The Bill Simmons Podcast - Movies and NBA Chatter With Wesley Morris, Sean Fennessey, and Tom Haberstroh (Ep. 282)

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey and New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris to discuss Oscar noms (7:00), Clooney's struggles (23:00), Jennifer Lawrence's missed chances (32:00), the state of Tom Cruise (41:00), and reasons to watch 'The Deuce' (58:30). Then, recently departed ESPNer Tom Haberstroh joins to give his thoughts on the Cavs' lacking defense (112:00) and potential Boogie Cousins trades (1:24:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So there you go. And if you missed a couple BS podcasts we did this week, we had Cousin Sal on Monday and then Janice Min Smart Gal Wednesday she talked about her days at Us Weekly

Hollywood Reporter Harvey Weinstein Jan Wenner it was a live one she was a great guest I would I would highly recommend carving out a little time

for that one so coming up we talk movies Sean Fennessey, Wesley Morris. We talk about the state of the movie industry and all the weird movies that have come out this year and how bleak things are. And also, after that, Tom Haberstrom,

my old ESPN teammate. I talked to him actually for almost 50 minutes and we're running that on the Ringer NBA show in its entirety. But we ran the last 23 on this podcast At the tail end that's coming up after Shawn and Wesley, but first Pearl Jam Here with Sean Fennessy, Ringer Editor-in-Chief, our old Grantline teammate,

Leslie Morris. Hi! Surprise winner, host of Still Processing, occasional writer for the New York Times. I'm more than, well, I mean,

at least in the next, like the past couple of weeks I've been more than an occasional writer. Full-time writer? Full-time writer! I just miss reading you all the time. Yeah, well, that's a different thing. I like reading you all the time. I like having you in my life.

Three times a week is a different, yes, that's not happening. I don't feel like I should be a present under the Christmas tree every time you write. I'm just used to you. It should be not quite like my morning coffee. It was never that. No, it was never that. It's never as good as the morning coffee. There's so much old stuff to go back to, though, too.

If you want to reread anything. That's true. Very good archives. That's fair. Very good archives. That's fair. There is the past. But no, I'm trying to get back to two times a week.

Is that a promise? Yeah. I no, I'm trying to get back to like two times a week. That is... Is that a promise? Yeah. I mean, I'm almost there right now. We need you more than ever because this is the worst movie season of all time. Isn't it? What do we do? I don't know.

How do Stranger Things dwarf the... Dwarf? Did I say that right? Dwarf. You got it. Dwarf. That's my Boston speech impediment. It dwarfed every single movie that came out in October.

I don't ever remember that happening before. We knew Netflix was a power, but Stranger Things was more important than any movie released in October. How do we know that? We don't know it metrically. Right. But culturally, yes. But we know conversationally.

Yes, yes. The anticipation for what happened last week was much higher than it was for suburbicon like get out was a moment where it was like you felt like you had to see get out not just because you love movies but because people are talking about it you were left out of the conversation which is normally how movies work and it would work that way 20 22 times a year maybe and now it's like September, October what conversation is that happening about what movie?

Well I mean there's a number of ways to think about what the Oscars are going to be like in February The Weinstein lens I mean

the actual broadcast is going to be one very strange and unknowable experience we'll have a preview of it at the Golden Globes but the Golden Globes will have TV. Right.

Right. So they'll also have TV that is like weirdly in conversation with whatever this moment is. You'll have Handmaid's Tale. Probably you'll have Big Little Lies. Probably. So the Oscars, I mean,

first of all, like what are your, what are your even potential best picture nominees at this point? Are they going to get to five movies? Remember when America cared about the nominees? Yeah, I think it's going to be hard to get them to care. I think Get Out is, from what we've seen, not a frontrunner, but it's a contender. Dunkirk?

Dunkirk is probably the leading contender right now. The other movies are mostly things that we haven't seen yet. Call Me By Your Name, which is a gay coming-of-age story coming out right after. I mean, it's really good. But I mean, are you going to get enough people to make it number one on your ballot? I don't know. I mean, would you have said that about Moonlight? I mean, eventually I would have figured it out.

But yeah, Call Me By Your Name. You called out Moonlight way before. I hadn't even heard anyone talk about it yet. But I need that Armie Hammer movie to work because I have all this Army Hammer stock from 2010. Yeah. You and Amanda Dobbins. She also is holding a lot of it. That Under Armour.

Like my two stocks that sunk the lowest. I need that movie to make it. I think the movie that is probably going to be most reflective conversationally about what's been happening in the world with Donald Trump but also with Harvey Weinstein and just the notion of reporting is probably the Steven Spielberg movie. The Post. Yeah. Which is coming out in December which is about essentially the Watergate story unfolding at the Washington Post. And, you know, you can feel the spotlight. Does anyone under 30 care about that?

But I think you can just feel the spotlight-esque narrative around the value and the necessity of journalism. And, you know, it's Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks together, which has never happened. So that's a very traditional Oscar narrative to look towards. Aside from that, though, there's just not a lot of enthusiasm because movies are in a weird spot. They're in a weird spot in that there's no... I mean, the thing that you guys, I've talked to you guys about on a number of occasions, is just like the shrinking middle. And now it's gone. Yeah. There's no, the shrinking middle. And now it's gone. Yeah.

There's no, the middle is all on TV. It is literally a television show and where all of that style of entertainment production has actually gone. And it doesn't exist in the movies anymore. I was reading the Biskin book because the Harvey thing. Which one?

I don't know if we're going to do Down in Dirty Pictures. Okay. Which is basically about Miramax and the Indie scene. Right. And as I was reading it, I'm like, oh, they wouldn't make that one. Nope. That's not happening.

Nope. Shakespeare in Love, no way. You just go through Good Will Hunting, not happening. No, I mean. It's an entire decade of movies that would not be made in 2017. I mean, just, I mean, you know, you know what my, Bill, you know what my baseline would never get made now movie is, which is Tequila Sunrise, right? Like, Tequila Sunrise for me is the perfect example of a movie that is only designed to get people to go to the movies. It doesn't want to win anything.

It doesn't want to do anything more than the, like, trashy thing it intends to do. Like, Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell get to, to like have sex scenes with michelle pfeiffer yeah she gets to like be michelle pfeiffer there's a sunset a lot there's a sunset a lot you've got you've got a you've got a pretty decent script by a really good screenwriter it just is it's just like a perfect hollywood movie that doesn't want anything more than to be a pretty good movie, period. Does American Beauty get made now? I hope not because I hate American Beauty. I hate American Beauty too.

But no, probably not. Well, for myriad reasons now. Right. Well, yeah, any number of reasons. You know what doesn't get made? American Beauty too. Yeah. No, I mean, but there is an entire You know I mean again

If we're going to stay on movies that at least Sean and I Don't like they probably wouldn't get made now Crash wouldn't get made now I mean How would I have learned to How to feel about racial relations There is a There's a YouTube channel for that I'm sure

I'm a white person who needs to understand The relationship Between blacks and whites better'm sure. I'm a white person who needs to understand the relationship between blacks and whites better. Crash helped me. I needed a car crash. Matt Dillon has a cop who's actually not that evil. I tried to help her in the end. That's a tough rewatch. Self-important mid-tier

dramas are gone. Suburbicon might be the last. Does Brokeback Mountain get made? No. I think it just depends You know it's like Who's paying for it? Who's paying? That's the big question

Where's the money coming from for sure But also think about this If the Post manages to do all of the things Based on its pedigree Source material etc It can probably do In terms of people wanting to see it and people at the academy needing something to feel good about yeah this is probably going to be the thing but

also just think about who's making it there's a whole generation of filmmakers that don't exist right there is no there's no young spberg. There's young imitation Spielberg. There's like the the imitation crab meat of of Spielberg, like those guys, the Stranger Things guys. Right. You know, there's lots of knockoff Spielberg, but there's no there's no I mean, Paul Thomas Anderson. What is he, 50? Yeah. Going to be 50? 48, I think. I just think that, I mean, there are maybe two or three people you can point to as being part of some other generation of American filmmakers that have interesting things to say and ideas, right?

Barry Jenkins, Trey Schultz. Put the La La Land guy in there. Oh, of course, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think that's why people glommed on to Chazelle and buried so aggressively. He's a real filmmaker. But what I'm saying is,

I think if you go back even 10 years to classes, Vanity Fair could take a picture of you know 12 people and say this is your this is the next 25 years in hollywood movies you couldn't do that now i was thinking about that during the spielberg doc oh god i never realized that those dudes all hung out together like that yeah that's actually george lucas coppola scorsese de palma and then who was the fifth guy that i was like wow he was in there coppola paul schrader schrader now there was a fifth guy i can't think of it but de palma was like he's probably watching going yeah i was

i was telling you i was neck and neck with those guys see but and all those guys they love movies and they were all competitive with each other and i i don't know if directors or directors competitive with each other and I don't know if directors are directors competitive with each other now I didn't like that that's it that's it

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that's it that's it that's it that's it It's not like anything Damien Chazelle wants to do, Barry Jenkins is going to be interested in. And even if they are, you've got to think that they'll just figure out a way to work it out. But I don't see any signs that that's really going to be an issue. There are not enough colleagues to have enemies. Right. And also, I think obviously the industry has changed a little bit.

It's not so dissimilar from LeBron and Carmelo and Chris Paul being friends too. It's the banana boat both the director's generation. A little bit. But just in entertainment in general, there's like this notion of support that is clear. And, you know, those five guys who were friends in the 70s, who Peter Biskin wrote about in his previous book to Down and Dirty Pictures and Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. You know, they were friends and they did support each other. You know, they watched each other's movies. They gave each other notes.

They gave each other a hard time and they were competitive with each other. But they were like part of a fraternity. Right. And that fraternity is something that I think is a little bit been displaced. You know, you feel it much more. It's weirdly much more present in television. You have this generation of TV showrunners, the sort of the Sam Esmail's and the Damon Lindelof's and all these guys who are thought to be part of this generation of people. And we know that they're friendly, if not outright friends, and that they're measuring themselves against each other.

And it's just completely shifted even in that respect. Well, then you also have the people who want to emulate those guys because they know if they create a show, they're going to be left alone for the most part versus the horror stories of, I saw the script, they made me rewrite it, they put the wrong person in. I mean, the biggest entertainment news before all of this, all of the sexual harassment news

was Shonda Rhimes leaving ABC to go to Netflix. Yeah. You know what I mean? What that's going to do to the network. And there's just nothing happening in the movies that feels that seismic. You said something interesting, though,

when you were talking about Tequila Sunrise, which is this was a movie that was made just to be a movie to go see and the movies that still succeed now are movies that are that whether you think they're good or bad right this friday is thor ragnarok the whole idea here is you got to see a marvel movie in theaters in september the only movie really that was released that was of note to people was it yeah because horror movies still have that feeling it can still do that thing where it can get you off your couch into a theater

to experience it with people. And that's why you see more and more movies made that are just like that. So you get the same thing over and over again. You're going to get more its. There's going to be an it effect.

You know, the thing that is unpredictable is something like Get Out. That's a movie that on paper should not be made and in reality is only made for $5 million. It had a trailer

that I was confused by the first time I saw it. I'm like, what the hell is this? This is a movie? This seems super racist, and you don't even know that. But how many movies felt that way for 40 years in Hollywood, where you'd just be like, I don't really get this. It looks interesting. I want to go find out more.

But curiosity is not enough now. Can we all agree, though? I mean, we can make excuses for why these movies are bad and they all make sense but i also at the same time it's incredible the stories that are just being missed oh yeah like think about the climate we live in right now and when you think about uh i was thinking about this when miles tower was on my podcast and we were talking about ptsd and that movie and then i was talking about this whole vietnam era that i grew up with from like 77 through basically rambo right where it

was just all these movies about the enormous guilt the country had about vietnam and about basically ptsd which we didn't even know what that was yet right and these guys coming back and they were mistreated or they had all these anger and all this stuff that was the thing and it was capturing what america was like at the time where are the movies that are capturing what america is like right now in 2017 they're not they don't exist so they do this is interesting this friday richard linklater has a new movie it's called last flag flying It's about a father and two old, old, old friends going to retrieve his dead son's body who died, I believe,

in the Iraq War circa 2002. It's an interesting movie and it's a Richard Linklater movie so it's very well made and the reception has kind of varied. Cam liked it. I don't like it that much it's

it's it's at worst solid i think yes but it's incredibly difficult to get people interested in a movie like that whereas if this were coming home in 1979 everybody would be the most important movie in america yep and that there's something to that too well i do think people just wait i know i do the other difference comes on tv i mean but to your point though about but i i also think that there's been a real i mean it you you picked vietnam and i think that the vietnam choice is really interesting because the culture around that war is different versus how we feel about wars now in the military right we? We don't care at all about the wars. We just care about the men and women who fight them

and serve in the military. And this is sort of what's happening around the NFL and these questions of protests. I just feel like nobody knows what's happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. Nobody really cares. But the idea that you would not do anything but valorize your service people is just anathema to people. So you get a movie like Thank You for Your Service,

which everything you need to know about it is pretty much in the title. Not that it should be ironic but it is it isn't challenging any aspect of what it means to send people to war i mean i'm sure the people who made it would beg to differ but uh it just doesn't work as a movie that is designed to get you to do more, but literally thank your service person when you see them. Yeah. What's the firefighter movie that's out right now with Josh? I mean, another movie that does the version of the same thing. I think the thing about an apocalypse now or a coming home or any of the allegories for the Vietnam War that were made during the 70s,

even a Rambo, there is a direct challenge to a system of government and a sort of war philosophy that had nothing to do with the men and women who serve. I mean, individually, like the deer hunter, right? It was about the service people people but it was also about what the service people were being asked to do and instead i think we're much we only want american sniper now and i was gonna bring that up that's a good example of a movie that i never thought would make the money that a billion dollars or whatever worldwide it should have told you where we were headed because it did right it's not a good movie it it is sort of relying on a very simple notion of service and and and you know whatever we think of as heroism um and it's not untrue, but I mean, the way it's presented is there are these boogeymen out there trying to kill

our soldiers. And, you know, here is a guy who is like risking his life to stop these, you know, unseen Brown forces that are like in the perimeter of the frame at all times. And then he comes home and then what?

It's a well done movie with a very likable star that doesn't have a lot to it. I mean, Thank You for Your Service is written and directed by the same person who wrote American Sniper. There is some continuity to these stories too. I mean, there was a movie earlier this summer called The Wall that Doug Liman directed with Aaron Taylor Johnson and John Cena.

Oh yeah. Basically a two-hander about two Marines who were trapped by a sniper. And it's the same thing you're describing. It's an unseen brown person who is attacking America, and America has to valiantly stand up to this unseen force. Like, there is something totally to all these movies. What's the Peter Berg movie? The Mark Wahlberg...

The Marathon movie? No, no. Or the other one. The oil rig movie. No, no, no the lone survivor oh lone survivor yeah i like lone survivor um i we we know you do and then but but i think that there is there is that's how we think of the of this era now it's not about it really isn't about the system by which people get sent into these situations it's more about

trying to find some way to make cinematically actionable the experience of being there rather than a movie like restrepo that documentary that sebastian younger co-directed um with tim heatherington i think it was the other director um that was i mean that that raised all of these questions about the experience of being at war while also thinking about well in this case the men serving um the last movie that really did that for me was jarhead and it came out at a really, at the point at which we didn't want to have those conversations anymore about what war was and what did it mean to serve in them and who were we serving and what were we doing over there in the first place?

It's much more misanthropic about the war than most of these other movies that have been released. But it's a, you know, a movie that feels much more resonant to what's happening relative to America's interest in Afghanistan or Iraq right now is Get Out. That's part of the reason why there's been so much made of it is because it feels like even though it was made, you know, before the most recent president was elected and before some of the incidents that had happened between police and African-Americans, it still is so reflective of a conversation that's been happening so aggressively for the last two years that it felt like it was dropped at the perfect moment in time. So that can still happen.

I wonder if, you know, I think movies had more of an impact. We've talked about it a lot. We launched Grantland in 2011 and it felt like movies mattered more to people. Like the way they were dissected was more sophisticated and the conversations that we had about movies were just deeper and like our staff at grantland like really cared what was getting nominated for the oscars and it really cared that the artist is going to win the oscar like that's fucking crazy that's we're letting that happen like yeah we really cared we did oscar travesties week. I wonder, like, you know, Nephew Kyle's generation,

do they give a shit who the five Oscar nominees are? Because they weren't, not only were they not raised that way, but I don't know if movies had the same kind of impact because nowadays you can go on the internet and get just about any sort of reaction or emotional, whatever you need. Kramer vs. Kramer came out in 79 that was like my movie that was going to get made going through yeah 1979 would be a 10 episode something or other

show but for me in 1979 it's like my parents are getting divorced i have nowhere to go and there's nobody to talk to there's this movie that's drawing me in that i can identify with the character now if i'm 10 do i go online i'm just reading about divorce nonstop? Does that movie matter to me like that? I don't know. It could, but this is the thing, it could. So you wrote that great Rotten Tomatoes story over the summer that really crystallized the industry problem and the industry's delusion

about what the problem actually is, right? Right, thank you. And I think there's a way in which I'm talking to Sean about the Rotten Tomatoes story yeah I didn't write that I think the Rotten Tomatoes scapegoat is so fascinating to me

the day the Weinstein story broke who published the story piggybacking on the no damn you rotten tomatoes ruining our movies forever martin scorsese right same day pretty much yeah about mother about yes and i mean we can talk about mother in a second because i do think that that is an interesting that is an interesting presentation of an old problem that will never... That movie... Suburbicon is going to kill a whole...

One type of sort of vanity project movie. Oh, that's interesting. That should have died a long time ago. I was just hoping it would kill George Clooney's directorial career. I think it might. I mean, but I would kill George Clooney's directorial career. Can that be killed? I think it has killed it. It is the worst movie I have seen in

five years, maybe. I think Bill predicted you would have this take. Wesley and I have had lots of George Clooney directing conversations. He's a nice guy. He's always been overrated as a filmmaker to me. Good Night and Good Luck is a sleeping pill and a half.

I don't get it. He's 0 for 7 with his movies. Yeah, I mean 6 or 7 or whatever. He's 0 for 7. He's made 7 and you wouldn't watch any of them ever again. Oh, is this the 7th one's over seven what's the seven what's the he's made seven and that and you wouldn't watch oh is this the seventh one yeah it's the seventh one confessions of a dangerous mind was the first one and people are like oh interesting original that movie's not good well monuments man was was the moment where i realized that they're yeah i mean this is what it's hard to direct george well okay yeah a lot of directors would tell you that and yet it doesn't really get a person

like George Clooney anywhere but wait my other point is that a movie like Suburbicon it it ends a certain period of movie making but I also feel like the one of the reactions I have to this Rotten Tomatoes problem is that nobody knows how to like it's not just that movie makers don't know how to make movies anymore it's that marketing departments don't know how to sell them and they don't know how to make you want to see a movie anymore see I would argue this is not

a new problem this is three William Goldman books right yes it's true they never knew what to do and now they really don't know what to do because people are just less likely to go to the movies so now it's like how the fuck do you get anyone never knew what to do and now they really don't know what to do because people are just less likely to go to the movies so now it's like how the fuck do you get anyone into it they've been right much more desperate than it was right it's it's totally totally desperate they are like those places like when you go to hermosa beach and those bars are like

one dollar shots and like that's becoming the movie theater industry this nine dollar what is it the movie pass thing? Movie pass, yeah, $10. $10 a month. As many movies as you want. Just to try to get people? That's where we are now? Just go to pay-per-view.

Do $60 a movie. We've talked about that for five years. Yep. There's so many. I would have gotten that Miles Tower movie on pay-per-view for $39.99 because I wanted to see it. I don't want to go to the theater. There are so many factors involved in this, though.

The Rotten Tomatoes thing is an after effect. It's not a pre-marketing thing. It's a story about why we failed. It's an excuse. Critics were mean. They convinced people to stay home and watch Stranger Things. Not our problem. And I agree.

That is not a critical problem. It's not a journalist problem. It's not even a sophisticated consumer problem. It's a movie industry problem. It's don't make Baywatch. That is the problem. Yeah, I went make Baywatch. That is the problem. Yeah, I went to Baywatch because my kids wanted to go. And I was so mad I was there.

Yeah. An hour into it, I was like, I can't believe it. And then Ben fell asleep, which made me even madder. It's like, you're the reason we're here. You're asleep. I'm hitting him with the popcorn bucket. You know, I just feel like there's a lot of sort of misused talent. I mean, Dwayne Johnson is a perfect example of somebody who they just haven't figured out what to do with.

Yes. A charismatic guy who they can't figure out. He should not be playing CIA agents. He should not be playing cops. Can I tell you something? What? My kid's second favorite actor. Everybody's second favorite actor everybody's second favorite actor

adam sandler is one the rock is two what's duane johnson's best film it's the one with kevin hart central intelligence his best movie or his best performance what's his best movie best southland his best performance southland tales like that so that's the point it's like pain gains his best performance best performance is pain and gainain. So we have The Rock. The Rock is an all-time American celebrity. He is tremendous at being famous. He's Arnold Schwarzenegger for this decade. Right.

Arnold Schwarzenegger made The Terminator and Terminator 2 and even Conan the Barbarian. He made myriad movies that are... Kindergarten cop. Kindergarten cop. Deeply memorable. Some might say iconic. True lies. Total Recall is the sleeper of that whole bunch.

Commando. Yeah. He made like nine really, really entertaining movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his movie career specifically, is just significantly more interesting, deeper, more fascinating than The Rock's. Even though The Rock is probably ten times the quote-unquote performer. Way more range. Far more talented. Yeah, but the rock didn't

have james cameron there's no 2017 james cameron is like the rocks movie star this is the problem this is the problem though where is that generation of people who was the young james cameron there's nobody capable of taking what he can do or interested in taking what he can do and doing something with it yeah um What's his agency in that though? Is it The Rock's fault that he's choosing to make Baywatch? I would say The Rock is 100% happy. He might be. I think he's fine.

I'm sure he's happy. I think he probably thought Baywatch was going to work and he probably blamed the script. It should have worked. Alternatively, like someone like Jennifer Lawrence, who has what I would say is a very good working relationship with at least one director and not the one she's dating. And it's David O. Russell. He really knows. He understands lots of things about lots of different actors, but he gets her. And even when he miscasts her in something like I would say she was miscast in joy and American hustle. Yes.

But especially American hustle. That, that one was bad, but I would say all three of the films they made together. She's miscast. Oh, that's mine. Yeah.

I mean, I didn't want to go there. She's a, she's should be a 44 year old actress. All three of those films. And for some reason she was all three of those parts. Want Ellen Barkin is what they want. They want,

they want peak Ellen Barkin, but they have to settle for jennifer lawrence because that's what we have now and ellen barkin and jennifer lawrence are probably just as good but the pool was so much bigger in 1990 1987 1988 the ellen barkin was like the 15th most most interesting actress working in the movies. But you've identified something and this is also true for Aronofsky and how he got Mother made. By the time David O. Russell gets to Joy

and he's made two movies with Jennifer Lawrence, the only way he can get Joy made is if it stars Jennifer Lawrence. It doesn't matter. If he tried to get that movie made with Ellen Barkin, it wouldn't happen in the first place. Joy is the kind of movie, that's not a successful movie at all in my opinion, but

it's the kind of movie we're talking about that very rarely gets made. And it needs people, the same way that George Clooney can still get Suburbicon made, there needs to be a person with power at the center of it, otherwise it just doesn't happen. And that's always been true in Hollywood, but it's more true now than ever and there are fewer people now than ever that can actually

make something like that happen. Somebody needs to have a talk with Jennifer Lawrence. Where do we start? First of all, just study the careers that have worked. Like my wife and I. You're telling her to study the careers that have worked? Yeah, just from like, throw some different pitches. How about this?

Make a rom-com. It's fine. It's fine. It's okay. Make one. Make a movie where you're trying to escape From your abusive husband and you change your identity And then he eventually finds you

It's fine The house next to where the woman Who's being abused by her husband lives Is going to have to have A black family living next door Being protested by a bunch of racists Who've been trucked in from out of town Great

You just can't do that anymore door being protested by a bunch of racists who've been trucked in from out of town great like you just can't do that anymore because you either have to have the most important statement being made about whatever or you're making you're remaking a stephen king my wife and i watched sleeping with the enemy on saturday morning the first 45 minutes because i think it's one of the most rewatchable bad movies ever made oh sure it's just great their house is great in Cape Cod the guy's so creepy that mustache Patrick Bergen it's got so many holes in it she teaches herself to swim and jumps off the boat in a hurricane swims to shore and leaves no trail and it's just like it's okay to make a movie like that cocktail

is a totally defensible movie. Just be a star. Make a movie where you're a star. Sandra Bullock's really good at that. Every once in a while, she's like, I'm Sandra Bullock. I'm a star. I'm going to make a movie. But I think that's kind of what we're, I think one of the things we're saying, though, is it's over.

I think if you put Jennifer Lawrence, not in Mother, but in Sleeping with the Enemy right now, like if it came out next week it would make a ton of money because obviously there's a there's a degree of cultural catharsis to the extent that we need it a movie about a woman who is being abused by a man serially who plots her escape and it's got a great ending sleeping with the enemy um which i won't spoil for anybody who hasn't seen it but it's got well i would say for one of these blank from hell movies it's got the best ending we had to spoil we're spoiling sleep with the enemy is going to go home tonight and watch it it's got a great ending it's but you know i i think i think it's great from start to finish

it's great if the whole thing is great but like i'll go slightly the other way because i want i don't think that sleeping with the enemy can be made today for the most part i don't either but i'm just saying if somebody made it they made it with enough with j-lo and it didn't work so maybe you're right and j-lo at a moment that where you know j-lo is enormously famous but not a box office nobody wants to watch her in the movies right but jennifer lawrence who candidly i'm not terribly fond of as an actress um passengers made so much money. She, aside from Passengers, has made interesting choices, right? So she has her superhero franchise.

She tries. And a movie like Mother is really audacious. I mean, that's a really strange, unusual movie, kind of regardless of your opinion of it. I'm a little mixed on it. Miscast. I agree. But the fact that she was like,

it's important that I make this movie is pretty bold. Yeah, I agree. She's the one who should have made I Tanya a movie that I am not even secretly excited for no that's a really good one good call it's a good it's a good call I mean I wonder but I wonder if

I mean I don't know how that movie I don't know anything about the genesis of I Tanya which is the which is for anyone who doesn't know It is the Tonya Harding It's the Tonya Harding movie But with Margot Robbie Playing Tonya Harding That made my brain

I didn't know who it was until they showed her name Somebody put our trailer in the slack It was like Margot Robbie's first of all A figure skater and then she's tanya harding but that margot robbie is somebody to the extent that like we can make any sort of sports comparison margot robbie wants to win well you we've argued about margot robbie because i like focus way more than you because i love margot robbie and focus and and she brought will smith back to life for like 40 minutes she brings she brings something something out of Will Smith that is really interesting.

And there aren't, another thing that we don't really have very much anymore either is these sort of chemical reactions that you get when you put two people together. Right. Right? Like J-Lo and Clooney in Out of Sight, they just clicked. Something about two certain people together really creates an energy that you can feel and you mentioned passengers that's something they wanted from chris patrick and jennifer lawrence and they just don't get it it didn't work there was no chemistry they were literally passengers they're nothing passengers also that is that is one of the creepier movies

you're ever ever going to see that movie would make six cents if they opened it this week if it came out this week it'd make nothing quick break to talk about home depot they say in life there are no guarantees they say there's no sure thing i'm here to tell you there might be one exception in 1924 husky started making things for people who make things they did it with common sense that meant adding adding function, never frills, and making tools that stood the test of time. 93 years later, Husky still making quality crafted durable tools. Husky stands by their hand tools for life,

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Only at the Home Depot. I'm excited because I start getting the screener soon because I'm in the producer's number. So you're going to get six screeners this year. Oh, you think they're not going to mail them out? I mean, you get six options. There's not a lot. What are your options? Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see how many nominees there are for Best Picture. Because it's up to ten. Five. It feels like a low number this year. I mean, they're going to eek to five. Why do you think comedies have both had a resurgence and then also have gotten even worse? Because I think Girls Trip, which I told you guys, made the mistake of watching my daughter which you discussed on parents corner doesn't sound like a mistake at all to me girl's trip was funny as hell yeah and it's like to me funny as hell and

scary as hell are always going to win with movies and that's those are the two safe places we still also i mean i don't like this is another place we are that people sort of fitfully acknowledge. But underserved movie going populations really matter. Black women get nothing at the movies. Hidden figures, girls trip. Sorry. See you in 2018. Bye, everybody.

Yeah, that's it. I think that that Yeah, that's bizarre. I mean, Taraji Henson is starring in a movie where she's like an assassin or something in January of 2018. I think that... Proud Mary. Didn't you just explain... Yeah, it's called Proud Mary. Is this explained somewhat, the Tyler Perry's success is that he's kind of understood what

you just said? It explains the old success. Now, Tyler Perry is trapped in the closet era R. Kelly, where now he's making movies for young white people, and white people are laughing at him in a way black people never laughed at Tyler Perry. That's interesting. So he has figured out now that he has sort of

oversaturated his black woman market and is now going for young college-age white people who think that tyler perry and drag i mean he's come full circle in a in a way back to being the minstrel figure that he had been being accused of being when he was just doing theater it's not sad it's sad but you know what it's still keeping him at the top of the box office or near the top that's why he owns a plane black women brought him that plane though. Black women paid for that plane. That's what he named

the plane. Black women brought me this plane. He better. The comedy question is interesting though. I mean there's not Girl Strip is by far the biggest comedy of the year. I think Thor, the Thor movie might be the second funniest movie I've seen this year which says a lot about the state of comedy. Thor, Ragnarok. Thor wasn't meant to be a

comedy right? No, it is. It's playing. It is playing for that. It is, but it also features battle scenes with the old Led Zeppelin soundtrack. So it's still a Marvel movie. It's just such a fun movie. It is. And it isn't... It's really fun. It isn't trying for anything. It's not trying

to uphold a Marvel mantle. It just is so stressless and enjoyable. It's's half fun go to the movies and everybody is happy kate blanchett is having a good time with whatever they've done to her face for this movie like it's it's just fun and i there are no movies virtually none where i leave on a high the way you leave that thor movie wow there's just high praise i mean i loved it honestly i just can't there's i mean but it shouldn't be that should just be saturday night that's my point yeah that you should just be like saturday night in the middle of october and i'm gonna do the same thing again next week we did remember we did rewatchables

or you weren't in the point break one back-to-back weekends terminator 2 and point break yeah i mean back-to-back weekends even something like american made which i liked and i think tom cruise is really good in okay that i i because it didn't make enough money by tom cruise movie standards is going to be something that they all, whoever made this movie, is going to think twice about before they make the next non-Mission Impossible, non-franchise-oriented Tom Cruise movie. Bill's going to text us in six weeks

and be like, American Made is incredible. As soon as he gets his hands on it. I mean, come on. I have season tickets to Cruise. I just haven't gone yet. It's just, but that is a movie.

That is basically a comedy too. It's basically a comedy. And it's not going for too much. He would have been nominated for an Oscar if that movie had come out like 10 years ago. Wow. And it would have just been another movie, but the reviews would have been good enough

for people to be like, oh yeah, I'll make a mental note, Tom Cruise in American Made. The problem is it's like year 37 for the Tom Cruise as a movie star era. Like at some point, it's just... I think he also just has a different reputation in the minds of many people now, especially... Under 30.

Yeah, under 30. People don't care. Yeah. But also he's, you know, there's a complex Scientology story that is, you know, that people don't ignore. It's harder to celebrate him in the same way. I thought Amy Nicholson like three years ago when she wrote about him and she made that point that he had this really fascinating first 15 years,

right? Where he was just like, I just want to work with great directors. Yep. And he didn't make like the sellout movies and he's like, I don't want to become a popcorn guy. And then that's what he became the last 15 years. And that's all he makes now.

And he's more interested in his survival. Right? Well, I don't know if it's... What is the movie that broke him? It might be Eyes Wide Shut, that combo. And right after that, he just started making popcorn movies. But I also think that a lot of these people don't trust their instincts anymore either. I think everybody's instincts are completely scrambled.

And for me, I don't know how you guys feel about this, and I know that it's crazy to put it this way, instincts anymore either i think everybody's instincts are completely scrambled yeah and for me i don't know how you guys feel about this but and i know that it's it's crazy to put it this way but i think the thing that signals a major cultural shift it's gonna sound ridiculous but i think it's julia roberts signing those two tv deals she could have just stayed home you know or like appeared in something once a year that wasn't but this is a woman who wants to work she knows she's not going to do it at the movies now yeah there's nothing for her to do and she can do anything she wants to do a really weird movie like three years ago with the guy from 12 years a slave it's like a murder movie oh the remake of

the secret in their eyes it's not good it's terrible and she's but she's working really hard in that yeah she's really trying to sap all the attract in this ad it's a rough movie it's not not a good watch but she but she works really hard she's very good she tries or she works really hard she's like lebron on the calves right now like really trying she's really trying to get her and Nicole Kidman and Chewits over the line. It's movies like that being unable to draw an audience is probably what you're, informing what you're describing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to take what you said, though, and give it even a little extra.

She sees what's going on with Kidman and Reese doing the big little lies. Oh, sure. I mean, I think that's a huge part of it. And she's like, oh, I need one of those. I think that's going to lead to a lot seven weeks and she's like oh I need one of those but that's gonna lead to a lot of those but she signed two TV deals this it's not quite the same thing as what would

at it like even in like the late 90s be like a special HBO situation for some for some actors obviously you see something like bit of bit little lies and you do think that that is that is obviously indicative of something changing but i think that you have this i mean it's true that julie roberts hasn't mattered

at the movies very much in more than 10 years but i do think that this to me signals like a kind of point of no return yeah it's fully shifted how long before tom cruise's prestige television show? He's right. I mean, and so this is the thing that a person like him has got to be thinking about because if, if he can't,

if nobody wants to see him do the mummy and nobody should want to, because that is maybe the second worst movie of the year. It's not a good film. I was ready to see it. And then the reviews came in. Rotten tomatoes talked me out of it. Yeah. Um, I was ready to see it, and then the reviews came in. Rotten Tomatoes talked me out of it. Yeah. And I think he doesn't have a – I mean, I don't know what his –

I don't know what's coming across his desk. I don't know what his options are. You can't make Jack Reacher three. We're 12 months out from his six-part miniseries funded by Netflix. How much money does Tom Cruise need? He needs eyeballs. But we're not talking about past money. When Paul Newman was 60, he wasn't like, I got to find another action movie to make.

Paul Newman's like, I'm good. I'm going to make salad dressing. I'm going to make nobody's fools. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I mean. He still wants to work. And Tom Cruise, I think, wants to work. And he's got 35 years under his belt of being looked at all day long. And I'm going to do. I mean, it still wants to work and Tom Cruise, I think, wants to work and he's got 35 years

under his belt of being looked at all day long and he, I'm sure, he feeds off it. Oh my God, yeah,

of course. It's like 57. It doesn't change. Maybe not more than ever because people think he's been diminished. Right. I mean,

he is fighting not for his, he's fighting for a kind of cultural survival. It's really, it's fascinating though. He's basically, there are some, really hesitate He's basically, there are some,

I really hesitate saying this, but there are some Tom Brady parallels. Oh, boy. Just being determined to be ageless. Both members of a cult. Very passionate. Brady's got his own TB12 cult type thing. But Tom Brady just won another Super Bowl. That's what I mean.

But Brady's where Tom Cruise was, what, 12, 13 years ago when he's cranking out Mission Impossibles? Yeah. And people are going, wow, Tom Cruise, he's really going to third decade as an A-plus solicitor? I guess so. But this is in common. You go through, think of the biggest stars when I was a kid.

Redford, Newman, Eastwood, Steve McQueen very early. That was it. Redford didn't have a 35-year movie career. He was done by the late 80s. He became a director who occasionally would show up in movies as a star. That would be like Legal Eagles? Come on! He made Legal Eagles and Sneakers. His choices are very strange. star that would be like legal eagles come on he made legal eagles and sneakers yeah i mean his

choices are very strange havana post havana yeah not a hit though no legal eagles was a hit but like dustin hoffman was an a plus plus plus lister and it flipped fast right then all of a sudden after rain man it wasn't the same but you do i mean the sports thing is really interesting to consider i think they're like athletes i think you have as an a plus lister you have if you can get 15 years that's amazing that's a great run right if you get 20 that's like but don't you think that the stardom models are changing everywhere where i think that there are there are people maybe younger than we are who don't place the same premium on on what we previously called stardom and yet well what is that i don't well this is the question right i

also think it's interestingly if you look at tennis yeah like who had the best years in tennis they're all people who were around 15 years ago venus williams had i mean officially the best year of any woman tennis player, even though she didn't win anything. She was in the finals of almost everything. Classy lady. I also set the record for most times people talked about how much class she had. Classy lady

that Venus Williams. I almost had to, like, mandatory, I had to say it for some reason. Federer, Nadal, had the two best years of everybody on the. Even Del Potro, who's been around forever and had a pretty good year. Right. Right.

I mean, it's just. We need a Sloan Stevens, though. Movies could use a Sloan Stevens. But Sloan Stevens, we'll see. But what I'm saying is. I'm going there. I don't think we have the stars like we did. We don't have.

I just think it's like a drought. I think it's like when the NBA had the T-Mac Vince Carter era. Well, I mean, honestly, you can, this can be pitched in any direction. Tiffany Haddish is hosting SNL in 10 days. Right. I mean, that's a big deal. But what do the movies... She might be a star, though.

What are the movies going to do for Tiffany Haddish, though? This is the question. I don't know. She should probably also have a TV show. I mean, but this is what I'm saying. Yeah. Where's Lupita nyong'o been great question where's tiffany haddish gonna go she was unbelievable non-stop

lupita nyong'o so no nobody's ever been more overqualified to be in an action movie than lupita nyong'o her three scenes and non-stop were so good incredible as the flight attendant her her appearance in the force awakens was the deepest metaphor for what happens to her. Yes. Like Lupita Nyong'o, where she is literally made unrecognizable as a CGI character. Yes. That is the story. An old, wrinkled, nasty-ass CGI character.

Thank you, Hollywood. That was her follow-up to an Academy Award winning role. To an Academy Award winning performance. It's crazy. There's no place for Tiffany Haddish to go. Girls Trip 2, obviously that's probably going to happen.

I'm sure it will. Of course, it's got to happen. Can we unfreeze Jada Pickett's face before that happens? Can we take out five pounds of silicone? Her face didn't move. Listen, don't do that to my girl.

I just want to say, she was beautiful. I hate when people who are beautiful mess with their face. She looked great. She also looked different. It's true. But I do think- She raised Willow Smith, who just released a great album this week.

Just going to give a shout out to Willow Smith. I just think we can't pretend that a person having one year is gonna mean that they're gonna have a career like because it just doesn't and i think until the great tv apocalypse comes and i honestly don't know how it's going to come but i think it's it's out there something will happen where we'll lose all our channels the funding will go dead on some of these things but until then there is a world for tiffany haddish to do whatever she wants, I think. But I just don't think it's going to be at the movies. Are we sure Hollywood does the Star Machine thing as good as they used to?

Because here's an example. And I know you know the answer to this, but I bet Nephi Kyle doesn't. You saw Get Out, right? What's the name of the black guy, the actor who played the black guy in Get Out? Who played the black guy in Get Out? The lead guy in Get get out what was his name see most people don't know that guy's name why wasn't that guy his name is daniel kaluuya yeah where were the three weeks of stories about hey this guy there's going to be when oscar season

starts what's yes you're right that in the immediate aftermath they do not know that guy's name also it's him and the girl from Girls. What's her name? Brian Williams' daughter. Right. And those are the two stars of that movie. I think what happened also with Daniel Kaluuya is Sam Jackson came along and totally, basically stomped on

like put that fire out by asking, by raising this question of Daniel Kaluuya's being British. And how he was faking the funk in Get Out. It should have been a real brother playing the brother in Get Out. Should be like Lil Wayne. And so, and I don't know who you cast,

but Jordan Peele will probably tell you that Daniel Kaluuya was great and he gave the best audition. Well, he was also good because i had no real baggage with him so i was experiencing him through like he was like a new person to me almost yes but i didn't really remember him from another movie black mirror heads will remember him from yeah he's a really good episode of black mirror but i think your point with nephew kyle is is true like i mean i think the way the way stardom works now it just it isn't i don't know if it's a name thing the way it was we have sandra bullock who's that boom right same book massive star yeah who's the last person who became a star it's almost i mean tiffany haddish tiffany haddish she's not there yet but she's not there yet but a person who a person who you leave a movie saying this person yeah i think it might

be jennifer lawrence yeah i mean and what was the movie it was a movie nobody saw well i mean people walked out of silver linings playbook like who is that but she was already is that the girl in the in the hunger games i think it's at the same person it's more something like it seems like we spend more time talking ourselves into stars well right hey chris evans we shouldn't know i'm gonna take another glass of chris evans yeah a little better this time and i'm just hoping chris evans becomes an a-lister well i think that that that Chris Hemsworth as, but only as Thor, is a movie star.

Is that my dude from Rush? Which Hemsworth is in Rush? Chris Hemsworth is a movie star. It's always Chris Hemsworth. The guy from Rush is a star. He is good. If it were 1975, he would be so famous. Well, he'd be Jan Michael Vincent. Let's be honest. How dare you? Let's be honest. He'd be Jan Michael

Vincent. He has like Burt Reynolds-y stuff going on. He's very funny he'd be jan michael benson he has like burt reynolds stuff going on he's very funny he's cool yes he but he but he would have at least been clint eastwood like making those weird every every which way but loose type movies mixed with he can do all that stuff but the thing that makes him different from the thing that made a bururt Reynolds a star is Burt Reynolds is handsome, but he's not, he's 70s handsome. Like a Burt, like a Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds was the hottest, like the physically hottest actor of the 1970s.

I left him out of the 1970s stars, yeah. Right. That was another one. He was the handsomest of all those people. But by the time you get to the 80s where it really does where the where the ridley scotts of in the tony scotts of the world bring their sort of commercial television commercial oriented ideas to what movies should look like and there's a slickness that gets applied to everything there's really no room for a guy who looks like Burt Reynolds.

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Use offer code BS to get 10% off your first purchase. Plus a free domain. Again, that is squarespace.com. Offer code BS. Do you think Julia Roberts' Pretty Woman, could that happen in 2017? I do, because I think that that's pretty similar to the Jennifer Lawrence thing.

I think that there is, sometimes somebody has a lightning bolt. Big though. I mean, as big as Pretty Woman? Silver Linings Playbook was not Pretty Woman. The Hunger Games is pretty huge. Yeah, but she was already famous at that point. Yeah.

I mean, I think the more relevant part of this, because I do think that people can be, there can still be comets in culture. There can still be people you were like, man, this person just captured the moment. They captured the zeitgeist in an amazing way. The Hemsworth thing is more interesting to me, because Hemsworth, who is so charming and so funny in a in the third thor movie of all movies his next movie which comes out in january is called 12 strong and it's exactly

the kind of movie we were talking about earlier it's a war movie it's a rah-rah post 9-11 essentially like a hardline red state let's's go kill people in Afghanistan movie. And that's a choice, that's a specific choice that he and his group of agents and managers made in an effort to kind of like balance his persona. But I have no idea what that movie tells us about Chris Hemsworth at all.

He needs to be playing a lifeguard at like a retirement village where Helen Mirren and all her girlfriends want to sleep with him. That's what Chris Hemsworth needs to be doing because I think, I think like, no, I'm serious. Like, let's just start making up plots because that's all they did in the eighties and just find people to be in them.

Oh, Oh, Oh. What about a guy who finds a mermaid on the beach and tries to make her be his girlfriend? You know why? Because they were doing good drugs in the 80s. That's why they had so many good ideas. Well, they need to get off the Oxycontin and get back on the cocaine and give us some movies. Yeah. I just feel like one of the things is I think people just aren't willing to be crazy anymore.

Like there's a total crazy factor if you go back and look at these plots from like the 80s and the 90s and and and you look at like how much money some of these like mid-tier movies went on house sitter like let's make a movie about a like about a like a pathological liar who just sort of shows up at people's houses and pretend she lives there let's like do goldilocks and the Three Bears but in California real estate or something. But those movies were all built around the person, the star. Right.

It was like Goldie Hawn is, we know she is a bankable, hilarious actress. Let's build something around her. Right. That happens less frequently. Yeah, it seems like old times like that. It's like Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, we have them. What is it?

She was married to this guy. He got out of jail and he's kind of on the lam and she still kind of likes him. That movie never gets made. Right. No, well, Jennifer Aniston was the last person who got to try to do that stuff. Every Jennifer Aniston movie until the Painkiller movie,

which I think we should revisit given the times we live in but the painkiller movie was the last thing that was the end of that era of Jennifer Aniston what was the what was the Adam Sandler and Nicole Kidman get just get over it or just go with it just go with it

with Jennifer solid right that was solid that is that is that is flat out solid I've never seen it that's that's That was with Jennifer Aniston. Solid movie. That was... Solid. That is... Flat out solid. I've never seen it. That's that era's attempt at a Goldie Hawn Chevy Chase movie. Yeah. It worked.

I mean, it was a hit. Huge hit in Simmons House. I believe it was a hit. My daughter told me her favorite movie until Girls Trip, which is now her favorite movie, was Blended. So that was really interesting. There's some complicated racial politics in Blended. She's 12 and a half.

That movie is effed the eff up. Listen, I'm not defending it. They love Sandler. She likes Blended. I mean, kids can't help it. Kids can't help it. You'll explain it to them someday, won't you, Bill? I tried to explain it when she decided she liked it.

I can't wait until she's a disaffected college student and her favorite stories that's that's what i'm looking forward to there is another one that like i mean that probably would be living the same life it is currently living but i think it would be much more a part of some kind of cultural conversation instead it's like it should have been more important. Who do you see the actors together? Yeah, Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler. Who's the other person I'm missing? There's a fourth person. Oh, Elizabeth Marvel, who's not a man,

but important in this movie and very good. I don't know. And it's by Noah Baumbach, who manages to make a movie or two every year. You know what's weird about him? I don't know. It just, and it's by Noah Baumbach who, you know, manages to make a movie or two every year. And you know what's weird about him? It's the same thing with P.T. Anderson. Two guys that had a great sense of humor

early in their careers in their movies and then completely abandoned humor altogether. Like Paul Thomas Anderson. So we haven't talked about Phantom Threat. It's really funny. That's another movie that is coming out that is theoretically an Oscar movie. Daniel Day-Lwis's reportedly last movie um that movie does not look very funny it looks quite serious no but it also looks like a movie it does do you know what i mean

it looks like a movie and i haven't seen it yet but you know i mean he's anderson i don't mind that the humor is going out of his movie. Well, I don't know. Inherent Vice is pretty funny. Inherent Vice is hilarious. There's so many good things in Inherent Vice. I mean, I think there's I mean, there's no but for me with Inherent Vice. I think that movie is great. And I think if you watch it now, the things that it is trying to say about an era will just seem like it's holding up a mirror to whatever is going on right now.

You're preaching to Sean's choir. It is. That's my guy it's it's it's it's better than you i mean i don't need to tell you this sean but like i think inherent vice and all of these i mean the master watch the master now the master is when that movie came out there's another sign for me that like you know what's the opposite of a canary in a coal mine that like the birds running for the hills or flying for the hills or whatever like that that movie couldn't get the traction that it did and i think some of it was this industry like this town sort of trying to make it go away the master and i think people not really knowing what to do with a movie like that it is not only extremely well made it's got these three really fantastic

performances in it amy adams philip seymour hoffman and joaquin phoenix and it's just by the by the by the last great american director who isn't also 65 years old and was working in the 70s with brian de palma here another, since we're shouting out ideas, Mafia, Italians, I'm ready. It's been a couple years. I'm just ready. What do you want? Bring me back to that world.

Watch the deuce. It's all over the deuce. It's true, it's in the deuce. It's well done in the deuce. Michael Rispoli is very good. It's well done enough. Actually, it's kind of a- Michael Rispoli.

Wasn't Michael Rispoli supposed to be someone- Like a star? I think he was originally Don Draper. Oh, John Hamm. No way. Who plays the gangster character on the deuce and John Hamm. Eventually it was between him and John Hamm.

He's so much sexier than John Hamm. Because Wesley has to go. So you guys are pro the deuce. Yes. I'm a wait and see on the deuce. I think it's really smart, but I'm waiting. I'm a wait and see. I willuce. I think it's really, it's smart, but I'm waiting. I'm a wait and see. I will see if they get,

do they get the, do they get the wish to make 24 episodes of that show? I don't know what the series order is. There will be a season two. Yeah, there will be a season two. I mean, I'm,

I'm, I'm wait and see. Like, let's see what the, that's a TV show that is a movie. I mean, that's the way that show is operating is, that's a hackney thing to say,

but it's true. I mean, the way that they're telling that story is not in that like beat to beat watch out what happens next cliffhanger way it's not like the wire i mean i don't know the wire was the same way but i don't know let me just give one quick shout out to to a movie that i just watched which is about this exact thing that we're talking about that i thought was pretty fascinating it's called jim and andy it comes out on netflix on november 17th it's a documentary about what jim carrey did during the making of man on the moon in the middle which is a really interesting rewatch that i told you this a couple weeks ago or one of you i know i texted one of you

and i was like i watched man in the moon again what a fascinating it's a really rewatch yeah yeah i don't really i mean that movie never gets made now no, no but he really becomes Andy Kaufman the documentary, essentially he was tracked by Lynn Margulies who was Andy Kaufman's girlfriend for many years during the making of that movie and he's in character either as Andy or as Tony Clifton throughout the entire making of the movie

and there's a camera on him for days and days and days doing all kinds of things and the movie is essentially footage from 1998 when they're making the movie, interspersed with a single long interview with Jim Carrey talking about the nature of that performance, his stardom, his family, Andy Kaufman's influence on him, and where he is now as a human, as an actor.

And it is a mind-blowing example of what happens to people when they get famous because he is speaking so oddly and fascinatingly and worryingly wait it's like that interview was done in 1995 or 4 no it was done this year it was done this year and he

the way that he describes the machine that he's put himself into he keeps drawing this parallel between his character in the Truman Show and his life at the time and saying that I made that movie specifically and the filmmaker made that movie because that's what I was going through. But he talks about the world now and the cosmos and existence and his place in it in a way that I don't know if I've ever seen a famous person talk.

It is because he's like, I have all the money in the world. I'm not interested in pursuing fame anymore. And so the way I see this now is on this continuum of existence that is so complicated and so strange. And you can just really see how fame fucks people up. He clearly is damaged by everything he went through. I think I would love a Will Smith of one of those. Listen, you could pick anyone. Look at Julia.

Julia didn't make a movie for how many years But I don't know if it's a head thing With Julia Roberts I think she'd be a lot more I don't think you'd get any of this stuff I think if you talk to Will Smith I think Will Smith would say I think that's a place Will Smith

Would probably go, that Jim Carrey place I would be fascinated to hear it It was bracing, The last hour of that movie was bracing. I think Eddie Murphy would go to that place. Eddie Murphy would have a different story to tell. I don't know if he's self-aware enough to do that. No. Well, who knows?

But I think that it would be interesting to have people who had these major career shifts who were at the top of the world who you can point to specific career choices. Forget the personal stuff, which Carrie has and Eddie Murphy has.

And just look at like a performance. I'm really into looking at performances that change an actor's career for either the better, but for me, mostly the worst. Like a performance that ever that a career just never recovers from like pacino and son of a woman well no i think pacino and scarface oh pacino instead of a woman is like the plea to get scarface out of your system like then he became the guy yes but it's so far away from anything he'd ever done Scarface he was playing an old blind guy

what is it for De Niro Raging Bull I know everybody thinks the performance is great but he put so much into it it ruined his career for 10 years he didn't I mean I would argue other things might have ruined it too go on well just anyone from 77 to 86 who oh sure but i mean but i'm just i'm just talking about the work i think you know obviously with faye dunaway was mommy dearest killed her career she just never ever ever recovered from having like the public couldn't see her in a different way that's interesting yeah that is true i think you know for eddie what would it be it probably i think with eddie it wasn't just the performance in Dreamgirls. I think it was losing the Oscar.

Yeah, but I mean, he was at a different phase anyway. But Norbit came out and it made a ton of money. You get the impression in the subtext of the Jim Carrey movie too, that he worked so hard to get recognized for the Andy Kaufman performance that not winning the Oscar and the choices he makes after that.

He wasn't even nominated. Yeah, he wasn't nominated. But he did win a Golden Globe. It was a very strange thing. It's actually kind of a travesty that he wasn't nominated. Yeah, I mean, he has a run of movies there, 97, 98, 99, that are all very interesting. And he's really like going for performances. But you're right.

The Pacino one is the most resonant for me because that was when he learned to pitch things up. And then he never could pitch things down again. Right. It's like, I've been acting for 10 years since Godface. You guys can't hear me. Right. It's just he never, it's like lots of actors have a performance that they just like, they just can't get past. Either because it was so great or because it was so bad. And then there's meryl streep who just shakes it off and goes to the next one right well she i mean well she she she had i mean she

had ms12 i mean she had moments right i mean and i i mean devil wears prada is a performance that like could have could have sunk her yeah But she's Meryl Streep. I mean, she's apparently unsinkable. That's coming up on the rewatchables. When you come back to LA, we need you on the rewatchables. I don't know. Can you just come back? I can just come back.

Just come back. I'll just come back. Come up with some dopey person interview and then stay for five days and we'll do like nine rewatchables. I'll do that. Sure. It's great to see you. Nice to see you guys.

Sean, thank you. Wesley, thank you wesley thank you my pleasure bye wesley bye one more break to talk about my old friend stamps.com convenient easy reliable flexible my favorite words to describe stamps.com why the heck wouldn't you avoid the post office why wouldn't you buy and print official u.s postage with your own computer and printer why wouldn't you hand your packages to your own mailman right outside your own house or apartment? I don't know. I don't know why you're thinking that way. Just sign up with stamps.com. It's the U.S. Postal Service right at your fingertips. Any letter, any package, any class of mail, you're in control of all of it. Stamps.com will send you a digital scale that automatically calculates exact postage and helps you decide the best class of mail right now.

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Stamps.com. Enter BS. Sign up today. Stamps.com. Never go to sign up today. Stamps.com. Never go to the post office again. All right, we called my old ESPN teammate Tom Haberstroh because we wanted to put a little basketball at the end of this podcast.

We ended up going for 47 minutes. So we're going to do something that we've never tried before on this podcast. We're going to run the last 23 minutes of the pod where we hopped around the league and talked about a whole bunch of different teams on this podcast. But then we're going to run the entire podcast, which is 47 minutes on ringer NBA show. So you hear the last half of it here, but if you want to hear the whole thing, go to the Ringer NBA show. His podcast is called The Basketball Friends

and it's on the Leverage the Chat network. If you want to subscribe to Tom, you can do that. Here's that podcast, the last half of it, right now. Don't forget, Ringer NBA show for the entire podcast. Here we go. On the line, my old ESPN teammate, Tom Haverstraw, now of Bleacher

Report. What's the name of your new podcast? It's Leverage the Chat is the company. And the new podcast is The Basketball Friends. And we should have some new ones coming out pretty soon. But that one is The Basketball Friends is what I'm doing every day now. Every day? Yeah, I do it Tuesday tuesday wednesday thursday friday um amin elhassan and black trey was mariano they do uh bomb mondays black opinions matter mondays and then the rest of the

week we our nba pod is basketball friends so i try to switch it up every day to give a kind of different different show every day. Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm pretty much on it four days a week. Did you have to like take some sort of detox shower? Like when people, when a nuclear reactor comes off,

it goes off and the people have to take the showers. Was that what it was like leaving middle Connecticut or no? I mean, we did this show. I mean, you know, um, at ESPN, we had like a daily podcast.

Yeah. They shut down twice. And when Jade Hoy left this summer, it kind of left this crater. And my contract was up. And I hadn't been potting for like three months. Pretty much all summer, I hadn't done a daily pot. So totally weird stuff was going on. And ultimately, it's good to be back with Jade,

and it's good to be writing magazine stories. I actually just dropped one five minutes ago. I read it. I read it right before I called you. It was about LeBron and yoga and these little bubbles that I'm going to get for my daughter because I'm a psycho. So explain the yoga bubbles. They're crazy, man.

Like this video, I saw David Menman from ESPN. He posted on Instagram, like the NBA Instagram posted it. Just LeBron before games now stands on these clear pillows and does like little basketball tricks on them. And it kind of, it's very bizarre it's really weird um and it's the most viral video that the Cavs have put out this year obviously not much good content coming out of Cleveland right now yeah but like it's mesmerizing and so I kind of called up a bunch of people in the industry to get the backstory. And I guess Rudy Gobert going from kind of this baby giraffe in the NBA to what he is now, a lot of it is just this core workout

that he does with Fabrice Gauthier in L.A. And he works on these pillows, and they just really sharpen your core. They activate your central nervous system. And it's kind of all these pregame warm-ups that you see from Steph Curry it's all in the name of like firing up your your central nervous system and working on your balance and so LeBron started doing it after he hurt his ankle with this longtime trainer Mike Mancius and it's just kind of like alien like and it's super. Let's go through some storylines really quickly. Do you believe the Cavs' defense is broken?

Yes. I do too. Yes. You know, these teams, when they go through three finals, I watched it with the Miami Heat in 2014. It's really, really hard to get that motivation. Not only are you physically exhausted from... Dude, LeBron James has played 2,400 minutes in the postseason in the last three years.

The last three seasons, he's played an additional regular season. 2,400 minutes on top of his regular season. But wait a second. If you throw in the seven Miami years, isn't it like over two additional seasons with those post-seasons? It is, right? Oh, yeah. And I'm just talking about the last three years. Like, this is the workload that he's having to do.

And look around LeBron right now. Like, it's Kevin Love and Jeff Green and Jay Kraut. I don't know where they're going to get the motivation because you need to have that carrot in front of you to go balls to the wall every night and play NBA-caliber defense because the league is too young. It's too fast. If you're not running back in transition, you're toast. Look, the NBA right now, the Brooklyn Nets, I just looked this up,

the Brooklyn Nets are averaging 105.9 possessions for 48 minutes, according to basketball reference. Wow. 106, let's call it. 106, let's call it. The 2005 Suns, the seven seconds or less Suns, they never got to 107 in the entire season. They got over 106 once.

And in the other 81 games, they didn't match the Brooklyn Nets' average pace this year. And Kevin Arnett had a similar tweet where comparing the pace of how quickly it's gotten so fast, like LeBron James and the rest of the Cavs, they can't just lollygag. They can't sleepwalk through games anymore because it's just that much faster of an NBA. Yeah, and I think it's a little hard for people who have been watching the NBA forever to even fully understand.

But I'm looking at the stats right now. Houston's shooting 45 threes a game which is like I it's just it makes my eyeballs bleed but you're talking about I was at the Charlotte game

yeah I was at the Charlotte game they took 28 two pointers 28 two pointers the entire game and they're not even shooting that well

they're shooting 31% from three but they don't care but half the league is shooting at least 29 threes which I think maybe maybe five years ago that number might have been five or six and when you're a team like cleveland and you're taking possessions off and you're taking quarters

off and the other team is just getting wide open threes you know that leads to the 38 point quarters and stuff like that i look at them and i i always try not to panic first month of the season or make some sort of go full hot take on whatever i just watch that team and and the majority of guys in their rotation seem like they're in the wrong situation and i don't know how you fix that right like i don't think this is the right team you're talking about yeah i don't think this is the right team. The cast you're talking about? Yeah, I don't think this is the right team or situation for Kevin Love at this point of his career playing kind of like, I guess, center. That's not good for him.

He should be next to a shot blocker. This isn't the right team for Jay Crowder, who I think was completely overrated anyway. I tried to tell everyone all summer. This isn't the right team for Dwayne Wade. This isn't great for J.R. Smith, who's used to starting. All of a sudden, he's coming off the bench. He pouts through the first three weeks of the season.

It's terrible for Tristan Thompson. This is Derek Rose as a guy who doesn't have the ball in his hands, as a spot-up shooter. That doesn't make sense. And then you go on from a defensive standpoint. They have so many below-average defensive players. We were talking about the ringer office. Just try to make your

best lineup or your best five calves. I'm not even sure what that lineup is. What is the lineup? LeBron has to convince himself because I think he's gone after this year. He has to convince himself, I'm going to put my body through the grinder

for this squad. Like, my whole legacy is either rings or MVPs at this point, right? Yeah. And he's got to do this for the entire season. He's looking around his shoulder and he's like, they're dropping my flies. Tristan Thompson, man, he had nothing left. He was completely gassed coming into this season. He went through, like, games where he had zero rebounds. A lot of people are saying it's the Kardashiansashian i have no idea that's it i think it's just dude the guy

played 82 games for five straight seasons and then did the three finals trips right there's only so much a guy an energy guy can take when you're basically the only big man like the only center on the roster for three finals trips it's gruelinging. I mean, you look at, let me read you the last six opponents for the Cavs. Orlando, Chicago, Brooklyn, New Orleans, the Knicks, and Indiana. The last six games, 117 points allowed on average. Not even good teams. Not even good teams. Orlando, Chicago, Brooklyn, New Orleans, New York, and Indiana.

And you know what? If Hayward doesn't go down in the first five minutes of that Celtics game, I think the Celtics would have put up like 128 on him. And, you know, we wrote about revelations on The Ringer today. Just like different staff members talking about their revelations of the season so far, things they're the most shocked by. I wrote about Ben Simmons because he's actually better than I thought he was going to be. But if my backup choice actually would have been Kyrie Irving, who I was a big believer in.

And even before it became it came out that the Celtics had a chance to trade for him, I was just in disbelief that teams weren't trying to go after him because I just thought he was one of the nine most important players in the league and somebody who had been in the biggest possible test and come through. What I didn't fully know and what I was hoping was that away from LeBron, with a really good coach, with different kinds of teammates, with a team that challenged him and used him in a different way and pushed him to be more of a playmaker and ran little off-screen action for him

and all these different things that they did for Isaiah Thomas, I was hoping that Kyrie would succeed in a situation like that. But it's been eye-opening. I can't tell you how many times I've texted my dad and just been like, holy shit, Kyrie would succeed in a situation like that. But it's been eye-opening. I can't tell you how many times I've texted my dad and just been like, holy shit, Kyrie's amazing. He's really good. And I think over everything else, that's what really hurts the Cavs this year

because they took off a spectacular player on their team for this Brooklyn Lottery pick that might not even be top five and for Isaiah who might not come back until February or March. I think that trade's a disaster. It's looking really, really bad right now. And I'll add that Isaiah Thomas does nothing for their issues. No.

I recognize that LeBron can't score every time down the floor and he needs help offensively, but their issues are 1,000% on the defensive end. And Isaiah Thomas is not going to help them there. So, you know, the Kyrie thing is funny because I wrote this story that Damian Lillard clapped back at me for this summer when I said Kyrie Irving is more Dame than he is Kobe. And Damian Lillard got really upset about it, tweeted at me,

said check my stats, and it was a whole thing. But the basis was that Kyrie Irving is 4-13 without LeBron James starting next to him with the Cats, right? So in the last few years when LeBron was there... Yeah, I read your story. I disagreed with you. I got

testy when I read it. And you didn't call me. No, I'm just saying it was in my office. I got testy when I read it. And you didn't call me. No, I'm just saying it was in my office. I got testy. No, I think it's really hard to play without LeBron James when you're playing with him and he's doing everything. And I don't know if there's a stat that can really account for that. It's like, you know, if you're living at home and your mom cooks for you every night and all she does is cook, cook, cook. And then on Wednesday night she says, I'm not going to be home.

You've got to fend for yourself. What are the odds you're going to make a great dinner? I just don't think – I think you have to get in the mindset of being able to do your own thing, you know? Does that make sense or am I overthinking it? Well, I thought you were overthinking it in the first couple games of the season because I was this close to doing one of those victory laps heat checks where I was like, Kyrie Irving, 4-15 without LeBron. Nah. I'm so glad I did it.

Well, you know what happened? And this is legitimate. He was really, really upset about the Hayward thing for two reasons. One, because I really think the Celtics team thought they had a chance to make the finals. I think they had a chance to make the finals. I think they had a great preseason. I think the length that they had, the weapons they had. Kyrie had never played with a good coach before, which seems funny because he won a finals.

But I think it was just eye-opening for him, just everything that was going on. He was really fired up for the season. He threw the alley-oop to Hayward, and it was behind him. And it was one of the reasons Hayward fell awkwardly. The other reason was Jake Crowder kind of shoved him. But I think that affected him that first game, and I think it really affected him the second game.

I think it took him a couple games to play out of it. Man, if you watch him these last couple, I'm waiting for him to have a 55-point game. And it doesn't seem, he might be wired like Durant. He might not want it. Like I remember I asked Durant and we did that mailbag podcast about, you know, somebody asked, could you ever score 70 points or what's the hottest you've ever been? And he's basically like, I would never score 70. I'm not wired like that. I'm always going to try to make the right play. I don't want to go for 70. And it does seem like Kyrie is kind of wired like that this season.

He's always trying to make the right play. And they've really worked hard with him on making that drive and kick pass to the corners, which he wasn't good at in Cleveland. And he's getting better and better at it in Boston. They are really dangerous. I know they lost Hayward, but I'm really starting to think they can make the finals anyway. Look at his point totals. 22, 17, 21, 20, 24, 24, 24, 22.

It's like he's got a governor, right? It's like he's got a cheat code that he can't score over 25 points, which I'm with you that it seems like he could go off for 50 at any point, but I think Brad Stevens' system, I just think he preaches ball movement and egalitarian stuff, but you can't tell me that a guy who worships Kobe Bryant and the Kobe mama mentality feels like he shouldn't go for 50. Yeah, you know, I've watched a lot of the Celtics this year.

I really felt that way too, and I've been so impressed by how often he makes the right play I actually think he values that and there were stretches during Kobe's career when he played like that too and then he would snap out of it and take 35 shots so maybe that's coming but you know I think the revelations on the Celtics team are they're just so much better defensively than they were last year, which doesn't totally make sense because Avery Bradley is considered to be such a good on-the-ball defender, but Crowder was overrated.

I think that's being borne out now. The analytics did not agree with it. No one was more in disagreement about their defensive reputation than Avery Bradley and the analytics like you know like the numbers on Avery Bradley on off court whatever metrics you want to look at Avery Bradley's like it just didn't make sense why to the eye it seems like he's a great defender but none of the metrics really back that up and now you're seeing Boston thriving defensively without it's totally different defender but there was evidence to suggest that maybe it was smoke and mirrors

or they had rebranded. Yeah, and I think – I don't know how I feel about that because the eye test does make me think he's a good defender. But on the other hand, the big difference with this team is now they have length. And Hayward would have played into that too because I think one of the reasons they really wanted Tatum was they wanted these just multiple long dudes and the ability to switch and to always have six foot eight guys running out on shooters basically which is what they have and they they have Rogier who's probably the shortest

guy they're playing other than Kyrie but he plays like he's six seven uh Smart who is a really good defender when he wants to be and then all all these Jalen Brown, Tatum types, and Semmy, who's been kind of a revelation as a second-round pick. And then they have Baines and Tease, who are just better than Amir Johnson and Kelly Olenek and guys like that, guys who actually get rebounds. So the team makes sense. It's going to be really interesting to see when hayward comes back

i i think the team is being um and for the right reasons really quiet about that but i don't think it's inconceivable he comes back in april or may i i think the fact that they had they haven't come out and said this guy is not coming back cross him off for the season is pretty interesting. And, you know, it's a long season. It's going to go through. It's going to the end of June. And if there is a scenario where you could come back, great. If not, I still think this team's pretty good anyway.

And we know the East isn't good. I mean, we were talking to the office. Who the hell is going to win the East? You would say like, oh, Washington. And you watch Washington. It's like they have literally no bench whatsoever. John Wall is a little too – I like John Wall, but I don't know if he's your go-to guy in a finals team.

Milwaukee does not have the supporting cast or the coach. Toronto, maybe? I don't know. Who do you think? I think it's going to be Washington. I think they'll work through some stuff and I think they could potentially go for like a boogie trade at the deadline yeah um wow and so i i like their i like their upside um and i just like the continuity that they have where the boston self except where they've most impressed me is that they have

the number one defense right now bill in the the NBA where two guys were basically rookies. When we get on the Timberwolves for being a garbage defensive team under Thibodeau, the reflexive thing is, oh, it's a young team. You're relying on young guys. But we don't hear that about the Boston Celtics. They have a new team, almost entire rosters turned over. They don't have Avery Bradley. They don't have Jay Crowder. So far, they're the number

one defense. We'll see if that continues, but it's so impressive their start this season with all the moving parts and the trauma with Gordon Hayward. Well, I think it's a 100% chance now that they lose to Oklahoma City tonight after all the praise that we've showered on the Celtics.

Any other teams that have surprised you? Minnesota's defense is really, really disarming to me. I wrote about Tom Thibodeau and his burnout factor in my last story for ESPN, and I expected them to be better this year defensively because of Jimmy Butler. He's been in and out of the lineup, but I'm really surprised that people are still picking

Carl Towns as the generational talent of this NBA, like the young stud. I mean, for two years running, I think the NBA GMs picked him as the guy they want to build a franchise around. But their defense is garbage. And at some point, it's going to come back to Carl Towns, where it's like,

alright, man, you've got to bring it defensively, because we've seen Embiid be out of the league for two years, bring it defensively, and we've seen even Por where it's like, all right, man, you got to bring it defensively because we've seen Embiid be out of the league for two years, bring it defensively. And we've seen even Porzingis, like there's actually defensive evidence there that they can do it. I don't know if Thibodeau, if he can't get Carl Towns and Andrew Wiggins

to play defense, I don't know who will. One thing that's, the reason I don't think anybody can say who's going to win the East is I still think there's going to be a couple of monster trades. And Minnesota is a team that could be involved in one of them. But I think when you look at the East, Milwaukee definitely has a trade to make. position now because getting this $8.4 million injury exception from Hayward, I would expect them over the next 10 days to just sign some random dude for $8.4 million. I mean, it could

be like freaking Ty Lawson. It doesn't matter. Sorry, Tate. Just sign somebody who's a cap figure and you get that guy for $8.4 million, now you can stack a couple more salaries. Now you can go get, I don't know if I'd want Eric Bledsoe, but somebody in that price range. I think Orlando is a team that can make trades. Milwaukee has a bunch of different ways that they can make moves. You go on down the line, it just feels like out of all the years, after all the trades we've had, there's still going to be a couple trades that could kind of shape where we're going. And I think San Antonio could be a contender for that too.

Who do you think is the most likely person to get traded? Boogie? I think Boogie's there. Have you seen his numbers? I mean, he's an MVP candidate. He looks miserable and his teammates look miserable playing with him, but he's putting up giant numbers. Listen, 30 points, 13 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 2.3 blocks, 2.1 steals, and 2.83 per game. Wow. And the threes are going in. That's the shocking thing. I can't believe these big dudes are shooting threes. I remember in the in the early 90s i remember mikhail because he was getting old just occasionally would throw up a three and it was always like the craziest

thing that happened in the game like oh my god mikhail made a three and now he would probably take seven you know i don't even know what his style would be now i remember watching boogie early in his nba career and he'd run like a coast to coast and shot it was shocking to me because at kentucky i didn't see that and then i was like well this guy has some like weird big like point center skills and then now he's showing it like he like if i told you a guy in the nba is averaging 30 points 5.9 assists and 7.63 attempts like you're thinking oh maybe that's like Clay Thompson. Maybe that's a two guard.

That's Boogie cousins right now. And the league is so like, they've got these giants and I'm like, it's tough because Giannis is in a small market. Boogie cousins is in a small market. You know, I know, I know Embiid's in Philly and he's a superstar,

but I feel like, you know, that these guys are not being in small markets. I don't know if people can appreciate what kind of skills we're seeing out of these big men. These seven-footers are freakishly talented, and I think Boogie playing next to Anthony Davis without any wing players, no distributors. Drew Holiday wants to play the two. He doesn't want to play the point guard.

That's a team that's going to have to make a deal. God, that Drew Holiday contract was dumb. It's really, there are teams that have just, and this has been something that's been going on for most of the 21st century, these teams that have just done a complete disservice to their superstar. I think LeBron is the greatest example

of just all the moves the Cavs tried to make to try to do a win-now type situation. And New Orleans did the exact same thing with Anthony Davis. Just, hey, we got this guy. Hey, we overpaid this guy. And it's like, well, you're on a treadmill. You're not doing anything.

You're not building anything. And now they have these two guys and everybody else around them is completely inferior to them. I, as a Celtics fan, I'm terrified of the Boogie Wizards trade. It just feels like it's going to happen. I don't know what the trade is. I don't know if it's Otto Porter.

I don't know if it's Gorta and Oubre and five first rounders. I don't know what the fuck's going to happen. But it just feels like Boogie, Wall, and Beal are going to be in the same team. That's my fear. And if you're Washington, you've got to make the deal, right? Because this is the vulnerable East. If you're looking at a time to strike, it's right now.

You've got to do it. You've got to put multiple firsts on the table. You've got to get it. You've got to get them. You've got to pay full price. You do. table you just you got to get it you got to get them you got to pay full price you do and um and like other teams just don't have the the young player to throw in the deal um and just you know ready play like a young auto like a auto porter um where you have kelly uber who's a wing player

that can kind of fill in the gap there yeah i think it's a right right time for a trade and it's going to be sad because like bo and Anthony Davis, Kevin Pelton and I, we did an analysis this summer. What are the type of teams that give the Warriors issues? And it's two twin towers. That's it. Crash the board and just have guys just bludgeon you in the paint because they're not a great rebounding team.

And they got still, right? And they just don't have a roster. They don't have an NBA roster. And I think that's the issue. When we talk about the medical issues of teams, like New Orleans Pelicans are right at the top of the list where they just, you know, the Quincy Pondexter thing is really, really shady.

And then the fact that, like, Anthony Davis is out every other game. I think that matters. Not only is it a small market in New Orleans, but you also have, like, guys whose careers just seem to go sideways because they can't stay healthy. I think that matters for free agents. They're not going to play with Boogie and Anthony Davis because I think there's just too many question marks with their front office.

Who would you rather have treat you with some sort of injury, New Orleans' medical staff or Philly's medical staff? I know David Martin over with the Philadelphia 76ers. He was a cycling guru who helped Joel Embiid, like, rehab. They sent him to Qatar, and he's kind of an out-of-box thinker. I just think there are too many cooks in the kitchen. There's so many medical guys in that front office. They just hired a new guy this summer to oversee the whole medical staff.

Like the Jaleel Oka for a thing no one talks about but he had a torn meniscus i believe and he was supposed to be out for six weeks and it turned out to be six months how did that happen the ben simmons foot uh all the imbeed injuries i mean that that wait rashad holmes had something god it's ridiculous last question the biggest mystery in the NBA right now. Markel Fultz. How does that happen? It's actually legitimately a mystery. That's what it is.

Ken Berger wrote about it today. It's a mystery. That injury I've never heard of before. It almost sounds like a dead arm in baseball. Like he just shot so many shots, his arm got tired. Like he was Tim Robbins filming Bull Durham or something? I've never heard of it.

I mean, listen, I don't know for a fact, but if I had to bet on a Marco Foltz condition, I would say he is the yips. That's it. You can throw in, oh, he did this, he did that.

I think the moment got too big for him would be my guess. But isn't the Woj agent story confusing too when the agent comes out and says he had fluid drained from his shoulder and then Woj has to put out another report that actually that's not true? That seems pretty conflicting.

Although, if it is the gift, that would be the cover-up, right? Is making that physical problem to explain it. That's my that's my point last last last question then we're gonna go you're redrafting the draft who's your top three uh redrafting the draft this year yeah the one we just had so like the 2017 draft yeah who's your top three oh that's that is jason tatum number one i think he is i wanted you to say it though i think i know you too well um jason tatum looks awesome and we didn't even talk about when we got on the celtics but he's a teenager. Yeah. And he's doing this. He's 19. I was there for Paul Pierce's rookie season, and he was two years older than Tatum and was not as polished.

And Tatum can just get to 12 to 15 points every game by being on the floor, which is really hard as a rookie. It's hard to not disappear game after game as a rookie, and he doesn't. I go Jason Tatum. I go Jason Tatum. I go Jason Tatum, Dennis Smith Jr., and then Lonzo Ball. That's how I go. Wow. Okay.

That's interesting. I don't know what to make of Lonzo. I've never seen a point guard who wants to have the ball for less time than Lonzo does. He's hot potato. He's overwhelmed right now, shooting-wise. He's shooting under 30%, and last night he played a full game and didn't score. I think mentally, he's overwhelmed right now. Being in L.A., I think he's going to get it.

I think he's got the package, the skills. Right now, I think the scoring isn't there, but I just think he's, I think he's a can't-miss prospect. And I think eight games into his career in L.A. with LaVar doing what he's doing, I think he's got a tough start. And he's not 100% healthy. I don't think people realize that either. He was coming into the season not healthy.

I think he's still a top stud in the league, and we shouldn't write him off after eight games. I agree with you. Here's my only question. Are we sure he can shoot and dribble? Are we sure? Are we sure he can shoot and dribble? Is that really that important in the NBA, though? Is that really that important? I'm not sure he can shoot is that really that important in the nba though

is that really that i'm not sure he can shoot i'm not positive he can dribble he can dribble when nobody's around him but like he does not have a handle like kairi irving or damian lillard or people like that he just doesn't it's yeah it's when he gets, I'm amazed how quickly he just gives up the ball. I mean. Yeah, but how much of that is just he's a teenager? I know we just talked about Jason Tate. Did it in college, though. But he did this in college, too. That was my one fear with him.

I didn't understand when Fox pressured him in those two games why he just got rid of the ball. I really like marketing, which I hate myself for making fun of that pick, but I actually like his game. I like Jonathan Isaac. I think he's going to be something. I don't know what, but he's definitely something. My buddy on

the pod calls his name is Mariano. He calls Markkinen Laurie Bird. He calls him Laurie Bird. He loves him. You don't like the finisher? Two N's? I'll tell you who else I like.

Get ready, Knicks fans. Kind of like Frankie Smokes. I think he's a devastating defender. Wasn't expecting that. Frankie Smokes really gets in your face, makes you do some stuff you don't want to do. I like him. I like the way he carries himself.

I like that out of a rookie in that environment. He might think big lights, New York, MSG. I want to impress someone offensively and score and make a big splash. Nah, he's just going to grind you defensively. I love it. I also think that if Donovan Mitchell was on the Lakers right now and playing under the name Lonzo Ball, Laker fans would be ejaculating on each other.

They'd be losing their minds. Donovan Mitchell's been incredible. I was agreeing with you until you just said ejaculate. Yeah, well, it's late in the podcast. We just had to throw that in there. But he's been stupendous. And you could make a case he's the second best player in the draft if you just go by numbers and tape.

Or he's certainly the most ready right now to contribute to a good NBA team. Anyway, Haverstraw, how do we subscribe to your pod? LeverageTheChat.com. Also on iTunes, Basketball basketball friends and Bleacher Report BR Mag story up on LeBron and his moon shoes right now

go check it out we almost work together at some point in life we'll work together Haberstroh we're working together right now man yeah that's true

I mean like you know in a more in a more significant way maybe down the road someday I love when all the XCSPN people are doing well thanks for coming on

thanks Bill alright thanks to Tom don't forget if you want to hear that whole conversation Maybe down the road. Someday. I love when all the XCSPN people are doing well. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Bill. All right. Thanks to Tom. Don't forget, if you want to hear that whole conversation, go to the Ringer NBA show. We're putting the whole thing there. Thanks to Wesley and Sean as well. Thanks to SeatGeek.

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