The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA Draft Reactions, Pelicans Party, and THE Worst NBA Owner With Joe House, Plus Michael McDonald | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House to rehash the Pelicans-Lakers trade and point out the winners and losers of the 2019 NBA draft (2:37). Then Bill sits down with the king of Yacht Rock, Michael McDonald, to discuss playing with Steely Dan, his time with the Doobie Brothers, heartbreak songs, his solo career, his summer tour with Chaka Khan, and more (1:25:50). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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the world's greatest website. We have all the draft coverage you would ever want. Just go to TheRinger.com. You can read all of it. Listen to The Ringer NBA show where we have a live reaction pod, I think, or a post-draft reaction pod. There's reactions.

We're reacting to stuff. Coming up, House. My buddy Joe House, we're going to talk about the draft. It is 8.22 Pacific time, PM. We're going to talk about what we just witnessed tonight and some interesting ramifications for the NBA season that's coming up. We're also going to premiere a new segment, Kyle. What is it?

It's called the Refeastables. Oh, House talked to me about this. Yeah. I'm ready for this. This will be a House of Carbs segment, but we're going to premiere it tonight on the BS pod. And then, if that's not enough, that's not enough content for you. Michael McDonald, the legend. He's on.

The king of yacht rock. The king of the Doobie Brothers. One of the iconic voices ever. Yeah, he's coming on. He's going to be on later. It's happening. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Joe House is on the line. It's funny.

In the old days, I used to write a draft diary for my old website and then for ESPN.com's page too, and then for Grantland. And then at some point during the night, I would call House and we would talk about what we just watched. Now we're just doing it on a podcast. House, I'm glad you're awake. How are you? I am awake. I'm fired up.

It's NBA draft night, one of America's great evenings. So, House, we started the night off. You know, this was Zion night. It was the Zion coronation. He's one of the four most important guys that we've had at the top of this draft this century. Shockingly emotional. I don't know.

Maria Taylor is easily the best sideline reporter they've ever had for this. Her interviews were great. I thought the guys were really comfortable with her and opened up. But Zion got genuinely emotional, couldn't talk. Then his mom came in and the tears were rolling down his cheeks. I almost started crying. How's his NBA draft? I've never felt that emotional before. What were your thoughts?

How about this? I'm so glad we're starting with this point and that you gave that shout out to Maria Taylor. she deserves it every one of these families came up the choreography to this was beautiful maybe this is the stage of life that we're in bill simmons like we are such suckers yeah for this this you know the the life-changing moment we want to see the guys with their parents and coming up and all thinking about all the hard work and parents and coming up and thinking about all the hard work and the realization as it hits them about how their lives are changing. And we got tears out of the Barrett's. We got tears out of the Morant's. We got tears out of

Zion. I mean, there's another half dozen I'm forgetting. It was like a tear fest. It was like Roy Firestone all over again. It really was. It was like the end of Jerry Maguire. And I think part of it was, she's just really good at this. And you know, the Zion thing, it's great to grab these guys at their most innocent, you know, they, they, it really is a hundred percent genuine. I'm sure 12 years from now, he'll have his own content company and he'll be making game shows. But right now it was, it was just this totally genuine moment. And, uh, I don't know. I got caught up in it. I, I don't think I've ever liked a draft pick coming into the league as much as I like Zion. He checks like every box I think I've ever had for a player. He plays as hard as humanly possible. He's as exciting as you could ever want

anybody to be coming into the league. He seems like an amazing teammate. I love the fact that him and RJ Barrett were as close as they were. He just seems really humble. And even at the end, when he, when he, she was like, what do you want from a, what do you want to say to New Orleans? And he's like, let's dance. It was like the perfect answer. Zion a plus 10 out of 10. I love Zion. Yeah. I'm not going to correct you.

In terms of your observation about him checking every box in a way that, that, you know, putting him number one at your all time draft list. I recall the level of excitement you had for Lebron entering the league i recall the level of oh yeah you had 100 kevin durant yeah for kevin durant yes now you know what your checklist is yeah uh you know you're a grown-ass man so at this stage of life you know what your checklist is and and we can say with confidence that zion checks the boxes. Yeah. And, you know, when KD came into the league, and obviously you and I were in the front row of that bandwagon, he seemed like a baby. You remember?

He just seemed like a little 195-pound, just a rookie that was going to come in. It's hard to remember that version of KD, honestly. And there was a whole thing about, you know, he couldn't bench press this amount and he just seemed young and it was like, he's going to be fine. He's going to be good right away. And three years from now, he'll be incredible. Zion's coming in and it really does feel like the LeBron thing and even maybe a notch ahead of it because he's already so filled out physically where it would actually surprise me if he wasn't good right away. I mean, I don't think he's going to be third team all NBA or

anything like that, but I do think he's going to be a really impactful player on both ends. And especially with how hard he plays and how athletic he is, you know, I saw a list of these, these guys that come into the league league what happened with their wins totals the first year you know like lebron and davis guys like that duncan was really the last guy that came in and his team won i i expect this pelicans team to at least be i don't know a 35 win team right what do you think oh i'm thinking a little bit higher yeah they still have they still have 30 million dollars hanging around out there i feel like they might you know figure out a creative way to deploy that over the course

of the season i'm glad you made the point about um you know seeing him on both ends i really thought that i know that that uh jackson hayes was not supposed to be slotted in in that 7 to 10 range necessarily. But he is a perfect complement for what Zion requires in terms of a guy that he knows will be back there protecting the rim. A genuine rim runner in Jackson Hayes. So, I mean, it really should have a liberating effect on Zion. And, I mean, I just expect New Orleans to fly up and down the floor. Do you think they at least texted Zion and were like, hey, man, if Cam Reddish is there at 8, what do you think?

No. What do you think? Should we take him? Definitely not. And Zion's like, no, man, we're good. Let's take a big guy. Zero percent chance. Just a quick aside. My favorite part of the draft tonight,

other than my dad's FaceTime, when I FaceTimed him after the Celtics traded back 17 times, was between the eighth and ninth pick, I texted you, oh my God, the Wizards are going to take Cam Reddish. And you had, I'll just say this, you had a violent reaction. It was, you were

violently opposed to the Cape British era. You've already lived through it with Jeff Green. You didn't want to run it back with Jeff Green 2.0. You were upset there for about 40 seconds. Well, I mean, my concern is that like at this stage of, of the Wizards franchise, uh, position. We can't have any guesses. It's gotta be a stable, you know, no guesswork about the nature of the performer. We can't have anything like inconsistent. That can't be one of the words that applies to the draft pick.

Like we just need a good, stable, steady character guy that can come in and make a contribution and work hard and make some buckets. That's what we got. You certainly got a steady guy. He was described as extremely polite. Or what did they say? They said he's such a polite guy.

I was like, I don't know if that's a good thing for my lottery pick. But you also, you had polite with Otto Porter. So now you get to run that back. I want to talk about this incredible Davis trade. And you and I haven't talked about this on the podcast. I did it with Rosillo. I thought

the Pelicans got the most amazing haul anybody has gotten for a superstar. But now they did this trade where they also, they took the fourth pick and got a bunch of stuff. So here's what they turned Anthony Davis into. They turned him into Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball. Josh Hart, who I'm not a huge fan of, but whatever. The number eight pick in 2019, which became Jackson Hayes. The number 17 pick, Nikhil Alexander-Walker,

the guard from Virginia Tech. You like him? I do. I like his motor. He works hard. That coach makes sure all those guys work hard. So they got him.

They took the 35th pick in 2019, which I don't think that pick's actually happened yet. They got the 2021 LA pick. If it's in the top eight, if it's not, it rolls over to 2022 unprotected. They got a swap in 2023. And then they got their first pick in either 2024, 2025. And they dumped Solomon Hill that they got for Anthony Davis.

So, this is unfair, but when you look at what San Antonio got back for Kawhi and compare it to this haul, it's a little bit stark. Yeah. It leaves you a little empty.

You might have to do the Kawhi laugh. You want to try it? Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! bit, it leaves you a little empty. You might have to do the Kawhi laugh. You want to try it? When he did it during the parade, Kawhi's approval rating, only Klay Thompson is higher right now for any NBA player. Maybe Brooks Koepka for all athletes, but when he did that at the parade in front of the Raptors, I love that. Anyway,

this Pelicans trade, on top of the fact that the Lakers screwed up the cap space part of it. Allegedly. Allegedly. It's been reported. It's been reportedly, allegedly. Rumor has it that there was an accounting error and they didn't realize that if they waited until July 30th

they actually would have more cap space and and it was one of the all-time whoopsies because if Davis doesn't wave the trade kicker which he might because as Roger Sherman wrote about in the ringer today now he's in space

jam there might be a way to make it back to him with the space jam where he oh you think i was on heat check with john gonzalez on monday yeah and we talked about this trade kicker and i was like i bet uh lebron james and anthony davis in los angeles will figure out a way for anthony davis to get back that four million bucks yeah I'm sure they can figure it out. So it's either going to be 27 point something or like 23 and a half, but either way, it's not enough for a max guy. So it rules out a couple of guys. What's startling about that is, I mean, this is a basketball team that's worth probably

$5 billion that has a lot of money and should have the resources to have at least one MIT nerd who's just all he does all day is in the corner office with no window, just crunching numbers? How do they not have that guy? How incompetent is the Buss family? I think it's a bit of a moving target. And to that point, I think there's a possibility that this trade tonight

out of the four slot and on down might have the effect of creating some of that space. It might be a form of bailout for the Lakers. I don't think that chapter has been completed yet in terms of what room the Lakers are going to end up with and whether the timing is still July 6th versus July 30 and all of that. But I will just confess right now, all that shit is above my head. Yeah. Let's keep bailing out the Lakers, a team that's in Los Angeles that everybody wants to play for that is worth $5 billion. Let's, let's keep throwing them bones.

We just, as a quick aside, can we get your take on the Davis trade? Cause you're usually in the camp of, if I'm getting an awesome player, I don't have to care what I give up. But yet this team gave up, as I laid out on Sunday, the biggest bounty anyone has ever played, ever paid for an NBA superstar in the history of the league.

The Laker fans got all mad at me, which I knew was going to happen because God forbid anyone questions the Lakers. But just how excessive the price of the trade was. And their whole point was, who cares? We got Anthony Davis. And it's like,

well, if you operate a sports franchise like that, it's usually not a good idea to be like, who cares? I'm just throwing extra draft picks. This is what, you know, the Brooklyn Boston trade was completely different,

but this was how we got Jason Tatum. Cause at the tail end of the trade, the Celtics were like, hey, can we throw in a pick swap in 2017? And Prokhorov was like, sure, we will do that. We can have you a pick swap. And then all of a sudden we get Jason Tatum. That's your Prokhorov?

Yeah, that's my Prokhorov. It's drug Prokhorov. That's pretty good. It was drug Prokhorov. It sounded like Malkovich. It sounded like Rounders. It's Malkovich playing Prokhorov. So where do you stand on this house? Do you blame the Lakers for just completely capitulating and paying 150 cents on the dollar? Or are you in the camp of who cares?

They got Anthony Davis. I mean, this is the most predictable thing ever. It's not going to surprise you one little bit. Yeah. Who cares? Yeah. The price is irrelevant. the most predictable thing ever it's not going to surprise you one little bit yeah who cares yeah the price the price is irrelevant they have anthony effing davis yeah with with lebron like here's the thing there's no price that's too high to validate the lebron acquisition this was about lebron like you can't have lebron come to your team and then surround him with garbage. It will

go down in history. This, this 2018, 2019 season as one of the most disrespectful, this disreputable treatments of a super duper star. One of the all time three greatest players in the history of the NBA came into this garbage situation and he tweaked his knee and they couldn't play. He couldn't play 20 games and the season was over. Yeah, it was it. I mean, they didn't make the playoffs. That's a, that's a terrible outcome for, for, for a guy, uh, of LeBron stature. Now he was complicit in it it he played a big role in it but the only way to validate i think his window right now is two more seasons that's what i think that's the best case scenario yeah wait we're aligned on that yeah so if that's your window then go get the very best player you can

get for those two seasons and there's no price that's too high who like out of ball ingram i mean obviously heart or any of those picks like who who name one all-star wins the first all-star game for any of that uh cash any of that that that uh great pile of treasure that new orleans received wins the first all-star game coming from that pile of treasure? It's a fair point. I acknowledge the point. I just disagree with it. Because I just, I think it's crazy.

My whole thing is, I've said this all week. Every time anybody brings up to me, I'm just like, who are you bidding against? Like, I understand if there's a second team. LeBron's, LeBron's career. Yeah, but they- team lebron's lebron's career yeah but they two years that's what you're bidding against you're bidding against two more seasons that's it nothing else all the rest of the teams in the league are irrelevant all that matters is the next two years of lebron james career i agree with you but new orleans didn't have a second bidder you're bidding

against yourself. Like you wouldn't go buy a house and just bid twice as much for the house as you had to. It's the wrong analogy. No, it's not. It's the wrong analogy. Why? Yes, because this is the thing. It was always the case that Clutch and Rich Paul and LeBron James and Anthony Davis had the upper hand here. As soon as Anthony Davis and LeBron made it public that Anthony Davis wanted to leave New Orleans,

Anthony Davis was leaving New Orleans. And that was it. And they did an effective job of completely neutering the only other legitimate contender in this, which was Boston, by making it abundantly clear that Anthony Davis would never resign with Boston. It was credible enough for New Orleans to accept that. New Orleans couldn't play Anthony Davis any basketball games this season. That is a terrible outcome for not only the New Orleans franchise, but for the NBA

league at large. You can't have a player of his stature not playing in games to protect the asset. That's bad. Bad business. I agree with you. So they had to move him. I agree with you on that, but somehow it worked out and they ended up with Zion Williamson, the most important guy that's come in the draft at seven years. That's just dumb luck. I mean, literally dumb luck. There's two dumb luck outcomes. It's the dumbest luck. New Orleans gets the dumb luck getting Zion. The Lakers get the dumb luck getting up to number four because I honestly don't think they had enough otherwise.

I don't think. I agree with you about that. If it had been the number 11 pick, then i can understand throwing in all that other stuff because you're like yeah you just take everything we have this is it like we don't have anything else um but the number four pick i think allowed them to make the trade i just here's the thing yeah you have davis yeah you have lebron we still think lebron is almost definitely one of the best, like seven or eight guys in the league.

Not almost definitely. No. He definitely is. Yeah, but you know what? We said that about Kobe in 2011, and we said that about Jordan and the Wiz. Kevin Durant is not playing basketball this year. Ray Thompson's not playing basketball.

At some point, the minutes are catching up to LeBron, though. I did this whole thing. That's true. I did this whole thing. That's true. I did this with Hinch. I don't know if I read this to you, but the minutes for LeBron, they're really crazy. All the time. They're really nuts now.

He's over 56,000 minutes, and the only two guys ever in the history of the league have played 60,000 minutes, playoffs, regular season combined. And everybody's just penciling in LeBron like, this is miami heat lebron and at some point it's not going to be now whether they can get two more years out of them which is really all they care about great but we're gonna see some atrophy at some point this becomes unrealistic let me ask you this though yeah other than the public images of him smoking cigars and drinking red wine yeah what do

you think he's been doing the last two months like he didn't have to play in the playoffs do you think that all of that his hyperbaric chamber was on x max right he's going in there every night he's catching his oxygen he's probably been to germany 10 times already which is what kd should have done i mean i think he's going to come back. I have to use these old-ass references because we both turned 50 this year. He's not the $6 million man. He's going to be the $30 million man. He's going to be money.

No, he's going to be the $300 million man. $300 million man. You said it. That's it. Well, I am all for get the best guy in the trade. I just think they left themselves with really no other ability to improve this team beyond Rob Palenka, who is established now to just be incompetent. Can we call him incompetent? I think it's...

No. We can't yet. He got LeBron and Anthony Davis. He didn't know what date to trade to make the trade official. It just cost himself Capra for no reason. Doesn't matter. He's incompetent. He gave away Zubach.

What about last summer? He's a doofus. They had the worst summer on the planet last summer. He's a doofus. All right, we'll call him a doofus. Doofus. But do you trust him? He's incompetent.

You can't have LeBron and Anthony Davis and call him incompetent. That's fair. All right, let's settle on doofus for Rob Blanca. Yeah. He's a doofus. They have 24 million left to get. Realistically, they need three more guys. I was looking at it because they have Kuzma.

You need three more guys. So you at least have six for the first 50 games of the season. And then you think you'll get two buyout guys in February, right? They'll get a couple of. Absolutely. A couple of their clutch cronies will just be like, hey, we're going to buy out somebody. Do you want first dibs? Like with Tyson Chandler last year. Isn't Cantavia still on that team?

No, I think they had to renounce him or they're going to. Yeah. The clutch gravy trade was great for him. He made like 29 million bucks. I was like oh yeah KCP go do it go do your thing I was thinking more of like the GMs and the executives than the other team I'm sure Griffin will throw him

a solid in February thanks for the seven first round picks we'll give you Etuan Moore as a buyout guy yeah so really it's up to Polinka to find three more guys but anyway I still haven't changed my opinion

I haven't done the full I know that Roger just published his piece I haven't done the Zapruder level analysis yet the forensics of the Space Jam 2 casting sheet but like it you know

is Patrick Beverly on that list? No, he's not. Dame Lillard was. Oh, is Derek Rose on that list? Dame Lillard was on the list. Oh, that's interesting. Dame Lillard, during the draft tonight, dropped a diss track on Marvin Bagley.

He dropped a two-minute song because Marvin Bagley apparently challenged him to a rap battle on first take. He dropped a two-minute song because Marvin Bagley apparently challenged him to a rap battle on first take. He did that. That was dumb. And Dame Lillard didn't like it, and he released this pretty harsh two-minute diss track.

Why did Marvin Bagley try and call out Dame? Because he's 20 years old. What does he know? He can't even drink legally yet. He thought it was a good idea. Dame jumped on it, and now it's going to be this whole diss track drama, which I'm sure Adam Silver has just got to be delighted by.

Can you imagine if this happened with David Stern? He'd fly these guys to New York immediately and start whacking them with the newspaper. We don't do diss tracks in this league. It can be edgy, but still clever and funny, right? I mean, in the same way that CJ McCollum and KD, you know, KD went on his podcast and then McCollum called him out for something, you know. Oh, House, I have some freaking news for you.

What is it? It's now 847. The Wizards in the second round got admiral scofield i like that guy oh i like him too holy yeah that's a nice pick somehow you're somehow your second rounder is better than your first runner congratulations that's rude that's rude i love when that happens i won't accept that i'm not sure we got the best player from gonzaga but i know that he's as good as Admiral Schofield. He got the second best player from Gonzaga with the ninth pick.

Gotta be happy about that. I really love Brandon Clark. Hold on. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to do winners and losers from the draft. Let's take a break to talk about Stamps.com. No one really has time to go to the post office.

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Not to mention a fraction of the cost of those expensive postage meters. Right now, my listeners get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale without any long-term commitment. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, type in BS, stamps.com enter. Yes. All right. Let's go through the winners and the losers of the 2019 NBA draft winner. First of all, Zion, no tie business casual. What'd you think of that house? Yeah. I mean, he could get away with anything he is he's a miraculous physical specimen he could have worn a uh you know what are you supposed to call the undershirts that are sleeveless now you can't call them by the name that i grew up with yeah i didn't call them wife beaters what do you call them now huh yeah a shirt that's what it's called yeah yeah we're yeah okay well yeah that's this just turned super awkward house meanwhile bull bull just got bull bull just got picked by

miami pick 45 but he was still in the green room that's the longest green room and a poor bull bull jesus i didn't know bull bull was available prior to that Wizards pick I would have taken Bobol yeah he could have hung out in the hospital with John Wall well no

Manute Ball and Bobol there's a you had a ball already well he went 44 we had the first ball now I'm reading oh big

big handshake from Mark Tatum poor Bobol he deserves it I hope nothing wrong I love Bobol me too so so zion locked

down business casual he mastered it most emotional pick ever he had new orleans all fired up and then he got this text from my dad after pick number 20 when they were running another zion thing my dad angry about the celtics text me by the way i've had enough of Zion tonight. Is this before or after the Celtics traded the most Celtic player in this draft, Ty Jerome? We're not getting it. We'll be getting to the Celtics during the losers part of this section. So that text came before Ty Jerome got traded to Phoenix. Another winner. Maria Taylor. Breakout performance. before taja rome didn't didn't got traded to phoenix another winner maria taylor breakout performance always i always liked her but man she was awesome tonight that was really really like

right like robin roberts was like whoa who is this lady she's on my corner they made fun of her shoes and then they showed her shoes and they were some kind of like athletic shoes because she had to be on her feet all night and i I'm down with all of that. That's the only knock. I couldn't, I can't figure out the dress combo with the shoes, but like, I think she had to stand for like eight hours. I support it. I know. I know.

No, I'm not knocking. No, this is an argument. The idea of having comfortable shoes. They just didn't seem like they went with the dress. But what am I, who am I, what do I know? This is an argument I've had with my wife pretty much every time we've ever went somewhere nice where we had to stand up for a while. Like when we go to the Espy's and she's wearing like these five inch high heels and then two hours in, she's like, Oh my God, my feet hurt so much. It's like, yeah, cause you're wearing fucking

high heels and we're at this party. We have to stand for seven hours. What did you think was going to happen? Oh, my God. I have blisters. Oh, I can't believe you have blisters. I'm shocked. I'm shocked that these five inch high heels gave you blisters. So then like two years ago, she finally started to just go for comfort with the shoes.

And guess what? A lot happier. Every time we go to anything, we have to stand up for a while. So anyway, I support Maria Taylor's decision. Another winner, the New York Knicks. Oh. Cheered on draft night. They took the right guy.

They took a guy who I think is going to be really good. And I think it'll be fun to watch the Knicks next year. I like that guy. I think he got a bad rap in Duke being on the Zion team. We've talked about it a bunch of times. I think he was in a really difficult position playing for a team that had the Messiah on it. And every time Zion didn't have the ball at the end of the games,

everybody just got mad at RJ Barrett. Meanwhile, he's 19. He's reading online like, oh, RJ's got to pass the ball. What the fuck's wrong with that guy? And I thought he handled it pretty well. I love how he stayed close with Zion. Didn't resent him at all.

And his stats for 40-minute college games, like you're putting up a 23-7-4 in college as a freshman. I think he's going to just keep getting better. I think he's going to work. People are picking apart his right hand. Is his three-point shooting good enough yet? He seems like the kind of dude who every summer will add something to his game i'm a huge fan i i'm really congratulations to the knicks fans i think getting him at three is a is a huge win what do you think i totally agree

with this i think your assessment i i think the criticism that was leveled against him uh for the end of game stuff really deserved to go to coach k like i was just wondering when somebody was going to wake up coach k and say hey buddy it's 2019 you know what we're doing here yeah like you know they they kept running these these one-on-four sets and solo things like you know the ball didn't move at all but you made the point point. He's a 19-year-old kid. He's running the play that the coaches tell him to run, and it wasn't very effective. The only way that Duke lost the season was by beating itself, but that kid wasn't singularly responsible.

He wasn't out there doing rogue shit. I did think that he played a little bit with blinders on sometimes. I wanted him to have his head up a bit more, but that's the best criticism I can come up with. His inside and outside game, he's right there. He was the second best player that I saw this year. Now, I love John Morant's athleticism. It's just incredibly uh explosive but in terms of of a developed basketball player with a high ceiling right there with you on rj and i love how he

has been thoughtful about how he wants to hold himself out to new york he's embracing new york and new york is embracing him back it's going to be fun, I think. Yeah, this is, so they got Porzingis a couple years ago and then they get this kid. That's pretty nice. You know, the Porzingis thing obviously didn't work out because they traded him. But I got frustrated with RJ early in the season because I'm with you.

I thought he played like he had blinders on. But the thing is, I'm not sure he's a typical point guard. I think he was put in position at Duke where it seemed like he was the point guard, but he's really an off the ball guard who should be score first and kind of playmaker creator, but really mostly creating plays for himself. I just think that's his destiny. He's never going to be a guy. So that would be great.

They just need a point guard then. They need a point guard in New York. Well, they can have Kyrie Irving. Just tell me. Say the word. I'll help him pack. Could be D'Angelo. Another winner for the draft tonight. John Morant and his dad.

Emotional father-son moment. And then they cut to the clip of John Morant. His dad's working him in the backyard. He's like jumping on and off a tire. And it made me think of when my son is the WWE heavyweight champion in the world. And me and him have that moment. And then they show the clips of me throwing him alley-oops

on the trampoline, which gave him the superhuman leaping ability that led to like his deadly elbow that he became famous. It'll be the same thing. We're like the John Moran and his dad of wrestling. And all of those clips of you and him in the hotel room, him with the hotel pillows, what he's done to those pillows, it's really a crime.

I'm glad he hasn't been arrested. I'm going to say when they interview me, I'm going to be like John Moran's dad. I'm going to be like, look, I gave my son everything I knew and everything I had in me, And then he did the rest. He really wanted this. He worked really hard. And now he's the WWE heavyweight champion.

So the Morantz, congrats to them. Another winner for me, the comedy of the State Farm commercials. They ran a State Farm commercial where James Harden and Chris Paul started arguing with each other. And I was so delighted. I rewound it and watched it a second time. How did they not cut that? I hope. Cut?

No, they need to run those all summer long. How about this? Has nobody made the observation? James Harden burned down Chris Paul's kitchen. Do you think that Chris Paul is happy? How can he be happy? James burned down his kitchen. Oh, that's right.

And he's probably going to take the State Farm ad campaign from him, right? So if you're State Farm and James is like, I'm only in if Chris Paul's out. Now what do you do if you're State Farm? You try to trade Chris Paul to an inferior insurance agency. For get some draft picks back. It only works... I think they... I don't know what to think.

State Farm's been very innovative. It's midnight. Goodness gracious. With its campaigns. I mean, they got to bring them all back. They were innovative with the campaign. They never expected that the two teammates they would have would turn on each other in real life.

What a wrinkle. Now they have to film more commercials where they're just not talking to each other. There's just third parties communicating with them. Another winner. I, for some reason, really, really liked the Kobe White to the Bulls. I don't know. I just liked it. It was like the right time in the draft.

What do you mean you don't know? You just liked it. He's awesome. It was like the right time in the draft. You don't know. You just liked it. He's awesome. I know, but like the best point guard in the, in the draft, a couple of guys got taken ahead of them, which I like little chip on his shoulder.

Now I'd like the team for him. They're, they're going to be bad. He can make his mistakes. They're going to, they're going to fly. He plays really hard. Levine,

at least offensively was at least playing hard last year. I like Wendell Carter. Weird moment when Wendell Carter came over and congratulated him. But I felt like Kobe White didn't totally sell it. Didn't know what was going on there. They got to work on that. But for the Bulls, I like when the Bulls have an exciting guy. I mean, twist my arm.

I had Michael Jordan for 12 years of our life. 14 years. I like when there's an exciting guy on the Bulls have an exciting guy. I mean, twist my arm. I had Michael Jordan for 12 years of our life. I had him for 14 years. I like when there's an exciting guy on the Bulls. Shoot me. I don't know what Chris Dunn's going to do, but I like the pick. Chris Dunn is going to learn how to be a backup point guard, I think.

Or the starter for the Wizards. Yeah. So another winner who's also going to be maybe a loser here, but the Hawks turned 8, 10, and 17. They traded up

and they ended up getting DeAndre Hunter and Cam Reddish and had to take on Solomon Hills expiring. But now they have Hunter and Reddish together. Put them with Trey Young. Put them with Herter, Ryan Russell's expiring. But now they have Hunter and Reddish together. Put them with Trey Young. Put them with Herter, Ryan Russell's favorite player. Put them with John Collins.

It's kind of the start of something, House. I don't know. It's at least a fun league pass team, right? It was worth the gamble for them. That was, you know, they got a ton of value for where they were situated and how they sort of transformed that position into guys that, like, if you track the draft board, the mock draft going back to the fall all the way through to, like, April of this year. Those two guys, Reddish and Hunter, you know, have been inside the top 15 pretty religiously pretty consistently

and you know for for a little while there reddish was inside the top five top six for a good long stretch until you know he had his injury problems so forth so for that for where that franchise is and and you know what the ambition and then just trying to build some excitement there. I mean, Trey Young, you have to admit, really exceeded expectations this past year. A lot of folks were skeptical. No? The second half that he had was pretty impressive. He's a great offensive.

Or he has the potential to be a great offensive player. I thought defensively, you might as well have just put just put like one of those yellow cones that people use on driving tests and just had that move around on defense like he is an atrocious defensive player but offensively really good well yeah but he is he's gonna be a liability his whole career defensively so we prefer how young he is and for where they are i i think they got value. Yeah. I'd rather it wasn't Luka Doncic. I'd rather have Luka Doncic.

Sorry. I know. I get it. But yeah, at least, at least Trey Young's not a bust. Dion, you like Deandre Hunter and Reddish together.

Maybe, you know, who knows? So it's like they're, they're, they have a kind of identity. They can, they can,

again, we were seeing about all these teams build around these young athletic wing guys that can run the floor and shoot right that's like and shoot shoot this is it's a speed kind of kind of a game and i think um it was it was worth it to find out i mean i'm not sure sure that DeAndre Hunter's ceiling is much better than like Otto Porter's. You know, he's a three and D guy. Or Mikael Bridges.

He's one of those guys. I don't think he's ever an all NBA guy, but it seems like he has the ability to be an above average swing man for a while. Would be my guess. I liked how he played in big games in college, but as we found out over the years, sometimes that's not the most accurate thing.

Another winner, Miami took Tyler Harrow, a pick before the Celtics, which really hurt because I was really focused and fired up for him. And then he came out wearing a crazy suit. And then there was weird social media photos for him. And then he came out wearing a crazy suit. And then there's... I loved it. There was weird social media photos of him. And he just seems like the kind of guy who would hang out with Nephew Kyle.

Word. Word. Nephew Kyle says word. Word. Of course. That's what... Yeah, word. So here's the great thing.

They got rid of Tyler Johnson and replaced him with Tylerler johnson 2.0 it's tyler harrow i also wonder i got a strong strong strong sensation this feeling came over me as he was uh doing his whole interview which i couldn't have enjoyed more yeah i really got a strong whiff of white chocolate it really felt felt like Jason Williams 2.0. He did seem a little white chocolate-y. Yeah, he really did, didn't he? Didn't he give that vibe? It was like a strong, little bit of that Southern lilt,

little bit of that attitude, that swag. I just got it. I don't know. Like he walks by and you're like, what's that smell? Is that pot? Or is it white chocolate? Is there a difference?

Losers. The Suns. So Sacramento abandoned their rightful, hard-earned territory as the league's most poorly run franchise about a year ago. It was a bummer. The dumbest team in the league, if you just asked anybody, who's the dumbest team in the league,

and people would be like, oh, it's Sacramento. And then over the last couple of years, I think they've shed that. And then it's been really a fistfight to see who could grab the belt from that. And then it's been really a fistfight to see who could grab the belt from them. And Phoenix was in there. You had the Lakers, even though they ended up with LeBron last year, Davis this year, but just doing like really weird things where you have people around the league going, what the fuck is that team doing? The Suns not only cemented their championship belt

over the last 12 hours, but I honestly don't know what the hell they're doing. I don't know what the hell they're doing. And the day started out, TJ Warren, who I think is actually good, I think he makes like 11, 12 million a year. That dude can score.

And if you put him on a playoff team, he will get buckets in playoff games. I'm just telling you now, they trade him to Indiana just to dump his contract with the 32nd pick. It's like, wow, that's weird. It's,

it's, it's almost like Robert Sarver has done this before where he's just sold off his players. Like he's selling like a TV or a car. So he, they do that. Then they have the six pick and they trade backwards for the 11th pick and Dario Saric,

who I think is going to be a free agent in like a year. So I don't know what they're doing there. And then with the 11th pick, they take a guy, Cam Johnson, who the ringer had 33rd on their draft board. This was the 11th pick. And then it goes up and it's like,

yeah, the guy, he transferred colleges, but he also has all these issues with his hips. I'm like, oh. Both hips. So that doesn't sound good. So then they end up, they finally do something relatively smart at the end of the night. They traded next year's Milwaukee pick for

Baines and the 24th pick and they took Ty Jerome, who we both like. So somehow the best move they ended up doing the whole night was the 24th pick. The 24th pick is going to be better than the 11th pick. I don't know what that team's doing. That team last year bought out Tyson Chandler for no reason. When they could have used his expiring contract at the trade deadline, they just bought him out.

They turned an asset and made it completely useless. It's like they don't understand how the league works. And it always goes back to me to, you know, big shot Bob Sarver, who is just an atrocious owner. I think he's like James Dolan with worst PR. If he had the right PR, we would be rightfully talking about him as the league's worst owner.

But, you know, he's in Phoenix, doesn't have like five generations of Knicks fans touting his terrible praises and doing the whole thing. He's just kind of buried in Arizona. Only the Suns fans are really affected. Nobody else really cares. But he is pound for pound the worst owner house. Yeah, I mean, the lasting visual of this era of the sons is that wonderful elderly woman in the public hearing saying that Robert Sarver's so tight he squeaks when he walks. Right. That's my favorite meme meme for the for this uh sarver era i don't so the reputation for cam johnson is that he's the best shooter in this draft yeah which is great um they already

have a pretty damn good shooter on the team who is right now a year younger than Cam Johnson. Devin Booker. Devin Booker's been in the league three years already. Yeah, he's had a new contract already. Cam Johnson's older than him. What the, what the, what is going on? Why do they do it? It starts out with Sarver.

You got to go way back. The 0-4, 0-5, 0-6, 0-7, 0-8 Suns. It's like kind of impossible that they didn't win a title. One of the reasons they didn't win a title was Joe Johnson wanted a new contract after the 0-5 season and the Suns lowballed him and he got pissed and he signed a restricted offer with Atlanta and told Phoenix basically, please don't match this. They ended up working out a deal with Phoenix for DL and a couple of first rounders, but they,

they could have had Sean Marion, Joe Johnson, Steve Nash, and Amar Stoudemire as their nucleus for the entire mid two thousands. And just with that one move, screwed that up. The trade actually turned out to be, wasn't like a complete disaster

because Dia was pretty good for them, but they sold off the pick that was Luau Dang. They just sold that pick to the Bulls, just gave it away. They sold off the Rajon Rondo pick to the Celtics. It's impossible that the Suns

didn't win a title one of those years. Just from an asset standpoint, they had the most assets, and he screwed it up. So from that alone, you should have been trying to drive him out of town. But then this whole decade, he's been the worst owner in the league. I pray

that a Suns blog aggregator aggregates this. You've my permission to aggregate my copy. Robert Sarver is a terrible owner and he should sell the team. And it's not your fault, Suns fans. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. Sell the team.

Sell the team. You need to do a new... You need ice. Put ice on a new... At least James Dolan, like, at least Cablevision is successful, right? I mean, James Dolan's more confident than Robert Sarver. Jesus. Just sell the team. Sell the team to somebody who knows what they're doing. Don't do this to the Suns fans anymore. Sell the team. Nobody likes you.

They're worth two and a half billion bucks, right? Yeah. Sell them. What's fun for him about owning the Suns? He's a disaster. Everywhere he goes, they're like, oh, that's the guy that ruined the Suns. What's fun about that? Let's take a quick break and then we'll go for the rest of the losers hey let's take a break to talk about Helix especially because house is about to fall asleep they create personalized mattresses to fit your unique needs

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That is helixsleep.com slash BS for up to $200 off during their July 4th sale. Okay, a couple more losers from the draft tonight. Cleveland, they took Garland fifth, who seems to be a point guard that doesn't have a ton of size. Not that that's, you know,

like Kyrie's not a huge guy and there's guys, there's point guard. Dame Lillard's not a big guy. They're putting him with Sexton and they're floating out. They think this could be a Dame CJ thing. First of all, there's point, Dame Lillard's not a big guy. They're putting him with Sexton and they're floating out. They think this could be a Dame-CJ thing. First of all, bite your tongue, Cleveland. How dare you say, bring Dame and CJ into this.

You're right. That's like a once in a decade, and that took years to hone whatever, but I thought that was a strange pick. What'd you think of that pick? I wasn't a huge fan. Not a fan. What are you telling Colin Se pick? I wasn't a huge fan. Not a fan. Like what are you

telling Colin Sexton? You're telling him, look over your shoulder, Colin Sexton. We just took another point guard. When has this ever worked? I mean, in recent memory, the last dummy who tried it was, was your boy, uh, con in Minnesota. Yeah. Well, maybe they didn't work out. Maybe they trade Colin Se out. Maybe they trade Colin Sexton. I find it hard to believe this is a backcourt that's going to play together.

It reminds me of when they took Kyrie and then they took Deanne Waiters. And everybody's like, hey, this is weird. These are two guards that love the ball.

And Cleveland's like, no, it'll be fine. Minnesota It's never fine. Minnesota traded up to six. They traded 11 and Dario Saric for six And I thought they were up

I thought they were doing it For a point guard And then they just took Jared Culver Who's not a point guard I thought that was weird What's wrong with Saric? Good shooter

Good shooter What's wrong with Saric? I guess they didn't I guess they didn't want to pay him We thought that Saric I thought this I thought this, I thought he was a decent contributor on a playoff team.

Like, not a starter, not a sixth man, but in the rotation, in the rotation on a playoff team. Yeah, he could have, you and I, we love to judge all the players we watch and we're trying to project by

could they have played in the finals that we just watched. Sarich could have played in that finals. Sure, sure, yeah. He could have played on either team and gotten minutes, I feel like. 14 minutes, something like that. Another loser. I don't want to dwell on the Celtics too much,

but I don't know what... Yes, you do. No, I really don't. I don't know what the hell is going on with this team. They start out with 14, 20, and 22. They lose out with 14, 20, and 22. They lose out. Al Horford, he's gone. Kyrie's gone, but good.

He can leave. Please, let's make sure he gets on the plane. But I didn't know what they were going to do with all these picks. 14th pick, there's some good guys left. Some Celtics types of picks. And they took Romeo Lankford from Indiana. I just didn't see that one at all. I hope I'm wrong.

I really do. Please, I hope I'm wrong. I know he had a ninja thumb and a shooting hand last year that probably affected his shooting. But I just feel like he's the kind of guy that they've taken before. Then they get to 20, and Thibault was on the board still, who was one of my favorite guys in the draft from Washington.

He was just an absolute defensive menace, and just the kind of guy who always ends up on a playoff team. They actually pick him, but they pick him to trade him to Philly. They trade down for 24 and 33. They took Grant Williams at 22, who you really like. Then they trade 24 and Baines to Phoenix

for Milwaukee's 30th pick. And with the 33rd pick, they took Carson Edwards to Purdue K. I actually got excited for that one. But it took me a while to realize what was happening. They're clearing cap space. These were all like moves that you do when you think you have a chance to sign a major free agent.

Lo and behold, they're at almost 26 million in cap space now. And if they get rid of Roger, that moves up to like 34, which is right around the number that a max guy would cost. What are they up to, House? What's going on here? What's happening?

It's my question to you. Who do you think they can get? Could it be D'Angelo Russell? It's one thing to have the space. Yeah. So that wouldn't be that bad. I was so impressed by him this past season. You have to have what he showed us in the playoffs was you can't put too much of the load on him.

He needs some complimentary pieces. Well, he's young, though. He's only 22. We think he'll get better, though, right? Oh, I mean. We both like him this will go down as i i think this among the uh last half decade of laker blunders getting rid of him because he snitched on uh nick young yeah cheating on his his girlfriend yeah that that it's a it's a

criminal negligence it was bad that they couldn't figure out a way to keep this 20-year-old top three pick on the team. That was bad. They sacrificed him because he told on Nick Young. Well, would you rather... I know my answer just because I lived through it for two years, although the first year was happy. Would you rather have D'Angelo Russell turning 23 next year or Kyrie Irving turning 27 next year with multiple knee surgeries already I mean this is the thing like I know that we're putting an ink that Kyrie is going to Brooklyn and that Brooklyn's also going to take a run at getting KD yeah but

like it feels at this stage there are only a couple of teams that have the institutional like fortitude to be able to handle kairi's bullshit it's like you know a team like brooklyn that's on the come up that needs a guy that can help put them over the edge but we've all learned don't let him talk to any of the young guys keep them away from the young guys um and and away from the young guys and, and pair them with another alpha. You need another alpha. He can't be the only alpha or send him back to where he belongs,

which is second banana land with LeBron and go. Exactly. That's right. I think, I mean that, that to me makes the most sense him back with LeBron and playing with Anthony Davis that then, then I can see the four to one odds. The Lakers are at right now to win the most sense. Him back with LeBron and playing with Anthony Davis, then I can see the four to one odds the Lakers are at right now to win the 2020 title.

And if that's what's up their sleeve, then, you know, more power to you, Lakers. That's what makes sense for Kyrie Irving. Can I make a prediction for what the Celtics are up to? Let's hear it. Based on no inside info. I love that you have to always put well because sometimes when i have celtic stuff people think i got it from somebody there and they they never leak anything i think it's gonna be malcolm brogdon maybe not that's not a max dick that's not a max no not a max but i think they can structure a deal where

it would make it impossible for milwaukee to bring them back and if you're trying to build a team to win in the east that team has to be better than milwaukee so it has the double edge the double edged uh don't say it. It's midnight here. I would say dildo, but, but that's, it's, it's after this late hours here.

I let you say adult, adult warning. So it has the effect, the double-edged effect of not only do you improve your team, but you really hurt Milwaukee. Cause I felt like he was extremely important to them. And, I don't know.

He's really good. Look up his stats. He was a 50-40-90 guy last year. Now, he's had some injury stuff. If that's the goal. Well, I'll say this, though. If that's the goal and intention, what you do with that money is try and sign Chris Middleton to a sheet and make the Bucs match it.

No, he's not a sheet, though. He's not restricted. He's unrestricted. Brogdon is actually restricted. Oh, I got it flipped. Which one was restricted? Yeah, yeah. So let me ask you this house.

If they get to 35 and they spend, let's go 21 million a year on Brogdon. Let's go 85 for four years for Brogdon. And then they spend the other 13 million a year on Kavon Looney. You get Brogdon and Looney with the cap space. Are you back in on the Celtics team? I didn't mention Romeo Lankford yet. He's in there too.

Well, he's on the G League team, but he's... Our G League team is going to be so much better next year. Another combo guard that can't shoot. He's a combo guard for our G League team at pick 14. I sold that from Mike Prater. Yeah. Shout out to Mike Prater for that one. Well, they, this Kings pick that they had that they thought was going to be this choice, unbelievable high lottery pick ended up turning into Romeo Lankford.

So I'm going to hit my head on the desk right now. Hold on. 27% shooter from the college three. Wow. When I have to defend him, the 14th pick, like, well, his thumb was injured.

Like, this is a bad place. A place I don't want to be. So are you backing on the Celtics team? Brogdon, Looney, Tatum, Jalen Brown, Marcus Smart.

Um, I forget who else. I think we, well, I don't think there are 67 win team. Oh, maybe if you include playoff wins. If you include preseason and playoffs, could we get 67 wins?

Let's play this game, though. If they get Brogdon and Looney, what is their over-under number? Here's the team. Brogdon, Smart, Hayward, Tatum, Jalen Brown, Looney,

and your boy, Grant Williams. He is my boy. I love him. And my guy, Yabasele, who I still haven't quit on. I can't quit you, Yabasele. I can't quit you. Well, why don't you? I just can't quit Yabasele.

So that's one way to go. The other thing that's interesting is they have $25 million in cap space, and Stephen Adams makes $25 million, and OKC is completely screwed with the luxury tax yet again. So it could be a situation where OKC is like, hey, we'll give you Stephen Adams. Just give us back Robert Williams, and we'll call it a day. No?

Do you really want Stephen Adams at this point? No, not if I'm not a contender. Probably not. Yeah. Probably not. I think the over-under for that... You're better off with Brogdon and Looney. The over-under for that Celtics team I just laid out

is probably like 46 wins. So we took a hit house. Oh. Oh, I think it's around 50. You don't think it's around 50? It depends what I'm getting from Hayward. It would be a team that moved the ball a lot better. I'll tell you that much.

If you had Brogdon, you had Hayward, and we taught Jason Tatum what it was like to throw a pass, you know, maybe put him in a passing clinic. Anyway, I don't understand what happened with the 14th pick, because there were a lot of guys in this draft.

I actually liked the 10 to 25 range more than the other range. But my point is the Celtics are up to something. I'm still putting them in the losers category because the quote unquote up to something can backfire so many times. And I just want to also mention my dad is really upset after the draft

and just at one point texted me and just said, I'm going to bed. And that was it. He was done with the night. I have two more losers. Chauncey Billups, rough night. Just, I can't totally blame him because he probably shouldn't have been on the draft, but it's hard to do those comps.

It really is. But you can't like compare the 13th guy in the draft to fucking kawhi leonard like it's absurd his comps were like he almost needed a second screen experience where you just had people kind of looking confused as he did comps like well this guy reminds me of scotty pippen it's like no he's not a lottery pick what are you talking about it's not too late that sounds like a rigor bit why don't you just splice together all of his co-highlander and and run it yeah no chauncey's comps i mean call it already has a name it's called chauncey's comps who's gonna build that build the youtube of it and show these guys we did and the players that he's

when i did this unbelievable when i did the draft we came up with the comps it and show these guys and the players that he's when I did this when I did the draft we came up with the comps thing and we were super excited about it and we put real thought into it and really tried to make the comps actually realistic and now

six years later the wheels have just come off and he compared RJ Barrett to Jalen Rose in Chicago Jalen Rose in Chicago the team won like 30 games and then they dumped his contract to the Knicks. Like, well, how is that a comparison?

Jay, this is the third pick in the draft. Jalen Rose in Chicago. What are you talking about? That's not the, that's not the violation. Which one was he compared Roy Hachimara? I'm going to get his name. Really Hachimara. I need it. I need hachimara i'm gonna get his name really hachimara i need it i need six months i'm gonna get his name wrong every day i i was close roy roy hachimara i'm gonna get who did he compare him to um to he said don't get it twisted

a young kawaii leonard yeah What was that? Let me ask you this. What the fuck does that mean? I think he meant. What's a young Kawhi Leonard? I think he meant a young Kawhi Leonard like when Kawhi Leonard was 15 and he was a 10th grader in high school. I think that's the Kawhi Leonard he was targeting. When he was a freshman at San Diego State. It was when he was being recruited by San Diego State.

That's where Rui Hachimura is. Don't get it twisted. A young Kawhi Leonard. That's one of those things, because I've done the draft. You have these pre-draft meetings, and you have to tell the guys who your comps are. How do they not have producers to be like, hey, man, Chauncey,

you should probably come up with another one there, because that's insane. You just compared Rui Hachimura to Kawhi Leonard. Maybe somebody else. Do you have a backup choice? Because they had like video ready for it. The producers are like, yeah, Kawhi Leonard, good one. We'll get the video ready.

Like what? What is going on? I don't understand. That draft should be so much more fun. I'd love doing the draft the two years I did it. Like there's so much comedy. The Suns take Cam Williams 11th. He's on boards where he's like 33rd.

Nobody's questioning it. Like why do we have a draft telecast? Nobody's questioning this. Nobody's going to be like, what the F are the Suns doing? They just had. No, they did. They got that.

Cam Johnson or Cam Williams? Oh, you said you misspoke. You said Cam. I johnson definitely cam who's cam williams yeah no clearly i shouldn't be on the draft telecast either i don't know what cam cam johnson's last name is but you you weren't on tv mike here's my question with that broadcast it was mostly successful oh yeah a lot of good it was great things a lot of the choreography was good why do we why not just have reese and jay sit there together why do you need and then if you need to toss yeah why do you need other people and you have the draft people you have those other people to toss you have bobby marks to toss it to mike schmitz was good i thought he did a really good job me i agree with you you have all those guys you have people to toss it to for for for stuff you don't need three people sitting at the table that's my that's

my uh analysis chauncey was not an asset uh my last loser so this is this has been a passion of mine for a long time and now i'm gonna now i say it again. Every once in a while, I have a great idea. I'm known to have a great idea every so often. And I think I've said this idea in the podcast, but if I haven't, I'm going to say it now. The picks go too fast. Having done the draft, you have the pick goes up, you see him hug the family, he walks up,

does the awkward handshake pose with Adam Silver, goes to talk to Maria Taylor. And as that's all happening, Billis is doing his whole thing. There's just enough time to get the second person to say like something for 20 seconds. Then it goes to Maria Taylor. She does her whole interview. And all of a sudden now we're moving to the next pick. It's not nearly enough time. It should be like 12 to 15 minutes when we're in the lottery because I mean, so much shit's going on. We had multiple

trades in this thing. The NBA is now this 24-7, 365-day sport and they've rushed through the draft. It's fucking nonsensical. So my idea is the lottery should be its own night. It should be on ABC on Thursday night. It should just be picks one through like 12 or one through 14, whatever. And make it like 12 to 15 minutes between each pick and really have fun and get Woj involved in each thing and really, really do it. And then the second night can just be,

you know, put that on ESPN and it's picks 15 through 30 then the second night can just be, you know, put that on ESPN and it's picks 15 through 30 in the second round, maybe even have some supplemental picks for the third round. And now we have all this chance to digest what happened in the, in the first 14, but then it's like, all right, what's going to happen today? The first team in the clock is 15. It's like, what happens to the NFL draft when it's like the second round is really fun. The NFL draft, cause they give us a whole day to think about the second round. Why don't they do this house?

Give me any, give me one reason. I, I'm, you're not going to get one reason out of me. I love it because it not only, uh, does it,

I feel rushed. I feel rushed trying to, you know, digest what the guys best available and all what's the background here and what's the fit and everybody's the whole the tempo of the thing is out of uh out of whack but he what one of the reasons i really love this idea of separating the lottery portion from the rest is because it it feels like it would greatly increase the trade. Yeah. You'd have more time. You had a full overnight. For the teams,

not in the lottery to, to adjust to what just happened and be, you know, thoughtful about what, what they wanted to do a full overnight. I think it could be just an incredible wild, wild West kind of thing. Well, and then a lot more teams.

Wait, hold on, hold that thought because you also have, if, if you have more time between picks in the lottery, and it's like 15 minutes between picks or 12 minutes, now we have more times between picks for tab trades. I heard from two different people who were involved with teams tonight that they almost had trades and they ran out of time because the other team had to do a pick.

This happened twice. 12 minutes is enough. Because at 12 minutes with 14 picks, that's like a three-hour broadcast. Yeah. And that's a good, lengthy, proper way to sell your industry. It's a huge sports night for all of us and casual fans too because it is the moment of hope for casual fans. I can't tell you how many people, Wizards fans, that I heard from,

just folks that pay attention to the team locally here, that are like, okay, what do you think about this guy? They pop up because it's the NBA draft, and the NBA draft is, is a, is a moment on the sports calendar. You've, you've done it again, Bill Simmons.

Well, send that right to Adam Silver. No, no, no, no. Send that one direct on the hotline. We need to go further. The two people in charge of this are Connor Schell and Burke Magnus.

Connor's, Connor's been my friend since like 2006. We created 30 for 30 together. These are our, yeah, these are your homies. Magnus went to Holy Cross. I'm calling them out by name.

Somebody will forward this. Hey, fellas, get your shit together. This should be a two-night affair. Thursday night ABC. Friday ESPN. Just do it. Listen to me. What are you doing? This is great. Why are we rushing through the draft? I can't wait. This has to happen now before we go

out let's we're gonna premiere the refeastables explain the concept to us well first of all i'm jealous because all of the enormous success deserved success of the brilliant conceit of taking movies and television shows and you know, series as they're happening and giving the takes and everything. And the brilliant idea of running it through and highlights and all of that. So I had to invent my own version of this as it applies to the house of carbs. And this is a thing that we naturally do anyways. All of us hungry homies all of us taste buds we love comparing notes about terrific meals that we've had and it's one of the things in

particular that you love to do to me which is go out and have some incredible meal with an incredible group of friends and start sending pictures and be like hey house if you lived in la right this is what you know this is what you could be doing so we're launching this is going to be this is the uh the virgin episode of refeastables a new segment on house of carbs where occasionally we will have on on the show uh folks from our walk of life friends in our in our giant network who come on who've had incredible meals maybe they've snapped a few pics of them we and they're just going to come on and walk us through the the beautiful meal that they've had the experience they've had and tonight

is is the the first episode the first segment of this you had a great dinner last night i like in true house of carbs fashion your intro was too long for it. Your signature. We all have our special charm. We've done this on your podcast. We just weren't smart enough to call it the refeastables. And then you came up with it and it was brilliant. But when I went to Major Domo for the first time,

I came on House of Carbs and talked about the entire meal with you and you made groaning sounds the whole time. So that's what's going to happen here. It's true. So a restaurant called Angler, which is famous in the Bay Area, opened up in Los Angeles kind of on the down low the other night.

And the head chef is Josh. Josh Skeens, who is from the restaurant Cezanne, which got three Michelin stars, which Chang said when it got the three stars was the best restaurant in America and probably the world. And this guy on the down low opens up another Angler in LA in the Beverly Center. And it's open, but I'm not sure people know about it yet. So Chang's like, we have to go. He's cooking. It's going to be amazing. Chang's in town too.

So we go. It's me, Chang, Cho, Chen, and Yang. And the first thing that comes out is a banana pancake. Wait, wait. We can't just blow by. This is one of your honorary Korean dinners. Paige, it's my honorary Asian.

You have your honorary Korean card. I have my honorary Asian card. Yeah. So this was... I was invited as the token white guy. You just run through with Chang, Cho, Chen, and Yang. Well, it's the crew. Those are the boys. And Simmons.

That's right. That's the crew. But we, I mean, for context, everybody knows we have to remind folks. They had a cap slot for a white guy, so they invited me. And well done. The first course was a banana pancake with this crazy caviar on it.

No cream cheese in the caviar, just like big ass delicious eggs, not too fishy. And we didn't know what it was. They just gave it to us. And it was like, this is a pancake with caviar. And then you bite into it. I think it was the best thing I've ever tasted in my life. And it was crazy to start with the best thing I've ever tasted in my life

to start the dinner that way. But it really was amazing. What color was the caviar? It was dark. It was dark. Was it black? No, it was like dark brown. And it wasn't that fishy.

And they ladled it on the top so that it was almost like if you have an English muffin that has a ton of jelly on it and you don't want the jelly to tip off the muffin. So you have to eat each bite carefully. So little caviar extended. Oh, I was imagining because you said pancake that you wrapped it around. It was just a flat, flat round pancake. Like a wafer. Yeah, like that you'd make for your little son

when he was like two years old. Only it was like the greatest version of that. So we started there. We had, I mean, he just brought out a bunch of stuff. We had antelope tartare. Sure, why not? There was a massive oysters platter that you would have loved. Ooh, I love oysters.

There was big, big, big ass prawns. Oh. And here's the thing. It's one of those things where he has, it's like really fresh fish. It's not, there's no frozen anything. It's the fishermen are catching the fish and bringing it over to the restaurant. And then they're in the fish tanks. And, you know, the fish is like, you felt like it just had been murdered two minutes before.

Could you pick them out? Like, give me this prawn. I don't know if you could. You're about to die. The prawns were huge. You're about to die. They had like the towels because it's like they didn't want, you know, they knew it was messy. So they had all that stuff going on.

We had a giant oysters thing. We had this trout that you peeled off the skin and you just kind of dug into could you eat the skin? you could the boy said I wasn't Asian enough to enjoy that one which I thought it hurt my feelings

that they felt that way we had a soft shell crab that I'll put a picture on the Instagram story. It was out of control. It was like, you realize that most crab is probably frozen. And even though if they're pretending it wasn't, usually it is. And this was like the crab had just been murdered three minutes before the dinner.

And it was nice and soft and gorgeous. And you would have loved that. So good. I and soft and gorgeous. And you would have loved that. Uh, so good. I love soft shell crab. They had a soft chicken, which is the same way like Chang makes it. There's this new way of cooking chicken where it's almost like boil baked.

So it's not really cooked and it just gets super duper, duper soft and wet. You know what I'm talking about? I don't know what that style is called. Oh, of course. I'm mangling all this, but that was awesome. We had venison cut, you know, like really old school filet mignon style,

but with the venison, that was ridiculous. Venison to me is a 10 out of 10 every time, if it's good. Well, these exotic meats, you have venison and antelope. Yeah. And then he made these baked potatoes that it seems like it takes two days to make

and Chang was berating him about how crazy it is to spend this much time making a baked potato, but it's like he skins it, you put it back together, you bake it, then you take it out, then you bake it again, then you bake it.

It's two days, and we're just like plowing through these baked potatoes that they had painstakingly made. It was really two days to make a potato? It seemed like it was like a day and a half, yeah. And it was like, so you're eating it, and there's like a baked potato bite,

but then there's like a, you know like when you get really good hash brownss and the hash browns are kind of crispy. So, but that was kind of in the baked potato. So each bite, you didn't know whether you're getting like the old school baked potato bite or like that kind of crispy hash brown bite. It was out of control. You would have gone nuts. It was out of control you would you'd gone nuts it was out of control so that happened and then they had a dessert thing with five different desserts and uh it was all over the map like things in coconuts that had ice creams and it uh it was it was an outrageous dinner and i probably left a soft opening of Angler or are they open open? It's a soft opening. Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to happen in LA.

We'll see how it goes. It's in the Beverly Center, which is a giant mall here. And it's an unorthodox location, but it's also in the middle of everything. And it's close to like five cities. So how was that? How was that for the first Refeastables? Did I answer all your questions? Yeah, it's also in the middle of everything and it's close to like five cities so how was that how was that for the first refeastables did i answer all your questions yeah it's terrific i i now have another thing to add to my must visit in la list it just keeps growing and growing because the food scene in la is just too much to to handle these days caviar and a banana pancake. I don't know what else to tell you, House.

I'm here for it. I'm ready. I'm ready, Chef Josh. These chefs, as we head into the next decade, that take these two things that seemingly have nothing in common, and then they figure out how to make them a delicious marriage, is my favorite trend of this decade, even though it's not a trend. I'm sure it's been going on forever. But it really seems like we've stepped up our game with how we do these marriages, food marriages. Shouts to David Chang. He's got a fried chicken and caviar thing at more than one of the restaurants,

more than one of the mobile foods. Yeah, those are ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, House. I think we did it. I think we covered everything fairway rolling uh you can hear that as we head toward the british open fairway rolling's been extremely entertaining i guess we did i meant to talk about brooks but we're out of time the the i'm all in on brooks completely and and if he's ever going head to head with tiger in a tournament, I'm going to be conflicted.

Brooks has become my guy. I mean, it could be as soon as this coming British Open. Yeah. So you think that's in play potentially? Well, you have to get over the sort of obvious thing of Roy McIlroy, who grew up in Northern Ireland and Graham McDowell, who grew up on this golf course he's been playing pretty well also so if you want you know if and the Europeans have been quite good in the open championship uh you know Molinari won it last year um but other than that sure why not the best player in the world is Brooks Koepka

he's I loved when he said he'd never had a hot drink. That was my favorite moment of the month. Why would I have a hot drink? I live in Florida. I grew up in Florida. Why would I have hot drinks? So good. Brooks Koepka, you're the best. House, thanks for staying up late. Congratulations on Rui Hachimara. And who's the other guy you got? Oh, and the Admiral. You got the Admiral. And Jonathan Simmons, I think, unless we already waived him. Oh, and they said John Wall did like 20 minutes on the exercise bike today.

So things are looking up. Things are looking up. As soon as we get it, everything will be off and running as soon as we get a GM. Do you need a GM for for a draft and free agency? How does that work? No. Nope. Not necessary.

Don't need one this whole season. Don't bother. I like when Leontes got mad about the Masai Ujiri rumors. It's like, we've never contacted him. It's like, maybe you should admit you tried to contact him. It's not a dumb thing to contact the best gm in the league right now right well and how about this it helps explain what the fuck has been going on for the past month as opposed to the dead silence and like the lukewarm gestures towards tommy shepherd who deserves better and you know the kabuki dance with tim connelly that

ended swiftly and unsuccessfully and then there's nothing in terms of progress as the draft approaches and free agency approaches we're just going to take our time okay take take your time don't try and explain it with a perfectly logical we're swinging for the fences thing it's i i don't know. I have mixed feelings, as is evident. Do you think it's funny that the acting Wizards GM right now, Tommy Shepard, was the same name as the character from Above the Rim who practiced in a playground by himself without a ball? Because his best friend Nutso had died by falling to his death on a dunk, And he had trouble adjusting to death. So he used to just play basketball outside without a ball for hours on end.

Do you think that people mentioned that to the real life Tommy Shepard? Is it the same Tommy Shepard? Could be the guy from above the rim. And then he goes in the climactic game against Tupac's team. He's wearing long pants and scores like 10 long twos. He brought back the long two in that. Remember that? This is why I always had a problem with Obama.

Why? Obama tried to be this dude that was like a baller, and he kept showing up in mother effing sweatpants. I mean, come on obama yeah why do you think he did that you think he had like like skinny legs or something i mean i'm sure he has skinny legs but i i feel like it was a some combination of self-consciousness and like somebody said something to him like the president can't be in shorts or some kind of weird protocol historical thing is my guess but

that wasn't my favorite look for a ball. When somebody's playing pickup basketball in sweatpants 19 out of 20 times it's a red flag. 20 out of 20, the 20th time, the guy's so awesome it's his way of being like, fuck off

you, I'm going to wear sweatpants and still kick everybody's ass. But the other 19 times are a red flag. You don't agree with me? I mean, I agree with all of it, of course. That 20th time, that guy is always awesome. Where he's just like, watch this. I just throw on some sweatpants. My shoes aren't even tied.

I'm going to get 10 straight threes here. House. Doesn't give a shit. House, thanks for staying up for us. We really appreciate it. I'm here for you, buddy. I'll talk to you soon. All right, before we get to Michael McDonald,

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I think Sean's stealing them. They're really delicious though. They're a nice little like three o'clock midday snack. So go to cliffbar.com slash BS, C-L-I-F bar.com slash BS for 35% off a trial pack off Cliff Bar's new whole lot of bars. While we're here, don't forget about Big Little Live this Sunday presented by Buick, Mina Kimes, Amanda Dobbins. If you go to at ringer or you go to hashtag Big Little Live right after Big Little Lies ends,

you can watch the ladies break it down. Special guest Bill Simmons. That's me coming on to do a little parent talk. So that is coming on right after the episode, which is a really good episode, by the way. Has a little parent assembly scene. I don't want to spoil it, but Reese Witherspoon bringing the heat.

Bringing the heat this week on Big Little Lies. All right, coming up, one of my favorite musicians. Spent my life a long time. Been dying to get him on the podcast. It finally happened. Michael McDonald, here he is. Well, what an honor.

I demanded him. He's here. Michael McDonald. I don't know how this hasn't happened before. I've had a podcast for 12 years. Oh, man. Well, I'm glad to be here. Thanks.

How many podcasts have you done? Not many. Yeah? Not many. You keep a weirdly low profile, but you're also, I feel like you're around. You're available, but you also don't do a lot. Yeah. You know, these days, for me, it's pretty much touring with the band

and then the odd record every so often. Yeah. I should probably be a little more industrious in that realm. Right. And I've kind of made up my mind this year I'm going to come down to L.A. and write more. I haven't been writing that much. And when I get home, I don't do much except play some little gigs around town with friends of mine. And just for fun, mostly.

And then I attempt to go surfing once in a while. Oh, nice. Let's go backwards. Let's go to the 70s. You hook up with Steely Dan. Right. You're like, how do they even find you? How does that happen?

Well, in the oddest of random events, as I think with most anyone's career, if you look back on your life, there's always those random events, but for which a million things would not have happened. But I was playing clubs in Los Angeles. I came out here for a record deal in 1970, recorded an album that hopefully will never surface. And it was at RCA Records. So I immediately got thrown into the studio, which I did not deserve a job I did not deserve whatsoever. Was it because of your voice or because of the way you played piano?

No, I played piano for him. And he needed to feed me. He would just throw me on dates to pay me union scale so I could pay my rent while I was out here working for him as an artist. And it's like a whole scene here at this point, right? Yeah, you know, it was. LA was epicenter for records. You just got the Eagles are going on and that whole sound.

And a lot of people from the Midwest were coming out here to try to make it into the record business, myself included. And so getting to meet those guys was random but very fortunate. And I played some club gigs and some casual gigs with them. And they were already in the session scene, which I was never going to last very long in that myself. I just didn't play that well. But this guy had used me in spite of that you know and uh but having met Jeff uh he was getting ready to go on the road he had just finished the Pretzel Logic album with Steely Dan yeah getting ready to

go on the road with those guys and uh they were looking for um somebody to play some keyboards and sing some backgrounds and so he he had remembered playing a gig with me like a year before that. And oddly enough, found my phone number and called me up and said, come on down and audition. So I threw my little Wurlitzer piano with all of about 25 keys that still worked

and in the back of my Pinto and drove right to rehearsal and auditioned and got the gig, you know. When Steely Dan's touring in the mid-70s, like how many people are we talking? Are you playing baseball stadiums? Are you playing 2000 seat venues? You know, not huge.

You know, maybe 3,000 to, you know, if we played a festival kind of thing, there might be 10,000 people out there. But we didn't do many of those. We did pretty much just, you know, singular gigs. And at that time, it was anywhere from like maybe 3,000 to 5,000 people would show up. Who was the competition at that point? Like who was on your radar? Because like Fleetwood Mac's out there at that point.

Yeah, I think that the Steely Dan era that I was in, it was a little bit prior to the huge success. Yeah, I guess, yeah, that was 76. Oh, I'm sure they were touring, you know. We were kind of oblivious, you know, because first, the band had a very eclectic kind of audience or enigmatic kind of audience you know uh coming from new york that was more of a very artsy kind of audience and whenever we would go back there to play there were these kind of uh you know obsessed devotees of the band you know that uh um but uh they were i remember they

were as like grown up they were always like really respected but it's been interesting like this century in the streaming era, I think their music has really done well with that stuff. I think there's a tale to it that some other bands from that era didn't have. No, I toured with them a few years ago, and I would just sit there to listen to the band. I just heard them recently. But it always strikes me funny how the music is so weird,

and yet they were the darlings of pop radio for at least a decade. It always strikes me funny how the music is so weird. Yeah. And yet they were the darlings of pop radio for at least a decade or more. And still, people really identify with this music that isn't anything like pop music that we're used to as far as the rules of pop music. But there's always been those artists that do that. Burt Bacharach was like that, you know, to me. He was, he wrote such great songs, but he broke all the rules, you know, that people would, you know, any A&R guy would, self-respecting A&R guy would go, people will never understand that. They won't like it, you know.

It's above their heads, you know. But, you know, you find that when you strike that resonance with an audience, there's really nothing above the audience's head that they can't appreciate if it's got that something, that harmonic convergence with, you know, people as a whole. But I still, like I said, I've always found it amazing that these guys were such top 40 icons. So then you end up, the Doobie Brothers pull you in. Yeah, that was Jeff Baxter went on to play with just about everyone that was touring. Yeah.

After he left the Steely Dan group. And he was out with Elton John and the Eagles and the Doobie Brothers. And he kind of stuck with the Doobie Brothers. And then at a certain point in time, they pulled me in just to kind of fill in temporarily for Tom Johnson, who was taking a medical leave, a hiatus, you know. And these guys, you know, they had like that kind of brutal management, you know, they just kept them on the road. You know, they were always on the road, always booking gigs. And, you know, there was a point in time where they just kind of ran themselves

into the ground and, you know, I think at one point, at one tour, they just mutinied and all got flights home. Right. But they were back at it at this point. And Tom's health was, you know, at the time, he just needed to take a break. So I was filling in, you know, as I mentioned, just, you know, at the point in time, temporarily. So you just needed like another voice and just a backup, whatever. Yeah, they just needed a keyboard player.

And, you know, so I, and then I wound up staying on with them, you know, and then doing and just a backup, whatever. Yeah, they just needed a keyboard player. And then I wound up staying on with them and then taking it to the streets. It's such a fascinating, I don't think there's another story like it where you have this band that existed in a specific form. And then you came in and that form changed into this other form that kind of kept what made the first band famous. But then you added this whole other element to it. And then it was these two dueling elements that kind of everybody figured out how to work together for like five, six years.

Yeah, it worked for a while. And I think whoever loves the Doobie Brothers usually has their preference. But the band was more of a guitar rock band. But the band was always very eclectic. They always did everything from slat key music to kind of folky kind of stuff. Right. You know, kind of classic rock almost kind of stuff, R&B stuff. You know, it was always a very eclectic band.

So maybe for that reason it worked. And I remember when we toured, when I was with them for the years I was with them, thinking that I don't know of any other band that has this kind of songbook to draw from. I mean, our show was just, you know, all over the map, you know, but audiences seemed to like that. Well, you know, the year, the farewell concerts in, I think 82. Yeah. And I was in some pharmacy and like four years later, you remember they saw the cassettes in the pharmacy for like a dollar and it was like Doobie Brothers farewell concert. And I was like, what the hell is this? So I got it. And I had it for like a dollar and it was like doobie brothers farewell concert and i was like what the hell is this so i got it and i had it for like 10 years and now it's now you can hear all of them on streaming because all of them are on there but what's really fascinating

about it is the variety of songs in that two-hour concert it's like seven different bands kind of thrown together in this one thing but it makes sense and it worked. You know, and I just don't know any other band that was like that. Yeah, I don't know of any band that could have gotten away with it. It was just, you know. You're playing Jesus Is Just Alright, the minute by minute. It's like, these songs have nothing in common. Right, right.

No, I know. But it kind of worked. It had like a specific vibe. There's a really good video of that too. It really seemed like a fun, it was like a specific era which we'll talk about the yacht rock stuff later but like it's outdoors everybody's just happy there's like a vibe people are wearing white it just kind of had a feel to it yeah no you know it was yeah it was you know pathetic in its own way but but a lot of fun you know i mean those those times

you know you think about it and you think about, you know, what was socially relevant then. You know, music, we were never one of the, you know, the more politically, the lyric-oriented bands, but we had our, you know, you always tried to write about what was going on around you, you know. Yeah. I guess Takin' It To The Streets streets was kind of that one of those songs for us and and you know a lot of other things but um the 70s by comparison to today was a very innocent time

you know and yeah music was still just kind of feel good you know people wanted to kind of go to a band with the name doobie in the title yeah you know it was a time to party you know if nothing else you know the uh the what's happening thing was i did the first time as a kid i was like oh these guys and that became this iconic two-part episode right which i'm sure you've heard about for the next 40 plus years. Ah, hello there. The Doobie Brothers room, please. And I'll speak with any Doobie who do be in. Ah, hello there.

Ivy Roger Thomas. Well, we had a crazy publicist got us this gig you know to do this thing and uh we thought it was ridiculous you know like and no self-respecting rock band would go on you know a primetime sitcom television show it would yeah the kiss of death it was like you actually performed you played a couple songs yeah and uh kyle do you know this episode kyle's generation doesn't know i'm sorry they go on what's happening and rerun is bootlegging the concert but the thing falls out of his pants and it turns into a whole lesson about how music piracy is a bad thing it's amazing it was very uh yeah it was way ahead of its time really yeah um but um yeah and we yeah, and we were so against it.

But we did a lot of crazy stuff. We were on the Dinah Shore show. Oh, yeah. And it turns out that actually it wasn't a bad thing, and we had fun. We just kind of were. I would imagine it probably helped you. I would imagine it probably helped you. It probably raised your profile in some way.

A bit, yeah. Because so many people watched those sitcoms in the 70s. Well, to this day, a lot of kids grew up and that was the first time they ever saw us. Yeah. And I remember as a kid, a lot of the acts that I grew up loving, the first time I saw them was on Shindig. You know, remember it was a show called Shindig. And, but for that show, I don't know that I would have ever become aware of Marvin Gaye and the Supremes and, you know, a lot of the acts that are now pure Americana. When did you feel like your thing was taken off in the whole Doobies

framework? Because they had some monster hits off in the whole Doobies framework? Because they had some monster hits there in the 70s and you were responsible for a lot of them. But did you ever anticipate that was even going to happen? I used to fantasize that some of the people I knew in the music business and bands that I knew, like one of the members might get sick and they'd call me up and give me a job for even just a while, you know, which is kind of what happened, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But I mean, you know, I remember, you know, cause I was just playing clubs in Pasadena as far as Santa Barbara and little joints, you know, here and there, and then doing whatever sessions I could get, you know.

But I remember when the first Doobies album that I was involved with, Taken to the Streets, came out, Warner Brothers took out a billboard right there by Warner Studios. Yeah. And I remember sitting there in my car, smoking a joint, looking at the billboard for like an hour, just going, wow. Having no idea what would come next. But, you know, it was just such a change from everything I had been exposed to up to that point, you know, kind of robbing Peter to make Paul.

But, you know, and again, I like – Are you single at this point? Yeah, I was single. So that was an advantage because some of the stuff you were singing about. Well, that and I, you know, all I really cared about was making enough money to buy gas and groceries and pay some rent, you know. Yeah. I never really was that motivated, you know, other than to play in bands. I had great fun doing that. And if I could make a living at that, well, I was happy, you know.

So I've had a running joke about like some of the songs you wrote. It was like, what kind of, what kind of breakup did he have? Where it's like, what a fool believes minute by minute. Oh, I can let go now. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had like some of the best breakup or this relationship isn't working out music. And it was ever made. It's funny because I always kind of thought of, I was writing about other people when I wrote those songs. Oh, no, no.

But that ruins the mystique. Well, I can let go now, on the other hand. It was a girlfriend. We had parted ways, and she actually said that to me. I ran into her later, and I said, hey, how are you doing? You been all right? Because it wasn't easy to, you know, it never is, you know, and she said,

no, I'm fine. She goes, you know, I finally got to where I can let go now, you know, and I remember thinking, wow, that'd be a great. I found that in my usual self-centered to the extreme, you know, manner. But I mean, minute by minute, it's like, well, yeah, I'm going to be holding. In my usual self-centered to the extreme manner. I mean, minute by minute, it's like, minute by minute, I'm going to be holding on. Yeah. I just had that conversation with my daughter driving down here. I played her Aretha Franklin's version of What a Fool Believes.

Oh, wow. And she goes, so what's this song about? And is this about you? And I said, no, no. I just, you know, train of thought that, you know, I got on and thought, well, you know, I'll write a song about a one-sided relationship where the one person really thinks it was that way for both people. Right. And it's kind of clueless to the fact that he was the only one who saw it that way, you

know. There's got to be an idea there somewhere. But she's, you know, like with my kids, they always like someone else's version of the song. Is that true? Yeah. Well, they're probably too close to just you every day to conceive of you as like this voice singing these lyrics.

Yeah, no, no. I think my daughter mentioned to me, she goes, you know, dad, you're going out with Chaka Khan. She's really dynamic live. And she's, what are you going to do when she starts mopping up the stage with your limp carcass? I'll just, you know, do my,

I just keep my eyes closed, you know. So the doobies goes till 82, but at some point in the early 80s, you know, you're going solo and I'm sure you're getting offers. Now I feel like the way musicies goes till 82, but at some point in the early 80s, you know you're going solo, and I'm sure you're getting offers. Now I feel like the way music is now this decade, it's almost like we don't have bands anymore. Everybody's solo coming out of the gate, and people are thinking that way when they're

14, 15, 16. Your era was more like, I got to be in a band, but now it's totally different. Well, I always preferred being in a band because I just always liked the camaraderie of that and the collective mindset of the music. I mean, even with the Doobies, when I joined them, people say, well, you really changed the Doobies. But honestly, it was a collaborative effort. What happened when I joined them had a lot to do with the overall part of jeff baxter had a lot of uh influence in the band as much as i did and all the other guys you

know we we kind of collectively came up with the next musical step we were going to take it wasn't just me also like bands last five to seven years and when you came in it was probably when the band was going to peter out with whatever that sound was anyway, and you're bringing this other thing. There's this weird – so this channel called Access has all these music documentaries. They made some Doobies documentary a few years ago, but it's always like some of them are like they're produced by the band or whatever. So it's not like the highest quality documentary, but I never realized that there was like this whole the old sound

versus the new sound thing, which I thought was like, who cares? Yeah, I don't think the band cared as much as some of the audience might. Because there are people, when I went out with Steely Dan, or no, the Dukes of September, it was Boss Skaggs and Donald and myself. And it was kind of something we wanted to do kind of self-indulgent really yeah we put together we got to play with this band that was better than probably any all the band as good as all the bands we'd ever been in and uh we did all these songs we did it we got to pick the songs we wanted to do and we largely picked from an old uh songs that we did as kids you know yeah growing up in bands, you know.

But all of a sudden you get to do this great old Fontella Bass song with a band that's killing it, you know. And it was, for us, a lot of fun, you know. But some of the audience, especially the Steely Dan devotees, were not happy. They were like, what's going on? And they let us know. Yeah, where are our heads?

And so there was nights when, you know, you know, just people sitting in the third or fourth row just wouldn't let up. It was like, you know, why don't you play some other stuff we know and love? You know, enough of this old stuff. But, you know, we had fun

if no one else did. But I think a lot of people enjoyed it. I do wonder if you guys created the Farewell concert. I don't know if anyone had done that before because it was marketed a specific way. Like, we're done. Here are the last couple times you can see us. And I don't know if that had happened before.

We might be the only band that actually lived up to the title Farewell concert. You did. Because every band that does it usually comes back the next year. It's like a wink-wink. Yeah, it's like a wink-wink thing. But we actually left the building.

But, you know, I don't think we were the first. But, you know, it was time, you know. I mean, I think the band as it was in the evolution of the band that I was part of, I think had run its course. Well, you also must have been ready to do your own thing, too. Yeah, I was kind of reluctant to do that, to be honest with you. It scared me to death, to be quite honest with you, especially the first live gigs I did.

I can't remember being that frightened about anything in my life. But then you get used to it. Did you get stage fright initially or no? Well, then you get used to it, you know. Did you get stage fright initially or no? Well, I did have quite a bit of stage fright. Not so much stage fright as just having to be the only guy that's supposed to do all the talking. Because even with the Doobies, Pat did all that. Yeah.

And he was the front man for the band. And that was fine with the rest of us, you know. Did, were you dating at the time? What was going on? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I dated. You must have had some cachet. You know, I wasn't together enough to make any use of that.

Big head of hair. You know, I was still kind of goofy and socially inept, you know. And we, again, you know, we toured so much. We were on the road so much. Mostly when I came home, I spent whatever two weeks I had at home in my bathrobe watching Cal Worthington smoking lots of pot. It wasn't exactly a life that anyone should admire. But we were just on the road so much. And I remember actually one tour, we were out for six months straight and without going home and we was our last couple

gigs and i actually started to suffer anxiety panic attacks at the thought of going home and being on my own not being with these 25 other people wow Wow. And somebody telling us where to go next, you know. The idea that I had no idea how to go home and just wake up and, you know, make a pot of coffee or, you know. Yeah, you become like a nomad at some point. You do. You kind of become a creature of, you know, I don't know what day it is and it doesn't really matter if I did, you know. Someone's going to wake me up and tell me where to go. And we're going to sound check as usual.

And then we're going to do the gig. So then you had a whole Motown part where you got into that. Yeah. You just kept going and going and going. At some point, you became an institution. That was, for me, one of the most fun eras of my solo career that I ever experienced. My first thought was, why me? You know, why are they even asking me? You know, there's so many great young black artists who really could carry this legacy, you know, so much better. And the only reason I actually said yes

was because I had sung this stuff so much growing up in clubs. Back in the day when a top 40 band, the measure of a good top 40 band was how much can you sound like the artist? So I kind of grew up having my own take on mimicking the singers whose records I was doing in the club. I would learn the little licks they did, and I would learn, without actually imitating them, I would try to just get a feel for their nuance, you know.

And so I thought, well, you know, at least I'm coming to this armed with that. You know, I've sung these songs, and I wouldn't mind singing them on record for sure, you know. But you're conscious of the, I'm a white guy, and this is Motown. Yeah, you know, it seemed odd to me. But then I thought, well, you know, and then there was all this talk about, well, we'll get like some hip hop producer to do it. I went, you know, that's not the project I want to do, especially out of respect for these artists and the songs, you know.

I don't want to chop them up into loops and do all that crazy shit i i would like to uh get somebody who could bring that kind of a ethereal kind of well kind of the way george martin brought his production value to the beatles doing smoky robinson yeah i mean or simon climey he produced the pilgrim album by uh eric clapton which to me was almost in some ways, maybe subconsciously, almost an homage to Curtis Mayfield. It was like the stuff that Eric was writing at the time just had that great feeling of that kind of soul music from Chicago in the 60s that felt really good,

but it was kind of lilting. It was really early hip-hop is what it was. Yeah. But so I thought, well, you know, if we get a really great British producer, and Simon, I love that record that they did, their Pilgrim album. And so they asked him, and he was up for it. And I think that was the moment in time that the Motown project became a success for me, you know, was to be able to go in and let Simon kind of help put these tracks together. So at what point do you start raising a family?

At what point do you have to start bouncing? That was... How much am I going to be on tour versus how much do I want to be home, all that stuff? Yeah, like all things, it kind of took on its own destiny. At the time, I was thinking and encouraged by people at the label, like, hey, Warners was always so good to me, that label. They believed in me probably more than they should have. But it was like, hey, this next record, you know, your second solo album,

it's got to be, it's the most important record you're going to do. You know, you want to get out there, you want to be touring, you know. And so my design was to get in there, do a record, get some singles, you know, get back into the touring circuit and start to build that part of my solo career, which did not happen. But looking back, it was great fortune because my son was born around then,

and it gave me time to kind of stay at home with him when he was a baby that I wouldn't have had. And I was just kind of newly sober then. I just had kind of went through my went through my, you know, drugs and alcohol stage was. I didn't even know you had a stage. Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, I was leaving that behind me and you know, for me to go back on the road and all of a sudden have a successful album probably would have been the kiss of death, you know, I probably would have started to think, oh, I got this, you know. Right, right, right. But so I was able to kind of stay close to home

and keep writing and kind of connect back to L.A. and the people I knew here and start to write with people and kind of put my solo band together at a more less frenzied pace, you know? That time that, you know, when you came to prominence, basically 75, 76, 77, you know, when you came to prominence, basically, 75, 76, 77, you know, there was so much partying, all that stuff, and people didn't realize certain drugs were bad for them and stuff. Do you look back at that and think, oh, my God? Like, there was just no awareness of basically everything.

Everybody's just having a good time. And then at some point, everybody looks at each other and goes, oh, wait, some of this stuff's bad for us. All right. We should settle down a little time. And then at some point, everybody looks at each other and goes, oh, wait, some of this stuff's bad for us. All right. We should settle down a little bit. And the nature of anything like that, you know, like, you know, addiction sneaks up on all of us and we all are usually people who are going, hey, you know, that's not me, you know. Yeah, that's him. I got this, you know, I can handle this, you know, until it's so far gone and your resolute stubbornness and incredible denial that's expounding, you know, as the situation gets worse. Yeah.

You don't become like less or more apparent. It doesn't become more apparent to you that you got a problem. Right. Usually, you become more resolute and your infinite capacity to lie to yourself becomes delusional at that point. So the chances of anybody getting sober, as far as I'm concerned, are like the same chances that the universe would be created in less than a second from absolute nothing. Yeah. And I look back, the longer I'm sober, the more I look back with incredible gratitude that some random chain of events led me to a moment where I went, the jig is up here. I better get on the bus or I may not be here when the bus comes back. Yeah.

It's such a fascinating time because you see it in sports and you see it in comedy and you see it in music where it's like 77 to 85. And just a lot of people got wiped out for either they died or they almost died or it really affected the work they were doing for years and years. In sports, we lost a lot of people, especially in basketball, a lot of careers really got affected.

Absolutely. And look at all the musicians who went for opioids or all know all the things that are plaguing us you know would still be here you know uh you know i don't think anybody i don't know that any of us who really are addicts make that decision ourselves when it happens we we are kind of um i think there there is a higher power at play that go that comes in in that moment of clarity goes all right this is what it is we're having a conversation here you're either listening or you're not you know and and uh it's not like i could think my way to you know uh deciding to give all that up you know i i never could you know, and I never will, you know, not even now.

And I've, you know, I've been sober a while, but, you know, my propensity for taking the smallest resentment and turning it into something that I could drink over is still there, you know. You know, my ability to, when there's a choice to be made. Somebody said it the other day. It's like, you know, you hear the Christians say, what would Jesus do, you know? For me, it's like, what would sobriety do? You know, I'm going to make this choice or that choice. One's going to lead me to a drink,

and the other one's going to lead me to a little closer reality that some higher power other than myself's will is better than whatever I come up with. Yeah. And I, you know, that's just how I live today. I just kind of don't,

I try not to project too much into the future and I try to just keep it all within the 24 hours that I'm living in, you know. Yeah. Were you amused initially with this whole Yacht Rock thing when it took off last decade? What was your reaction? I was, you know? Yeah. Were you amused initially with this whole Yacht Rock thing when it took off last decade?

I was. What was your reaction? You know, it was funny to me. It seems like you have a good sense of humor. Well, my kids, you know, they'll never let me, you know, anything like family guy. Your kids must have loved it. When TiVo came along, I couldn't escape anything.

They would TiVo all the family guys and all the, you know, Yacht Rock on their computers. And, you know, whether I liked it or not, I was going to see it. And I always thought it was funny. And what I thought was amazing is how it kind of turned into this whole serious radio music genre. It's like a legitimate genre. It's amazing.

There's arguments about what's yacht rock and what isn't. What's yacht or what's not. I actually, I'm working on me and Jimmy Kimmel are good. I hosted yacht rock last year for an hour at the channel and me and Kimmel are going to count down our top 25 favorite songs. And everybody's got a different criteria for what is yacht rock and what isn't.

I always feel like it's gotta be from like 77 to 85. I have to imagine it could it could be played on a boat I don't know why that's important to me but it's as good a place as any really yeah it's just like it's the sun setting in Santa Barbara or San Diego or something everybody's on a boat

would this song make sense I gotta feel like you can come in the background on it in at least 50% of the songs I'm picking, that at least you could come in flying in for one harmony. But I do think there's rules. I get really mad when they use like, you know, Chicago is on the Yacht Rock.

I'm like, that's not Yacht Rock. That was pre-Yacht Rock. Yeah, they were around too early to, you know. But I look, you know, like whether Toto is Yacht Rock, I've been in actual arguments about this. That's funny. It always seems like you, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, a couple others,

but there's like the staples that have to be involved. Yeah, yeah. Steve Lukather would probably kick anyone's ass if he said that. Really? I'm sure. I feel like it's a compliment at this point, though. When you get your own channel, something's going on.

Yeah, and I always tell my son, who's a musician, look, he always loves to give me a hard time about all this stuff. We laugh about it a lot. I always tell him, look, when the relevance of your music becomes less important, your pathetic comic value may have some, you know, some use, you know. So you think it's more kind of, I actually think people really genuinely like the music. I think that's like 95% of it.

I think you're right now. You know, I think at first it was just kind of a spoof, you know, but yeah, I think it's become to some people, they might not even think about what the term even means. It's just, you know, it's just a genre, you know. Because I remember initially SCTV did a sketch, which I'm sure you've seen, where you're late to a recording session doing the background and you're like running in. Right. And that was the first time I'd ever been like, oh, wow.

This is something people have noticed that is just like in my life. But then the Yacht Rock thing happened, which was pretty early early i think it was before youtube it was probably like oh four or five but then that became a thing and then it just kind of snowballed and then last year i went to a hollywood boat concert it was you christopher cross and kenny loggins and there's like 18,000 people there people dressed like boat captains and everyone was rocking it was it was really hilarious no i know really into it well you know and no one's more amazed than than we are i mean people dressed like boat captains. That's great. Everyone was rocking. It was really hilarious. People were really into it. Well, you know, and no one's more amazed than we are.

I mean, I am, for sure. I mean, especially when I went to see Steely Dan in New York at the Beacon and went out and sat in on a song. And I can't help but look across the stage and I'm thinking, did we ever think when we were in our 20s that we'd still be taking the stage together at this point in time in our 60s, you know, our late 60s, you know. And the answer would be no, you know. I would have never dreamed that. I remember the joke in the late 80s with the Rolling Stones was like, oh, man. Yeah.

Imagine these guys will be, they might be here five years from now and it seemed amazing. Yeah. No, it's true. It does seem like nostalgia has become such a huge part of the concert industry. Like you look at the acts of like top 50 girl sing things and it's a lot of bands that, you know, have been together

for 30, 40, 45 years. Yeah. And I think a lot of those bands have earned that, like the Stones, for sure. You know, when you go to one of their shows, even now, you know, what a book of songs. You know, their encore would be a great concert for most bands. You know what I mean?

U2's like that, too. U2's been together 40 years now. Yeah, that's amazing. But I do think part of it probably has to do with the fact that people get older and they still love those bands, but they also have money to spend. I was old in the 80s. Kyle has no money.

None. He can't afford the yacht rock at Hollywood Bowl. Unless I'm a guest. No. They're not going on any yacht cruises? No, can't do it. Yacht rock cruises? Whose voice right now would you most want to do a duet with?

Is there somebody out there that you'd be like, I just want to do one song with them that would match you? Probably a lot of people. There's one female singer from Spain that I really like. Her name's Buika.

And she's kind of an iconic artist in the sense that she's been around. But she's kind of an iconic artist in the sense that she's been around, but she's kind of the voice of kind of Afro-Flamenco music, which is a very real genre in Spain. And she's just got this amazing voice in her timbre and, you know, ability to sing. And so I, you know, I've always kind of fantasized in the back of my head doing a song with her,

like maybe an older kind of a tango. All right, so we've put that out. Now somebody in her life will tell her. How did like, like you do something with James Ingram? Yeah. How does that happen? Is the studio arranged that or are you at a bar with James Ingram

saying hey we should do a song Actually Quincy Jones reached out to me about that So he sees something and he's like these two voices I gotta put them together and see what happens Right and most of the time it was a producer who

would call me you know and um because the whole duet thing i think has kind of gone off the rails but when some of the the classic ones in the 80s were really good and really good matches of people and then they usually happen kind of through the back door too yeah i'm a i'm a real believer in the fact that when you plan a duet, it's probably not going to be that great. No. But if somebody calls you at the last minute and like the other person's already sang their vocal,

it's like that far along, you know, sometimes those things just take on a life of their own. Well, it's like whenever I call you a friend, which I think is a classic Yacht Rock song. Yeah. That's always on any playlist. But Stevie Nicks wasn't a classic Yacht Rock song. That's always on any playlist. But Stevie Nicks wasn't supposed to be on

the song. And I think I pulled in last second. Yeah, Melissa Manchester. She wrote the song. And she's just kind of, hey, can you be on the song? And then that becomes a song that has a 40-year and counting life. It does. That's been my experience, is the things that

happen almost by accident. James and I, Yamo was the last song we wrote. We wrote three other songs that got turned down for that project. And we kept getting sent back to the drawing board, which was great fun. We became great friends during that time. But it almost got to be laughable. We were like, oh, you know. What's your biggest song that you felt like you can't believe this wasn't a hit?

Wasn't a hit? Yeah. A song that you had that you're like, this is going to be, people are going to love this. And then it didn't pan out. Oh, I don't know. Or you just never know with this stuff. Yeah. That's a good question. I think sometimes I thought there were songs that should be singles

or maybe released as singles, but like Here to Love You, I thought was kind of a cool track, the way the Doobies had done it and everything. But it wasn't meant to be. It was released, I think, as a single, but it just didn't get interaction. What about the flip of that? What was the song that you had that you instantly knew, all right, this is going to do well?

I think we felt that way about What a Fool Believes, just collectively as a band. Yeah. I don't know. It was just something about it. And I think when we cut I Keep Forgetting, we kind of felt like that was, you know. That was another one, another breakup song.

I didn't even mention that one from before. Right. I forgot. That's another member of the breakup all-stars. Right, right. I Keep Forgetting, we're not in love anymore. Well, yeah, they're all, you know, I always had a thing for sad songs. Who was that one about?

You know, no one in particular. Just, in fact, it was taken from an earlier song of that title by Mike Lieber and Jerry Stoller. You know, so it was... When did you meet your wife? I met my wife when she was 15

and I was 16. Or 19, I think. There's laws against that now but we met right here in this neighborhood not far from here

and she was out here she was signed to the Beach Boys label Brothers she's a singer yeah she's a singer and I was hired

as her piano player the guy I mentioned earlier Richard Art he was producing her also and kind of hired me to

kind of practice with her and play piano and get her ready for her and when did you get when'd you get married like 80 well we didn't get married till 83 yeah and uh we our first kid was born in 86 so when you you're doing that keep forgetting she's not looking at you like are we sure are we good everything's all right with us oh yeah no no she she knows me too well we're good good, right? I'm a sappy old songwriter. What's up with that keep forgetting? No. You're not trying to tell me anything, are you?

I don't think she ever listens to my songs that closely. So this summer you're touring with Chaka Khan? Yes. Are you, she goes first, then you go, you go first, she goes, you mix it up? How does that happen? I honestly don't know. But I know that Shaka always has a great band and always does a phenomenal show. She just kills it.

And so it's exciting for us to go out with her. Yeah. Like I say, I hope she doesn't raise the bar too high. For me, I've always kind of felt that the best other bands you can go out with, it always has the best effect. To me, I'd rather, if I follow a band especially, and I don't know what configuration we're going to do this tour in, but I'd rather follow a good band than a band that's kind of put the audience

to sleep because then they want to take their frustration out on you when you come up there but if they really got them going then it's almost easier to go up and play in front of an audience like that There's no more the Doobie Brothers farewell concerts where they've done like nine of them over the years.

We can't have another one. Because I still enjoy playing with them. I do from time to time. I haven't recently, but I never counted out because I'm still pretty much in touch with all the guys. Not everybody as much as Pat.

Pat and I talk a lot. And we see each other because we're kind of neighbors in one of the places we live and our kids stay in touch. So, you know, we see each other. We talk to each other quite a bit

and he's always mentioning, hey, you know, if something comes up, would you want to still come on? I always say, yeah, because I enjoy it. You know, those guys, they're great guys.

He seemed like a legitimately fun guy. He's a great guy. Patrick Southerland. He just had, those certain people in the bands we see him on stage just have a look in their eye. You're like, oh, that guy's trouble. No, he's a fun guy. And one of those guys that it's fun to get him to laugh because he has, you know, he likes to laugh, you know. But great guy.

And all the guys are. Tommy included, Jeff Baxter, John McPhee. That concert that I had on tape, everybody introduces the next person in the band. Oh, really? Yeah. And then it goes to you, and you have to introduce Patrick Simmons. And you're like, I'm lead guitar, lead vocals, and probably on drugs, Patrick Simmons. And he's just like, he just seems like the greatest guy.

He is. All the guys are. A great Simmons, Kyle. Yeah, another one. Yeah. Add him to the list. We'll put him on the Simmons All-Stars. Well, good luck this summer.

Man, thank you. I'm glad we did this. Thanks for having me. Yeah, this was fun. Thanks. I keep it going, but it's getting hot in the office. We got these panels. This is a-

I don't want one of us to pass out. These are hallowed halls for this place. I remember when this was Screen Gems years ago. It might still be- Oh, wow. In some areas, but Carol King wrote here and all these great songwriters. I never- I always hear stories about Sunset.

Like people- This was allegedly Frank Capra's office, but I have no idea if it's true. And back in the movie days. Yeah. So who knows? Who knows walk these halls. Feels like there's some magic. Definitely.

Ghosts for sure. Well, thanks for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you. All right. Thanks to The Zone. Don't forget to sign up at DAZN.com.

Thanks to The Ringer and The Ringer Podcast Network. Thanks to hashtag Big Little Live Sunday night. Thanks to Cliff Bars. Whole lot as the tasty new fruit, nut and seed Ringer Podcast Network. Thanks to hashtag Big Little Live Sunday night. Thanks to Cliff Bars. Whole lotta is the tasty new fruit, nut, and seed bar from Cliff Bar. This soft-baked snack bar has all the goodness you want, like pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, dry cherries, or ginger. None of the stuff you don't want. That means no gluten, soy, dairy, or added sugar.

Plus, packed with 10 grams of plant-based protein. Visit cliffbar.com slash BS for $35 off a trial pack. C-L-I-F bar.com slash BS. We will be back next week with more podcasts. Maybe I'll have some more information about the Celtics by then. Until then.