely local product, you know, and baseball has now screwed up how you think about it because the playoffs really do matter as much as they ever have. Of course.

In like in the last 20 years, it feels like that's back. We're seeing like NBC's pushing opening night, NBC, the Dodgers against the Giants. And it's like, I'm still not sure people want to watch other teams unless it's the playoffs. This is the, this is, I was going to do this as a five minute max on the pod. Yeah. I'll turn it into a two minute max if you want to hear it. Yeah, let's hear. The NFL, because of the nature of the sport, like a lot of times the NFL is pretty,

raise for everything, do everything like the NFL, they do it so great. But really the number one thing they have going for them is back to my long term short term incentive thing, right? Yeah. The short term incentives in baseball is grab this money from these local deals. Of course, why wouldn't we want to take this money, right? But it turns it into a very local sport. The NFL, because the inventory is so low, can't be as local, must be a national sport, partly because the nature of the sport's so brutal, you can't play that many games. And since there fewer games, it's easier to build up, tell the story, watch the game,

break it down afterwards. And because there's so little inventory, compared to the other sports, everyone in the country can follow every team. Well, plus you have the fantasy and the gambling. And for sure, but that exists in basketball too. Fantasy's dead in basketball. There's no reason for that, really.

The load management and the injuries have killed fantasy basketball. I don't know anyone who plays fantasy basketball anymore. I don't know people who play fantasy baseball anymore either. Tell you the truth. I'm still. I'm still. alekeeper. Tell me about that guy

in the Yankees who throws 103. I'm looking at him for the minor league draft. That's a real hardcore sports degenerate. I think what killed fantasy for a lot of people was daily. Once I started playing daily fantasy like football, fantasy football,

I don't have the patience for that anymore. Daily fantasy, I have multiple teams on the same game. I get all different permutations of teams I like. I can play for 50 cents. Have you done guillotine? No.

Geotene's good because it's just a giant league and one team gets cut every week and their players go back in the pool. Oh, that's pretty good. So you can be out right away. I actually won the league we had last year and it was really into it. And it had a natural ending and it's so time consuming. It's like to play daily fantasy is just acceptable. No.

I'm not proud of it. No. I think of the A.O. Keeper, like our drafts at the end of March, I got to start studying who the changes were and rosters? You ever see those like TED talk type things where the guy's like, this is how many he'll like graphically show people. This is your life. Each one of these.

And this is how much you're awake and you've got to take half of that. And so here's actually the amount of time you have in your life to do everything you want to do. Now subtract fantasy sports. Oh my God. I have a friend who quit fantasy football 20 years ago and he said it was, he feels the same way. It's like when he hears people talk about.

putting smoking or heroin. He's like, I've just added all these hours. I'm not, like, stressing out because Odell Beckham got hurt in the second quarter. But that's the other thing. It went from, like, you know, free basing to crack. Like, you know, like fantasy, daily fantasy. It's quick, quick, cheap, you know, dopamine. It's amazing.

Well, now and that's moved, some of that's moved to the gambling and the props. these are all like phases that eventually like the same game parlay is that will move into something else but yeah actually it's the same amount of time spent on it it's just like yeah it's just moving it around shifted a little I had so many more mailback questions

but we're at the two hour mark I got to ask we've been sitting here for two hours yeah Jesus Christ I know every time we do a pot it flies by so we didn't talk about game over Rich is on there in the beginning and Rich was always like I'm gonna shoot from the hip I'm gonna say my so you guys

start the pod. Every time you do an episode, news comes out of it and people are going nuts that Rich is saying this stuff. And I think he mostly loved it, right? For the most part, I mean, I'm sure there was some professional pieces. He stands by what he says. Yeah. A lot of times he's being tarred by what I say. Yeah. Right. Like people are attributing the stuff I say to him because he's sitting next to me. Right. Like the Austin Reeves thing, I suggested that they should think about trading Austin Reeves because what other commodity do they have other than Luca that's worth something on the trade market, right? The discourse about the pod has been fascinating. Other podcasts weighing in on whether this should be a podcast. But it seems like we do this every

time there's some sort of new genre that moves into podcasting because it's like when Drayman had a podcast. Right. And it's like, wait a second, instead of a press conference, this guy's just going to talk directly to the whatever. Why not? In this case, I think because he reps all of these different players and has all of this extra intelligence, obviously. Part of the game seems for people listening. What's he trying to say? Is he carrying the agenda as somebody else? And it's been fascinated at watch from afar. When Rich called me a year, almost two years ago at this point, and was like, hey, what do you think of this? And I was already working on something at that point. I thought, I thought he's kidding at first. Yeah. Right? And then I realized he was serious.

And I stopped and thought about it for a second. And I would think, I thought, as a consumer, I would consume that. I would need to know. I'd have to watch that. I'd have to listen to it. So, yeah, for that reason. He gets the rhythm of it now. And like I talked about on my pot on Sunday,

he had that Ann Edwards is the best point in the week take, which I thought I disagreed with it violently. Of course. But I thought it was a great take. Yeah. Because it's like you could at least offend it. You're not saying it, I think where we've gotten in problems with take culture over the years

is people saying a take for the reaction and not because there's DNA strands believing in it. And his case was like, I think the best part in the league should be able to play both ends, period. I agree. And it's like, all right, that's what you think.

Yokic is the best player in the league. I think Yolkich is not, right? But like, it's either Yolkich or Wembe. But it's, and by the way, when was the last time the two best bigs were the two best players in the league? So I, see, I don't think this is fair to SGA because he's been out for two weeks

and everybody just forgets how good and dominate is. I think the difference with Wembe is what I said earlier about can you have a shitty game and still be the most impactful player in the game? And him and Yokage are the only two. Yokic could go six for 21 and still be the best guy in the game. Is SGA much better than Jalen Brown or Cade Cunningham or Aunt Edwards? Or is he much better than those guys? I think he's better. I think he's a little better. But he's what we talked about earlier with you build the team around Luca that accentuates all the stuff he's good at. Which is what they did.

Which is what they did. But I do think he could fit into different situations. If you said, I need to try to win a championship this year. And I could take, if Yokic, Wembe, and SGA are available, I don't have to think about that very hard. I can only, I could take, I could name two that I could have. Oh, do you? I'd have the easiest chance with Yokic to build a team around him.

If you're giving me like the concept is, I'm going to have really good players in this team, who am I starting with? And he'll have really good. teammates. I'd go with Yokich and Wembe. I think Wembe second. Right. That's what I'm saying. So when you say, well, it's not fair to SGA, it kind of is fair to SGA. We would both take Yokic first, Wembe second. I think I want to see by the end of this postseason.

But at end of the playoffs, let me see who I have first in Yombe and Wembe. This is why it's recently biased with Wembe, though. We can't do a three-hour podcast, by the way. No, no, this would be the last topic. I mean, I can. I don't have to pick my daughter up until like, you know, I saw this in the Pistons game. I was thinking because they were just so clearly trying to beat the living shit out of them.

Right. That's the question we don't have. The answer we don't have is over 10 weeks with teams doing this as a strategy. Like Drake May in the playoffs, we're just going to beat the hell out of you and wear you down. What's he going to look like in June?

We're on the same page. The question remains, when was the last time? Two bigs were the top two players in the game. Obviously, Bill, Bill Russell and Wilk Chamberlain count. I would say Duncan Shack, if you count Duncan as a big guy, which I would. I would also.

Duncan Shack were the two most important guys in the early 2000s. I would also, but I don't think it's clear. Well, that's not clear cut now anyway. Like I could say Duncan or Kobe, you know, but. No, it was Duncan and Shack were the best two guys from zero zero to zero four. Oh, from zero to zero four. Yeah. Yeah.

And you can even say 99 because Duncan won in 99 and he was the best guy that season. That's 20. It's a five-year stretch. So that's 22 years ago. It's been a generation since two bigs were the best in league. And what about before then? Well, Jordan. Yeah.

Right. No, it goes back to Kareem. And then Magic. Kareem and Moses. Kareem and Moses at one point. Kareem and Walton, 77. Korea, I would say, but the last, I'd say like Kareem and Moses in the early 80s. And then the next time it was 20 years later.

Yeah. And now it's 20 years later again. And here we are. Like, that means stuff just changed. they're going to test one be a lot. A lot. Detroit was like, this is what we're all going to do now against this guy.

We're going to elbow him and chip him and push him. They have a guy who's during and they, you know, we're going to take, he's not, if he's getting a dunk around the basket, we're going to hit him as he's dunking. But that's just the offense, Bill. You said it earlier.

That's just the offense. He has an enormous impact on the other side of the floor. And it's not just against big guys. I said this the other night. Like, just look at what he did to Cade and SGA. It's impossible. These guys that are around, they live on the 12-footer, 10-footer, and it's just gone. And you can watch their brain break in real time.

You're not floating anything over this guy. Fuck, so I'm crossing that off. Okay. It's honestly, like, it's a little like boxing where you see like when somebody fights, like you talked about Stevenson. It's like, all right, here's my plan. I'm going to go into Stevenson. I'm going to start.

And then it's like, I can't hit him. Right. Now what do I do? By round four, you're like, fuck. Or Wemby is, this is going going back to Belmont. He'll take away your best two things that you can do. You're number one thing. Your two best receivers,

he better beat you on to the third receiver, right? Like, Wembe takes away more than one thing that you can do. He takes away multiple things you can do. It's like, it's not good. You know what teams guys are doing to him now? This must be in the book. Because teams have figured out, over the course of the season,

they figure out stupid little things. Like with the Celtics, we always said the bigs. I say we look them on the team. The big set the picks. 25 feet from the basket. Right. And they do these little handoff screens.

So what teams have been doing lately is they go around the big and they try to crash before it's the handoff and try to screw up the play, make the shot clock, right? So the Celtics are now adjusting on that. With Wembe, he's got these athletic guys like the castle types, Ron Holland. They're just going right at him into his body and double clutching and making him go vertical,

but kind of bouncing off him and then just trying to get a foul on him, basically. And this is like a new strategy. What you just mentioned a couple guys, the thing about Wembe is, if he wins the title this year as clearly the best player on the team. Well, it's like the team 86 type level of stuff. Even if,

even if it's like he was off offensively because they had a defensive game plan for him. He averaged 18 points and 13 rebounds, which is off for him, right? And like, you know, four blocks or whatever it's going to be. His team could still easily win. Right. He has so, like the opposite,

of the Cade Cunningham problem. You have five different guys who are the second best play. Like, you know, who can do it offensively. So, like, it is, I think, much more likely than people realize that the Spurs win the championship this year. Well, you know that 40-20 role, right?

40 teams that get to 40 wins before 20 losses. Before 20 losses. Only four teams ever. And so saying there's only three this year, the Southex lost to Denver last night, so they're not going to be in there. Right. And there's obviously strong,

positive correlation there. Like, they beat Detroit at Detroit. They beat Denver at Denver. They've dominated OKC. Their ceiling, yeah, it's like you got to factor in how high the ceiling is when they look good and their ceiling's as high as anybody. And then I think you get knocked down a peg because they lost the in-season tournament to the Knicks.

Right. Come on this one game. Stop. We, Zach and I talked about on Sunday a little just like the, when you have young guys who've never been in there, you just never know. You don't. But I'm like, I'm just, that is just to say. that you could figure out exactly how to play Wemby.

It could really screw up his offensive game. The Spurs could still beat you and he could still kill you on the defensive end. Like they got a lot. Max Cullerman, game over, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then the boxing, so where's the next one? Give us the promo. Zufa boxing, March 8th, the cruiserweight champion of the world.

Jai Opataya is defending in a, who's an action fighter, by the way. When he won the title, it was from one of the best in the history of the cruiserweight division. he got his jaw fractured. He couldn't close it. I think on both sides,

Opitaya in the third round and fought the next nine rounds with a fractured jaw against one of the best who ever did it in the division. Won the title. He's a south ball. He can box.

He can punch. He has a ton of heart. Australian. 200 pounds. That's cruiserweight division. He's the best 200 pounder in the world. It's basically like the new heavy weights. Right.

The regular size heavy weight. Yeah. And he's fighting a pressure fighter, action fighter, very determined, Brandon Glantton puncher. It's going to be an explosive. fight. The winner gets the first ever

Zufa championship belt. Big Z on it? So, you know, what happened with these sanctioning bodies through the years is... IBF. This is the reason there's 17 weight classes, right? And there's 17 weight classes because they want more

sanctioning fees. Every time you fight for a sanctioning body belt, they charge you a sanctioning fee. Right? So there's 17 of them, but that wasn't, and there are four different sanctioning bodies. It's four times 17. 68 different titles, but it gets worse because each sanctioning body now, or several of them, have multiple champions in each division. They say here, here's our regular championship belt.

If you get injured and you can't defend, you'll be our champion, but then we have an interim champion. I was like, yeah, we should have an NBA. Then they have a super duper championship belt. They call it the diamond or this or that, where if you unify the title with another organization, you're now there a diamond champion. So they have so much. many belts because they want all those sanctioning fees that not only is it all diluted but the belts themselves are trinkets they're not like the zufa belt is like diamonds studded right and it's you know how it's like a notch in the belt every title defense you make they add a black diamond they etch the the win into the belt and then a black diamond as added to the belt like a notch in your belt

that's your title defense so what's amazing about it is because ring magazine that champion Belk is lit. That's the, whoever holds that's the champ. But it is awarded to someone who has done that. It's as a recognition. It's not like, we're forcing you to do X, Y, and Z. So there's no real mechanism for the best to fight the best. The difference is the Zoufa belt will attempt to, to, will, if you fight for Zufu, you're going to have to fight the best guys in the division. And so here is the first one, the ring magazine, the real guy, cruiserweight. champ Jayopataya in a sensational, should be a sensational action fight

against Brandon Glanton, first ever Zufa Championship belt. Okay. Yeah. Good? Is that pretty good? That was good. Yeah. I got me excited. I like the cruisers. Yeah, the cruisers. Max Carlin. Great to see you. Thanks. You too always. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Max Kellerman.

Thanks to Gahal. Thanks to everybody at the ringer. Thanks to Eduardo. Rewatchables. Don't forget. Monday. 6 p.m. E.T. Live on Netflix. Cario as the start of the of CR month. And then this Sunday, we're going to wait until after the Celtic Sixers game, me and Zach Lowe, Sunday night, maybe Jason Tatum's going to be in this game.

We're going to find out. But we're going to go live on Netflix right after that game. So it'll be around 1030 E.T on Sunday night. Have a great weekend. See you on Sunday. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and President D.C. Kentucky or Wyoming.

Game in problem, call 100 Gambler or 1-800-May-R-E-Hon-800-7-7-7-7. Or visit c-ccpGPGG.org slash chat in Connecticut or MDGamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit Gamblinghelpline, MA.org, or call 800-327-50-50 for 24-7-Sported in Massachusetts or call 8778-8-Hope NY or text HopeNY in New York for Louisiana.

Call 877-7-770-8867. Thank you.