The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA Finals Overreactions, College Reunions, and Resurgent Yankees (Ep. 221)

Episode Date: June 2, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on Kevin O'Connor to discuss their initial reactions from Game 1 of the NBA Finals (5:00), Kevin Durant's comfort level (13:00), Curry's Game 7 redemption (19:00), LeBron matching Durant (22:00), and Kevin Hart's nicknames for the Cavs (27:00). Then, JackO joins to discuss his and Bill's 25th college reunion this weekend (32:00), Aaron Judge's absurd upside (46:00), and ways to rekindle the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry (55:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on June 5th. You can subscribe now on iTunes. I will tell you a little more about it during this podcast, but basically it's a 60-episode binge watch, binge listen. For anyone who either binge watches Game of Thrones or already watched it and wants to relive it or hasn't seen it before and wants to experience it in real time, we're putting up 30 of these on June 5th,

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this is the podcast for you. I will tell you more about it during the podcast. Right now, let's go Pearl Jam. All right. On the line right now, he's in the Bay Area. I was in the Bay Area last night. I zoomed in and out for game one. Kevin O'Connor from The Ringer, you wrote a piece about your quick thoughts,

the impressions you had on game one. We also had Jonathan Charks wrote a seven things breakdown, which he's very good at, about all the things he noticed. And the stuff that you guys noticed mirrored what I noticed at the game. Here's the one caveat I would say. By the way, hello, Kevin. How are you? How's it going, Bill? So here's what I think was lost.

And maybe you couldn't feel it on TV, but I could definitely feel it in person. I had great seats. My friend John Burbank, who's involved with the Warriors, Maybe you couldn't feel it on TV, but I could definitely feel it in person. I had great seats. My friend John Burbank, who's involved with the Warriors, we sat behind the basket and I was very close. And I thought the first half was so intense. It really like immediately felt like a fourth quarter game seven. I don't know if I've been to a game. I've been to a lot of basketball games. I've never been to a game that immediately kicked off with like game seven level. All the,

all the chips have been pushed to the middle of the table intensity. It was amazing. And what happened was once the words started to pull away, you could, you could kind of feel, but the air go out of both teams. But for about two and a half quarters, I felt like I was watching game seven. I know Cleveland's defense was bad. I know we can talk about all the strategy mistakes. But from an intensity standpoint, I was astonished. What did you think, Kevin? It was tense in the first half. I mean, that whole first half, it felt like it was really going to feel like this for the whole series.

And that's what felt so disappointing towards the middle of that second quarter, towards the whole second half, really. I hope we get more of that moving forward. I'm not sure if we will. I think since last night, since I wrote my piece, there's been some other things I've looked at after re-watching parts of the game.

Cleveland has a lot they're going to have to overcome. I think Golden State has ways they can improve. Cleveland's transition offense wasn't great either. There's a lot of problems that they have to move on from. They made some strategy mistakes. First of all, the pace was way too fast. I don't know whether they were trying to catch Golden State by surprise

or whether they just had so much energy from all the hype in nine days and it's a heavyweight fight and they came out. And both teams, like Golden State missed a lot of easy shots in the first half and a lot of it seemed to be adrenaline-based. You know, easy layups, three-pointers that were a foot too far. But the pace was too fast. I don't understand why Cleveland ever in a million years thought it was a good idea for them to do that.

I went back and looked at the Game 7 box score from last year. I think the final score was 93 to 89. Golden State took 83 shots in that game. Last night they took 106. So, look, this is common sense. Golden State has a better offense, they have better shooters, and they play better if the pace is faster. You don't want to give them more chances to score.

I was really surprised that Cleveland didn't try to ugly it up. But I really feel like they got caught up in the Super Bowl nature of that game. Especially before the bench guys came in at the beginning of the second quarter, it was so intense. I think all the game plans went out the window. Is that possible? They just kind of forgot what they had planned to do? You mentioned their transition. I looked on Synergy Sports. They had 23 transition opportunities last night, and of those 23 chances, they had four turnovers. They shot one for nine from two, one for seven from three. That's two for 16 total on transition.

The thing is, they were forcing a lot of those chances. Like, rewatch those possessions. Golden State was getting back on defense. They were playing good interior defense, whether it was Dava Petulia, Kevin Durant, or Draymond Green. And I think Cleveland needs to possibly slow things down because they can't force those baskets because so many of those turned back into easy transition points going the other way for Golden State. And like you said, that was the mistake I think they fell into. I understand pushing the pace because it's hard to pass up on transition opportunities, but most of those weren't real transition.

It was force. Yeah. So that makes me think that might have been the game plan. And if that was the game plan, that's a foolish game plan. It really is. Like, Golden State wants fast. They want chaos.

They want, like, long rebounds where all of a sudden they're going off and guys are finding spots. Like, I thought at halftime, I really felt like Golden State had left 25 points on the table. They didn't play well. I think you had the stat in your piece today about how in the half court they were averaging.89 points per 100 processions,

which is horrendous. Well, that was from the fourth quarter to be fair to them. Oh, okay. But they still did have a lot of missed opportunities in the first quarter. I'm going to say in the first half they missed four or five layups. They missed how many wide open threes.

It was the same thing I noticed in the Boston series and it was, I'm kicking myself a little bit although I think Cleveland will be heard from in this series. But the biggest thing I noticed from that Boston series was how many wide open shots the Celtics had and how many good looks they had.

And even when they missed, the guys were open and they had open layups. They had open post-up plays. Cleveland's defense just wasn't good in the series. Boston's offense was bad. And leaving that series,

I was like, man, if Golden State gets the shots Boston just got in that series, this is a wrap. And now you watch last night, Golden State 113 points. I felt like with the shots that they had, if they got hot in that game, they could have put up 140. Clay was awful. How many layups did they miss?

How many around the rim baskets did they miss? They didn't play well and they scored 113 points. That's not a good sign for Cleveland. But that's the scary part. After game one of the playoffs when the Cavs beat the Pacers by 1, 109-108, I wrote an article in my Takeaways column that week. What if there was no

scoreboard? Because it felt like that game, it wasn't a one-point win for Cleveland. It felt like it was 10 or 11. Last night's game, Warriors won by 22, because it felt like that game it wasn't a one-point win for cleveland it felt like it was 10 or 11 and last night's game warriors won by 22 but it felt more like 32 maybe 35 it just felt like cleveland could have could have and should have lost by more and that that's really the scary part i think for them the fact that gold they did miss those easy at-ram opportunities the fact that golden state was was missing some open threes, Clay Thompson 0 for 5. I just think Cleveland, there's a lot of areas

where you can expect Cleveland to get better. I think you can expect they're going to hit more threes moving forward. I think they're not going to be as poor in transition. But I also think Golden State's going to be better too. I just don't think they've seen the best of them yet. The role players on Cleveland sucked. So if you left that first half, if I said to you before the game,

Kyrie and LeBron are going to go off in the first half, and Klay Thompson is going to be horrendous, we would have said, all right, Cleveland's probably up at halftime. But nobody else on Cleveland's team showed up. And specifically, Korver really hurt them. Korver had, I'm going to say, either three or four, but I'm going to say four, wide-open threes. That is the whole reason they got him.

He missed all of them. Shumpert missed every shot he took. These shots were all going in in the Boston series. Darren Williams came in. He was an atrocity. Jefferson looked five years older than he was last year. Thompson was invisible. I barely even noticed him the whole game. And, you know, and meanwhile, Draymond and Clay were six for 28. That was, I felt like last night, as weird as it sounds, was the time to catch Golden State

because they didn't play that well and there was a moment in the third quarter even with how bad cleveland was playing i think it was like 80 to 68 and uh and mike brown had turned into mike brown for about four minutes like he first of all he started zaza on the second half which i i don't i just don't think zaza should play in the series but uh then replaced him with McAdoo. And they had this weird lineup out there. And it was like, wow, Cleveland, they were down 12 playing like crap other than LeBron and Kyrie. And it was like, wow, if LeBron or Kyrie or somebody gets hot, this is going to become a game.

And they just couldn't get it going. Did you agree? Like, Charks thought that they have to pick between Thompson and Love and that they cannot play both of them. I'm not there yet with conceding that you have to pick one, you've got to go smaller. Where do you stand on that? I don't think small ball is always the solution. I think a lot of the time it is.

I think for them, to Chark's point, one of the problems is Kevin Love was not good defensively last night. And Kevin Love was pretty good defensively the entire playoffs. I mean, got to give him credit where it's due. He was pretty good. The issue is that they haven't faced a team yet, obviously, like Golden State, that can beat him off the dribble. So I think, look, I think they need Kevin Love to be effective this series. I don't think, I think

you're asking for trouble if you're going small and you're relying on a Richard Jefferson or Darren Williams playing 28 minutes instead of 18. I think you're asking for a lot for those guys playing small. I think, really, they need Kevin Love to be effective defensively.

And the question is, I don't know if he can. I just don't know if he's good enough defensively against this team. He's passable in the rest of the playoffs. But what does it matter at this point? Well, we haven't even mentioned the guy who was the best player on the court last night. Kevin Durant. You know, I'm always thinking about, I always have my rankings in my head all the time. I left that game last night thinking like, wow, is that the fourth best forward of all time?

Is like LeBron and Bird and Duncan. Is there any other forward ever that's better than Durant? Durant was unbelievable last night. And there was one play, he was trying to do everything. And I think this is, I think he senses the moment in a lot of ways that this is his chance to really put himself on the map as an all-timer, to go head-to-head with LeBron, a guy that's always had a lot of success against Durant's teams. And he brought everything to the table, the speed, the length, the shooting, the passing.

There was one play in the third quarter where Kyrie, I think Curry was out and Kyrie was going to take the ball out and Durant just decided he was going to pick Kyrie up full court. Did you notice this? And Kyrie's like, really? You're picking me up full court? Durant defending him all the way up the court.

Kyrie's like, I got this. Clear out. I'm going to take KD off the dribble. Ended up trying to go by him and threw it off the backboard. And the only reason Durant did that, I think, because he was trying to show off all these different layers of his game. He was incredible. I mean, LeBron had a 28, he had like a 28-14-6

with like two minutes left in the third quarter, and he wasn't the best player in the four. Durant, I thought, was the best player in the four last night. What did you think? I mean, I think watching Kevin Durant, I wondered last night, has the game ever looked easier for a top 50 all-time player? Has it ever looked easier than it did last night?

Those open dunks, the defense, the deflections, I just can't recall a superstar in a situation where it has ever come that easy for the player. It was remarkable to watch, especially his defense. We talk so much throughout the whole season about Golden State's watch, especially his defense. I mean, we talk so much

throughout the whole season about Golden State's offense, but Durant has added a new element to their defense. There were instances where he caused deflections when LeBron tried those cross-court passes, driving the lane and forcing fast-paced opportunities, or even just preventing an

open corner three. Durant was unbelievable. He was flying. He was, like, flying is the word I always use. He was flying around the court. He looked 120% healthy. And, you know, they did something that really made me mad that the Celtics didn't do more of. They were ready for those LeBron cross-court passes.

We put, in your piece, we put one of the videos of the guys jumping the pass, or Jarks' piece, one of those. But LeBron, he loves doing that. He loves driving and just immediately in a split second firing these cross-court passes that nobody sees. And the Warriors were trying to jump them, and specifically Durant and Draymond were just ready.

They were locked in on those. And LeBron's going to need a plan B. But, you know, Durant, I always call it command of the room. You know, when you see really great players in person in a basketball game, especially when the stakes are that high, and some guys just kind of own the room. It's the same thing as, like, if you're at a party or a restaurant, a club, whatever. Just some guys kind of stand out

and have a certain swagger to them. And I felt like Durant had that last night. Like he knew where Jay-Z was sitting. He knew where Rihanna was sitting. He knew where all the celebs were. He just kind of had command of the room.

And it was really interesting to see to watch LeBron try to match it. When LeBron's always the guy who has command in the room, right? So they went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And once LeBron realized that he did not have the horses in this game, you could see him kind of ease off the gas pedal. He was going 85 to 100 miles an hour in the first half. In the third quarter, he started to downshift.

And by the fourth quarter, he's just kind of cruising around the neighborhood he was saving it kind of mentally filing away the little things he needed to do but it's it's it's so rare to have two great players guarding each other in the finals we always think like oh magic and bird it's like well they didn't guard each other you know uh when when Shaq for three years didn't really have a foil. Hakeem and Ewing, you know, we were excited about that. Duncan really never had the guy that, you know, he went against in the East in the finals. This is pretty cool.

That's my big memory from being there last night is just, wow, these are probably the best forward of all time and the fourth best forward of all time in their primes going head-to-head in the finals. It was cool to see. I think it might not be cool for Cleveland or cool for LeBron, though, because he carries such a heavy load offensively already. It's so much to ask him to also defend maybe the second-best forward of this generation in Kevin Durant.

And the question is, if you take LeBron off Kevin Durant, who do you put on him? I mean, are you relying on Richard Jefferson to do it, who's 40 years old for the whole game? Do you rely on Humpert? I don't know. I mean, I don't know what solution there is besides saying, LeBron, you've got to do both. I have an idea on this. I think you just let him get his points. I don't think...

There's nobody on the roster who's going to stop him. There's no Durant stopper. Nobody's stopping Durant. Newsflash. Not happening. He's getting his points. There were moments when it was like, oh, I'm buying myself on the right side

with Tristan Thompson guarding me. I'm scoring on you. Oh, Kevin Love. Oh, this is delicious. Hold on. Let me put some ketchup on you. Kevin Love goes and scores on him. They had nobody. And if you're going to play Shumpert on him, which I was expecting, and I think they're saving that for game two. Shumpert was a train wreck offensively. He was terrible. So if you put Shumpert in and you have Tristan Thompson in, now you're playing three on five offensively.

So is that worth it to make sure Durant doesn't get his? To me, I would put LeBron on Draymond. I agree with Charks. I would put LeBron on Draymond and make Draymond shoot threes and use LeBron as a free safety. And I would just keep throwing bodies at Durant, J.R. Smith. I'd put Kyrie on him. All right, post him up.

Just do bullpen by committee on it and just try to make sure he doesn't get 60, but worry about the other guys. The other problem they have is Curry know all the way back i mean that's about his the the stretch he's having now is as well as he's played in two years and there there was what did you notice the one great moment when love got switched on him and i think it was the second quarter and it was like oh game seven game seven redux and and curry knew it and love knew it.

And the fans, they went and were like, Oh, watch the Curry's little, little makeup sex for Curry here. And just torched him, went by, gave him 17 moves, then just went by him and did a lefty layup, scooped it in. And it was like the, the, the hidden message was I'm healthy now. Last year was an aberration. This is what happened when I couldn't score on you in the biggest play of our season. I was hurt. Now I'm healthy now. Last year was an aberration. What happened when I couldn't score on you in the biggest play of our season? I was hurt. Now I'm healthy. I'm going by you.

And I don't know, it's pretty illuminating. Kyrie's going to have to guard him. The thing is they can't guard Kyrie. So if I'm a Cavs fan, the two takeaways I have that I love from this game are they can't really guard LeBron and they can't really guard Kyrie. I thought Kyrie could get pretty much whatever shot he wanted in that game. What'd you think? Yeah. Kyrie can always get what he wants. I,

I, it seems. And you know, one of the interesting things from last night is coach Daniel on YouTube did a really interesting, uh, who coach, coach,

who coach, coach Daniel, that's his YouTube name. He's good. He's really good. really interesting piece. Who? Coach who? Coach Daniel. That's his YouTube name. He's really good. He does great stuff. Coach Daniel? Coach Daniel. He did an NBA Finals preview piece and basically one of the concepts he outlined in the video is how Draymond switches

off-ball, right? So last night in the game we saw this with Stephen Curry. Like last year in the finals, the Cavaliers would try to run screens to get LeBron on Curry. They tried to find the best matchup, and they tried that last night. But the adjustment the Warriors have made is they'll switch off the ball before the screen happens. So if Curry is on Irving, right, and let's say Thompson is on Smith,

they'll have Thompson and Curry switch as Irving's setting the screen. So instead of Curry ending up on LeBron, it'll be Thompson. It's a switch before the on-ball screen. And that worked effectively last night to completely hide Curry. There were very few instances where Curry ended up in a really bad matchup. And so not only is Curry all the way back offensively, but defensively Golden State has made that tweak to hide him defensively. And it was remarkable to see that last night

because Cleveland didn't have an answer for that. I mean, they set up for the game like you can't simulate Golden State. But that's something I feel like they should have, or probably did see on film. It's hard to figure out a counter attack to that, because it's just something Golden State does whenever they want to. And I'll be curious to see how they

attack that moving forward if they figure out new creative ways to do it. There was that fun play when Curry went to, he ran over to the corner, they basically did the Isaiah Thomas defensive tactic with Love, and love immediately tried to post up and lebron threw in the ball and draymond came flying over and just blocked it like

they were ready for all of cleveland's moves and you know cleveland the three teams they played and especially last round god god bless the celtics i love that team but man you know you're going from injured isaiah thomas in two games then he's not even in the game anymore and just this hodgepodge group of people who would not have been one of the best four players on the Warriors to Kevin Durant and Steph Curry I was talking to a friend this morning I think Durant and Curry are two of the best five players in the league even though there's seven best players in the league but you could argue like the way curry's playing now would you rather have like forget the season forget the mvp

just would you rather have stephan curry or james harden i think i would rather have stephan curry like it's just like i who would i want in a series i would rather have stephan curry i think he's in the top five somewhere and And they have two of the top five. And I was racking my brain trying to think of any other time that's happened. And it's really McKayla and Bird in 86, Elgin and Jerry in the 70s, West and Wilt in the... I mean, Elgin and Jerry in the 60s, West and Wilt in the 70s, Cowens and Havlicek, Dwayne Wade and LeBron in 2011, Shaq and Kobe for those three years. This does not happen very often. And I think this is LeBron's – the biggest challenge he's had in the finals ever.

Like 2015, he's hurt. They had injury. He wasn't hurt, but they had injuries and there were excuses. There's no excuses. He built this super team and they're all healthy. And it's not enough. And he's going to have to dip into some reservoir that he has not dipped into before. Or else they're going to get killed.

Last night I was sitting there. It's like the third quarter, early fourth quarter, whatever it was. And I'm sitting there thinking about what are they going to do if we get three more games of this? If there's three more blowouts, Cleveland gets slapped, or even if they lose in five. What answers can they find this summer to solve these issues? I mean, it's a long list.

We went through just a handful of them, and there's more to talk about from a roster construct standpoint. It's hard to figure out what they can possibly do to solve this long list of issues. It's too early to look forward, but at the same time, last night I couldn't help but think about it. Just while sitting there at the NBA Finals, when is a game being played?

I'm thinking forward. It's hard to figure that out. So let me put the brakes on for a second the home team's supposed to win game one only two guys on Cleveland played well they had a bad strategy and you know I think as I said I think I said earlier

that they had 106 shots last night and 83 in game seven the recipe for them to hang with this Golden State team in Golden State is to replicate game seven and to slow the pace down. Exactly what Jarks wrote about today. Slow the pace down, ugly it up, walk it up constantly. Every offensive play is basically either LeBron

and Kyrie together with the screen or somebody else in it. Just that constant, constant LeBron trying to get the right guy on a switch that he can torch. And that's the only way they're going to win. They need Klay to suck. They need Iggy and Draymond to miss threes. And they need these games to be like 96 to 90, 95 to 89. They need Thompson to slow it down. Thompson gets going.

And they need, you know, think about Kyrie in game four. I really think the Celtics, I know it's crazy because Celtics were just not that good of a playoff team, but I really think they were going to win game four when LeBron got those four fouls. And Kyrie just went to seven other levels. He was insane. So they need him to, I know it's like a cliche to say they need Kyrie to have an awesome game, but they need something like that in Oakland by either LeBron or Kyrie. They need one of them to have an out-of-body experience. And Kyrie has it in him him I actually was waiting last night for him to do it I was I was like oh I wonder if I wonder if Kyrie's gonna you know the scary Kyrie I wonder if he's gonna show up he never he never really showed up but that's you know that's what's gonna have to happen

because I think otherwise the Warriors are too good I think Durant's too good they do not have an answer for Durant I don't I that's the one where if you leave game one and you go, all right, what do we do to stop Durant? Everybody just stares at each other. Uh, and what do you do? I don't know. Hey,

can I tell you, uh, I sat next to Kevin Hart randomly last night who was rooting for Kevin Hart. He's rooting for the Cavaliers. And, uh, the, the three,

the three takeaways I had was he calls LeBron LJ. I think that's LeBron. You know how the players have the basketball public nickname, but then the nickname nickname, that's the real nickname. So he was calling him LJ. He was calling Kyrie

Ka. Tate loves this. Tate's on the edge of his seat. And Tate, what do you think he called J.R. Smith? J. Real. No. He called J.R. Smith Swish. Oh, nice.

Apparently that's J.R. Smith's underground nickname, Swish. He's like, come on, Swish. Come on, Swish. He's doing that. But yeah, so it was L.J., Kha, and Swish. Did not have a nickname for Kevin Love. I think it was Kevin. But he said he was rooting for the Cavs because he

had a lot of shoe stuff. But then Rihanna showed up with Jay-Z. They were four seats apart. They seemed like they did not come together but obviously knew each other. Rihanna, tall lady. I'm going to put her at about 6'1", Kevin. Maybe 6'1", Kevin.

Let's say maybe 6'5", something like that, but definitely was decked out and rooting for the Cavs and giving everybody shit, so that was pretty funny. But it was, I mean, you haven't, was that the first finals game you've been to? Yeah, that was my first finals game, Bill. It was a really cool experience. What was your biggest takeaway from just the difference between a finals game and a normal game?

I would say really everything before the game, just how many people are there early. Usually when you show up to any game, playoffs, regular season, your arena is really empty a couple hours before the game. You can just kind of sit baseline and do your thing. But at the finals, all the security's out, all the cameras are out. You know it's the finals when you step out there.

That was my first takeaway, showing up at the arena four hours before the game, or however long it was. You know it's the finals the second you're there. That was a really cool experience. And it's also, I used to love, especially when we did Countdown the two years, I used to love, especially when we did countdown the two years, I used to love getting there as early as possible because there's just so much history on the court,

you know, like, Oh, there's Isaiah Thomas. He's walking around. Oh, there's Barkley. Yeah.

It's like these guys who are in the top 30 all time are just like become these characters dissecting the game. And then every relevant media person is there there's a million good conversations to stumble into and uh and then you add the celebrity factor and it's the finals is the best it's really really cool and it's you know nba.com does those little mini movies where they try to capture it like these little five minute they use all their cameras and all that stuff and those are pretty cool those come fairly close to capturing

what it's like but man the energy in that place in the first quarter because we've got nine days of hype but then to actually watch it and there was a moment in the game when everybody kind of got to do their thing for about four minutes where it was like

Curry did his thing. And he was like, hey, by the way, I have one of the greatest handles in the league and I'm probably the best shooter. And he did a couple of those. And then LeBron was doing his thing and just going to the basket and getting in the line and doing LeBron stuff and throwing crazy passes. And then Durant's Durant and Kyrie. And it was just a staggering display of talent. And I don't think people should get discouraged about this series yet. I think Cleveland's really good.

And I think they just had a bad strategy for game one. There's some holes on the Warriors team. Zaza's terrible. Zaza played, what, 12 minutes? He's an abomination. Ian Clark was out there. It's not like the Warriors have this great

1-9 team. And role players often decide some of these games. I expect the Cavs to slow it down and do their thing. What would your prediction be for Game 2? I think Cleveland does

need to slow it down. The thing is, I'm not sure they will. Last night, there was kind of a unified message from everybody. They were all reciting the same lines. You can't turn the ball over as much as last game. You can't simulate Golden State. But the one other thing, like Richard Jefferson kind of got at the idea of slowing it down. He's like, this is the way we play it all year.

This is who we are. I just think they're going to have to slow it down. He's like, this is the way we play it all year. This is who we are. I just think they're going to have to slow it down. If they do that for game two, if they don't do it for game two, I think they're going to lose. I think they have a chance, absolutely, if they slow it down. That's like some Atlanta Falcons stuff there, right?

Keep attacking. Keep attacking. Oh, please give us the ball back. Sometimes you have to adjust to what the reality of the situation is. And you're not going to beat Golden State playing small ball. You're just not. And you're not going to beat them in a game where both teams have 100 shots. It's just not happening.

You have to. Their advantage, I think, is to. I respectfully disagree with Charks. I think they have to play Thompson and love because if they're going to go small ball, now you have Darren Williams and Iman Shumpert, all these guys that aren't good. And you're just playing into the warrior's hands.

They, one advantage they have is they can pound the boards and they have three guys who can get 15 rebounds in a game. You know, shut Thompson, love, love at 21 rebounds last night, Thompson, love and LeBron can completely dominate the boards in the game. Thompson, Love, Love had 21 rebounds last night. Thompson, Love, and LeBron

can completely dominate the boards and the paint. So to me, that's what they have to do. And they have to slow down the pace so they don't put too many miles on these guys and all that stuff. All right, Kevin,

stay out of trouble in Oakland and I'll see you at game three. I'll do my best, Bill. All right, take care. Bye-bye. Quick break to talk about Hotel Tonight. If you're like me and you're not so great at planning ahead, I've got good news for you.

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Also, don't forget, Monday, June 5th, The Ringer is launching Binge Mode. That is the first podcast of its kind that we've ever done. For the next six weeks, The Ringer's Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion,

aka the Mother of Dragons and the Maester, will dive deep into HBO's Game of Thrones. And I mean deep. Theories, explanations, the history of why this person did this and why that person did that, impressions of Robert Baratheon. Oh, yeah. I was wrong.

The first 10 episodes of Binge Mode are going to drop on Monday, June 5th, which correspond to season one of Game of Thrones. And every Monday, a new batch of 10 episodes will be coming out. And the reason we did this, and we're trying it, and look, it might not 100% work. I think it's going to work, but it might not because we've never done anything like this before.

We're hoping that either, if you've never watched a show before and you want to binge watch it up until the Game of Thrones premiere date, that you can watch the shows and then listen to the podcast and kind of experience it through them. Also, we're hoping if you want to binge watch the show

for a second time, do it and jump in with Mallory and Jason. And then third, you might just be a weirdo who wants to listen to these anyway. I'm in that camp. I'm going to listen to these, but not binge watch the shows again. But either way,

if you ever cared about the inner workers of game of thrones and every possible why did this happen why did that happen conversation and you just want to be prepared you want to be impress your friends whatever i would listen to this because it is a really good podcast so subscribe to binge mode an apple podcast soundcloud stitch, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, we call it Binge Mode because of this story in September 2015 when we were trying to figure out a nickname, I mean a name for the site, which ended up being The Ringer. One night at like two in the morning and I might have had a few drinks, I came up with

the name Binge Mode and got excited and bought the URL on the internet and then excitedly emailed Sean and Julia and Chris and Mal I was like I got the name Binge Mode and they were like is this a joke?

It was terrible this is why you shouldn't buy URLs at 2 in the morning if you've got drinks so it's been a running joke ever since and then when we did this podcast

we were like we should call this Binge Mode and it actually makes sense so full circle all the way around Binge Mode subscribe now alright we're going to call full circle all the way around. Binge Mode. Subscribe now. All right.

We're going to call my buddy Jacko because my reunion is this weekend. I want to talk to him. All right. Calling our old friend Jacko, a BS Report slash BS Podcast Hall of Famer, and somebody who is going to our 25th college reunion this weekend. So it might be the last time I ever talk to him. I don't know if he's going to have a drinking act where he drinks himself to death,

uh, out of joy or out of agony and pain. It's, it's unclear. Maybe take shots just to numb the pain of the moment, but are you scared? Are you excited? What's got,

what are your, what's your thought process right now? Um, I'm a rollercoaster of emotions right now. I'm a little bit excited. I'm a emotions right now. I'm a little bit excited. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm a little bit apprehensive. I just don't know what to expect. I plan to just, you know, I'm going to follow Bluto's advice from Edible House. I'm just going to start drinking and just continue doing that. What are the odds of you getting into a heated

political conversation with somebody after 15 drinks tonight? No, probably not, because I don't have any dog in this fight. I'm not a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination. So I doubt there's very many Trump supporters that are going to be coming after me to challenge how wonderful the dear leader is. So I think I'm probably pretty safe in that regard. Do you wish I was going, or do you think I was the only smart one here? Well, I wish you were going, but I think you're also smart for not, but I definitely wish you were going, and I wish I could somehow monetize the fact that every time someone

asks me, where's Bill, or how's Bill, then I could somehow monetize the fact that every time someone asks me where's Bill or how's Bill then I could retire. Just say he's not fucking here we don't talk anymore. The over under on where's Bill is about $7,500 and I'm going to bet the over. You have to create some fake story

like we had a falling out and we don't talk anymore or something. I'm just going to say Bill who? Just say Bill owes me money from 15 years ago and we don't talk anymore or something. I'm just going to say Bill who? What? Just say Bill owes me money from 15 years ago and I haven't talked to him since. That's what I'm going to say. That sounds good. Do you think people will bring their spouses to this?

Because I always feel like that is the reunion faux pas of all time. Well, I looked yesterday because you can see who is going to this thing, so you can see the list of attendees, and the number of bringing spouses is very sparse. Good. Now, maybe there will be spouses there, and they're just not on the official registrants, but sometimes you did see a few

where it was like, you know, so-and-so, and then it had the same name right underneath it, so you know it's a spouse. But, you know, if-and-so, and then it had like the same name right underneath it. So, you know, it's a spouse. But, you know, if you went to Holy Cross with your spouse, obviously they're going to be there, like our buddy Chip Cade. But other spouses seem to be sparse in attendance. There's nothing worse than the bummed-out spouse who's just being constantly introduced to people who aren't going to remember who they are 10 seconds later. That, that,

and also the standing there while your husband or wife is, does 25 minutes. Remember the time we, and the other spouse just stands there like looking at their shoes, you know? The last, the last reunion I went to was the 10 year and, and,

uh, I, I, I, I do some things over again. I'll just leave it at that. I haven't been back since. But yeah, it was rough.

I think the big difference this time would be the cell phones. And God, we sound so old. But the selfies and the pictures, it's going to be... I mean, it's funny because we had this Facebook page for our reunion, and everybody's been posting these photos for the last six months. And Tate, you'll love this. Tate's amused and horrified right now. Tate, when we were in college, we had cameras, and you just had a roll of like 36 pictures, and you just snapped pictures. And the roll was done, then you put another roll in, and then you would snap pictures and the roll was done

and then you put another roll in and then you would bring them to the photo store. Yeah, take them to Walgreens. Right, take them to Walgreens, wherever, and you'd get like all the things developed

and you would, what would we hope for a batting average for good photos from each roll, right? It was like 36 photos, maybe five would be good. Yeah, exactly.

Half of them would be blurry, like you'd be like, oh, that would have been the best picture, but the guy's thumb was over the lens. And now it's just like, you just keep taking photos until you have a good one. You just keep deleting them.

So I'm expecting great photos from you. And now you can see what the photo looks like, too. Right. Because you couldn't do that in the old days. There was nothing on the back of the camera to see how it came out.

And then we'd roll back from Walgreens after you dropped it off for an hour or two hours and get it back. The photos were incredible. I'm always amazed thinking back, too, about now that cell phones are so ubiquitous and we can't do anything without our cell phones. How did we ever meet people? I don't know. If we were going to a party or a bar, how did we ever meet up with people pre-cell phone it's the biggest really crazy it's the biggest thing that i can't i can't wrap my head around when i think back to college where you know you had we we had different we were obviously in our we had our group but sometimes you would drift off to this

other group on carroll street and we would go to parties and I'd be like I really hope Jacko's there and then you'd come in and it was like the Shawshank the end of Shawshank now we would just text each other hey you go to the I'll be there at 10.15

but there was a level of excitement that just I can't imagine cell phones would match. I mean, you'd probably spend more time worrying that your cell phone was going to run out of batteries, I guess. God, we sound so old. This is great. It's ridiculously old. But so, the reunion.

Yeah. Do you have a plan? Is Friday night going to be the big night? Saturday? What are you going to do? Just full throttle two days? Well, I'm going basically with our buddy, the blue boy. So I'm picking him up in Worcester in a matter of hours.

And we're immediately going on the pub crawl at 3.30. So they put you on a bus. And you go on a bus to Old Haunt in Worcester. Sadly, they've closed Jody's, but they do take us to McGuire's, which was our other bar haunt in Worcester, and some other bar first. I don't know where it is. So, you know, I plan on being sober for about an hour,

and then I'm going to get on the bus, and then it's just all bets are off. So then, you know, then you hit the ground running at the pub crawl and then at night tonight they have like a you know cocktail party dj dinner thing so you know open bar is my friend and um just gonna hit the ground running there so today's probably the big day i think you go in and make a big splash tomorrow's like a recovery in this thing for the whole blue boy and I are in this thing for everything. We're going to this picnic tomorrow, which is always up on this big field.

They have shitty beer trucks and hot dogs and bacon in the sun. And then at night, it's like this fancier dinner, put on a suit thing. Tonight's really the night. A little more casual. Tonight's really the night to cut loose more casual. Tonight's really the night

to cut loose. Couple notes about our friend Blue Boy. First of all, one of my good friends, he's never been allowed on a podcast in 10 years. So I think that's,

let's start there. Just not allowed. Just not going to happen. Why don't you tell the story of how he got the nickname Blue Boy? Well, I couldn't testify to this, but apparently Blue Boy was the name of a male-exclusive pornographic magazine back in the day. Yes, it was. And he had a...

Yes, it was. And he had a... Yes, it was. And Blue Boy had a blue car, and his older brother gave it the name Blue Boy in deference to the magazine. And so he would call the car Blue Boy, and so we would be hanging out at our house, and we would see the car come in, and we would go, Blue Boy! And then somehow the nickname moved from the car to him

because he was the sole driver of the car. So he became Blue Boy in honor of his car, in honor of a male-exclusive pornographic magazine. That's our friend Blue Boy. And that's, yeah. I don't know what he's going to be capable of this weekend. I'm surprised, yeah. I'm surprised he's in for all of this. He's the most excited person I know about this.

That troubles me a little, too, because I just don't know what to expect. Now I wish I had gone. Now I have regrets. I do, too. It was a really poor performance. I got sidetracked by the finals and this soccer thing for my daughter. They have the finals every year. Your 25th reunion comes but once.

I know. But really, I just want to see you guys. We could do that anyway. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. We'd all end up just hanging out in a group together anyway. I will take copious notes and give you a full report. Believe me.

The Facebook page where everybody was posting photos. I got sidetracked. I forgot to finish that. It's, it's an amazing, amazing document of how poorly people dressed in the late eighties and early nineties. It's,

it's, it's staggering. We might as well be wearing Amish clothes from, from like the clothes they wore in Sturbridge in the 1780s. It's the giant sweaters. Somebody posted a picture that I was in a couple days ago where I'm wearing, we were at some function, I'm wearing a gray suit and a black shirt and a black tie. It looks like I'm going to an 80s party where I'm trying to parody an 80s outfit, but that

was actually the outfit, and I thought it was a good idea. It is incredible. I remember when you wore that, and you were all proud. I was. You were like, oh, yeah, look at this. There's another one where, for some inexplicable reason, another picture where you're wearing an Indiana Jones hat. Yeah, that's true.

Remember, I got that hat in the Bahamas. Remember, it was a hat made of like a banana tree or something? And then I brought it back and wore it in Worcester, Massachusetts inexplicably for like a month. I don't know what that, oh my God. What's scary is, you know, I'm half Italian. For whatever reason, the half Italian became full Italian with the way I dressed in college for like two years leading to that black suit I'm gonna put you know what I'm gonna do for uh for America I'm gonna put on my Instagram I'm gonna put that picture on because I

I really can't describe how bad the outfit was and I'm gonna put the hat picture on too you can get both but uh but these pictures were hilarious and then all of a sudden there was a little bitterness this week because some people were mad that they weren't in the pictures. Right, right. It's like, well, just post the pictures. People are just posting pictures of their friend groups. I know. I don't understand that. It's like a rabbit hole of like, you know, about in groups and out groups.

And, you know, not to mention people are 47 years old, by the way. Right. and outgroups and people, you know, not to mention people are 47 years old, by the way. And we're still talking about like cliques and in groups and, and, you know, bitterness from when you were 22. Like, you know, let's move on folks. So that should be fun. Hopefully some of that attention comes out after a few cocktails. Yeah. Hey, settle down.

Yeah. Guess what happens in college? You show up and you become friends with whoever's, whoever's in the rooms around you in your dorm. That's what happens in college? You show up and you become friends with whoever's in the rooms around you in your dorm. That's what happens 97%. Tate, your best friends from college? Yeah. Where are they from? Well, they're from North Carolina.

They're from college, but were they from your freshman? Yeah, from the floor, from the same building. So you know Jacko was in the room next to me freshman year. Wow. And one of the reasons we became friends was because he didn't realize I was home once. And he was just belting out the lyrics to The Unforgettable Fire by U2. That happened a lot in college where people didn't realize somebody was in the next room and they were just like kind of really feeling themselves, belting out songs and stuff but yeah we were jacko and i were literally next to each other joe house was seven

rooms down and that's it that's who you end up being friends with it doesn't nothing to do with like in groups or whatever it's just you're friends with who you were next to as a freshman you're 18 right um what do you think the toilet situation's going to be like? Is it going to be as bad as it was when we were in college? Did they solve that? Well, the good news is we're staying in some new residence hall that didn't exist when we were there.

Yeah. And according to the reunion thing, every room has a private bathroom. Oh my god. And so it's just me and the blue boy sharing our bathroom. So pray for that one. But we don't have to have like a communal one with like 30 people using it. So that's good.

Wow. Tate, what else do you want? A private shower and a private bathroom and air conditioning. Tate, what else do you want to know from the reunion pregame show? Hold on. Let's give the reunion pregame show. Hold on. Let's give the reunion pregame show a sponsor. Actually, this reunion pregame show,

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Again, back to Jacko. Wow. Who knew the Read and Pregame show was going to have a sponsor? That was so exciting. I'm going to see if I can get the bus driver to play this on the pub crawl. Hey, guys, settle down.

Listen to my podcast. Hold on. We got to quickly talk about the Yankees because Aaron Judge is on pace for 85 homers or something. And is clearly headed for five years from now talking in front of the senator committee, testifying, saying he's not here to talk about the past. I don't think there's any question anymore. No, I'm kidding. He's been fantastic. Is this your favorite Yankee since Jeter?

Where does he rank right now? Oh, God, yeah. No, I love Aaron Judge. I love Aaron Judge. He's been everything we hoped for and more. I mean, they brought him up in September, and he hit like 200, struck out left and right, and I was like, ah, he's probably too big, too big of a strike zone.

And this year he's just – he worked really hard in the offseason apparently, and he's just like absolutely caught lightning in a bottle. And he's like says all the right things. He's super humble. He's like the toast of New York. He did a funny bit on Jimmy Fallon where he like interviewed people outside Yankee Stadium pretending to be a sports reporter talking about Aaron Judge, and they didn't realize it was him.

And he was really good. The kid's like 24 or 25, and he's like this quiet kid, and he was really a natural acting. You couldn't have asked for anything better than what he's been so far. Not to mention the numbers he put up. Girardi had to move him to the three-hole yesterday because he's like the best hitter in their lineup. So it makes sense. So you're back. he's like the best hitter in their lineup.

So it makes sense. So you're back. They're great defensively, too, everywhere. You're feeling like this is a little 95-ish? I do feel a little 95-ish. I mean, they got these, you know, he came up and has been phenomenal. They're getting this pitching they didn't expect from Severino and Ada. Yeah.

And, you know, they got a good mix of, like, young guys and older veterans. Matt Holiday is apparently, like, a great clubhouse presence. Gardner has been the best player in baseball in May. They got these young kids producing. It's unbelievable. And then there's all this hope on the farm. Like, they weren't supposed to be this good this early. Like, they're supposed to be, like, a year or two away. So if they, you know, if they have they do anything this year or make some noise, look out,

because then next year, Gleyber Torres is coming, although he may be coming this year the way Chase Hedley is hitting. He may be in the third basement before long. So you've got all these kids on the farm. They've got the ability to make some moves because they've got such a deep farm system. It's fantastic. Why aren't they wearing the black arm patch on the jerseys? Oh, God, for?

For a routers Chapman shoulder. Well, that's the thing. I mean, normally you lose your closer who's like this big guy, but they had Batanza step up to the plate. He's been phenomenal as the closer. But he comes back as basically an embarrassment the closer. When he comes back, it's basically an embarrassment of riches. When who comes back?

When Chapman comes back in 2019? Okay. Okay, your second starter is elbows held together with duct tape and wire for $217 million. Hey, in retrospect, in retrospect, spending $312 million

on David Price and Pablo Sandoval, maybe not the best idea. It was positively Trumpian. Really? What? I mean, that Sandoval, you know,

the Yankees take heat and rightfully so for some of these disastrous contracts. That Sandoval contract, I mean, Jesus, that's the worst contract in the history of baseball. Yeah. No, Karl Crawford, to be fair, Karl Crawford is the worst contract in

the history of baseball. Yeah. Who could have guessed that Sandoval would potentially get out of shape once he got given large sums of money? I have on my League of Dorks team, which has a chance to win the title this year, we have Chapman, Batances, and Klippard. So we had all our bases covered in case Chapman's arm came flying off his body. And then it actually happened. So we replaced the saves. But I'm kind of like you, even though I hate the Yankees, where I'm refreshing Chapman's player profile.

And they're like, he played catch today. It's oh he played catch okay yeah we're back um yeah but it's a it's yesterday they were talking about like the distance he was able to throw like he was going to start throwing from like 90 feet or something so right good good sign there we're making some progress do you know it was funny because he you know he he was pitching he he actually was he labored through a couple of saves and he blew one against um was it against the red socks where he got lit up and you're like and he you know you're like but he still was throwing like 100 or 102 but i guess it affected his movement or whatever so yeah that's concerning when a guy's whole bread and butter is throwing 102 to 105 and the shoulder is shaky that's not great but well the bottom line is you've dealt him last year for somebody who's the best prospect in the entire american league

and then re-signed him which is a pretty pretty unbelievable uh turn of events yeah my thing with the red sox it's been a strangely dissatisfying season so far from a team that has like a 700 million dollar payroll but um they it doesn't feel like they've gotten going yet and like the price thing it's like whatever it's it's the offense that the offense and the setup guys have been the concerning things to me. And just, like, I don't know what... I knew Ortiz, I knew they were going to miss his bat and the clubhouse presence, but there's definitely been a ripple effect.

Like, you can feel it. But my thing is, like... Well, they're officially lurking now, though. They've had a good... No, I know. I mean, I was hoping they were, like, dead and buried in mediocrity. Nah, they're too talented.

They've been at Farrell, and, you know, they're getting ready to get rid of Farrell, and they're whining about, you know, they want Farrell gone. Then they caught fire, and, like, last night they're getting murdered by the Orioles, and then they made it interesting in the eighth inning. I mean, the ninth inning. Right. Because Hall of Famer Jackie Bradley Jr. hit a three-run homer or something.

I mean, the team has no pop, but they've had a little bit in the past like week and a half. So if they start hitting some home runs, you know, Wednesday and whatever price gives them, they're going to be scary. Yeah. The bats are just starting to come around. I never panic about baseball until July. You just think, you know, it's all these teams are so close and you have the wild card and whatever. I just thought, I thought they would hit more homers. That's it. That's what I was.

I just thought that it would be this new generation of, you know, kind of the, uh, the 77 Red Sox basically. And it's, hasn't totally happened yet. And,

and, uh, I miss Ortiz. He left and he took the good stuff with him. Oh, you should talk. Aaron George out of nowhere. On pace for 840 homers.

Kids are born again Christian. He does it the right way. Clean living. They made him pee in a cup last week, but the cup disintegrated. So I don't know what that means. Because he's so strong. The cup just melted. It's good.

I was talking with somebody when I had Dez Esmeralda on. We were talking about how the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry kind of died. I remember the first two years of my podcast, or basically the first three, the Red Sox- Yankees rivalry was so heated. We would just

call each other and make fun of each other's teams all the time. And then it just died. It just didn't really matter call each other make fun of each other's teams all the time and then it just died like it it just it just didn't really matter anymore and they'd have these four and a half hour games on ESPN on Sunday night and just the magic was gone and now I'm hoping if Price can come back if Chapman comes back and then we start having some old school star-studded Yankee Red Sox games again that'd be a fun way to spend the summer. Sign me up. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, if they're battling for first place, it would definitely be fun. But this is the Red Sox thing now. Like, for 100 years, the Yankees kicked the Red Sox ass. Like, for literally 100 years. And then Red Sox are like, oh, this is a bitter rivalry. We're bitter rivals. You've had a good 10 years, and everybody's like, well, that rivalry's over. That's all done. Forget about that. Like like what the fuck happened to the previous hundred years where

we kicked your ass and now you're declaring the rivalry is over if you remember and i even wrote a piece about this i was one of the few who never called it a rivalry because the red sox never won i always called it i called it a feud it feud. It was just bad blood. But a rivalry insinuates that both sides have exchanged dominance. Yes. And we just lost you all the time. It should be more of a rivalry now than it ever has been. Yeah. Oh, it is, but it just doesn't.

What really needs to happen is there needs to be a fight in the game. We need our Bryce Harper Strickland moment where we need somebody to hit somebody need bad blood we need Pedroia to you know to charge somebody and all that that all needs to happen we need something what sort of slowed things down the rivalry was you know you had Johnny Damon who was a Red Sox and then he became a Yankee and yeah all these guys are. All these guys are friendly off the field and they all respect Jeter and the Red Sox respected Ortiz.

There was too much love among the players. In the 70s, Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk legitimately hated each other. They hated Greg Nettles because he hurt Bill Lee. There was real, legit bad blood. Veritech and A-Rod, there was

some bad blood there. Of course, everybody hated A-Rod, there was some bad blood there. Of course, everybody hated A-Rod. That didn't really foster the rivalry, but it's not like the old days where you really had real, actual dislike. Part of it was when Pedro left. I think that Pedro

kind of coincided. And also, the Yankee fans really fed off Pedro, especially in Yankee Stadium. Those games were events. And then when the Who's Your Daddy stuff started, that gave a little extra life. I was at that game in 2003 with Pedro and Clemens when Zimmer got thrown down. And that literally, like, that was the most nervous I've ever been at a sporting event because that was the Roman Coliseum. Like, that crowd literally, like, wanted blood.

Like, they would have, like, they could have gotten their hands on, you know, Kareem Garcia. They would have, like, torn him to shreds. Like, some ancient Roman thing. That was really, like, ew, this is getting a little too intense. You know, then the Red Sox won in 2004, and I think that released a lot of the pressure. It was like opening a valve. Yeah, you had Clements, who we hated,

Paul O'Neill, who everybody hated, and who remains one of the most loathsome players who ever laced up baseball cleats. We had the Manny Ortiz combo that was just fun and felt like these were like our two buddy cops trying to topple the Yankee rivalry, basically. So maybe, you know, one bench-clearer,

judge comes in and just starts throwing people around. He probably turns green like the Incredible Hulk. In a bench-clearing brawl. He grows two feet. It's really amazing. Johnny, congratulations. This guy's headed for 800 homers, and I don't see anyone stopping him. Congratulations.

I know what you're trying to do. What am I trying to do? I'm not trying to do anything. You're trying to jinx him. I'm really happy for you. You're trying to jinx him, and it's not going to work. I think the final list will be Judge 1, Bonds 2, Ruth 3, Sammy Sosa 4. I just can see it in my head. And Gary Sanchez Productions is starting to hit too

What's that? Gary Sanchez Productions He's starting to hit too Yeah he hit two home runs yesterday Don't let him get hot Him and Judge it's like Ruth Garrick for the 21st century I'm very happy for you I'm also happy that we didn't talk Trump

I know you have to go Actually I'll give you one minute on Trump And then go Well I mean it's a minor thing But this really sums up Trump this week He's half falling asleep And he sends out this tweet About media covfefe

Or whatever right So obviously he was trying to type coverage And he's a moron So he leaves it up there as covfefe or whatever right so obviously he was trying to type coverage and he's a moron and he leaves it up there as covfefe now a normal human and a normal political party would say oh he was tired and he fucked it up and he made a typo no big deal but what does sean spicer his press secretary come out and say he's like well people in the know know what it means and like try to be all cagey about it like it's some secret fucking code from this moron like that's like a north korea shit that's like cult of personality and republicans hated it when democrats were like obama is the messiah and this cult of personality

and now they're even worse with the cult of personality because like his minions have these quotes on tv in the paper where he's like the sun god. All life emanates from Trump and he's so wonderful and everything is going perfectly. And anybody with eyes can see that it's not going perfectly. And when you have to do that about something stupid like a typo in a fucking tweet, I mean, that's not a healthy place for the country

to be in. It's not good. You know, just come out and say, oh, he was falling asleep and he started to spell coverage and it screwed it up and he fell asleep like that's all you have to say and it goes away but they try to make it into this grand thing and it's like what and everybody can see through it transparently it's ridiculous it's it's look throw out the parties it's our first experience of having an insane narcissist run the country and uh and it's going as expected yeah of course it's the first time we've ever been he to quote dennis

green he is who we thought he'd be you know the the climate thing just reading the stories and it's like what's the upside of pulling out of this? See, this is why I didn't want to talk about this. He just keeps trying to do like a base play. And it's like, you know, he's trying to appeal to his 38, 35% on a good day of people that support him. And it's like, if he wants to get reelected or wants to really build the party, which I don't even think he cares about the Republican Party. I think that was just a vehicle for him to get in. But assuming he wants to get things done, you can't just appeal to the same base.

You know, I know it worked once, and independents, I guess, were willing to take a chance on him because of his amazing business acumen, or because they didn't like Hillary or whatever. But you can't count on that same base. You can't count on those same voters being there in two years for the midterms and four years for the election. Most presidents try to expand that so they have some better prospects of getting things through Congress where Congress is afraid, oh, God, he'll come in and campaign against me. But nobody's afraid of him. Can you give me, as a Republican, two positives from the Trump presidency so far? Well, I mean, this guy Gorsuch that he put on the Supreme Court is a good thing.

And he's put some... I like this guy Mattis, who's like the Secretary of Defense. So some of his cabinet officials I like. But that's about it. But I mean, he's causing horrific damage to the Republican Party because they're going to wear him like an anchor for generations

to come. At what point do some people start to gravitate away and start working against them? Well, that's what I've been waiting for. But, I mean, so far, nobody in Congress has a backbone to do anything. They're all deathly afraid that he's going to tweet against them or call them out. And I have no idea why they're so fearful of him

or they're so fearful of his base voters, I guess, in the Republican district, that they could get hurt. But one, I don't know that that's really the case because, you know, where are they going to go? And two, you know, the guy is wildly unpopular. The smart play is to do the right thing and stand up for conservative principles and don't fall into this, you know, North Korean cult of personality that he's developed. But they haven't done it so far. So I don't know what will be the breaking point. I have no idea.

You know what I'm starting to think? There might be something to this Russia stuff, Johnny. You heard it from here. You heard it here first. Might be something. I mean, I don't know. Something's fishy about this whole thing. I mean, look.

Well, I mean, what worries you, of course, is that Russia has some shit on him, like on video. Although I don't know what it could possibly be that would hurt him, because there's already so many bad things that have come out that should have hurt a regular candidate. But either they own him financially or they own him because of some dirt that they have on him. And they obviously wanted him to get elected because they thought he could be compromised. if some of his campaign surrogates played with footsie with wiki leaks and the russians it's not good obviously but so far there hasn't been any evidence to definitively prove that now maybe with comey stuff and everything will come out and that'll be proven but so far it's a lot of smoke without any fire but well it seems like he started a war with the intelligence community which is not really who you want to go after yeah that seems like a bad idea it seems like

like where all the bodies are buried you know they know where every single body possible is is not really who you want to go after. Yeah, that seems like a bad idea. It seems like a bad idea. They have like where all the bodies are buried. They know where every single body possible is buried. It's funny. The cable channels have been showing all the president's men a lot lately. And I don't think it's a coincidence, but you know, I'm sure more is going to come out. Anyway. All right.

You have to go. Johnny. Yeah. Have fun at the reunion. Give everybody a big hug for me. Send me lots of pictures and texts and I'll keep talking to you over the weekend sounds good take it easy

before we go I wanted to wish everyone at the ringer a happy one year anniversary and thank everybody for spreading the word for us we announced earlier this week that we are moving platforms from Medium to Vox which is something that we've been thinking about for a while, trying to figure out how to build a bigger website.

Medium was fantastic for us. We were able to basically launch our site nine to ten months before we could have. And we were able to, in that first year, try to find a bunch of young talent that we liked, try to build a multimedia business from scratch. Tate was our first employee. I think I hired him in October 2015, somewhere around there. Now we're up to 70, hoping to have another 15 or so over the next nine months. The site itself is doing really well. We're up to 5 million uniques a month. And that's something that once we have a homepage that we can show some more stuff

and we're able to promote, especially the podcasts and videos and things like that and have a bigger umbrella. We actually have a lot of traffic of people that come to our homepage, which is a little unconventional. And that's something that Grantland also had where, uh, people just go and they know that we're, we're not putting a ton of stories up every day, but, uh, the ones we do, you know, we put some thought into why we put them up there. So I'm really excited for year two. This has been, you know, a dream to, to start something from scratch is something I had been putting a lot of thought and time and energy into basically since, I don't know, 2014.

And it started with Sean and Mallory, but once they left Grantland, we rented a house that was in off of Franklin in Hollywood and just were there every day trying to figure out what kind of site we wanted to make, how we would handle how the web has changed, how people got their content. Because when I was coming up with Grantland in 2010, people read websites and they read content on desktops. And eventually that's evolved. First iPads and iPhones, and then everything became digital. And now most of the traffic from stuff is on phone devices. So trying to figure out where we fit in with that and how to balance quality and immediacy that was our biggest challenge in in year one and we struggled with it like there's no question it's really hard to to have a quality you know when

you're trying to do quality pieces but also trying to react to stuff that balance of knowing when to have a quicker piece versus when to have kind of a meatier piece. That's been our biggest, I don't want to say struggle, because I think especially over the last four months, we've figured out how to balance that. But it's a conundrum that I think every site is facing, where do you chase traffic?

When do you balance quality versus just trying to jump into a story because there's a story? What we found is a lot of times the story has maybe a three- or four-hour shelf life, and it's really helpful to have a good, short, well-written piece that can play off that because there's a three-, four-hour span where people just want to read about, oh, Paul George got traded to the Lakers. I want to read about this.

And you kind of have to be in the mix there. At Grantland, we didn't have to be in the mix. We were part of ESPN. We were able to kind of be over to the side and ESPN could handle all the hard news. You want a hard news, breaking stuff right away. ESPN was right there. And if you wanted something that was a little more detached, a little more meat, features, bigger stuff, oral histories, columns, essays, all the stuff we were doing, we fit in with there. Here, it's a little different.

It's a question of when stuff happens, how do you react to it, and how does that affect the decisions you make maybe 12 hours later? I think if you look at what we did with the finals in game one, O'Connor, who was on earlier in the podcast, he wrote kind of the reaction piece, and it was good. It's five minutes long, and it was a nice take on the game. And then Charks came in this morning with kind of a deeper dive on the seven things that he noticed and more video and stuff like that. And the balance of those two, both of them could be read two days later. Both of them could be read

immediately. And, you know, that's, that's been, uh, that's been something that we've had a lot of fun collectively trying to figure out how to do it. But, you know, you can't do a site like this unless everybody just commits to it and works their asses off and we have so many people that uh you know are up late hours at night working on weekends working when they were supposed to have memorial day off and then something happened and and especially when you're starting from the ground floor and you're you're a little understaffed and the sum of the part the whole hased and the sum of the part, the whole has to exceed the sum of the parts basically, or whatever that phrase is. I can

never get that right. What is it Tate? The whole, how does it go Tate? The whole six, I can't remember how it goes, but you just need people who are super committed and who believe in what they're doing. And we have that that's been for me the biggest um the biggest thrill of the of this first year is just the people we have are fantastic and they work their asses off and really believe in what we're doing they care about each other and uh it's just been cool and year two you know definitely more video we have to figure out um so much of the internet and especially a lot of the advertising dollars are going into video right now. And we have a whole bunch of things we've been trying on there, but that when you

want to grow a business, you know, you have to have a bunch of things. And that's something we realized before we launched this site is you can't launch a site that's just words anymore. And even at Grantland, we knew that like we knew a big part of our strategy shifted the first year. It was just about, we're going to have good writing and we're going to have podcasts and nothing else was on the table. And then YouTube started throwing money around and we're like, Oh, we can start a video channel. That'll be cool. And then that evolves. And suddenly we're making documentaries and series and stuff like that. And you kind of have to follow the momentum of where things are going. And for us, like right

now, video is, is the biggest thing. And it's, it's a constant creative challenge to figure out, um, what's best for what's best for written piece. What's best for a video piece. What's best for a podcast. And you just, you know, eventually you hope that you have something for everybody and that you're doing everything at a really high level, which is the goal for us for year two. That's, it's a really good time to create content. There's a lot of, a lot of, uh, a lot of potential partners out there and there's, um, a lot of different ways to do it and people everyone who's doing this is trying to figure it out some people are doing it better than others we're just happy to be in the mix and uh and it's been just a tremendous tremendous year one that we've we've

all really loved making the site creating it and the ebb and flow of of uh of doing, of doing it. Even if it wears you down, sometimes it's definitely worth it. Especially when you have days like yesterday where we had just so much good content and it's going to keep getting better. And, you know, you go into year two, year three, you figure out what you need. Uh, it's almost like building a football team. Um, ah, we need a corner. Ah, we kind of need a backup linebacker. Ah, you know what? We could get better in the kicking game. And you just keep adding until you keep getting better. So it's been awesome. But I want to thank everybody that worked so hard for this last year

because it's been awesome to watch. It really has. It's been certainly the most thrilling experience in my career. Anyway. Uh, thanks for listening. Enjoy the, uh, enjoy the weekend. Don't forget to subscribe to the binge mode podcast, um, which is launching on June 5th. And don't forget about the Larry Wilmore and cousin Sal podcast. Cause those launched a couple of weeks ago and, uh, and check out the ringer.com. I'm going to try to write something about the finals next week, so stay tuned for that.

But we have a ton of great basketball stuff up there, so you can hear all of that. And if you missed Ice Cube, who I did a podcast with on Wednesday, he was fantastic. And I actually, I should have put more thought into how cool that podcast was going to be

because I was surprised. I was like, why am I surprised that Ice Cube is great on a podcast? Because he was awesome. The stories he told were great, especially about LA and 8792. So that was pretty cool. All right, shout out to Holy Cross.

Enjoy the weekend. And I'll be back next week on the way. So I don't have.