The Bill Simmons Podcast - MJ vs. the World, Quarantine Month Three, the 2017 Warriors, and 1995 Magic-Bulls Myths With Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss episodes 5 and 6 of ESPN's docuseries 'The Last Dance' (2:40), getting restless in quarantine, all-time NBA teams, the "time-traveling athletes" argument, and more (40:55). Finally they revisit Game 6 of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals between the Chicago Bulls and the Orlando Magic (1:29:28). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the BS podcast on the ringer podcast network brought to you by zip recruiter. During this time of change, we want you to know that zip recruiters focus has not changed. They're still doing what they've always done. Helping people find work, helping businesses find the right people for their open roles. If you're looking for a job, zip recruiter is working with you to find the right job faster. They're dedicated to helping you get hired from caretaking to delivery of food and goods to building medical facilities, supply and protective equipment, so much more. In fact, ZipRecruiter's

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a little 12 to 15 minute review preview. Uh, depends on the show. If something's coming up, like last Friday, we did a billion season five preview with Mallory and Sean. That was like 12 minutes. So you might have those. You also might have me and Marcelo doing Ozark season three. You never know what you're going to get in that feed. It's almost like a Spotify playlist. It's exclusive on Spotify as well, TV concierge. So check that out. We also launched a little mini podcast on our Recapables feed called Behind the Billions with Brian Koppelman and David Levine, the co-creators and showrunners of Billions. Billions is on Sunday night on Showtime, right after it ends, around 10 o'clock range. That podcast goes up and it's like a director's commentary for the episode. So you can check

that out wherever you get pods. It's available everywhere. And I think they're going to do all seven Billions episodes over the next seven weeks and then go backwards and do season by season. So probably 12 podcasts in all. Check that out on the recapable feeds. It is called Behind the Billions. Coming up, Priscilla and I are going to talk about a bunch of NBA stuff. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Sunday night, Ryan, Marcello and I just watched episodes five and six of The Last Dance that mostly centered on the 92 playoffs, the 93 season, some dream team stuff, and a little flash forward, some fun all-star game footage.

I loved all the behind-the-scenes stuff. What was the biggest thing that jumped out to you? The building towards why Michael decides to leave in the 93 93 94 season and then ultimately coming back late in 95 and you know whether or not you believe and i'll ask you later uh conspiracy thoughts that david stern said walk away from the game but even if that's true there's a there's a bigger thing here about the public and the public can really fucking suck sometimes okay and we do this thing no it's true man i like you're coming in hot no i'm pissed like i watch this and go okay so we're doing this again and we did it to him and i already knew that we've done it we've done it to everybody

we do it to all of these people we do this thing where it's like man when you're new we love you we love you we build you up into something that doesn't even exist, right? And you benefit from that, and that's fine. That's part of the deal. But then it's like, okay, we've really liked you a long time. Let's see if there's something wrong with you. When there's always going to be something wrong with every single person that walks on this planet. And then it's like, oh, MJ gambles a lot. Now, maybe it's a massive problem.

Maybe it isn't a problem because he can pay for it. You know. Whatever. Maybe it's a problem. That's not even the debate. But what is the most cyclical pattern ever with fame is that we build you into something that doesn't exist. And until we find out what your flaw is, once we find it, we rip you to shreds and feel better about ourselves. And it's why reality TV works because most people on reality TV shows are fucking up all the time. And we're at home in our lives feeling better about ourselves. And that's what it is. It's like, wait a minute, this person that I turned into a God, I expected to be a God, which is foolish anyways, isn't really a God. So now I feel better about myself. It started with, uh, the Jordan rules with Sam Smith. And I remember I was in college

when that came out. And at that point it was seven and a half solid years of just everybody loved Michael, the posters, the shoes, the slam dunk contest, all the playoff games. He had a unanimous approval rating. Even fans from other teams liked him, which is a really rare place to get to. He was kind of everybody's pocket second favorite player. And then that book came out during the 91-92 season. I actually thought the sequencing of how they handled it in the doc, I would have brought it up sooner because it was such a important moment to the whole Jordan Odyssey, where it was like, the guy's kind of a dick to his teammates. He punched Will Purdue once.

There was like behind the scenes locker room stuff. I remember there was that one part about him and Pippen betting each other on which of their young kids had a bigger dick. It was just this behind the curtain stuff that we'd never thought of him that way. And it was like this behind the curtain stuff that we never thought of him that way and it was like oh the guy's really over competitive and it was unflattering and from that moment on I thought there was a little thing that went up with him a little guard

and it carried over through the playoffs there was an edge that he developed and it just kind of got worse and worse and at 93, there's a Peter... Did you see the Peter Vesey clip that surfaced a few days ago from the 93 Eastern Finals? It was a halftime show, him and Bob Costas. And it was after they had done...

They had aired an interview with the guy who's really a complete degenerate. The guy who did the gambling book about- The golf guy, right. The golf guy, Richard Esquinas. And NBC did an interview and Vessi goes on the next day on the halftime show and just lays into NBC and was like, it was completely inappropriate

that we ran that. That guy has no credibility. I think it's totally unfair. Michael didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He's not breaking league rules. I don't know why this is a story. This should be in the agate of a newspaper. That's it. And really laid into him. He was the only media member I remember at the time who was saying, what are we doing? Why are we doing it this way? But I think if you look at the big picture of where things were in the early nineties, this is when it really started that tabloid journalism. This is when

inside edition and those kinds of shows start. This is the OJ trial. This is the dawning of the real world. This is celebrity is just starting to change in a lot of bad ways. And Jordan was the first guy we had, I think, the big superstar athlete who got caught up in that. It didn't happen to Joe Montana. It didn't have... Think about Lawrence Taylor and Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry,

all those guys who had problems in the 80s. Bird gets into the bar fight in 1985 during the playoffs. Doesn't blow up the way it could have. But by the 90s, Jordan just got the brunt of it. Look, I don't feel bad for him, but it just kind of sucks because I do think it's the biggestunt of it. Look, I don't feel bad for him, but it just kind of sucks because I do think it's the biggest reason he left. Yeah. And granted, a lot of this comes down

to the big game hunting part of it, but I'm not even defending Jordan, the gambler. I'm just pointing out the cyclical nature of human behavior with celebrity in that we can't help but fall in love. We pretend it's something that it isn't because all of us are flawed. And then when that person's flaws are exposed, we all sit in the corner and point. And then we somehow feel better about ourselves. Like if you bought a Buick because you thought Tiger Woods didn't cheat on his wife, that's your fucking problem. You know, like seriously, like Tiger was cheating on his wife. Not great. Okay. Not great. Not the first guy either. And certainly not the most obscure, unique thing

for a guy who's really rich, powerful, one of the most recognizable faces in the planet to have a problem being monogamous. And then it was like, well, you know, this is really bad. And then it turns into this thing. It's like, well, he needs to answer for this. He needs to talk. You know, he's built up. No, no, you built up this image. And I don't know why I don't build up anyone. I don't build up any, the only people that I can say, Oh, I know this guy's a good guy, or I know this guy's a bad is somebody. If I absolutely know him, I don't give anybody the benefit of the doubt. And yet people do it. And then they act like they're surprised. And then the whole cycle of, well, you know,

have a press conference for what, why did Tiger Woods need to get up in front of everybody in front of his mom in a room of people? Now when he said he was going to start dedicating himself back to his roots of buddhism you know that was weird but like he had to do this whole orchestrated thing and who was that for that was for us to then be able to move on from it like that just all of that stuff has always bothered me before i even you know whatever it is that i do get into sports talk yeah Yeah. You think like Muhammad Ali mid seventies, right? He has that one fight where he fights, it's either Frazier or Foreman. I think it's, I think it's the Frazier one in Manila, but it might've been the formal one or the other where he starts falling in

love with the person who's going to be his future wife, Veronica. And his other wife finds out and flies halfway across the world to confront him and all the media there knew about it, but nobody wrote about it. and his other wife finds out and flies halfway across the world to confront him. And all the media there knew about it, but nobody wrote about it. And it was, you know, you still were in this situation where they felt like they wanted to protect these guys, at least a little bit, the superstars. And that starts to shift in the 80s.

And then by the 90s, it was just completely different. Like the way the gambling stuff was covered. And it's funny because on the one hand, it's overblown. On the other hand, you hear the way he talks about it. And it's exactly the way somebody would talk about it. If they had a real problem where it's like, it's fine. It's not like I'm broke. It's not like my wife left me like, like the excuses he's using for not having a gambling problem. I'm just really competitive. And you know, I, he, he obviously did have a gambling problem because he'm just really competitive. And you know, he, he obviously did have a gambling problem because he's playing with some of the biggest scumbags of the early nineties.

It's like, and he became a mark. And by the way, this still happens. And we could talk, we could tell stories about current famous people or people from the last 15 years that you and I both know who became marks in these high class poker games that they have in Vegas and LA and these different things where these guys are literally losing millions of dollars in poker and always think, oh, this is the one I'm going to win. And they don't realize they're the one being invited to the game because everybody's just going to, you know, take his money. Um, so it's, he, he wasn't the only one, uh, over the course of the last 30 years, I don't think who was gambling like this, but,

you know, I, I just think everybody's expectations were so high for him. He, he was this exalted dude. And it was like, you went to Atlantic city between playoff games with your dad and you came back really late like it the people's disappointment in this stuff was real it was a real thing in the early night is i can't explain it i i feel like if this was 2020 don't you think they would be much more sympathetic to the player well everybody's more sympathetic to the player so the right the quick answer is yes on that but you know the playing of the result is is what would happen I remember when the 08 Celtics team when they were playing Detroit and they they a bunch of the guys after a game I don't know if it was the night before a game or if it was after a game or something but like they crossed the border to

go to one of those casinos and some of the guys are like serious like there's a title on the line here and when And when that happened, I go, this is classic because they weren't going to lose that Detroit team. But if they lost the Lakers, you go, well, you guys weren't as locked in. This is just how these guys operate. They are rock stars. They go into different cities. They don't sleep like we do. They don't need sleep like we do. We can talk about sleep benefits and patterns and the rest of all this stuff. But a lot of these younger guys, I gave up ever thinking that any of this stuff mattered. And basically what happens is this is if you win, it's just Jordan's a machine.

And if you lose, it's, oh, he shouldn't have gone to the casino when it's likely that none of that was ever going to impact it. Now, if you're a mess and you're out seven nights a week and you know, that kind of stuff, that's a, that's a whole nother category of a guy. But, um, if, if anything, if we've learned anything about reading about Jordan for what now, decade four, is that he just was a little different. He was wired differently in that he could play 36 holes in the sun and then drop 50 on you in a playoff game, go out that night, do it again.

And it just didn't matter. So I don't know. I remember the Vessi thing. I remember know i mean i remember i remember the vesey thing i remember going back and i remember thinking like at the time as a kid i go what am i gonna when i'm not gonna buy his shoes now like i'm not gonna do that like his his shoes are sick and it's mj you know the doc hits this i wish it had hit it for three more minutes in the first six parts at some point about how important it was when he showed up that rookie season

and all the little checkpoints he hit as that generation's, oh my God, this is our guy. Every single decision he made and the Nike thing played into that a little bit because it was Converse. Converse was the shoe. There was, they mentioned how there was Adidas and Kareem wore Adidas and a couple other people. Spot built? Yeah, their spot belt was in there. Puma was in there. But Converse was

the cool one. That was Magic and Bird and a couple other guys. And as soon as he did the Nike thing, I remember every piece of that. I remember the first posters you had to get those, the, the, the first Jordans. Oh my God. What are those? It was the first cool shoe anybody had ever put out. And then all the little things that happened during that season. I remember when he went on Letterman, it was like a huge deal to me personally. It was like my favorite show and Jordan's on, and he's talking about Nikes. And I was like, favorite show and Jordan's on and he's talking about Nike's and I was like, oh, all my worlds are colliding. This is the greatest thing. And, you know, I, I really think magic and bird, it was like everybody picks sides. You were either a magic guy or a bird guy. I think all, depending on where you live in the country and whether you like the Celtics more Lakers

more or whatever, Jordan was pretty unanimous there through the 80s. And I don't really ever remember another athlete like that. The only one, I mean, of our lifetime, the only one is really Tiger, where everybody was all in like that. But in basketball, it's so much harder. There's so many competing interests. And yet everybody, you can even see with the Barkley thing,

where Barkley loses the finals he's like if I'm gonna lose at least I lost to that guy and nobody talks about basketball players like that and that that's those are some of the things that jumped out of me today was just how unique the experience was those first 10 years yeah I'm probably a little hot off the top here too because the second part just ended minutes ago with me watching the suns lose again and oh i figured i would figure like oh three game seven socks although i was still a little numb to it 86 certainly i remember being i don't i was never devastated when the socks lost in 88 90 because it was just that a's team you're like. Well, that game six was tough because they're up four with the ball

and they miss a little jumper. Yeah. That would have made it an insurmountable six-point lead. The Barkley one, that game six, I remember exactly where I was and the whole thing. I've just graduated high school or I'm about to. Our high school was weird then because they used to let us out way before we'd actually graduated.

I think I was already out but like waiting and uh you know I I back then such a Barkley guy that I kind of talked myself into thinking they actually had a real chance and when they won game three I was like they got this they can do this and I was that's that's probably one of the five most disappointed times I've probably been Maybe Mullen in that St. John's run where they were unbelievable, but they just couldn't beat Georgetown that year. That's another one. So I know you weren't asking me

to be the five most bummed out times ever, but that was it. Did you think Horace Grant wussed out of that layup? It's a very polarizing basketball play. Yeah. It's right there. Because there's a whole school of thought

that he wanted no part of it. Like even in the moment and afterwards, it's like, ha, Horace, notice how he ran from that layup. It wasn't the most high percentage play to throw it out to Paxson, but at the same time, it worked out, so you can't fault it.

No. Because if Paxson misses it, people are like, what the fuck? You had a layup. What were you doing? At the time, that's what I thought it misses it people are like what the fuck you had a layup right what were you doing at the time that's what i thought it was and as i've watched them more and more recently i feel like that's kind of who the bulls were though that was kind of the sneaky great thing about the extra pass yeah they really when you have people engaged i remember doc rivers telling me where i'd be like why do you have kendrick perkins hold the ball at the top of the key when you have garnett when you have ray

you have pierce like in rondo like why would you what's the point of ever having perk have the ball on his hands yeah and he was like because perk doesn't going to want to play 35 minutes if he never gets to touch the ball, man. And I was like, oh, you know, it was like this awakening of like, oh, wait a minute. You're right. Because I can't ask Perk to never be in the play. And part of coaching is making sure that everybody feels appreciated, even though it's ridiculous. They're all millionaires and they're all pros and all that kind of stuff. And that's one of the things watching all these rewatchables with you,

where there's so many moments where I feel like, you know what, these guys really were pretty selfless despite the rep of Jordan being this incredibly selfish player, which he wasn't. He wasn't. He just was better than everybody else. He wasn't going to pass as much, but his assist numbers are usually pretty great. So as I've aged and I watch that,

and Ainge kind of doubles down to drop on him, and Ainge was getting shit on Twitter for not closing on him, Paxton. But, you know know you didn't really play it that way you didn't play to chase people off the threes you didn't say glue to the three-point line especially back then that way so um I'm not going to be a force grant for that yeah the thing is in 2020 that's a terrible play by Ainge in 1993 people were making four threes a game. Like, you know, people just weren't, you weren't thinking that way yet.

So I can't blame Ainge on that one. I could blame Westfall for some of the choices. Were you pro or anti-Paul Westfall as a coach? I've always, like, the first time I didn't like you is I thought, I think I interviewed you once. I was like, do you think all 30 NBA coaches suck? Were you pro or anti? I always think that you can find things in there that will uh will rip them apart i i just watching them now i think they're less talented than i thought they were then so i'm not as anti-westfall as i probably

was you know one thing we should mention with uh earlier in the thing they did that blazers thing and correctly make the point that the Drexler thing, he took it personally and kicked his ass. The funny thing is Drexler is not bad in that series. If you go look at his stats, he's like 25, 8, and 7.

He did exactly what he did during the year, but Jordan's like 35, 8, and 7. He just scores 10 more points a game than him. It's not like he ruined the guy's career, but I think the combo of that and the dream team. And when I did that, when I wrote about Drexler in my book,

The Pyramid Section, you can actually see it in Drexler's stats the following year. He has like an off year the next year and he's in his prime. He's in like the eighth or ninth year of his career. And the combo of, of Jordan, just smushing him in the finals, even though he played well, then they go to the dream team and Jordan and Pippen are wiping the, wiping the, like Pippen's the best guard other than Jordan and the dream team. And there's this famous story about there's this one game, one scrimmage.

Drexler goes to practice and he accidentally brought two left shoes. So he had two lefts, no right shoe, but didn't want to go back. Didn't want anybody to know. So he played with the two left shoes and Jordan found out. And Jordan was like, oh my God. Like it was just like, I mean, he was such a killer. He's like, oh my God, I've completely owned this guy. He's wearing two left shoes during a game. But I'm telling you, if you go to his stats the next year,

he's somebody who should have been like a top six or seven guy in the league. And I don't even think he made the all NBA team the next year. Okay. Think how weird it was back then though, too, because Drexler was almost like this ghost. There's no league pass. Yeah.

Portland's even though they're good and they have a nice this ghost there's no league pass yeah Portland's even though they're good and they have a nice little run there we're not as aware of them so you keep hearing about you know Clyde the glide and Houston and the whole deal and you're looking at these numbers and this is incredible and then what Jordan says the doc isn't a lie though like it's just not close but people were trying to do this like hey there's this this Pacific Northwest Jordan who doesn't get enough pub because Portland is big as Chicago. And you're like, hey, nice dunks and everything, man, but give me a break. And Clyde's always been kind of weird about the Jordan thing.

Because we'd had him in a couple car washes, and I was like, what do you think about you and Jordan? And he basically, I mean, it's kind of an insane answer for everybody else to process. Where he was just like, look, he won all those rings, but it wasn't like I wasn't as good at it. And we're like, hmm. So he was not deferring. Yeah. In 92, he averages 25 a game

and shoots 47%. In 93, it dips to 19.9 points a game, and he shoots 43%. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It was only his-

How old is he? He's 31, 32? He's 30 in the 93 season. So it definitely shook his confidence a little bit. And I think you asked me how much of the conspiracy stuff I believe, and you know I love conspiracies. Why did Jordan leave? Let's just set it up you know I love conspiracies. Why did Jordan leave? Let's just set it up. Right, right. Yeah. Why did he

leave? Because you know episode seven's going to dive into that. And the case against... The case for there being some sort of conspiracy is we're watching this 10-episode documentary about this person who is the most insanely competitive player

of all time. He's playing fucking some throw a coin game against some dude. The Tiger King's dad with a gun. Now that we know he's strapped. Tiger King senior. And he's beating Jordan to doing the shrug. And Jordan's like pissed. He lost $20. This fucking security guard.

He's furious. So the case against, oh, there, you know, there had to have been something going on here. It's like the most competitive guy ever is like, yeah, I'm good. Probably my career. I'm good. Three titles is enough. That part never sat right with me. The flip side of this. And this is something that, um, I wrote about two years ago about LeBron because I thought this is the best thing that ever happened to LeBron. Continually having these new challenges,

these new carrots being dangled in front of him. All the way through, you go back to the 2000s and it's the bad boy Pistons. Then all of a sudden, it's the cagey Celtics. And then he goes to the Heat

and it's like they put all this pressure to become America's villain. They only win two titles. The third year, then it's the, he goes to the heat and it's like, they put all this pressure. They become America's villain. They only win two titles the third year. Then, then it's like, they lose that year. All right, I'm going to go to Cleveland. I'm going to bring them a title. Now the Warriors come in. Now he's got this new villain to deal with. It's always something he had to chase. Um, Jordan, like kind of conquered it by 93. He, he had beaten everybody. You could have lined up in front of him and he knew there was no superstar coming that we were, you know,

a few years away from if it was going to be Shaq, it was still going to be a couple of years. Um, nobody else at his position was close to him. And I think that's a tough thing. I wish he'd had a rival. I wish that, you know, it's a shame that 22-year-old Colby wasn't in the league in 93. Because at least somebody that's coming where Colby's like, all right.

Or Michael's like, all right, that guy. All right, that guy. I got to watch out for him. He didn't have a, I got to watch out for him guy. And I think that really hurt him after the 93 season and aside here before we get back to the conspiracy the early footage of episode five of the madison square garden all-star game is incredible and when it's mj and it's hard away and by the way in the footage you see the other superstars looking at mj in a way that

you're not supposed to look at another basketball player and they start talking kobe and mj's like man he's gonna turn this whole game into one-on-one and they're like who they're like the laker kid and yeah it's not they're not saying kobe it's so it's, it's like, he doesn't let the game come to him. He takes, he takes the game. He's kind of excited for it though. Yeah. He's pro.

He's totally pro him, but he's, he's also like, this is them. This is all these dudes, these legends in the East locker room talking about this Kobe dude in the other locker room in 1998. And then the best line is MJ going,

man, he goes, that guy he's like he just he goes he's gonna go with everybody he goes shit he'll miss four straight and he wants the ball he's like if you were my teammate and you you miss four straight you want the ball you better fucking rebound right it's just i'm telling you man i know that everybody and maybe it's just, I'm telling you, man, I know that everybody, and maybe it's coming, but six episodes in, I've never liked MJ, the personality more because it's all exactly who he is. And the case for him as the goat has always been that it went beyond the stats and the resume and the titles and all that stuff. It was the command of the room. It was the crazy respect that everybody had who either played for him against him and you

could see him in that 98 footage he's by far the king of that locker room there's some good players that locker room right he's got grand hills in there penny hardaway one yeah yeah young twan great they were almost like all right number eight we're gonna take just gonna move you out of this one and then and then how about when it's he larry and magic and larry's line is unbelievable he's the coach he walks in and it's like oh we're here might as well win hands in his pockets right right and he's kind of serious about it and magic comes over mj starts giving him shit and then it's those three guys and as i was watching that part of it i go how could you ever expect these guys to be normal like how could you ever expect magic johnson

michael jordan and larry bird to be just stuck in a hallway little closet section bullshit and giving each other a hard time and it's like you know how how is it even possible those guys could be normal and the standard that we hold them to you know that was what i thought was the most appealing thing when we saw the dvd 12 years ago was that like that seems like that scene of him in the hotel suite when he's lying on his side and he's got like orange juice in front of him and he's smoking a cigar and he's he's just like this is what my life's like i can't go anywhere and this is just for years like you, he's basically going from hotel, practice center, hotel, hotel, game, hotel. And every time he's going anywhere, he's being shepherded through, you know, like he's a boxer being brought to the ring with like an entourage. And I, you know,

they put that security guard, the coin thing. I don't even know what that game was, but there's a, there was way more footage of him hanging out with the security guards. Those are the only people he hung out with. He was always in that little room with the four guys. He's trying to find some normalcy. Right. And I think in one of the parts you could look at this and be like, okay, who he was

being a dick, uh, towards the end of of episode six when they get done with practice. And then one of the reporters is like, hey, Scotty, can you talk? And Scotty's like, all right, I'll talk. And Michael's like, no way, no way. We have a 3.30 tea time. Tea time at 3.30, like shut up. And then they get outside

and then MJ just goes right to the bus because Scotty actually stops and talks to the reporter. He probably liked the guy or whatever. And Scotty becomes a really likable guy, I think in these episodes too, like it's just somebody you could hang with, you know, normal. And MJ goes into the driver's seat and starts just blaring on the horn to screw up the interview. But at the whole, after watching all the buildup, I'm like, I get it. And if you've ever been with somebody who's like a neurotic person about their tee times to begin with, that's not even that unique. But I was kind of taking MJ's

side with the whole thing because yes, I know the deal is you get to sell hundreds of million dollars worth of shoes. You're worth a billion dollars. You build this fortune. And that's sometimes I think what the public does to you where they go, well, you get all those things. So you have to deal with all this bullshit. That's just the equation. Sorry. That's what you signed up for. But I think any person should as great as it as it would be, and I would have loved to have walked around the planet as the greatest, the baddest man in basketball. Anyone who's ever played basketball, just to even imagine, because it's impossible to even imagine what that would be like.

I can see where he just turned into this guy that people would say, no, he's kind of sucked. He was kind of a jerk. He was kind of those things. It's like, yeah, but that's all of product of of what he was dealing with at that time well he's also a six foot six famously bald handsome black guy who's gonna stand out anywhere he goes so committed to the mustache longer than anyone by the way he really did he's still never given up on it yeah i don't has anyone ever been committed to that kind of facial hair for 40 years? The height can't be underrated.

The one time I went out with Brady in the Miami Super Bowl, in the Colts-Bears Super Bowl. Oh, no. The boat? I don't think he was married yet, but he was definitely with Gisele. But it was like a Friday night, and I was with his crew, and they were like, we're going out with Tom. And it was like the whole backdoor,

ropes lifting, the whole thing. And then he would find the back of the bar, basically, and his friends would build this little armada in front of him so people couldn't get to him. And he's just leaning against the wall. He's 6'5", so impossible for anyone not to know who he is. Just having a drink. Half the place is just staring at him like he's a zoo animal.

It's 3 in the morning. You have the Sully and Murph types coming, Hey, Tommy! Hey, man! Can I get a picture? And it's just like he finally stuck out. It just didn't seem like that much fun. And this was a random Friday

at the Super Bowl where there's a million celebrities. I don't even know what Jordan could have done other than play golf or go to a casino. It's not like he's going to a nightclub. Where's he going to go? Is he going to go to the movies? What do you do in 1993 if you're him?

Nothing. There was this bar in Boston called The Place. I actually bartended there for a little bit when I was getting my on-air thing started. Yeah. I like how you... First of all, I went to The Place, the pre-opening, like the week before

when it was just like restaurant service people. So how dare you? What do you mean? What are you talking about? The Place. Am I bringing up some bad... Is there bad here no you made it you made it seem like i didn't know what the place was i oh no i'm doing it for the listeners the millions of listeners all right all right i'm not doing it for you all right no so our our crossover in boston was like barely it was it was honestly months but um the guy the guy that ran at this guy sj he'd be like oh man brady's coming

by you know and brady had been in a couple times when he was younger you know when he was the backup that year which i guess apparently the story went that he had asked out like one of the the bud light bathtub girls and she said no and then she would brag about it oh my god it was like well what are you bragging about like you said no and the guy that ran it was i said no to tom she would brag about it oh my god it was like well what are you bragging about like you said no and the guy that ran it was i said no to tom yeah she's like i told john brady that my you're not my type tommy and i was taken at the time i mean he's an electrician 49 he's too fucking tall so i i was like oh wait he's coming in he's coming in and they were like yeah and he goes yeah but it's now it sucks like he sits in the kitchen yeah and we have to have guys stand in

front of the kitchen because the kitchen was like real accessible to like where the end of the bar was and it wasn't and i get why he would want to go out he's still a young guy he's famous it's still cool but it's like all right i have to go out and to go out in public i have to stand in a kitchen and not even be able to be in the main area of a place you know what it would be like to be those guys it would be like if we had a pandemic right now and everyone was quarantined you couldn't go anywhere no it wouldn't it's still better yeah it's probably it's still it's still better than being quarantined. Quick conspiracy thing, then we're going to take a break. Okay, so we've kind of danced around it. We've talked a

little bit about it. I know you love the conspiracies. I know what I've heard from a lot of people that are convinced of it, but what do you believe as of today of whether or not Jordan was actually suspended from the league? The answer is no. As you know, I love conspiracies. I've also been fortunate enough to talk to a lot of people who know things over the last however many years. And I've always asked, I've always been intrigued by it. I do think it adds up that he walked away for real reasons. One is the carrot thing we mentioned. Didn't have the carrot dangling in front of him. Didn't have that one challenger. Was completely worn down physically from the grind that they had. Because going back to 89, there's 100 game seasons, five years in a row. He never really

was injured. He's playing 3,800, 4,000 minutes a year. The press and his antipathy for how shit was handled with him in the playoffs, I think was a real thing for him. And I think he was really fed up and he was telling people that season, I got to, it's fucking it. Like I might walk away after the season. Like, don't, don't be surprised if I leave. And then the thing with his dad, you know, unquestionably fucked him up, by all accounts. Cause when he retires, it's closer to the season than I think people remember. They'll go into that in episode seven, but it's almost September. about sitting in front of Pat Croce that time at a Celtic game when I was like just, you know, a guy with 5,000 readers on Digital City Boston. And it was a Sixers Celtics game. And it was right when Allen Iverson

had released his rap album and it had the lyrics in it. And Pat Croce was telling the guy next to him how Iverson went to see Stern and Stern was reaming him about the thing. And he's like, next time something like this happens, I'll suspend you for a year. You see what I did to Michael. Don't think you wouldn't be next. Now I did hear Pat Croce say that not making it up. It's 100. So what happened? I wrote about in my book. Um, but Stern might've just said that to scare Iverson. It might, he might've

just used the leverage of it. I believe that more than the conspiracy piece. The reason I've always had a hard time believing it is that it'd be impossible for Stern to sit in a room with MJ and be like, this never leaves the room. We take it to our graves. Because you wouldn't be able to execute it that way. If you're MJ, you'd have to lie to everybody for the rest of your life and if you were stern you'd

have to lie to everybody the rest of your life more believe if you're stern far more believable than mj but if you're stern who everybody who wants to believe the gambling suspension conspiracy also believes the conspiracy of the frozen envelope to get patrick ewing to the knicks like so if you believe that you would do anything to get the Knicks franchise relevant again, why would he want the NBA's meal ticket out of the league at any point? And then why was it for a year in like 60 games and now you can come back for the playoffs?

It doesn't, somebody would have leaked the story. The story is too juicy. It's been 25 years. Someone would have given us more details because there wouldn't be any possible way to keep this kind of decision between just two parties well we still don't know who killed jfk so i um it's he read any mob books it's the mafia the uh the only there's a hybrid theory that I think is kind of interesting

that was told to me once that Stern did want to punish him even though during the playoffs he exonerated him whatever that Stern did want to punish him at least a little bit for some of the gambling stuff that you know it was a little inappropriate

and that was another piece of at least a little bit for some of the gambling stuff that it, that, you know, it was a little inappropriate. And that was another piece of why MJ was like, fuck this. Now I'm going to get suspended for the, who knows if that's true or not true, but maybe he was going to get punished that next season. And maybe that added to the carnage. I don't know. I'm spec,

I'm speculating by the way, don't aggregate me. No, but remember too, how people have used this quote as evidence that he was suspended when MJ says, maybe I'll come back if Stern will have me back. No, he'll go, oh. And he says that, but knowing MJ, that's him throwing shade at Stern.

Right. And the NBA investigating MJ, which they should have done, because MJ's name was showing up on checks for drug traffickers and another guy who was dead. There was two checks there. I'm not defending MJ's gambling. I'm not defending it in the sense that, again, back to the beginning of the pod, it wasn't like me saying, hey, I'm pro MJ's gambling problem.

I'm just anti the teardown of people in this cyclical way. But MJ was doing some stuff as like the number one athlete in the world like why would you be hanging out with all these shady guys it's like well you like to lose money to them and gambling but when you go back and look at some of the stuff that sam smith wrote about at the time he wrote the jordan rules book he was like the nba investigation was a joke like there was no real investigation the nba kind of said it to appease the masses and then there wasn't really any investigation because smith said that he looked into it as an Like there was no real investigation. The NBA kind of said it to appease the masses. And then there wasn't really any investigation because Smith said that he looked into it as an investigative report before he's even a sports reporter

saying there was no like path to follow. Like the NBA was going to have any room to even talk to any of these people. So that felt like a PR thing. So the investigation that the NBA had that would lead to this, this supposed suspension that nobody ever has known about other than speculation at the core of it. that the NBA had that would lead to this supposed suspension that nobody ever has known about other than speculation, at the core of it, apparently this investigation never even took place, or not much of one.

FYI, there were worse gambling things that happened with the NBA over the last 30 years. Jordan doesn't crack the top three. I'll leave it at that. Care to elaborate? I'll leave it at that. Did you have the Celtics over in the first Patino season? Is that one of them? You can Google some stuff and things come up. I'll leave it at that. Did you have the Celtics over in the first Patino season?

Is that one of them? You can Google some stuff and things come up. I'll just say that. We're going to take a break and then we're going to talk about quarantine. We're going to do MJ's rewatchables. We're going to talk about some goat. The goat talk is out of control right after this. Let's take a break to talk about a beer

that's very near and dear to my heart. Miller Lite. Miller time. A moment for people to come together in real life to connect over a few beers. It's a little tougher when you can't be with your people, but Miller Light can still be enjoyed with your people, just not in bars or at gatherings. You could do it. You could stay 10 feet away from each other, have Miller Light. You can do it on Zoom. You can have a little toast. Yesterday when my daughter, we had a little birthday party for her, had a whole bunch of people on the front lawn stayed six, seven feet away from each other.

And you know what? Had some good talks. It's possible to stay connected with the people that you still care about. Miller Lite is the beer that makes Miller Time possible. It's the original light beer that tastes great. It's less filling, which means it won't get in the way of enjoying time with your people. The reason I've loved this beer over anything else over the years. Miller Lite, you can have a couple and not feel like you're sleepy or you're stuffed or whatever. It just

goes down nice and easy. Miller Lite, the original light beer while you're home. Enjoy a classic. Available for delivery today. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. All right, so let's audible to a couple other things. Then we'll do MJ's rewatchables, which I'm really excited about because this is a good deep dive of a game.

But had a social distancing party this week rewatch of Bulls, which I'm really excited about because this is a good deep dive of a game. But had a social distancing party this week, Priscilla. Wait a minute. At what age group are we talking? My daughter, it was an impromptu birthday party arranged by her best friend who got like 10, 11 other friends of hers to just stop by my house at a specific time, mid-afternoon on Saturday. And we had the front door open and my daughter came down. She thought we were walking the dogs, looks out and sees a whole bunch of her friends holding signs, comes out. Everybody stays six, seven feet away from each other. And then the girls were like,

screw it, about a half hour in and started hugging and doing the whole thing. Like they couldn't take it anymore. The adults talking to people like soccer dads for my team, for my daughter's team, they're wearing face masks. We're, we're just talking about like a best takeout we've gotten, uh, Ozark season three. We're all wearing masks. We're standing in the fucking lawn things are getting weird and i feel like they're they're just gonna get weirder and weirder have you become resigned to the fact that this just might be where we are for like the next three years no three years you really think you're gonna be standing in your front yard a year from now with a mask on standing 10 feet away from your neighbor talking about high school sports come on

i hope not i don't like california is different right like i was looking at every single state and trying to figure out like who was opening up and who wasn't maybe go visit somewhere and uh california is is on lockdown like we we're gonna be in the last place as far as when things start back up again so i'm willing to believe anything as far as that but yeah i have uh i have a small birthday party tomorrow i've done this 60 days i've personally interacted with i think three people in 60 days and i'm i'm going to a party tomorrow so yeah you can shame me all you want but i i don't care because it's going to be like six people and we're going to jump in a pool with chlorine.

I think that's how this has started to shake out where people are now expanding whatever their little quarantine circle was. Whereas initially, if you live by yourself, you just stayed by yourself. If you're with your family, you stayed nuclear family. But now I think it's almost become Tinder for hangouts where you're, you're thinking about the person and or family that you're wanting to hang out with and, and kind of judging like who they might've had in their thing and be like, Oh, they seem safe. We can, we can hang out with them. Supposedly they've had no other people in their house other than their grand. And you just start, you know, judging

people good and bad. Cause then you have another family where you're like, oh, I heard, I heard their daughter has been riding bikes with a whole bunch of kids. Like, who knows? They're off the rails. What life is like now, your scouting report, quarantine scouting reports on different families. Yeah. Cause I do this thing where I, I try to assume the other person is hypersensitive about it. Right.

So I keep my mask on. I stand as far away as possible. And like I said, I'm not necessarily anti any of it. There's just part of me that thinks like, so wait a minute, in 10 days, a bunch of politicians are going to say, okay, you're cool. Now go to the beach, go to the park. You guys can just go to your neighbors. Everything's fine. And even when you look at some of the California stuff, it says any gathering under 10 is fine. And I'm not like out there other than going to the grocery store once a week or something like that. So I don't feel like I'm a huge high risk person going to somebody else's pool for a couple hours because I'm just going to do it. I mean, I got invited.

I've been invited to a couple of different things and I just haven't gone. But I was walking around today. Like I just got in the car. It was like I got to get out of the house for a little bit because I was watching the games this morning. And I saw a bunch of younger kids, skateboarders are like 10 or 11. And when it's like the Manhattan beach age,

like those kids are aggressive. No one's as old as a 12 year old New York city kid, but yeah, Manhattan beach has kind of that a little bit too, where they just look at me, like, look at this old loser. And I'm looking at them as like,

look at these skateboard shitheads. Right. Like no masks on. The other day, a kid smashed into a car parked on our street and I heard it. It was so bad that I heard it. And then I went and looked and then the kids took off. And then later on, when I went to go check out, get in my car near that, they scratched up the whole side of this truck like they just smashed into it left and were like all right we're out of here and i just i always kind of think about how when you're at the office in your 20s and you think of how you feel about yourself and how people perceive you and i always tell like that 25 year old all the guys that are 40 think you suck for the most part and it was the same way

as when these skateboarders were looking at me and I was looking at them. So I don't like when you have kids and you want your kids to get out there, especially in a safe part of town, like where you live or where I live or that kind of thing. I can kind of understand parents telling their kids like, Hey, look, if you want to go for a bike ride, I mean, it's great if you wear a mask and everything, but there's a park near me where I'm just noticing people starting to give up a little bit. And there's a park that's kind of open that people aren't really enforcing anymore. So again, I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying anybody's wrong necessarily, but you're right. Human nature here eventually is with nice weather. It's just tough to keep saying to people, you're going to have to stay inside closed doors, except for the

grocery store. Yeah. People are going to push the envelope just in general. Think the speed limit's 55. People don't drive 55. If I have room on a highway, I'm going to go 90. That's not legal. And I think people are going to justify however they want. It's not normal for human beings to just steer clear of other human beings like this for months on end. Here's the problem though. And this is why I worry that this is going to be a long-term thing. It does feel like if people come back too soon and we get this second wave, then we're basically back to square one. And the last nine weeks is just thrown out the window. And that's the part I can't reconcile because we know there's no vaccine. We know we, we have a general sense now of who this thing targets and what kind of demos

it goes after who, who are the lottery picks for the COVID where they're like, oh, that, and there's just certain people they're going to be like, oh my God, a nursing home. They're just going to clean through that. But you know, for younger people or people who are in good health, it does seem like you're a little bit better off. The more and more that statistics are going to clean through that. But for younger people or people who are in good health, it does seem like you're a little bit better off. The more and more that statistics are going to come in, I think people are going to feel safer and they're going to go out more. And then that second wave, it's just so up in the air. I don't know how it's going to play out. Yeah. I don't know if the fear of the second wave should keep everybody in until we know,

but what do we really know? In what version of science would anyone say previous to this after 30 days of information, like, yeah, okay, I know it. I got it. That's insane to me. There's no version of science where you'd be sitting there after 30 days thinking you knew this thing perfectly. And I'm not saying that it isn't bad. I'm not saying it's the worst thing ever but i guess i'm just always a little surprised in some media circles where any hope is perceived as being an asshole right and that's that second wave is is a real fear you're totally right like it's gonna suck if it goes hey you know what guys like the line curled back up like late august and or whatever you know if it's a weather related thing and again this is just you and i after reading a bunch of this stuff trying to sift through it all

but i've never been i don't know i i almost feel like sometimes i'm i'm worried about trying to be positive about it because then i'm going to get dragged which is right well you think about when this thing shows up here it's it's second week of march right as the weather's starting to turn a little bit and now we're in may and and the weather all around the united states is at least okay in some places and really good in other places now we're gonna go through the summer but you know if this hasn't gone away by like november when when we hit flu season again but now we have flu season combined with this thing out there. I I've tried to read, I keep waiting to read the piece that makes me go,

Oh, I get it now. I had now, now I can envision how this might play out. I still haven't read that piece. It's like every single day there's new information or information we thought we knew goes out the window. And it's like, yeah, that thing you thought that's out that, that, that throw that away. Take, take that out of your arsenal. But like the Ralphs in Hollywood that they call rock and roll Ralphs, cause it's on sunset. They just announced yesterday they had a huge outbreak with like 19 employees there, uh, in mid April and they had to shut it down. I didn't even really read all the details. So yeah, the grocery store. Yeah. Um, which you read that and you're like, holy shit. You know that like, this is one of the only places we know we have to go to.

And this place had an outbreak. So, so why? Um, so, you know, we've spent a lot of time on this pod the last couple of weeks talking about when a sport's going to come back. When's the NBA going to come back? What are bubble systems? What about the NFL Schrager? And I talked about that on Thursday, the NFL were four months away. They'd have to start a preseason. They'd have to start mini camps or the July mini camp, probably like mid July. That's two and a half months away. None of that seems realistic to me.

I basketball probably seems the most realistic, but you know, my wife asked me a question that the way she phrased it made me rethink everything. She was like, why is it so important that basketball comes back? And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, what is it ultimately good for? Is it actually good for the economy or is it just because the players, she was like, who, she asked me who, who would make money from this? And I was like, well, the players, obviously we get their salaries. The owners would be able to recoup some of their money at recoup. And then, uh, and then the networks and she's like, yeah, but how does that help? Like restaurants come back? How does that help travel? Like that? It

doesn't really help the economy, right? It's just helping a bunch of people in a smaller circle make money. And I'm like, yeah, you're kind of right. I guess it helps the spirit of Americans, the fact that we'd have shit to talk to and fans and, you know, take our mind off things, et cetera, et cetera. But economically, there's no real advantage for the basketball to come back other than the people that are directly involved. So you think about it that way and you're like,

okay, so why do we want this? Yeah, maybe, but the sports gal and I get along really well, so I don't want to zag her on her husband's pod. You can zag her. All right, but it isn't just the owners and the players and then us selfishly having something. It's everybody knowing that people at ESPN that could be losing jobs or furloughed,

they'd be safer. Same thing, TNT, ABC, and then every single podcast or any blog that has any revenue generated to covering basketball. So I think it does, but yes, it's not waitresses and waiters and bartenders and that kind of thing, but we're still talking, I would imagine hundreds of people being more secure if we have a product to cover. Probably thousands. Yeah. From a media standpoint, definitely helps. But it's a 10-week kind of savior, right? It doesn't ultimately solve the standpoint

of how would they actually have a regular season. I still don't understand how a football regular season would work. Even after Schrager and I laid out all the possibilities in different bubble cities and then got some feedback from people, um, in sports too, about some interesting stuff you guys brought up. It's still every, it comes back to the question of what happens if somebody tests positive, what do you do? Do you just shut down the playoffs at that point? Does that team get eliminated? You know,

like let's say you have the Lakers and it's like, whoever, the backup center in the Lakers comes down with the COVID. So is that team out of the playoffs? Do we postpone all those games for 14 games? I think this is the stuff they're talking about at the different leagues. All the worst case scenario, what happens if somebody gets it

as we're in motion with our playoff system or whatever, you know? One of the things that I like that you and Schrager talked about, and it kind of fits into that category of, well, if the NBA doesn't start back up, or even if it does, then they can delay the start and then have an entire season to kind of test the Christmas through the end of the summer model,

which everybody seems to be on board with now. But if the NFL were to come back, instead of worrying about, because they can't just go to like an NFL or a football facility and have 10 games going on at the same location. Like that's something that the NBA has. The NFL is probably looking at me like,

man, we can't even do that. You'd have to use more days in the week. That would be the safe. But that's always something I would think deep down those guys would always want to do. The NFL goes out of their way to try to own the media calendar. They drop news all the time and they sit there. And again, I don't think any of this stuff, I think it's all overrated a little bit like, wow, we're really in the news cycle today. It's like, cool. But the news cycle is not,

hey, we have NFL games five nights a week. Why wouldn't they just do it and then see what happens? Because it actually might be insanely successful. Now, some of these numbers are going to be tough. Like, and everybody's going to play the game of like, hey, look at our ratings. Like, look what our ratings were. The draft ratings are insane. The MJ Doc ratings are insane. Anything that comes back on, those ratings are going to be nuts.

And it'll be kind of funny how people play with the numbers and maybe try to argue something that isn't even real. But for football, I would think a lot like the basketball shifting of the schedule by a few months to seeing what the results are. I would think football would love the idea of trying to do it on a bunch of nights instead of just Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I'm sure they've thought about Friday night, right? There's an anti-trust thing that they would have to actually... Somebody emailed me about this this weekend after hearing the Schra Yeah. That they would have to actually, somebody emailed me about this this weekend after hearing the Schrager thing.

They would have to actually get Congress's permission to play on Friday nights and on Saturdays beyond what is already, like they have like, how many Saturday games do they have during the regular season? There's always a couple in December. Yeah, it's late.

But they would actually, Congress would have to agree to do that. I think it would be great for the psyche of Americans, the more sports that could come back, just for people to have more to do, more to talk about, for life to feel more normal. But it keeps coming back to that, the worst-case scenario stuff,

and not knowing what the solutions are for that, not to mention all the tests that they would need and the fact that we don't, it's not like we have tests right now, like they're just falling out of trees. So the amount of tests you'd even need to do a nine-week playoff thing, that's going to be a tough sell too.

It's like, why do you get all the tests? For what reason? So you guys can finish your playoffs. Meanwhile, we, why are you, why do you get all the tests for what reason? So, so you guys can finish your playoffs. Meanwhile, like we need these tests here, here, here. So I don't know what we'll see how it plays out. I go, I, every week I'm either more optimistic or more pessimistic than the week before this week. I've, I've hit the more pessimistic side, but I, I think part of that has to do with, this is what, a top four weekend of the year, usually sports-wise.

And it was just another weekend. Like, it's today's Sunday. It could be like Wednesday. I don't know what the fuck day this is. I love the Derby. I always try to find a spot to go somewhere. I threw, it's like the only party I've ever really thrown that I put a lot of effort into it. Really?

Yeah, we did like a big ESPN staff crew came over to my house i got catering i did a full bar with a bartender we even west hartford yeah west hartford then i didn't even know it was called what's it called a step and repeat for the ladies so we set up we rented a pony we did a red carpet with velvet ropes on the way in and uh i even dj'd a late set it was like a secondary there was two parties within the party and it it went over pretty well um the cleaning lady that was her second week at my house it was the only time i've ever hired a cleaning lady so i did it normal she was like oh my gosh this guy lives on like one floor and doesn't even go on the other ones and then she called me while

i was at espn that monday she goes oh my god is this is this because we had roses roses were just smashed into the flooring everywhere oh my god you know it's tough to get those rose petals out the lovers out there know what i'm talking about yeah you're pessimistic bill this week that's okay i try to you know feed off of my co-hosts at all times if i got to bring people up i try to bring them up but i just i like when you're optimistic, Ryan. Yeah, I get way too much of a bad rap about being negative about it. I guess I just...

I don't understand where... Like when somebody just goes, you know, the world's going to be different forever. Maybe. Maybe it will be,

but I just think some people are so definitive about it. And yes, my history of paying attention to big stories has been that usually we were sold the worst version of it all the time. It's almost like a greenie tease where the tease isn't, Hey, what could or couldn't happen? It'll be the key to next year's masters.

And it's not tiger woods. And you know, it's just that the packaging of, of every story, it's very important. Like, Hey, it's the biggest storm perhaps this weekend since. Look, I'm not trying to call coronavirus Y2K. It's serious. It's horrible. The numbers are terrible. We did a bad job on it in the beginning. But I guess I'm getting a little repetitive in that sometimes when I'll hear somebody say, well, here's the worst case scenario and all these things.

We're like, okay. All right. Maybe. Maybe that's what happens. But i guess i'm just until then and look it's not like i'm out doing anything and it's not like if i were living with my father who's 74 back maybe he was living with me i i'd be probably way more uptight about it even though like i said i've talked to i think three people in person we were talking yesterday at my daughter's thing about some of the soccer dads just about wow, we might not see a soccer game

this year. Our kids might not. We won our last game the second Sunday in March. Zoe was supposed to have this whole three-month run. All that got wiped out. Then we're all like, wow. Our team

might not be together until spring of 2021 or God only knows. Because I think youth sports will be slower to come back than professional sports because there's not the same financial incentive. With the pro sports, with the money that's at stake and all the different people that are affected by it, they're going to look for every way to come back. When you talk about kids and there's no stakes other than you just want your kids to run around and be on a team and all the great stuff that comes with these sports. Hey, I'm, I'm way more pessimistic on that because there's going to be a lot of parents

that are like, fuck that. My, my kid's not playing. No, not happening, not risking it. And I don't know how that's going to play out. And that's

something like we've talked so much about pro sports, but there's way more people in youth sports. There's way more teams, coaches, institutions, and all that stuff's on hold too. And a lot of that stuff is going to crater soon, you know, because you have team dues and you got to find the whole ref pool and the coaches pool and all those people. They're making $0 right now. Does Zone Ball make a comeback? Very possible.

Or Zone Ball. Yeah, I remember reading about that. You know what I do want to pick up because you tweeted about it, though, is this story that picked up. There's a bunch of stuff that happened this week. Yeah. Confirmation of things that we talked about on Sunday, specific to the Orlando thing, where if this can be executed it makes the most sense but then you know every time something comes up there's 10 reasons to tear it down and like i've said

from the beginning i'm just not going to do it there's no there's every idea that every proposal that's brought up there's going to be some risk and there's going to be some problems and the new one i think it was somebody from a staff was like hey our staff is really old and you're like oh that's a good point well maybe that means you're not going to travel with a full staff. You know, back in the day, it used to be one coach, maybe two. Maybe that's a new version of this thing. And I know it sucks, but if it's the only way to get things going again, that's part of it. The Orlando thing always made sense, like we had talked about on Sunday.

But something that you tweeted about was that agents and executives are saying it's not going to happen. And I'm like, wait a minute. And that's the other thing that I've learned through the process is that this is a lot like Kawhi Leonard's free agency is that anybody that thinks they know something definitive today probably doesn't have very good sources because all I can tell you is everything that you and I have talked about from sourced conversations is that it's a moving target and open-mindedness and constantly changing of proposals never mind executing an existing plan but the agent part of it was like what when did the who asked the agents yeah it's this is owners and superstar

players and to a lesser degree the networks i think the networks will be fine with it, but ultimately this is going to come down to whoever the eight owners with the most juice right now, silver, um, probably Bob Iger, Jimmy Pataro, uh, whoever's running Turner now. And, um, and a handful of superstar players, Chris Paul, LeBron. All those guys are going to have a seat at the table ultimately. Tatum. Tatum. They're all going to have a seat at the table because if one of them is like, fuck this, then

it becomes like a house of cards and it gets pulled. I want to talk about superstars though because we had this on our list of things to talk about. And it's just because now we're nine weeks in and it's just, everyone's just dusting off the all-time evergreen topics, right? MJ's, we've been doing a ton of MJ stuff. MJ LeBron is really heated up.

Who's the greatest team? Really heated up? Dude, did it ever cool off? No, it's really had a resurgence. Yeah, it's overcooked. It's now entire shows, entire morning shows on ESPN or whatever talking about it. I think by the end of this MJ series, the LeBron camp is going to be in some trouble with their case. But I think we've had some of the wildest takes I've ever heard in my life.

Like the one you texted me today, the tweet where Wilbon's on get up. But then in the course of that, they're saying how David Fox just thinks Michael Jordan would have scored 50 to 60 a game. If he played now, it's like, how do you say that? Who, who thinks this? Could he say if it was high school, I could see him. If he was in a high school league, I could see 50 to 60 a night. I don't even think in college you could score 50 at so many points. All right. So if I give you the timeline of that whole tweet and then me texting it to you, I actually

think it's funny because the tag on the get up tweet says, Wilbon says guys like LeBron Durant would not dominate in the 80s or 90s. So when you read that, you do a massive eye roll and you're like, all right, Wilbon's just stepping up for his boy MJ and he's doing the Chicago thing. And then I go, hey, you know what? Before I fire off a reaction, which I rarely do anyway, you go, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to click on the video and then I'm going to watch what he actually says. i know it's a shocking shocking idea and when will bond explains it he goes you guys that think like durant and lebron

go in a time machine and they get 50 a game back then because of the evolution of man and superior athletes and stretching the floor more um i'm like oh okay will bond i actually agree with him there but then yes planted in there was david falk mj's agent saying he'd get 50 or 60 okay so a game a game yeah yeah no i don't think anybody thought we were talking about season do you know how hard even if we just go with 50 that means the night you get 30 you gotta get 70 and if you want to take it to 60 like if you're getting 40 if you have an off night of 40, you have to make up every 40 point game with an 80 point game. You would have to hog the ball.

You'd have to hog the ball like James Harden. You know, you'd have to have a usage rate like his, but even higher. And you would have to make, I don't know. You'd have to somehow also score 10 more points again. It's ridiculous.

The only case ever for moving somebody into another era, how they would destroy, is basically moving any dominant anybody into the 60s because they only had like two black guys on a team, except for the Celtics. It was just a different league. There was maybe 20 to 25 good guys in the league total. And Wilson, they're just cleaning up against these six,

eight centers. And if you put, like, if you put mid 90s shack in 1962, he would have scored 40 to 45 points a game. He would have been unstoppable. Nobody would have been able to get near him. But other than that,

it's not an acceptable argument. No. And if we do that kind of stuff, because part of it was like, okay, well, what would MJ get today? And then Jalen said, look, I'll give him 40. If, if Harden can get 35 or 37, I'll give him 40. And it's like, okay, that's, that's, you don't think Jordan getting

far. I mean, he almost, he had 37 there in the eighties. So I don't think if Jordan decided, Hey, I'm going to get 40 points a game in today's game. Like I don't, anybody that says Jordan doesn't shoot threes. Like he would figure it out. He would shoot threes. He would make threes, but here's a couple of important things to factor in. As you mentioned those runs in the sixties, when you look at those bill Russell rebounding totals, it's not only that bill Russell's one of the greatest players of all time, greatest rebounder defensive player. They averaged at the peak in 60, 61, 109 shots per game per team okay yeah 109 today they average if i go by year and i have all this done so i won't bore you to death it's about 90 shots per team per game now but also they're making more they're making a higher percentage of those shots because in the

early 60s they were shooting like 37 38 so there are way more rebounds available some of the shooting numbers for guys that we think are the all-time greats you're like how come these guys have so many years where it's in like the high 30s like what the hell is going on now if you look at mj's run through the years he won titles so we're going like it started in 88 89 90 even though yes i know it was uh 91 and then you take it through 98, if you go attempts per game, per team, it's like 87, and then on the low end towards the end of his career, the second end of his career, it's like 80 a game. If you look at the last 10 years or so on shot attempts, it's not that far off. It isn't. So there's more points because they're three-pointers but you're kind of looking at this

range of you know from 2011 2000 to 20 it's it's 81 shots a game to like 88 it's picked up quite a bit in the last couple years so if you take a 10-year the last 10-year stretch of mj to the last 10 years of the nba the possession numbers actually aren't that crazy or based on shot attempts what is crazy is something that was brought up that guys today take so many more free throws and that MJ would get all these calls. Now I do believe that MJ, if you said, oh, MJ, you can learn all these stupid tricks that everybody falls for now, where you can trick the ref into getting all these free throws instead of trying to execute the play like MJ that make it even more ridiculous, how dominant he would be. But I don't know that it relates to anything where

it's 50 or 60 a game, which again, I could just shoot down. But if you look at the last nine years in free throw attempts per game, those are the nine lowest totals in NBA history of it being tracked. And again, that has more to do with threes. So I hate a lot of the calls that happen now, especially going back and watching these games in the 90s where no one tried to trick anybody. Because if you did, they just didn't give you the call. And now,

for whatever reason, all the younger refs, they give these players these calls, so the players keep going for it. But the free throw attempt numbers are down from when MJ did it. So it's not some massive jump and shot attempts between now and then. So that was actually, I thought, two math reasons against MJ. I think the easiest thing as I finish here is we make it too complicated with the great ones. And I'm talking the truly great ones. If you want to go from like 1980 on, the truly great ones, you plug them into any situation, they're going to figure it out and they're going to get their numbers. And we make this way more complicated. Durant would put up 30 a game in the 80s and 90s because he's fucking insane. LeBron would go nuts back then too, but there wouldn't be this superhero

version of him that is so far beyond the evidence that we have of like 20 years of these guys playing. LeBron in 1962, there would be the superhero version though. Look, that's my Eddie House theory. I think there'd be Eddie House statues at all 30 NBA cities if he played in 1962.

Like you look at Elgin how revered he was in the early 60s. And Elgin, he averaged 35 a game one season, all that stuff. And it's like, man, he was the guy who brought basketball into... He made it vertical. And then you look at the clips of him, and it's not like he's jumping over dudes and dunking and stuff like that. He was just the first guy who incorporated jumping, jump shot, drives in traffic, bouncing off people. You know, very early prototype

of where we're going. But I mean, if you time machine LeBron and just threw him into 1962, people would not, it would be like Armageddon. They wouldn't know what was happening. They would think like an alien species had landed.

Where, what is this guy? He would have been the biggest player in the league other than Wilt. Would you agree thatbe's the closest thing that we've had to mj just on a style and approach yeah i think kobe's i i think duane wade in 2009 is the underrated version of it if you go back you look at his i still think i've said this and the Laker fans get mad because people just get mad at everything now. I think his 2009 season is in the running for Wade's 2009 is in the running to be better than any Kobe season. I like Kobe's Oh six season. I thought his Oh two season was really good, but Wade, Wade was like 38 and six and he was 50% shooting and he was just awesome. And it was just very Jordan S that whole year. His team was terrible. Um, I, I think he reminds me of MJ as much as Kobe did. Kobe

mimicked a lot of his moves and stuff. And I thought earlier two thousands, Kobe reminded me more of MJ just cause he could get to the rim. He could spin with either hand. He had that little, that little foul line, lean back jumper and things like that. But Wade reminded me more of him athletically. Cause you, you always make the case with Jordan. Nobody had better body control ever. I think you look at some, uh, some of that vintage Wade stuff from the late two thousands and it's just unbelievable. Some of the stuff he's doing, he's going against triple teams and he's just getting to the rim. Like he's, he's taking it to a really good Celtics team, you know, that made finals in 08 and 2010. He's just like shredding them. So I, he, I, I always feel like he gets left out. And now ironically, the second half of his career became over celebrated and then he retired for three years and that also became ridiculous but yeah that it's weird people

you mentioned how uh well the reason i even bring that up though is just that like yes kobe's not mj but people have turned this into that mj would just dribble through everybody with all the spacing and have 50 a game and And you, not everybody, but that pro argument and you go, yeah, I don't know. We hit, we have guys. Now the spacing thing is, is newer. It's not 10 years of spacing. It's a very shortened amount of time that we've seen this game just kind of change. It feels like overnight, smaller, all that kind of stuff.

Like Jordan would still dominate and he would be a little different if he were coached to shoot threes and worked on that. Cause he would, it's not like the MJ wasn't going to work on it it but the hand checking thing's so overrated the heart foul thing's so overrated i think the rim protection the rim protection thing's not overrated though i just think there's less guys protecting the rim than there were when he played you know that's just you just had more bodies in the paint it's just a fact like no i'm not disputing that i'm not arguing i'm just saying like that that's the biggest thing that's different is just less traffic in the paint but what i'd ask the person who thinks like mj would get so many more points because of the spacing you go well you know we

have guys that are still good at driving to the hoop now in this league if you want to say mj is the best fine but like the gap between mj's ability to drive to the hoop like it's he couldn't he wasn't actually flying over couldn't he wasn't actually flying over people okay he wasn't like jumping over everybody like spider-man he still had to like get around people and then people would help and all so the help was was more condensed yes because the paint was more condensed but just because it opens up to just add all this thing up like there's i don't know i just feel like we have guys in the league right now that are really good at driving the basketball and they're not going to get 50 a game I actually think he would have made I I think

he would have really loved like this the shooters that he would have in the corners and stuff because he was such a sneaky good passer he never got enough credit for that um but he always made good passes and the thing I always liked about like that game we did a couple weeks ago the 55 point game against the uh the Knicks then we did that one against the sons. They were all flow of the game. It was never one of those. I'm just scoring as many points, but he usually made the right basketball play. And I still feel like he would do that now. But, um, you mentioned that Wilbon thing about people just seeing the tweet and then reacting. We had that happen to us with the Dennis Rodman thing last week. I thought it was hilarious.

You ended up trending. Seriously? I didn't even know that part. Well, people got really mad. No, I didn't. I honestly didn't. I knew that people were mad. It was funny because it was your thing.

You were the one that brought it up in the pod. Yeah, but the problem is because when you tweeted it, then it became your thing. And I like, that's just the way it works. But it was funny how nobody listened to what we actually talked about. The initial premise was that, you know, Rodman always gets played up in all of these things. Like he was, you know, the most fascinating human being who ever walked the earth. And the reality of the people that were actually there watching it, it wore off pretty fast. And it always felt like it was headed for a sad end.

And he goes to the Lakers in 99. And by that time, it was just played out. His Lakers stint was really sad. He had real problems and they ended up kicking him off the team. I think after what, 18, 20 games. And it always felt like it was headed that way. It always felt like he was hanging on by the seat of his pants in that third bowl season

that he had. And I think there's really fun ways to glorify that now and make it seem like it was so interesting and, and he was standing for all these different things that I'm really not sure that he was. And I, I still never totally understood it. But I also don't understand Kim Kardashian and Khloe. And I've never really, I never understood Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, The Simple Life. Like the concept of reality people seeming like they're interesting when they're really just interesting because they know how to provoke people.

They know how to get attention. And they know how to provoke people. They know how to get attention and they know how to push people's buttons to stay in the news. I never personally was that interested in that. I'd imagine a lot of the pushback had to be from younger people that are either learning about him the first time or go like, this is crazy.

Like this guy dyed his hair and he did all these things and he was so wild. That's all he did. He dyed his hair. I went back and watched an episode of the Rod and World Tour show that MTV was all fired up about.

It's painfully boring. Yeah. I mean, it's painful. And MTV was like, we're out. And I almost tweeted it as evidence. But I don't really care. And the other thing that happens is, this is always this is always something that's, that's, that's weird as like a white male is that if somebody's hate something I say, they will say, oh, I don't like that you said this. Okay. And anybody that's not in that category, the bullshit part of having an

opinion that if, if a woman in sports says something that it's like, oh, well, you're just a woman. You're like, Hey, look, you can not like my point, but don't start where you already doubt me because I'm a woman. And if you're anybody that's a minority, a lot of times, and it's just shitty stuff that's so brutal if you really dip your toes and read some of the stuff. I remember when Michael and Jamel had the six and people didn't like the show, all right? But the reasons they said they didn't like the show were just so fucked up. And if you're that person, you're going, okay, well, this is why everybody...

And this is the first time ever as like a white male where you go, oh, because I'm older, people think my... Like somebody who disagrees with me, it's because of a specific thing about me now. It's that once I have a four in front of my age, it's like, oh, you're a fucking idiot. Like I'm a young person on social media. So it's not because i have a four in front of my age it's like oh you're a fucking idiot like i'm a young person on social media so it's not because i'm a white male it's not because

you did just like it's just like oh you're a dumb old guy now who doesn't understand rodman and the funniest part of that is i felt this way when i was 19 me too when when he was with the world i was yeah when he left detroit and went to the san an San Antonio thing and was completely unhinged, it was doing it for attention. I mean, he's an intention-seeking person. That's what he needs. And that's okay. A lot of us like attention.

But it was so calculated that even at 19, I could figure out. And as I was looking at some of the stuff being like, oh, you're just old or you're boring or you're jealous, you go, okay, that's what you think because you've just decided I'm an old guy. Like you're going to disagree with me. And it's not because of what I said, it's because I'm just old and dumb. Now I'm just washed and I'm,

I don't have anything interesting to say. And it's like, okay, yeah, but I, if, if I had had a show when I was 19, I would have done this segment the exact same way.

People were tired of it in the moment in 97 and 98. It's just, you know, like, yeah, unless you're a bulls fan because now you're just you know it's it's a fun memory you won you won all that shit would have been real funny if they got bounced the playoffs a couple like a series in but it's funny there's other people who are head cases that get looked at you know with a lot of disdain even now i think spreewell is a guy like that. Or Sprewell has choked his coach. And then you have the Knicks fans that have real love for him because of the 99 season and because they had that little improbable run.

But some of the guys from that era really took a lot of shit. 50% deserved in some cases, 70%. Iverson was another one that just got piled up, but now Iverson's cool. Everybody's in on Iverson. It was not the case in the late 90s. He was a really polarizing guy. Our job is to tell people, at least when we talk about this stuff, at least we're old enough to be like, here's what it was like when this actually happened. The 96 Bulls is a good example. People now think, oh, the 96 Bulls

are the greatest team, what do you mean? It's like, just go do a modicum of homework. Go back and read any of the pieces written at the time where most of the pieces, there's a Sports Illustrated piece, I think in January of that season, where they're like, this team has a chance to win 70 wins. And all the quotes in the piece are,

it's not even better than the three Bulls teams that won in 91, 92, 93, the league. So diluted. They're saying over and over again, the theme is the league is diluted. That's why this team has a chance to win 70 games. Nobody in the moment felt like that was the best team of all time. They just had a chance to make history, but the, but people are very aware of what was wrong with the league. Now the years passed, and it was like, well, the Bulls, they had Jordan and Pippen.

They went 87-13. They have to be the best team ever. It's like, that's not how we felt in the moment. It just wasn't. I don't even know how you could, like, when you go for who your third and fourth guy

are talent-wise on these Bulls teams versus what Golden State had in this five-year run, it's not really comparable. And when you run through a playoffs and lose like one game, it's different than some of these Jordan things. I think, honestly, all of this builds up Jordan more to me

as I go back and watch all of this stuff because his third and fourth guy was not somebody you would even put in a top 30 list. You just wouldn't. They were nice players, really constructed. Well, we'll get to some of that stuff in the magic thing. Well, all right. So that, that we're your team and I haven't really done the full deep dive on this, but I think you can make a case that that's pretty much hands down the best team of all time.

The 2017 Warriors. Like if you're talking statistical resume, number of good players on the team, style, ability to do all kinds of different looks depending on who they're playing. And then what the outcome was,

they went 67-15 and they went 12-1 in the finals. They finished 82-16 They had Durant, who is one of the 15 best players ever. They had Curry, who is one of the 15 best players ever. They had Curry, who is one of the best 25 players ever. They had Klay and Draymond.

They had Iguodala, who's going to make the Hall of Fame. Matt Barnes. Zaja Apiculia. Sean Livingston. Wait a minute. What was their playoff record? It's 16-1, right? I'm sorry.

16-1, not 12-1. Yeah. Right, right, right. 16-1. So they finished 83-16 that year, which they played less than 100 games. The Bulls set the tone. The Bulls were 87-13. I think that's going to be a tough one to beat.

The Warriors, ironically, in 16, probably had the best chance to beat it. But man, you look at the playoff stats for this team in the per game. Durant and Curry are both over 28 a game. Clay's at 15 a game. Just Durant, Curry, and Clay, just those three guys are 10 made threes a game. 10 made threes a game. So you think about like, all right, if they're playing the 96

bulls, what happens? You just have to give them an extra 10 points in the matchup. If you're just pulling the bulls out of a time machine and you're saying, all right, what would happen if these two teams played the 96 bulls don't have time to assimilate to the way we play basketball. Now you have to take the two, the 2017 Warriors to me are the one seed in any tournament of the greatest teams ever, because they would score between 12 and 18 points a game on threes and be able to hang it in every other capacity with whoever you're throwing them against. It's too big of an advantage. Plus not to mention the scoring part of it, the fact that they, the, the Curry Durant,

whatever play they wanted to run in any close situation, they're getting a great shot, period. Yeah, people kind of like cringe on this one, but if you were just doing the time machine thing and the Bulls showed up, layup line, and the Warriors are shooting around, like Pippen and Jordan would be looking at each other

at the layup line being like, are you you watching one of those like yeah what's happening what are those guys doing over there in the first quarter they call a timeout and they go to Phil be like what the fuck is that and people could sit there and say oh you'd sick MJ and Pippen on clay and and Steph but I mean that's the whole point is that what are you gonna bald and I am 30 feet away from the game. There's a hoop for 48 minutes with the rant is your outlet or Draymond green in the middle, making the read.

It would be, it would be weird. Like again, that would be an unfair version of them not being assimilated at all to that style of basketball. That's, that's, that's the part of it.

That's totally unfair, but I don't think it's a, like a crazy basketball discussion to go. That would freak people out. If they had never seen anything like that before, it such a good team they were just offensively i think the best the best team we've ever had uh from an efficiency and all that but the reason i bring it up is i think when you get older you talk about the old guy thing you get accused of being more protective of the stuff you know that like the bird of magic, those are my guys. And I'm always going to fight that. I'm a who, who's greatest thing. I don't

care what year it was. I don't care if it was three years ago or 30, I can just judge it from, was I there? How did I feel? What does the research say? What does the math say? What were people saying in the moment? Which is why I think it's so important. If you're going to like really argue about this stuff, go back and read the SI vault. You could go back and read any sports illustrated story ever. You can read a lot of newspaper stories online, go back and read what people were saying about the people, you know, that you want to talk about this golden state team. They only played three years ago. And I think they're weirdly underrated now because that game four where they could have clinched it against Cleveland

and it's one of the all-time officiating shit shows that the Golden State literally gets no calls for the entire game. Cleveland shoots the lights out. They get red hot. And it's just a fluky game. I think Golden State was just significantly better than Cleveland that year.

And I thought that Cleveland team was really good. Yeah, that's the thing. Like that Cleveland team, it wasn't some bad bad how the hell did those guys get to the finals five or ten years later they were loaded now the warriors are always going to suffer from everybody hating what that team was about yes because of durant and more years removed from it, I probably agree with the masses more. I'm not saying you should hate Durant, but I get how much it sucked. I get how much it sucked when you add it all up. But I, in the moment, was always kind of like, yeah, he just doesn't want to play with Westbrook anymore, man. And why would you? Why would you? So he wants to go to basketball heaven. But I'm not going to tell a bunch of fans that live

and die with this stuff that they're upset for the wrong reasons because that's just not that wouldn't be fair but the 3-1 loss that hangs on the 16 team and then durant rolls in it's just as much as i loved watching them play and i love steph's story and i'm as big a steph defender as probably anybody in the national media because i think he's treated poorly by his own basketball peers like i think they don't respect him enough by the way when every single number tells you that steph is the thing that that makes the engine go like when you look at the plus minuses over those five year stretches where it's like well what about steph and clay okay well you know what about steph without clay oh wow it's still pretty good what about steph without draymond oh wow it's pretty okay but what about steph without durant you go oh wow it's

still really good like holy shit the other thing with that warriors team so they average 119.3. They give up 105.8. So they're like 13 and a half points a game for the playoffs, which is unheard of basically. And they're sick defensively this whole time. So that's the other piece. Right. It's like this wasn't some flashy thing.

They were always one of the three best defensive teams throughout all of it except for the last year of the run. That season in the 17 playoff games, opponent shot 42.9% against them. I know nobody else is under 45. It was a relevant team. That team was ridiculous. Everyone was mad about the Durant thing. They played beautiful basketball and offensively, it was ludicrous to watch them. Uh, but that's one of the series that I think we're about about we're gonna

take a break and then we're gonna talk about this uh mj rewatchables um that's one of those series that's been remembered wrong and we're gonna talk about a whole bunch of other ones that we had uh in one second i have a tease for you though before we go to that because you made me think about the spreewell pj carlos incident yeah where i'm just trying to think of like how that would play today and I first take graphic bar where it would just be like the tease might even be like the three things PJ did wrong next

wanted to tell you about a new limited edition ringer podcast it's called behind the billions it's on our recapables feed but if you search for it on Apple or Spotify or wherever, you'll find it. Brian Koppelman, David Levine, the co-creators and showrunners of Billions. After every episode on Showtime, which ends probably around 10 o'clock range, we'll put those pods up. They're like director's commentaries for the episode you just watched.

We'll be doing it for the next seven weeks. And then after that, Billions stops because they stopped production. And then they're going to go backwards and go over how they made Billions. They're going to do an entire episode on season one, then another one on season two, season three, season four. So I think it'll be 12 episodes in all.

But Koppelman has extended Grant Landringer family, obviously. So very excited to have those guys back. Levine, he's the pippin to Koppelman's Jordan in a lot of ways from a podcast standpoint. You'll see him shine with some triple doubles during this feed. So go find that and go watch Billions on Showtime on Sunday nights. And then you can get this right after the old director's commentary pod. All right, back to this podcast. Okay, so MJ's Rewatchables Volume 4,

Bull's Magic 1995 Game 6. We're going to dive into this. This series has been remembered completely incorrectly, including by myself. I'm going to throw myself in there. All right. I watched a lot of this series on YouTube this weekend. Cause I got nothing else to do. Did a lot of deep dive research on it. There has been this feeling that we kind of throw this one away. It's like MJ was six for six in the nineties.

And then it's like, well, what about 95? Nah, we don't count that one. He had just come back from baseball. It's a throwaway. And then the other thing people remember, in game one, he gets stripped by Nick Anderson up one with 17 seconds left. They're pressing. For some reason, they don't have Pippen bringing the ball up, I guess because he wasn't a great free throw shooter. MJ beats Nick Anderson. He starts showing up, just kind of loses track of him. Nick Anderson comes from behind, knocks it away. They get a fast break dunk. And then at the end of game one, MJ drives, throws it to Pippen.

But Pippen had started a cut, goes flying by him, goes out of bounds. And it was like, wow, a rare, like just shitty end of the game for Michael Jordan. He's wearing number 45. He comes back the next game. He's wearing number 45. He comes back the next game. He's got 23 on. The reality is he was really good this series statistically. And now you think like the end of game one and game six, which we're about to talk about,

he doesn't look like MJ in the last few minutes of game one, game six. But he averages 31 a game in the series. He's 31, seven, and four. He has three games of 38 points or more. Here's what really happened this year. The Bulls weren't good. Can I just jump you? It's unbelievable.

No, no. I'm going to just give me 10 seconds. Everything you're saying, I've written down because I too was like, wait, the Bulls were 500. And this is remembered as MJ like joined this. See, what happens is they won 50 plus games a year before they lose that Knicks series. So we think like, no, they were really good.

Now they went 13 and four when he came back. So MJ comes back. Well, say their record. They're 34 and 31 when he comes back exactly so they're 500 team that they're this amazing team that he joins up with and because people muddy the two years and i've done it too you muddy the two years together like they were 50 plus one team there were nine teams that had a better record than him in the regular season once the playoff started they were a fifth seed and we remembered it's like jordan didn't have it and i'm just so

glad that you're pointing all this out. So the go back, go back to what you were doing. Well, just one other piece. This is the only time basically from 87 to 98 when they don't have Charles Oakley, Horace Grant, or Dennis Rodman. I think you can make a case. You could put any version of Jordan in this series. You could give me 91 Jordan. You give me 92 Jordan. Knowing what we know now, watching this series, seeing what a bad matchup it was for them. Considering they had Will Purdue, Luke Longley, Bill Wennington,

Koo Coach, and Judd Booshler were their big guys. And they're going against Shaq and Horace Grant. And it was a mismatch. They couldn't keep those guys. Shaq was getting any shot he wanted. They couldn't keep those guys. Shaq was getting any shot he wanted. They had to double team him. So they're double teaming him.

He's passing to whoever he wants. It was just a bad matchup. Chicago's leading rebounders of this series were Pippen and Kukoc. And the fact that Rodman wasn't here and then they come back the next year. So here's the second piece of this, Rosillo. They sweep the bulls. They sweep the magic the next year.

So now years pass and people go, yeah, well, they lost that Magic. That Magic series was done, but they swept them the next year. Well, you had Horace Grant gets hurt. He only plays one game. He gets hurt in game one. Nick Anderson gets hurt in game three.

And Shaq and Penny had big numbers in that series. It was just the Bulls were better. Rodman did a great job. Rodman averaged 16 reb had big numbers in that series. It was just, the bulls were better. Rodman did a great job. Rodman averaged 16 rebounds a game in that series, which brings me to my point. I think they probably lose in 95 with the team they had, no matter what version of Jordan you put in there. I think this would have been the one series he gets beaten because Orlando had a home court too.

That game seven would have been in Orlando. That's the other piece of this. So I don't know. I just think this series has been remembered incorrectly. Okay. So that's, um, that's always crazy about Wennington because Wennington kind of gets lost in the shuffle a little bit there because he's such a prominent part of it before. But Luke Longley, and by the way, when you watch Longley matchup against Shaq, you go, Hey, you know what? shuffle a little bit there because he's such a prominent part of it before but luke longley and

by the way when you watch longley matchup against shack you go hey you know what luke longley was massive yes and he wasn't as stiff at all he right he was perfect for kind of what this was but i just i'm just so happy that you brought it up because it sounds a little bit like you wanted to count more of a ding on mj resume, but we just know how it all works. We just know how it works. Unless it's the finals, the record doesn't really count. And anybody that wants to use the first MJ loss against the 86 Celtics, like that one, I've seen a ton of, it's a lot like politics. Again, the periphery stuff on the edges, the pro LeBron, pro MJ stuff, you could just have it.

And I'll kind of sort through the middle and still come to the same conclusion that MJ's better. So that's why I always thought, oh, LeBron's never got swept in the first round, that kind of stuff. And just like, who cares? Spare me that thing. Because those two Jordan teams that were bad

were just bad teams. But when it comes to this, this is remembered as this version of MJ that was so bad. And it really is the Nick Anderson steel because it's a bad play. Like MJ does just, he gets Nick Anderson's behind him. And you know, in that spot, I don't think you can rely on a teammate cause it's not in transition. Really.

He's crossed half court and you can't worry about somebody yelling behind. And then you're talking game one. Yeah. Game one, game one. And then the past, the Pippen was uncharacteristic. I mean, I watched a lot of this series, the stuff that's on YouTube. He's definitely not 100% on his game.

Like he's way more tired, I think, than he normally would get in the early 90s. Like they're always talking about he's hunched over, he's on his knees. He's not totally in basketball shape. And the other piece is, you know, around the rim, like some of his finished stuff, the, the, he just didn't totally have it. Like he, his rhythm was a tiny bit off, but I'm telling you, that's not why they lost the series because all right. If he scored 35

a game instead of 31, it still goes seven. And I just don't think they were big enough. I really don't. I think Horace in the first five games, the series was 20 and 12. This okay. It's a finger in game six. Shaq was a 24 and 13 Orlando and six games shot 210 free throws. Chicago shot one 64,

uh, Purdue Longley and Wellington combined were 15 and nine and most important, no rim protection at all. You, you had guys going, no, here's the other fluke with this series. This was the year they moved in the three point line. So you had that cheapy three point line that the bulls just weren't a good outside shooting team other than Steve Kerr, Orlando penny could make them, but then they had Dennis Scott, Nick Anderson, Brian shockock could come off the bench.

They had 12 threes in game six and it was an advantage. And the Bulls like just kind of didn't see that piece of everything coming either. I just think it was an ill-equipped team for where basketball was in 1995. So the start of the game, Orlando can't miss. They have 25.6 minutes of the game. Yeah. And you're going like, what is going on here? And by the way, for the broadcast that we have the feed of,

it's a local broadcast crew because of however the playoff thing worked. And the vibe is dead. I thought I had the wrong link twice because I go, wait, is this because I did that on a different one where I was trying to get a better version of the video? And I go, you're watching a regular season game. Dickie Simpkins is starting. Like, what are you doing wrong? I switched to TNT. I found a TNT with Bob Neal and Doug Collins. I should have sent it to you. Okay, well, I watched the local one.

And because it's local, we understand how it's going to go. I mean, the entire time, it's just a local broadcast. So, you know, every city is the same when it comes to that. But the MJ part of it, you're right. The first half, and I keep writing it down, he's got a bunch of turnovers. His shot is off. Anybody that comes back and hasn't played in a while,

you just touch around the rim. That kind of stuff isn't right. And then it sort of comes back to you. A couple reads, he was short, and he was just out of the play because Pippen was going off and Kukoc was going off, especially in that first quarter. And it was weird, but then you're right. Cause then I go, well, wait a minute, go, go back in. He played those 17 regular season games and his numbers were terrific. And by the

way, looking at Pippen's numbers, the year without Jordan and the most of the year without Jordan, his numbers didn't really change dramatically. He went from like 16 and a half shots a game to 18. You know, when Jordan was gone, um, he went from like 18, 19 points a game to like 21 or 22. So it wasn't like he turned into a completely different guy. So it was actually not as hard to get him back. And those two guys working with each other, but MJ just looks off. So if you did this thing where you go out, you know, MJ had missed all this time at this point, I think he's 26 games in, including the regular season and the playoffs. And then when you go back and look at the game log for the 95 playoffs,

which is why I'm so glad you brought it up, because both things are true. Yes, he doesn't look like the Jordan that we've been used to watching in these rewatchables, but he also had 48 in the first game of round one against a Charlotte team that was the higher seed. 48-9-8 was his game one. The rusty Michael Jordan, number 45, goes for 48-9-8. And in game two, he had 38 against Orlando game 3 he had 40 so even if little things were off he was still putting up insane numbers which

again exactly leads into your point that it's remembered and to use Clemens line misremembered as the washed Jordan version when in reality like the production production was still nuts. And by the way, the unveiling of the greatest Jordan ever, the 11th. Oh, I'm glad you, I'm glad you threw that in there. Whatever version of Jordan is in this series, it doesn't solve the Shaq Horace Grant problem. And I look at this 94, 95 bulls team as really bad planning that cost them this title. But actually, in the long run, might have been good for them. Because summer of 94, they're supposed to re-sign Horace Grant. Comes really close.

He has some sort of mix-up with Jerry Reinstorf, where Reinstorf offers him a deal, but his agent's not there. Horace accepts. His agent flips out. He thinks it's bad faith. They back out of what Horace agreed to, and then Ryan Starff's like, fuck that guy. I'm out.

And this is 94. We had some, it was almost a lockout, but it wasn't. But free agency starts a little bit later. They're trying to figure out some cap stuff. And by the way, on my broadcast, the local announcers are like, oh, Horace struggling again. They were doing like a Marv Jordan thing

and then Horace was getting booed. Right. But Horace played really well in the series. Yeah. Yeah. People are really mad.

Yeah. So he goes, he goes to Orlando, which was probably their biggest rival other than the Knicks for just who could be in their way for a title.

I went and I actually deep dove because they ended up spending money on Ron Harper, who, if you noticed, if you watch this game, is not really involved in the game. He's like the eighth man for the Bulls playing 20 minutes a game. It doesn't make any sense

because this is pre him being, like I was such a huge Ron Harper guy. When they got him, I was like, what? How did they get him? You know? So they signed him from the Clippers. He went out in the Clippers. They paid a lot. They paid 3 million a year for him. I was like, what? How did they get him? You know? So they signed him from the Clippers. He went out in the Clippers. They paid a lot.

They paid $3 million a year for him. Like, they had the cap space that they finally had because Jordan wasn't coming back. So I went and looked at all the free agents that year. Sean Elliott, Dominique Wilkins, Danny Manning, Detlef Schrempf, Purvis Ellison, Tyrone Hill, Xavier McDaniel, A.C. Green, Mara Ely, Wayman Tisdale, Brian Shaw, Michael Cage, Larry Nance, Antoine Carr. The reason Harper was a bad signing was this was the year the three-point line moved in. And he was basically, he was a slashing guy. He was kind of like a very poor man's version of Michael offensively.

And once Michael came back, they couldn't play him, Pippen, Kukoc, and Michael at the same time. So they picked Kukoc over him because Harper was such a liability as a shooter. But it's interesting. If they had just signed Sean Elliott instead of Harper and you added Sean Elliott shooting to them over the next few years, or if they had just brought back Horace Grant, they'd probably make the finals this year. Yeah, but don't you think that Harper eventually pays off in such a big way that you have somebody that has these incredible offensive skills that never even... I mean, we're talking about maybe a third, fourth option

on a lot of those laters. I get it. And the 96 team was his best year, but you look at his stats. He was a little like Iguodala-ish with his offensive output. He's basically 10 a game. I think for the amount of money they spent on him,

it's probably a miss. But then the guys I just listed, Sean Elliott and Schrempf were probably the two best free agents you could have picked. But just losing Horace, that's why you mentioned how people get the 94 and the 95 team confused. The 94 team is so much better

because Horace and Cartwright and Paxson are all on that team. Paxson and Cartwright retire. Horace leaves. And it's honestly a bunch of 10th men with Pippen and Ron Harper and Kukoc, who's like, you know, a sixth man on the right team. So Jordan goes back to that. I just thought Orlando was more talented. Penny was first team all NBA that year.

Shaq is a 25-12 every game. Horace was still an all-star power forward. They had Dennis Scott and Nick Anderson shooters. This is a really good team. And they have Bradshaw off the bench. When you're watching them at the start of it, and Anthony Bowie thinks he's better than everybody. Right.

Which was always my favorite thing about him, where I go, oh, he comes in, it's like ISO time. And then Bowie's mad about not getting a call against MJ. And he bitches. And I i go this is like the game this is a 2020 this guy was built for the 2020s he can complain about every single call well they so they beat it's true he maybe he came from a time machine they uh they beat the pacers the next round that was a good pacers team the 95 seven game series reggie's apex awesome series there's some good games in there they go into into the finals, and this leads me to,

I want to do this before we kind of broke down this game. The series that get remembered incorrectly, and I think one of them is this Bulls Magic series that everybody just remembers now is, oh, MJ, it doesn't count when it should. And then Rockets Magic, that finals, which is like all Rockets swept them, that Magic team self-combusted next year.

Well, first of all, they were a 57-win team in 95. The next year, they won 60. Game one, famously, Nick Anderson misses the four straight free throws. That game's over. Like that game, I don't know what the win percentage is for Orlando. Win probability? Win probability is way up there. And then game three was another one

where they have this must-win game three. And that's an awesome game. Like, go watch that one on YouTube. That's Clyde Drexler's best game in the series. But that's a toe-to-toe, and they kind of blow that one, too. That series was way closer than a sweep. And just in general,

I think this Magic team has just kind of gotten kicked to the curb. I think that team was really good. And I don't think it's a bad thing that MJ lost to that magic team. You guess what you're due. Like the Celtics lost in 85. Cause bird broke his, broke his thumb in a bar fight or whatever,

sprained the thumb in a bar fight and never came out till after. Which bar was it? No, but remember the guy sued him. Oh no, it was another, it was another one. I can't remember the name. Squire? No, but remember, the guy sued him. No, it was another one. I can't remember the name of it. Squire? No, it wasn't one of the OG ones.

But, you know, we don't go, oh, they would have won if Bird didn't break his thumb. It just kind of happens. The ebb and flow of the playoffs, you're going to have a year where it's like, oh, that was the year this happened. Well, this was the year for the 95 Jordan that came back from baseball and they had a shitty team and that's why they lost this should count on his resume i feel like yeah see i i'm with you on all of it

except for the conclusion like i don't understand we don't we just don't do that we don't really we don't really count the non-finals against guys. And I'm not saying it's necessarily right, but if anything, I left this series going, Jesus, this is another thing that's a positive for Jordan. Like this is remembered as this negative for Jordan. Oh, I agree with you. When you watch the starting five come out and the rotation for Orlando, I'm going, oh my God, that's right.

Like back then, one of the things that we've constantly talked about, look at the second and third player, look at the fourth player compared to the great teams of today. It's not close. It's not close. And yet Orlando can,

in this mid-90s stretch where a lot of teams had two guys you could depend on to get you a bucket, when they bring in B. Shaw, it's like five guys, and that's not even counting Horace Grant as a 20-point guy

in this series where he started taking on more offensive responsibility shack watching it peak young shack not peak shack the player but just he's actually the best looking 300 and something pound guy you're ever going to see just the way he moves you kind of can't believe the announcers aren't freaking out and screaming every five minutes like look at this guy and also that Shaq isn't screaming at every teammate because I can't believe how consistently bad they were entry passes oh my god Shaq when Shaq is set up with his foot on the block you can't pass it where a guy this big has to catch the ball where he's then repositioning himself

further away away from a seal and the the entry passes were bad part of it was because Hardaway had Pippen and Jordan chasing him around the whole time. And then Hardaway has moments and his scoring imbalance in this game is crazy. He had 19 in the first half and doesn't score his second half points until throwaway free throws at the very end of the game. So he basically doesn't score in the second half.

But he has 19 because he's hitting four straight threes. But you'll see the things with Penny where you go, this is why we get so excited about this guy. The smoothness, the way that he could dribble through all these guys, the passing and all this different stuff. But if the question is, is this Orlando roster underrated historically? It's an emphatic yes, because this is a really good team. And the other thing with MJ where it's like, wow, if he didn't go play, if he didn't play baseball, he would have won eight in a row. It's just not true. I'm sorry. I agree with that. I've always agreed with you when you say that. I think the wear and tear of just trying to do this for four straight years

would have gotten him one of the years or five straight years, whatever you talk to anybody who's been in this grind of doing the nine month, a hundred game season year after year after year, it's got a shelf life of four to five seasons. And you go back and you look at the Lakers in the eighties and the Celtics, they would have these years where they would just fall off like the Lakers 86 against the Rockets, which was another completely misunderstood series. The Rockets kicked their ass in that series in 86. They could not handle Samson Elijah on, and they, they were kind of this tweener Lakers team

where it was like they'd added Maurice Lucas and they had Rambis. And it was like, oh, well, we'll bring out our big guys. And as the Rockets were like, great, we're going to destroy your big guys. And then the next year they were like, fuck it, we'll get sleeker and faster. And that's how the second half of the 80s goes for them. But you need to retool every once in a while. It's really hard to year after year be good. And you look at the moves that the bulls made this season where you just lose Horace Grant. He's just gone. You replace him with Ron Harper who's playing 20 minutes a game. You're worse. That's it. That's the reason you lost. You replaced Horace Grant with Ron Harper playing 20 minutes a game. But other series that I feel like

have just been remembered incorrectly. Another one, Spurs-Lakers 2002, which we did on the rewatchables and we covered this angle, but just quickly, you know, the Lakers had a three-peat. This game is, this series is 2-2 after four games. They have this awesome game. Horry misses a three. And now I kind of feel like people go, oh yeah, they won three and then Shaq and Kobe turned on each other. It's so much more impressive that the

Spurs took them down than I think they've ever gotten credit for. I'm sorry, 2003 not 2002. So wait a minute, it's the 0-3 series. The 0-3 series. Yeah, I wrote down 0-2. I meant 0-3. Where it's Duncan by series. The 03 series, yeah. I wrote down 02, I meant 03. Where it's Duncan by himself against Shaq and Kobe who are both, you know, throwing heat. And they beat him.

They beat him in a series. And Duncan should get more credit than this for this. He beat Shaq and Kobe when they were both really good and healthy in a playoff series and then went on to win the title. It's, to me, the greatest thing on his resume is that Oh three season Pistons Lakers and Oh four is another one.

The Pistons just kill them in that series. And they showed one of the games today. That series is demolition. You could, you could argue that they should have won five games to zero because even the one game, the Lakers won, they barely won. I can't, but by the way, when you go back and look at that one and you know working with chauncey i would go what happened he goes man you know chauncey just be like man i'll tell you what we knew from the jump they couldn't guard us right and and it's

true like they lit them up when you look at all numbers, if you go back and be like, okay, what was like the rebounding percentage was insane. They fouled the shit out of Detroit. They lived at the free throw line. And then the shooting for the Lakers, a Kobe Kobe's terrible in that series. He averaged 23 a game in that series. He shot 38% overall and 17% from three. And he'd take like 125,

130 shots in that series. What was it? 113. He was four or 23 from three. Didn't he take like 125, 130 shots in that series? What was it? 113. He was four or 23 from three. Again, like I said, 17%. Here's what's weird. He played 230 minutes and he averaged three rebounds a game.

And then nobody else shot the ball. Derek Fisher shot 31% overall. Devin George is below 40%. Gary Payton is below 40%. Gary Payton is 30%. Carl Malone played 125 minutes. He shot 33%. Shaq was incredible. Everybody else was way below what you'd expect.

Another series that's remembered incorrectly is the 07 series, which we covered with Nash about the Robert Horry shove series. The Spurs were great that year at 07 series, which we covered with Nash about, you know, the Robert Horry shove series. The Spurs, the Spurs were great that year at 07. They, they won in six. I think in five of the six games, they were up 10 in the fourth quarter. God bless that son's team. But I still think the Spurs win the series. Even if that Hace shove, even if their guys play, I think they could have stolen the series.

And I think that's what sucks about the Horace shove. Nash feels like they were better. I think that Spurs team you have Duncan is like his last piece of his, of his real prime. And you have Parker and Ginobili rounding into the, the all-stars they became at that point. That team was just really good. Uh,

Oh nine magic calves. This is a just really good. 09 Magic Cavs. This is a Kevin Clark staple. Everyone's like, oh, and the Magic caught fire. They shot the lights out and shot the Cavs out of the series. Clark always points out that's not actually what happened. They shot threes all year. Nothing that happened for them in that series was different than what their recipe was all year.

It was Dwight Howard and guys shooting. LeBron was awesome in that series. Didn't matter they won. LeBron was so good in that series was different than what their recipe was all year. It was Dwight Howard and guys shooting. LeBron was awesome in that series. Didn't matter they won. LeBron was so good in that series. Yeah, didn't matter. That shouldn't really be held against him. That series is real simple for me. The second, and it was one of those things that I couldn't see it until I could see it. And it's, the perimeter guys were enormous.

And the perimeter guys for Cleveland were small. Yeah. And they couldn't do anything with those guys. And you go, Oh wait, like this isn't going to work out. 2010. Seltz calves and 2011 Mavs heat. I'm lumping these together because these are,

if you're going to do the goat argument with LeBron, these are, you really have to explain these two series. You just do. Jordan never had two series in a row like this. That Cavs thing was so weird the last two games. And you can look at the stats and be like, well, game six, he scored 29.

It's like, I'm sorry, you had to watch the games. And I'll never forget inside the NBA coming on after game five that all of those guys, they were so disappointed with LeBron. They just felt like he kind of disappeared from the moment when the team needed him the most. on after game five that all of those guys, they were so disappointed with LeBron of, they just felt like he kind of disappeared from the moment when they, when the team needed him the most. And the, you know, I think there's a lot of stuff going on with the free agency coming. There was a lot of pressure.

The team wasn't very good, but that year. And then the year after that Dallas series where they should have gone up to nothing, they completely choke in game two and they go to Dallas and Dallas just figures out how to beat them. And I, it, that's a weird one to remember nine, 10 years later, because it's really just Dirk and a bunch of awesome role players. And you look at that Miami team, the game was on today. It's like Wade peak Wade Wade's last great season, Bosch LeBron coming off two straight MVPs and the Mavericks just knew how to beat them. And I don't think that series was a fluke, but I, you know, those two together, I think just

there's a LeBron narrative there that I think has slipped through the cracks. Spurs heat 2014. I just think that Spurs team was so underrated in so many different ways. And it is to me, the other great team of team of the 2010s that doesn't get enough attention. And then the last one I had was Cavs Warriors 2016. Just, you know, game four must win for Cleveland. Golden State beats them. You have Draymond with the nut punch at the end leads to the suspension in game five, but I left game four going, oh, the Warriors are going to win in five. This series is over. They we've solved this this is the greatest team ever and that nut punch is still way up there um any other series you have from the last 25 years where you're like oh this is

now being misremembered maybe the the t-wolves and rocketsets with Garnett and Marbury. Or it's like after you, when you blast a team in the first round in a short series and you're like, you guys are next. Because that was like that Bullets, that Bullets-Weber team that lost to the Bulls. Remember that one where it was, like they they competed something's here yeah we this is like next 10 years you'll be saying how many rings what's the over under rings three the nets had one of those remember kenny anderson and derrick coleman that one year where they they threw some punches at uh you know they exchanged some punches with the bulls they they were kind of all right these guys you know that'd be there punches with the Bulls. They were kind of, all right, these guys.

That would be if this thing goes on, we're six months without sports. We should rank first round exit teams that people like way too much that never did anything. Well, the Marbury Stoudemire Suns was up there for me. Remember they had that great game against the Spurs in like 03. It was like, look at these guys, the new Malone and Stockton. Well, look every night Marbury, there was a stretch there where you would look at his numbers and go, Holy shit. Like 35, 12 assists, couple boards shoots, the lights out. And you're like, what do they win? Like, no, they lost again.

He was like Westbrook where it just seemed like when he wanted to get to the rim, he got to the rim period. He's getting in the room and that's it. And that's what he was like for seven, eight years. And when he's young, when you're young and you're watching it at first and you don't care about the wins, you're like, this guy is going to be one of the three best players in the league. Like, yeah, I think that about early Marbury wasn't really crazy

because he was that special. Because he was also a little thicker, too. Like, he wasn't Iverson in that, you know, Iverson pound for pounds as tough as anybody, but Marbury had a little bit more to him. He got traded straight up for Jason Cade when Jason Cade was one of, like, the best six players in the league.

But Phoenix had to get him out of there. I know Phoenix had to get him out of there, but that's at least how talented I think people thought. Speaking of big point guards, I was watching game six of Dallas Golden State, which was on my DVR. That's how- Aaron Davis? That's how desperate I am that we believe. Oh my gosh. And Steve Kerr said that's the loudest arena he's ever been in at any point of his career. That game six, it's basically a tie game at halftime and the Warriors go on like a 70

to two run in the third quarter. Like there's just captain Jack's making threes. Baron Davis. I really miss that version of Baron Davis. That version of Baron Davis. Oh, I love that. That version of Baron Davis is just so filthy because there's such an edge to the game, too. It's almost like he had already, you know, he ran full court like in his crew didn't lose for five games.

And then he showed up to the NBA game that he had to play in. Like, that's what I think of when I think of like prime Baron Davis. And Darren Baron Davis is like one of those dudes. It's kind of like he's the son of Rod Strickland, where I always say Rod Strickland is a guy that other players have's kind of like he's he's the son of rod strickland where i always say rod strickland's a guy that other players have this kind of awe about and you're like oh wow that's a real rod strickland huh and there's this kind of like yeah man that guy could fucking yeah that's amazing baron davis is is that guy for whatever his era is and it's so funny you said that because nash told me i think even said it on a podcast we did that was the guy

he hated playing the most out of anyone for that entire era was Baron Davis he just fucking hated playing him he said it was like playing a NFL running back where who could jump over you you're beaten up after the game because he would just when he went into

it went through your whole body he was just like I was went into, it went through your whole body. He was just like, I was just miserable playing him every time. All right, back to this rewatch of Bulls. Bulls go up 36-31. Magic take a two-point lead at halftime. Then two-point lead heading into the fourth quarter. We finally got ourselves an awesome Scottty Pippen game this game. He's doing everything defensively.

I think he has like a 26-12-9. I think one of the things I love about him, and they go into it with the last dance, is that whole point forward thing where it's like he was a point guard and then he just grows seven inches but kept all the point guard skills. When I watch this Bulls team and you know, granted, it turned out great for them with the six titles. I wonder why he just didn't have the ball all the time. I would have, I would have used him like the whole point forward thing. I really would have point forwarded him because I love the decisions he made. I think the other team hated when he had the ball. The other guy that the other guy that

was like, this was Kukoc because Kukoc had that nice little low post game and they never went to it. And then every time they went to it, he would get a good shot. But I just watching it, I felt like the triangle was almost the wrong offense for those mid nineties teams. I just would have let Pippen cook. Am I overthinking it? No, that's not one of those things. I don't like to do the play-calling thing because there's so many different things happening in this game. It's amazing

the Bulls were even in it and then up in the first quarter considering what Orlando did. They started 8-10 and then I think they finished 2-10 or something like that. I think it was a 10-11. They made every single shot the first six minutes of 11. It was just every, they made every single shot the first six minutes of this game. And you're like, how is Chicago even in it? But Pippen was amazing. And Kukoc was amazing. And Kukoc in this game reminds you of why he comes

over as a 25 year old rookie and a team like the Bulls shot at the Kraus, even seeing this because he's so big, but he has all these little skills in between. There's a great pace to his game and he would pass, make the right pass, but he'd also make the right cut off the pass and all this stuff. I felt like Chicago ran more stuff than the other games that we were watching. It just felt like there was more stuff, and it wasn't always setting up the triangle and getting the weak side guy to flash to the free throw line for a wide-open shot because they had a lot of options.

Even Longley was somebody that was respectable, at least in this game. But MJ's so not involved in the first half, and when you go to the third quarter, it's 85-83 Magic. MJ at that point's 5-15 with 17 points. He's having a bad game. Marv would have been so excited doing this one. There's 9.30 to go.

Marv would have loved this. And that's finally at the 9.30 minute mark. MJ's like, all right, enough of this shit. He has a turnaround where he hits a turnaround jumper. You're like, wait a minute. That's the first time I feel like the whole game, he looks like MJ I'm supposed to see here. The next possession, Judd Bushler takes a jumper that MJ sets up.

He misses it. MJ tips it in. And then he goes and pulls stuff. Yeah, that almost looked like he had a great Gatorade up. He misses it. MJ tips it in, and then he goes and pulls stuff. Yeah, that almost looked like he had a great Gatorade for like five minutes there. Exactly. Three straight possessions. It was all MJ.

So that would be not my counter to your Pippen thing. It was just that having Pippen set everything up was working, but it was clear that MJ, especially knowing he just put together these monster games just a few games earlier and it's this bad to this point that he was he had just had it and he has this incredible stretch he has a steal and then he dunks it puts him up 95 92 and not to get ahead of ourselves but orlando's falling apart and you're watching it going wait i know orlando wins how do they win this game? Well,

you know, the key thing for this, they're, they're down eight with three and a half, one Oh two 94. And when they go up one Oh two 94, the local announcers that I have are like, that's the nail, right? That's the nail. Well, they get it. It's the nail. You expect it. BJ hits a three timeout. Orlando comes out of the timeout. They miss comes back down. They forget about BJ's in the corner. Exact same three at the three minute mark. Misses it. Misses.

And if he makes that game, the game's over. The key thing though, is Horace gets hurt. He hurts his finger and ends up really not playing in the fourth quarter, which means they have to play Brian Shaw. And I think that was probably their best lineup. I know Horace was awesome in this series, but when they had Brian Shaw at point guard, then Penny could play off the ball.

They just had Shaq and four shooters and they're stumbling into this small ball futuristic lineup, you know, where it's like, oh, this is actually where 20 years from now, this is the lineup that every basketball team would be playing. Horace Grant wouldn't be playing, right? It would just be like Shaw, Penny, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott, Shaq, come stop us. Go, please double Shaq. We have shooters everywhere. We'd love it if you doubled them. And this is, and they basically go on this run. I had it written down. I'm Sean. This is a three shack jump hook. Coup coach loses it. Penny hits a three bulls fans get super quiet. Pippen gets posted up, misses a little four footer and then has a little tip in. It doesn't go in.

Now you're watching it going, Oh, this is one of those years where it's just not meant to be a horrible blocking foul on pippen felt like it was a charge on shaw nothing's a charge in the 90s yeah no no great call great call yeah you hate charges um mj is like all right i got this guy's airball no legs just looks dead and they subbed him out for a minute too of game time they subbed him out for a minute, too, of game time. They subbed him out for a minute of game time, and he looks just toast, even for him. Because he was spending too much time, I think,

trying to defend Penny on the other end. Now, here's a mistake I thought. So Kukoc is out there, and he's on Nick Anderson. I probably would have had Ron Harper out there because they weren't going to Kukoc anyway at this point. But Anderson just tor to Kukoc anyway at this point. But Anderson just torches Kukoc.

So now all of a sudden the Bulls are down one timeout. Set up a play to MJ. MJ drives. Double team comes at him at the paint. Perfect pass to Longley. And we have the bizarre version of the Charles Smith game. Longley goes up. He's seven, two.

It gets tipped a tiny bit as he's going up, but he still has his hands right, right. Even with the rim laying it in and just kind of chucks it sideways. It doesn't go in. They stupidly foul. Scott makes one or two free throws. So they have another chance to tie it.

They're only down to the bulls. MJ takes it, does this weird spin move, follow a thing. And Shaq comes over to help. He's got three guys on him and he ends up throwing it away. And I think that's why people remember this. Like, Oh, MJ, that's, he wasn't MJ that year. It's like, well, maybe, maybe somebody just played good defense. I'm going to play off game. Law of averages is he's not going to win every playoff game for the entire nineties. There's going to be moments when, you know, you don't have it,

but I thought the magic legitimately won this series. And I don't think it's fair to them that, uh, it has an asterisk personally. Well, you should take it off because it's just to watch it and to see the talent they have out there. It's a great point about Brian Shaw,

because what happens with Penny's 19 in the first half and how easy the 19 were because he's hitting these shots, but it's clear that MJ and Pippen decide, well, whoever is on him, just eat him up and he doesn't score. And the stuff that they allow,

especially in that first quarter where no one's really contesting, they don't run guys off the three-point line the way we're used to today, but they'd also, even in a playoff game, kind of let you set up your post offense and then they were doing some different stuff with how they would double Shaq and Shaq was really good and some of the predetermined reads like and he would deliver the pass like he knew okay I'm getting doubled here I'm gonna kick it down to somebody else he's so impressive in the in this series he's incredible too and the defense

now with the Shaq thing like how would he do showing but it doesn't matter because he's incredible too and the defense now with the Shaq thing like how would he do showing but it doesn't matter because he's always in position on drives like he's really good on some of that stuff and there's a few moments how about when he Pippen gets him in a switch and Pippen brings him back out where he's perimeter against center and he's like I'm gonna drive past you Shaq strips him goes length of the court for a dunk on his own. It's nuts, and it's actually the second most impressive play. I couldn't believe that he didn't get caught from behind. No, he didn't get caught, and they were trying to challenge him at the rim,

and even Shaq's kind of like, am I going to make it 60 feet dribbling? All right, let's see what happens. Yeah, and he does it, and then there's also another play where Orlando has a miss. The ball kind of is loose in the air towards the free throw line. Shaq grabs it and does a no look behind his back bounce pass

to Horace Grant, who then gets fouled. And then Pippen gets a technical. So they get the free throws. That was nice. Yeah. Go ahead. We didn't mention the United Center with this because in 93, the last time we did rewatchables,

it was the old stadium, Chicago Stadium. Amazing. Then he leaves and then the United center gets built. And now he's in this, in the TNT broadcast in the second half, when he's not, he misses a couple of shots and Collins goes, Doug Collins doing the game. He's like, I don't think Jordan likes this end of the stadium, Bob. We've seen this over and over again. Something about this stadium. He just, he, the cider, I don't know what it is. Um, I just feel like everything was uncomfortable for him coming back.

He had the 17 warmup games for the playoffs and was just getting used to like these new teammates. There's just different guys on the team. He's got his baseball body. I get all the excuses. I still think he played really well. I was impressed. Like,

Oh, sorry. He wasn't the best player of all time, but he's still, you know, he was still the best guard in the league that the all NBA guards that year, I think it was Penny Hardaway.

And I think Spree. Well, I think we're the two first team all NBA guys. Jordan comes back, hasn't played in a year and a half. He's the best guard in the league right away. So it's, I,

I just think the, the concept of him being a shell of himself is just wrong and we should stop it. Yeah. He he's MJ again for those five minutes in that fourth quarter. And then, you know, he stripped somebody,

he goes and dunks and Orlando is falling apart. Like they have three straight turnovers in a row mj comes back in at five and a half they're up 99 92 bj hits that three it's 102 94 324 left and i'm telling you you're not going to believe that they lose the game because you're like look at this orlando team and they're pissing away these turnovers they're bad turn they have one where hardaway just after an inbound dribbles out of bounds he just for no reason like dribbles like Penny's kind of a mess in the second half and then Nick Anderson who was really quiet offensively hits that three he hits that step back on Kukoc and then they make the free throws and it just all of a sudden you're going wait a minute like if I were in that crowd as a Bulls fan, I would be leaving that arena going, what the hell just happened?

The season, like how did that, like you're thinking no way this isn't going to game seven and these new guys are going to be rattled because MJ's back. And I think that's the takeaway of this. Just being there 25 years ago, there was this assumption

Michael was going to figure it out because of our history with him. And even like during that game, and I don't remember where I watched it or anything like that, but I guarantee when they were up eight, timeout, three minutes left, it's like, I can't believe we thought they were going to lose. It's fucking Michael Jordan. What were we doing? They're going to go to Orlando. They're going to win a game seven.

Like, this is Michael. Of course, this is how it's going to play out. And it's really hard to overstate how shocking it was when they fell apart and all of a sudden it's over and people are walking out of the building it's shocking i think even orlando when you look at the magic bench once they know okay we're up four it's a free throw thing here at the end and they're looking at each other kind of high-fiving like and they still have the pacers they're not even in the finals yet and it's like we actually did. I'm telling you right now, watching Nick Anderson in game one, strip Michael from behind was like finding out my dad's not my dad. Like I just, I, I, we just, and that's an unfair thing to do to LeBron.

But no one has ever had that like MJ where you didn't think it was even possible that he wasn't going to show up in that moment. And yes, he's missed game when he shots and that kind of stuff. And he has that air ball at the end of the game in this game. You're like, what the hell was that? But that game one thing with Nick Anderson, because it isn't just a good defensive play. It's just you lost track of a guy and you got stripped by like, you're not 40 MJ. You got stripped from behind in 1995.

It's just, yeah, it wasn't comfortable. It wasn't, you know, it's funny comfortable. But you know what's funny, though? This is his worst playoff moment ever, right? This series? And he put up 31 a game, and he was awesome in like four of the six games and had a couple fuck-ups near the end.

Yeah, it is. You're right. But LeBron had 2010, those last two Celtic games. He had the entire 2011 finals. The 2014, that Spurs Heat Series, where they just kind of disappear as that goes along. Everybody else,

I wouldn't hold that against LeBron. Like everybody, that was when LeBron sitting on the bench going, you know what, this whole, I'm going to stay in Miami one more year deal. Like he's going, I'm out of here now. Because everybody around him, I thought was falling off.

I hold it against him 10% He's going, I'm out of here now. Because everybody around him, I thought, is falling off. I hold it against him 10% because... I don't know. Because you want to be a jerk about it? No, I just feel like the champs, they were the defending champs, and I thought they rolled over that game. I thought San Antonio was better, was mad they were. And they didn't miss.

Remember how many threes San Antonio made in that series where you're going, oh my, like, are they not going to miss? And it was kind of new for us still. When was the last time you watched it? I watched it not that long ago, actually. The second, I didn't like, I didn't like their second half.

And by the way, the Celtics have had stuff like this too. Like, I really don't like the Celtics game six second half. And by the way, the Celtics have had stuff like this too. Like I really don't like the Celtics game six 88 and they're banged up. I get it. But I just feel like they, they kind of rolled over in Detroit when Detroit took it for them. Um, say, you know, they like Jordan, at least in this thing, he's fighting to the bitter end. He's not playing that well, but even when they lost, it's like, holy shit, I lost. I lost.

You know, you could see it. So he has this quote after. He said he had miscalculated in his plan to, quote, steal a title. After returning for the last 17 games, the posting, this is BJ Armstrong's very adamant about this. That Jordan's looked at the league. He looked how kind of like diluted it was and was like, I can come back and steal a title this year. So he said,

I'm looking forward to having a training camp with these guys. I think over the course of an 82 game season, we could do something special. I've got the hunger back, but he, this guy was so good. He disappeared for 20 months. He's like,

I think I can steal the title. I'm just going to come back. But he's still so young. Yeah. What was he, 29, 30? No, he's got to be 30. Oh, he's like 31 at this point? Yeah, 31.

I mean, that's the thing is he kept retiring and you're going, well, wait a minute. How old is this guy? And he was 31 that year. He retired again when he was 34. And so when he came back to the Wizards, as much as everybody's like, this guy's so old, I mean, he still was only 38 when he came back to the Wizards that first year. Another little small side note about the Nick Anderson part of this and that game one.

After game one, he had said, I could do that to number 45. I couldn't do it to number 23. And then that's when MJ, as you point out, came back game two with number 23 on. Team got 525 grand. Russ Granik has the all-time power play quote saying, we can't just have guys wearing whatever number they want every single night. He says it about MJ.

MJ gets fined five grand, and the Jordan 11s are released, and Nick Anderson was actually picked by Jordan to wear the Jordans. Because he was a Chicago guy. And yet he says that about MJ, and MJ was so pissed, he put on a Discman headphones and didn't talk to the media after, and didn't talk to the media the rest of this run. One other thing about this game, and then we're going to go. So in the TNT broadcast, there's this pivotal elimination game for your sons.

They're playing the Rockets. It's game six. It's just going on on another channel. And they're going, uh, yeah, over, over on TBS, uh, Charles Barkley, 27 in the first half, the sons looking to stave off elimination. I'm like, what were we doing back then? Why would we have these two games on at the exact same time? Miscarriage of justice when i was watching one of the other games they were at the beginning of the youtube video for a bulls magic game is akeem being interviewed by hannah storm and they join

the broadcast they go haven't missed much 10 12 yeah going what the fuck? By the mid-90s, we should have figured this stuff out. Yeah, that's like when restaurants are bragging about real chicken now. And you go, that shouldn't be something you're bragging about. That's it for MJ's Rewatchables Volume 4. We're going to step these up. We're going to do a couple more because this is really the last sports we have. Once the last dance is over, it's going to get dark. Now, you like when it gets dark.

You like when it gets weird. You're ready to get your fucking weird on. I'm not afraid. The recruiting stories did great. We're doing part two this week. So I have like five guys on. I go, give me your best story about recruiting. Matt Leiner talks about being up in Michigan.

And he said he got so drunk the whole time he was there that then when he had to throw, he's like, I felt like crap. And he goes, they offered me though. They didn't know how hung over. I was, and I was like,

wow. And he goes, and then I really want to go to Michigan because Pete Carroll wasn't the coach yet. Like the guy he committed to at SC, um, was a whole, the whole different staff.

And he's like this Pete Carroll guy. Like, I don't want to play for him. And then he decided to play for him and the rest is history. So those are great. We have five, uh, new guys coming Pete Carroll guy. Like, I don't want to play for him. And then he decided to play for him. And the rest is history. So those are great. We have five new guys coming out for that. I know we're doing a little rewatchables as well.

But yeah, I'm always ready to go. We should do the 86 World Series. Oh, man. Why would you do that to me? Game six? Because now you have four rings. Why? You know, I was watching the Aaron Boone game on ESPN.

I saw that. Game 703. And McCarver talks about how he had mentioned how Clemens had said, I didn't ask out of game six of the World Series. That's not true. And McCarver tells this whole story during the game. He's like, you know,

John McNamara called me, the Red Sox manager. And Joe, I'll just tell you, he was adamant that Roger Clemens asked out of that game. He said, it was 17 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. He did not want to continue.

So just in fairness, that was John McNamara's side of the story. It's just this random anecdote of the game. He did not want to continue. So just in fairness, that was John McNamara side of the story. It's just this random anecdote. He's murdering Clemens. Clemens is pitching, but that's amazing. And the thing is, is when you watch game seven with Pedro,

you can see why they leave him in though on the left, right stuff. Like I'm not saying it's the right call, but you can, you can see the pattern. Now it's not great that Pedro's looking at Grady little in the dugout being like, are you saying it's the right call but you can you can see the pattern now it's not great that pedro's looking at grady little in the dugout being like are you gonna take me out of the game like we normally know what the plan is the whole time but there's there's an argument to be made that once he had one batter you knew he was gonna get like two or three more

that's all let's not do let's not do oh three game seven because that one was that's luckily emotionally things had worn off a little bit because i'd worked for the minor league team in o2 and trenton when they were still the red socks and then i was doing it every single day in boston in 03 if that had happened in 99 i may just now be getting paroled but you know it's great they're they're showing like and remember the last time these two pitched and they just show the clip of the don zimmer brawl which is a real thing that happened were you there for that i think i was no no i wasn't i was at the 90 i was at the 99 when i was in la i was working for kimmel but yeah i was at all those games i was at all those games and it's just the

tension the nastiness. I mean, it's nothing. Jacko was on the pod Thursday. He said it was like a Roman Coliseum. There was so much hatred in the fans. So much hatred. It'll never be like that ever again. I don't feel like.

All right, Rosillo, listen to your pod this week. Oh, we're going to do, you me and House are going to do an episode of the rewatchatchables as part of one of your pods later in the week, where we're going to do the Bullets. Oh, perfect. That plays in perfectly to our plan then. When in August, we're doing the first rounders. Good seeing you. All right. Thanks to Rossello. Thanks to Nephew Kaya. We're going to three podcasts starting this week, at least for the next probably two, three months. Hopefully we'll have a lot of stuff to talk about. I'm going to step it up with some guests where there'll be a lot of celebrity surprises over the course of the next few weeks. The Rewatchables, Monday. We got a little gladiator that's happening. So there you go. Talk to you little gladiator. That's happening.

So there you go. Talk to you later in the week. Feel the air Twirling On the wayside On the first Sun I never Lost I don't have To ever See you again