The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA in Quarantine With JJ Redick, Plus Cord Jefferson on the Impact of ‘Watchmen’

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by NBA veteran and New Orleans Pelican JJ Redick to discuss some of the challenges of staying NBA-ready during the pandemic, the benefits of regimented training and recovery, thoughts on the “Orlando bubble,” LeBron’s gravitas among NBA players, the playoffs format, and more (1:44). Then Bill talks with screenwriter and former entertainment journalist Cord Jefferson about the social significance of HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ and its "second impact," his time at Gawker, the grind of late-night TV, working with television titans like Damon Lindelof (‘Watchmen’) and Mike Schur (‘The Good Place’), elevating the superhero genre, and more (42:35). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the BS podcast on the ringer podcast network brought to you by zip recruiter. Well, if you've been wondering what athletes have been doing on their hiatus, we're about to find out with JJ Redick when he comes on in a second, some people in businesses, they're branching out during this time. Other places are doing what they've always done. Like our presenting sponsors, zip recruiter throughout all of this, their mission has remained the same. They're still helping people find jobs and helping growing companies hire for their teams by bringing together candidates who need employment. And employers looking for great candidates,

ZipRecruiter is committed to helping our workforce stay strong. Let's work together. ZipRecruiter.com slash work together. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find new podcasts like The watch press box ringer NFL show. JJ's pod with Taylor Rooks, which she's going to talk about a little bit later. Binge mode.

Uh, the wire way down in the hole, still going fairway. Roland is back. And, uh, and you can play a fan dual.com slash ringer golf. If you want to try to play against house,

but, um, we're still cranking them out here. Coming up, J.J. Redick is going to talk about life during quarantine and what Orlando might be like. And then we're going to talk to Corey Jefferson, who I've known for a while,

who wrote for The Watchmen this season, a show that has become relevant yet again. So that is the podcast. Here is Pearl Jam. season a show that has become relevant yet again so that is the podcast here is pearl jam All right. JJ Redick is here taping this late Thursday afternoon. He hosts a podcast with Tommy Alter for the Ring of Podcast Network, where they've had a lot of good guests during quarantine, especially. I've been thinking about you because you're a man of routine. Yeah. Some people who are men of routine, uh, have not enjoyed the quarantine that much. You're a man of routine who also needs to practice his craft. What have you been doing? What is your,

what is your, what's racing through your brain these last three and a half months? I mean, I, I guess I'm in the same boat as, as most people. Um, you know, there's so much uncertainty, um, both in people's personal life and in the, in the world at large. I mean, there's so much uncertainty, both in people's personal life and in the world at large. I mean, it's just there's a general angst and anxiety, I think, hanging over everybody every day. And so for me, what's been really important is finding gym access and being able to go play basketball for an hour every day. I actually said this to the guy who's been working me out here in Brooklyn, but I said this to him today. I was like, I feel like I've gotten better in the three and a half months of quarantine.

Like I've worked my ass off on my game. Yeah. And I've been conditioning. I've ran a ton. Since we came back to Brooklyn, I haven't had access to a weight room. So a lot of the body stuff is just body weight stuff. But, um, I think the, there is no routine in quarantine, especially for me who has a five-year-old and a three-year-old. So the, my only sort of like solitude and, and, and sort of escape is that, is that hour on the court, just going

super hard, um, you know, playing basketball. How many guys in the league are wired specifically like you? Because I think like Ray Allen before you as somebody who is similar in a lot of ways where it's just like, you go to the gym, you have your routine. There was that famous video that time of Ray Allen in the dark with cheerleaders next to him still doing like all the things he does. Like, is there a little club? Is there a text thread? How many of these guys are there? There's not a text thread. I feel like you, you recognize similar people. And then when you become teammates with guys who are like that, um, you instantly form a connection. Uh, you know, for, for me, like I'll give you an example, like Tobias and Jimmy,

uh, with Philly, we're like two guys that just worked, you know, they loved being in the gym. They loved working on their craft. They loved trying to get better. Um, so that was, that was an easy way for me to connect with those guys. Um, and then, and then it's funny, I get text messages all the time from young guys in the league and I get a lot of post game interactions from young guys, you know, during the game, they'll be like, Hey man, can I chat with you after the game? And you know, I'll find them after the game and they'll ask me about a conditioning routine or my shooting routine or my off season workouts.

I actually had a young player today text me asking me this, you know, all these questions about what my off season workouts. I actually had a young player today, text me asking me this, you know, all these questions about what my off seasons look like. Um, I think some guys have to figure it out. And then some guys I think are just like sort of wired that way. Like where I feel a sense of, I actually feel guilty on days that I intentionally take off. Yeah. Like today, Bill, we had to push this podcast back because my car got towed. And so my prior, so my car got towed. I walked downstairs to go to the gym and my car's gone now. Now it was a little bit like, dude, where's my car? Like I'm trying in my brain to be like, all right. I, you know, I drove my kids back yesterday at 5 PM. Like

where, where the heck could this car be? And by priority of course was I've got to get in the gym. So I've got to push Bill's podcast back because I will, I will beat myself up. I will feel a sense of guilt if I don't get my work in today. Yeah. And I would have made you feel guilty if you didn't do the podcast. So yeah, exactly. Either way. What are you expecting when the season actually comes back just from people's games? Like, have you heard there's, there's all this LA rumor right now, and I haven't been able to crack it of all the Lakers are playing at some rich guy's house and it's all like, you know, nobody talked about this. And, but have you heard about like different rumors and what teams are doing and all that?

Are you expecting people to show up out of shape? What, what do you, what do you think? All right. So in regards to the Lakers, I've heard similar things. Obviously, nothing has been posted on social media supplying us with the evidence that we need. But there is a gentleman, I think his house is in Bel Air, who has a Staples Center replica in his backyard. Yes. It's a full court, locker rooms, weight room,

steam shower, whatever you want. I've worked out there before. My assumption is those guys are working out there. That would, that would make a lot of sense. I about. And he gets, and he gets great stories for his friends at cocktail parties. Like no doubt.

A year and a half from now. Like, hey, just FYI. Remember the quarantine? Yeah. So that's what's in it for him, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, but look, I never played for the Lakers and like, you know, you've seen videos of like a couple of summers ago, Chandler Parsons was in there a bunch. Um, John Wall has been in there like guys, if they're in LA, that's, that's one of the gyms that we can have access to as players. Right. Um, so I actually said this to someone, uh, about a month into quarantine when all these guys were saying, like, I haven't touched a basketball and I I've been in two different locations.

So the first location I was in, I had access to two different gyms. I got kicked out of two, by the way, I should say that I got kicked out to, or like turned out like, no, we can't, we can't.

But then I had to, and then I, I, I came back to Brooklyn and like, I finagled my way into access to three gyms. So like if one gym says you can't use it today, I've got two, two backups.

So all these guys saying they don't have access to a gym. I just, I call bullshit. Like you don't want to be in the gym. Yeah. I I'm being serious. Right. You can't get in at six o'clock in the morning. You don't want to be in the gym. And yes, some of it is like, I'm not following social distancing rules, but I'm going in. No one's touching me. I've got access, like my own personal access. I've got my basketball trainer who I've been with the whole time. And a lot of guys have their personal trainers who they've been with the whole time who can rebound for them. It's, it's an excuse. I don't buy it. So your basketball

trainer, that's almost like you have, you've crossed the line, like almost with your kids and your wife where he's throwing you the ball back. You're not, he's not wearing like gloves and a hazmat suit. Oh no. We like, lice all that we lice all everything before and after the workout hand sanitize all that stuff we wear mask into and out of the gym like we're we're serious with it you know but obviously there's that period of time where we're each touching a basketball but i guess what is different between what we're doing because obviously we're communicating every day all right you know have you had a contact have Have you had contact? Have you, do you have any symptoms? I check my temperature every day per the Pelicans. I have to send in my temperature every day.

So we're doing all these things, but what's the difference between us doing that and, you know, guys at a practice facility, um, going in and seeing a trainer and them doing the same thing with the balls and disinfecting everything. It's the same thing. There's no difference. Was there a point where you felt like the season might not happen? Yeah, for sure. I think most of April and may I felt initially. And, and maybe you've talked about this on the pod, so I don't, I don't want you to repeat, uh, to your listeners, but listeners but uh the first two weeks it was like what the is going on like what like is this because for for them to shut down sports for them to shut down 90 of the industry industries in the usa lockdown cities i mean

it was surreal it was scary and so you're trying to figure that out you're not even thinking really about the nba you're like is my family safe or my parents safe you're thinking about those things then it gets into like week four and you know the numbers are still not looking good and you're just doing the math about like it takes this many weeks to do the playoff and you're like if we don't have a decision here in the next couple of weeks, you know, we're not going to have a season. I got scared the week before LeBron and Chris and those guys finally had that phone call. Cause I was like, yeah, I was doing the math. And I have, you remember talking about in the pod, it was like, if this doesn't start going now that this can't happen

because now you're deep in going against football and then you wouldn't be able to start the season until after and all these things, it just didn't seem realistic. So I, you know, it does seem like the history of the league is always the superstars get the ball rolling, no matter what it is, whether it's a union or anything. Right. Um, and the superstars got the ball rolling. Um, and then last week, I mean, I don't, you haven't really talked about in your pod that much that the, all the stuff last week about all of a sudden now there's a whole players union call 80 people on it. Kyrie wondering, is this a good idea? Like, I actually thought that was really

healthy that everybody was having those conversations. Were you concerned at that point that that might undermine it? Yeah. So I actually, we released a pod today with Taylor Rooks from Bleacher Report and we talked about it with Taylor and I just kind of shared, you know, I don't know everything. Obviously I wasn't on the first call, which was Tuesday. There was about 50 players from what I understand on that call. I got the notes from that call and then I was on the call Friday night. And so leading into the call Friday night, you know, Chelsea, my wife and I, we, we had been talking and I was like, look, this thing, this thing might,

might not actually happen. Um, and then I was on the call Friday and that call actually gave me sort of an affirmation that the season was going to happen. We have a lot of things to figure out, um, both as a league and in our society. Um, and I'm hopeful that we can all, we can all work together to, to like create real change. And, and my understanding, my understanding is that the NBPA and the league ownership, obviously, like we all sort of want the same thing here. The players, everybody wants the same thing. Um, and so it's, it's really about keeping open lines of communication so that we can really put some policies in place and really invest in some, some, uh, some areas where we can, we can change some things. And it does seem like if you use the platform correctly, it will be the most powerful

way to get a whole bunch of things done. And if they can figure out all that stuff in the right ways, it's going to work. I've said this privately. I don't know if I talked about it the other day. Like, I have zero problem with a guy saying he doesn't want to play for any of the reasons that are out there. Whether it's COVID, whether it's being away from their family for two months, or whether it's this, uh, social justice movement. I don't have a problem with any of it. If you don't want to play, if you're not comfortable playing, I get it. This is not what we signed up for. Yeah. These circumstances are not normal to play NBA

basketball. So I get all of it. Um, my, I, one of my concerns with not playing in general is if we do not play and we, we were obviously that would be a huge statement from our players. It would be a, it would be a topic of conversation for a number of weeks. But as you start getting into September and October and November, the conversation is going to be about football in late August, if they still have it, the Republican National Convention. Maybe people going back to school. Maybe people going back to school, maybe a second wave. And then the election. The election is going to eat up 80% of media coverage in the fall. So if we don't play, there's a chance we've missed a real opportunity. Taylor Rook said something on my podcast.

It's not just about wearing a t-shirt, though. It's not just about doing something during the national anthem or saying something in a postgame interview. We really have to work with the NBPA and the league on, on figuring out actionable things that we can do to help. That's what it comes down to. We have to do something beyond just tweeting and talking and wearing t-shirts. Not going to, not going to be enough. Well, now that they've finished the 133 page guidebook, that was like the size of Lord of the Rings and they know we're at the hotels. Congrats on being at the yacht club, by the way. Um, I, I, I don't want to brag. I don't want to brag corner suite.

I've been breaking news on my podcast. Okay. It was like three weeks ago. I, I spelled it out on my podcast, what the formula was going to be. This is like eight days before they vote. I spelled it out. And then I think it was the Pat Connaughton podcast. I gave the three hotels we were staying at. I knew the three hotels, which didn't come from the PA either. That was from another source. I'm breaking news on my podcast, Bill.

That's all I want to say. It's a JJ bomb. But now that we have all this stuff settled and everybody knows all right here's what's happening here's when we have the whole schedule all that stuff now it seems like they could spend the next couple weeks figuring out all right how are we going to use the platform yeah what are what are the five things we want to achieve here yeah i think what's what's's unique about everyone being in Orlando at the same time is even when we have our NBPA meetings, whether it's at all-star break or the summer meetings,

the turnout is not always great. You're never going to have this amount of NBA players in one place at one time. Like There's a real opportunity to have conversations, to come forward with a coherent, cohesive plan to present and get actionable items on the table that we can actually do. And to me, that's a huge opportunity because doing conference calls or tweeting or DMing or texting, I don't know that it gets it done if it's face-to-face and in person. And by the way, on every conference call, Shams is on it. So there's media members on it.

I mean, we all know it. He's pretending he's a small forward. I mean, I literally got off that call and I'm like, this mother, he's verbatim bill. Right. I said to Chelsea, like I'm looking in the corner of my screen right now and it says recording and like the call is getting recorded. Like, you know, I don't know.

Shams. He figured it out. He's using, he's probably assuming somebody else's identity. Yeah. I think, uh, I think there'll be able to figure out a lot of stuff in the lead up to when you guys get there. One thing that fascinated me though, the Patrick Beverly tweet about

if King James says we hooping, we hooping, however he phrased it. And I was like, I wonder how many players in the history of the league had that kind of sway that another player would say was like, I wonder how many players in the history of the league had that kind of sway that another player would, would say that like, Hey, if he says we're playing, we're playing. Cause obviously Jordan would have been like that. I think Kobe hit a point. You were in the league by then the late two thousands when I think he had a steam like that.

Um, I think magic and bird together and magic by himself. I think we're like that Other than that, not really. But do you feel that way? Like ultimately LeBron is going to decide what happens here? Yeah. Look, you have to consider the fact that there are so many players at different stages of their career. And so if you look at the young guys, maybe they need the money. Maybe they just want to play. Maybe they're trying to prove themselves. Maybe they're trying to get into rhythm. Maybe

they're trying to set themselves up for the next contract. Like a lot of these guys, they want to play. That's not to take away from the fact that they are all about the social justice movement, but there may be a little more motivated to play. If an older player says we're going to play or we want to play, they're going to follow that. I remember, you know, during the lockout being on some of those calls and when KG would talk or Kobe would talk or Paul, Paul Pierce would talk like their words certainly carried a lot of weight to me and, and framed sort of my own thinking for sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Plus, the guys hit a point where most of the guys in the league

grew up watching them, which I'm sure is a weird dynamic for LeBron in general, right? A lot of times he's competing against... That's what I was going to ask you about. As a historian of the game, I think there's like a level of respect for LeBron. Like everybody wants to compete against them and wants to beat them, but there's a level of respect and not just as a basketball player.

I mean, the guys off the court has just been a monster, a monster. He's done it right. And there's a level of respect for him going back, let's say 2000s, nineties, eighties. Do you think that there's that level of respect or is there a little bit of hatred and jealousy? Cause I don't sense that from players towards now, maybe from the, from fans, but there's not that sense of jealousy or hatred towards LeBron that maybe there was for superstars back in the day. So it's interesting. One thing he's in terms of terms of service, I think he's like one of the three oldest players in the league just for careers, right? He's been in the league

since Oh three, all the guys from that class, except for Carmelo are gone. And I think, so he's just been around for two decades. Um, he has more natural rivals than I feel like anybody who was the undisputed best guy of his era has ever had. Like there's been all these different moments where, you know, Curry was a back-to-back MVP. Durant went toe to toe Durant. Yeah. Two straight finals and outplayed him. And then you go back to 2010, 11 range, like Dirk outplayed him in a series. So I don't, I think the respect comes from the total package more than the

that guy kicks our ass. Because do you really think Kawhi doesn't think whether it's true or not, Kawhi goes to sleep at night thinking I'm the best player in the league. Might not be true, but I don't think he feels like LeBron's better than him. So I think that's the difference with that. You agree with that or not? What? No, I don't disagree. I think a lot of

players go to bed saying I'm the best player in the league, whether it's rational or not. Yeah. I mean, or guys are like, Hey, I'm top five. I'm top five. My motherfucker. You're like top 75. You saw the Chuck quote during the last dance i mean that's you can't get to a certain point without some level of irrational confidence you just can't yeah um but i the thing with lebron is he's had so let's just take away his rookie year he's basically had a 16 year prime yeah like there's now there's varying degrees of his prime, but for relative to most 99% of players, his prime has been longer. I would argue than maybe anyone in the NBA history. Well, you think so the night, remember the 1984 slam dunk contest, they brought it back

and Dr. J was in it. It was like the old man. Cause he had won in 1976. Like, Oh, the old man, Dr. J he's like two years younger than LeBron in that dunk contest. And it's, Oh man, the old guy.

Like when I was growing up, I went to have a check, have a check was our guy in Boston in the seventies and his last game. And he had played 16 years. It was like the most anyone ever played. It's like, Oh my God, 16 years.

How'd he do it? You know, and LeBron is my play 25. I mean, we've talked before about just the advancements you guys have, like the, even during a quarantine, the ability of somebody to diet correctly, sleep correctly, train, do stuff, do go on YouTube and find core exercises, all these things they didn't have in the 70s and 80s. But I do feel like he's figured out how to maximize his body in a way that other than maybe Karl Malone,

I don't ever remember seeing in the league where he's just, the punishment he takes being able to play eight, nine months a year. Like think about your guy Zion. Like for him to ultimately reach his potential, he's going to have to treat his body the way LeBron did really from about 2008, you know, where there's gotta be, no, there's gotta be complete buy-in like, and, and I, I said this to Joel after last summer, I, um, I went to his, uh, apartment,

uh, right after the season. And again, we, Joe Allen and I've talked about this publicly, so there's not something new, but I, I went to his apartment after the season and I basically said to him, like, Joe, like you're, you know, when you're healthy and you're in shape and you're, you're all that stuff, like you're, you're a top five, top 10 player. Your, your prime could be three to five years. Your prime could be 15 years. It's up to you, you know? And so there's gotta be that, that whole, that holistic, it's a holistic buy-in. It's not just, I'm going to go work on my game. It's no, I'm going to work on my game. I'm going to work on my body. I'm going to eat right. I'm going to sleep

right. Like I, I learned it. I learned it my junior year of college. And obviously when you're 20 at the time, when I'm 20, it's not necessarily a lifestyle, but you start developing these habits. And then by the time you're like 24, 25, like it's just your lifestyle. Like you, you go to the gym and you, you work on your body and you work on your game and you eat right. And you're, you're worried about your sleep and you're worried about what you put in your body all the time. It's all the time. It's constantly,

um, I don't know how many guys really do that, but when you have someone as talented as LeBron and he does it, you see, and he does it the best that he does it the best. Yeah. You see the result of that. You see the result of that. You see the result of that.

And you know what? CP and I talked a bunch about this too, because CP has made a huge change over the last few years. And he's always worked hard. No one's ever questioned his work ethic, but just really understanding what he's doing. And he's, I mean, Bill,

I remember reading you when you used to write for ESPN and back in like 2011, when Chris had his knee injury and you saying like, Oh, Chris, Chris looks like he's limping. He looks like he's playing on one leg.

Like there's no way this guy's going to last. And like him and I are basically the same age. Like he, he was an all-star this year at 35. It's remarkable. It's remarkable. I thought, I never thought he was in great shape when I would go to the Cooper games

I didn't think he was in bad shape but I definitely thought in the beginning of the year he would play himself into shape stuff like that

I thought he I thought he was moving as well as I've ever seen him move at Oklahoma City you know and he clearly you know

he's talked about it like plant based diet all that stuff I remember Paul Pierce who we almost made the finals with him in O2. I say, we like him on the team. Um, and then he was a little choppy, had some issues. Ricky Davis joined the team. That was that guy, a little dicey and he had a bad year

and they lost to the Pacers in the game seven. And it was kind of, it was kind of a fork in the road for moment for him. And I think he saw it and he came back the next year and he was awesome. And from that point on, he started really working on his body and then KG comes and KG is like this force of nature. And then now everybody, you know, there's no other way you can't, you can't not work if he's on your team. So Pierce was able to buy this little extra piece of his prime that I don't think, I don't think it would have happened otherwise. I just think he would have had the same kind of career most guys have, you know? Yeah. If you never change, you lose out, you lose out on three or four years. Absolutely. I lose out on three. Iverson's a good example. Iverson was,

was done in oh eight and he came in the league in 96. It 96. It was done by the time he got to Detroit. So yeah. So I look at Zion and I'm like, is Zion and Embiid are the two guys where if you could just do a fantasy draft and be like, what two guys do I hope learn from LeBron? Because it would be fucking awesome to watch them for 20 years. I think those would be the two guys. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. What would agree with that. What's, what's been your impression of Zion, by the way? I don't think we've talked about it on the pod. You got to spend a year with them. Yeah. So my first impression of him is I've never met a, well, it's 19 when I first started, you know, hooping with them, but I've never met a 19 or 20

year old who's that famous and that famous from such a young age who was so level-headed, right? Like he's not an asshole. He did. There's nothing. It doesn't have a big head. Um, it's a great teammate. Um, I, I think that the biggest thing for him and you just kind of touched on this is like him just learning to develop the right habits. But I have no doubt that he's going to do that. I have no doubt that. And going back to Joe, I have no doubt that Joe will. And you saw this thing the other day where he says, like, I've been in the gym six days a week for the next 10, 15 years and just be a first ballot hall of famer and win championships. Like that's my hope for Joe. That's my hope for Zion. Um, you know, I, Bill, I, I think a lot about my own career when I think about these guys, because part of me is like a little jealous. I feel like I've, I've, for the most part, I've maximized my career and I want these guys. Cause like if these guys maximize their career, they've got everything. They've got things that I could never achieve. They've got things I could never achieve and they'll achieve some of those

things. No doubt. But if they really buy in their first ballot hall of famers, their multiple, you know, and be all NBA, multiple MVPs like Joel should win MVP. I have no doubt he should for sure.

I hope he, as a Celtics fan, I hope he never totally takes it seriously. I hope he gets like 85% there, not a hundred. It's, it's funny. Like,

so you come in the league in oh six, we redrafted your draft, by the way, you, you went way higher than you did in the actual draft. Like, so you come in the league in oh six, we redrafted your draft, by the way, you, you went way higher than you did in the actual draft. Uh, we did. What did I end up going? What pick? He went like fourth. I took you early.

I think I jumped on you early. Cause I was like, I make it 20 years of JJ 2026. He might still be playing. Um, but I think one thing about your generation is the internet and the 24 seven talk cycle has probably positively affected a lot of these guys. Whereas in the nineties and the eighties, you know, hearing negative feedback, that's actually true and actually hits home, but it's not wrong. I think it's the opposite for writers. I think the internet and social media is social media is the worst thing that ever happened to writers, but in basketball, if Joel Embiid is hearing like, Hey, part of the reason the Celtics beat you in 2018

earmuffs, don't sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Part of the reason we beat you is because you were huffing and puffing in game. You know, you weren't totally in shape yet. And you have Barkley and Shaq talking about Joel's got to take it more seriously. Like those are hall of famers who don't believe in your work ethic yet. That has to help him just has to. Yeah. I don't disagree with that. I would, I would spin it in sort of another way. So with the way social media works and that everything's out there and the way, uh, our league works and that everybody copies everybody else. Uh,

if somebody has a, as a basketball trainer, I need to get a basketball trainer. I might work with the same guy. Actually. He had a pretty good year last year. If somebody has got a personal trainer, I see this guy working.

I like what they're doing. I'm going to go. People didn't have, there was no exchange of information amongst players when I got in the league. That was 14 years ago. I don't even, I can't even imagine what it was like

in the 90s or 80s about all this stuff. So social media has put all the good stuff out there as well. And guys want to do what other guys are doing. And I think that's a big reason why you're going to see a lot of these players and my generation included who are going to play pretty damn good basketball. Maybe not prime basketball, but pretty damn good basketball well into their late thirties. The only thing that worries me is just all the studies about the AAU generation and all the miles that these guys have on them by the time

they get in the league. Cause even you're, I guess you were a borderline AAU generation, right? But you weren't playing like five basketball games at a weekend, were you? Or did they have that by the, when you were in high school, they had all that. When did that, when did that start? Oh man. So maybe that's good. So I knew it all through high school. I knew it all through high school. So I started, so I was, I was 14. I just finished my freshman season. I was 14. Boo Williams, who was on the other side of the state. He had a big AU program, Iverson, Alonzo morning, Joe Smith, um, Ronald Curry. He asked me to play with his 17th. So I did, I did three summers with boo and we would start playing tournaments in April and we would finish in September. We usually, there goes that theory.

We would usually only play one tournament in August, but the entire month of July, we were somewhere. June was always like USA basketball camp, five-star camp, uh, Nike camp right around July one. And then you'd go to Orlando and you'd go to peach jam. And there was a tournament in Staten Island. There was a tournament in Portland. So we would play yeah. Three months. And yeah, you'd be like, I joked with Andre Guadalla last year, but like we, we played them in the national championship. My last year playing a, you play them in the national championship, 17 and under.

He played for the Illinois warriors. And I think it was like our 11th game in six days. It was our, we had the national semifinals were at 8 AM. The national championship was at 11 AM. Like we, we just, we just would play, play, play. You go play, play, play. And I shot like four for 18. Part of that was, he was a really good defender, but also, I mean, by that time of the tournament,

I was just gassed. I had nothing left. Nothing left. That's stupid. I mean, you know, we don't have a sports czar. We have nobody overseeing any of this stuff. And this is like a classic reason why you need a sports czar. It's like, hey, this is a bad idea.

11 games in six days. Bill, this is going to happen though. There will be someone who's going to do this. I actually have a buddy who's pretty involved in these sorts of things. He's involved with actually overtime. But this is like his big passion project right now. He's doing it with a couple other people. They're trying to find the right person to oversee this, but we, we need to actually look out for these kids. We actually,

we have to look out for these kids. We're, we're doing them a disservice for sure. My daughter's soccer team. They, our coach is like pretty diligent about, cause you can have these tournaments where you play eight games in four days or, you know, like just, you're, you're just doing double headers and it's like 90 degrees. You're in like Las Vegas. And we had a couple of those when she was 10 and 11 and like the second game, like, it's like, is my kid going to keel over? Is this, is it, how is this help? Everyone's just kind of wobbling around like a maniac. Are you speaking to kids? Are you bringing your kids? What's going on? What's the plan Orlando? Are they, is everyone coming? Well, they can't come. I mean, they can

come. We make it to the conference semifinals. No family. So that's the only time. No, not so once there's eight teams left of the 22 conference semifinals, that's when family can come. So I I'm yeah, I'm leaving, uh, next week and you know, I'm, I'm looking at, uh, two months without my family. It's,

um, do you guys have a chance? You're behind, right? You're a few games. Are you like three behind three and a half? Yeah. So we,

so we, we have a chance. I haven't seen our schedule yet. I mean, their algorithm, it right now based on your next eight games of teams available to play. But I think we definitely have a chance.

I mean, I would love to make the playoffs for sure. Well, you have a little streak at stake. I wasn't going to bring it up. No, come on. I don't know. Lou Gehrig. I told I told my guys on our team and I was like, look,

I was like, we were talking about whether we wanted to play and all the, all the stuff that went into it. And I said, my playoff streak in this, in my decision about whether I want to play or not play is completely insignificant. Like in the scheme of the world, it's very insignificant.

I have other motivations of why I think we should play. That is so far down the line. I mean, I told him like I could, I could do the next two months with my kids swimming in a swimming pool in the Hamptons, or I could be sequestered at the yacht club in Orlando, Florida in 102 degree heat with a hundred percent humidity, you know, basically with all dudes playing basketball. Like I I'd probably rather be with my kids, but that was a big thing we said was, you know, if we, and I know Dame came out publicly and said this too, was look, if we are going to, if you're going to put us in a, in this, in this bubble, we want a chance to be able to actually feasibly make the playoffs. If you give us that chance, Hey, we're all for playing. And then Aldridge was like, I'm getting surgery. I'll

see you guys later. It's really acted up. Got to talk to the doctor. I, uh, every year there's one team that for a variety of reasons, the first 55 games underachieved injury, usually injuries. Yeah. And then in the last 2025, you're like, oh man, it'd be fun if they were in the playoffs. And it was so monitoring you guys client. I remember texting a couple of times like, oh man, look at this. It would be fun to have you in because I thought at full power, you were clearly one of the eight best teams. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. When we're, when we were all healthy, I think we we're i think we're one of the eight best teams now look the way this schedule shakes out and the the rule with you got to be within four games uh of the eighth seed like we have a lot of work to do and i think

the interesting thing about memphis is everybody's just kind of underestimated them yeah throughout the season and then they just kind of like they just hovered around 500 they never really hit a point where they broke you know there's obviously portland san antonio sac phoenix the every all these teams in the mix the memphis thing killed me because we have their we have their pick oh it's like really really you guys are you guys are gonna have a winning record this year we're sitting on this pick for seven years i forgot about it's like really really you guys are you guys are gonna have a winning record this year sitting on this pick for seven years I forgot about that John Morant's like good immediately

I forgot about that so who was the best team you played this year by the way the best team yeah man um

I I would say I mean I would say it's it's Milwaukee Lakers Clippers those three I mean

I the team I love by the... The team I love, by the way, the team I love is Toronto. I love Toronto. I love their team. I love the way they play. I just... Great coach.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's amazing that they were able to shrug off the Kawhi thing and kind of patch his numbers together and still do their thing. And then the Lowry, you know, they had injuries too.

Yeah. They had a bunch of injuries. They just kept winning. Yeah. I'm excited to see my team again. I really, I miss my guys. It was really getting attached.

Tatum, Brown, Marcus smart. Oh, can we hit Kemba all of a sudden? Then it, then it's over. All right.

Um, we can listen to your pie. Are you, what hit Kemba all of a sudden? Then it, then it's over. All right. Um, we can listen to your pie. Are you, what's your podcast schedule going to be? People are asking, but once we get toward the season, you have to shut it down. No,

absolutely not. Absolutely not. So zoom, zoom's been good for you. It's zoom's been super easy. It's super easy. It's super easy to get on somebody on a zoom call. Um,

I, so we have, we're doing a zoom call. Um, I, so we have, we're doing a recording next week with, uh, when Butler from arcade fire, uh, he's become a buddy of mine. He lives down in new Orleans. We've been trying to get him on the pod. So he'll probably be the last one we do before we get down to the bubble. I may do one in new Orleans during that little 10, 14 day period where we're, we're, we're not practicing, but we're practicing. I'm not sure what, what's happening. And then, um, yeah, the podcast is going to be all behind the scenes stuff. Uh, we'll have some players on from other teams. Um, and it's, you know, we we've actually recorded a ton of episodes and I think they've all been really

relevant. And, and, um, lately. And lately we've done a bunch of stuff like with Jamal and Malcolm and today with Taylor Rooks where we're talking about the issues going on right now. And it's just important to hear from them. I mean, that's the biggest thing. They have such good perspective on things. And I've actually learned a lot

just in listening to those three guests. The other thing we forgot to mention about Orlando is it's gonna be tamperpalooza 2020 all these dudes together all these potential free agents or a year from now free I can't even imagine what's gonna happen it's gonna be wild I'm bringing my stick I bring in my sticks down there I'm gonna play some golf and so I'm wondering who else is gonna who else is gonna bring their clubs down and and and will there my stick i bring in my sticks down there i'm i'm gonna play some golf and so i'm wondering who else is gonna who else is gonna bring their their clubs down and and and will there be some action on the course i really curry curry curry for sure curry's not coming oh yeah you're right

iguodala is coming though iguodala um Curry might come anyway for the golf. If he knows, Willie green, Willie green will, will bring him. Although he's a, you know, he's with Phoenix as an assistant. I just don't know many dudes that play golf anymore. Like it's not a thing. When I got in the league, everybody played golf. Really? Yeah. I probably, probably half my team in Orlando played golf half. I would say I know one other dude on my team in new Orleans that plays golf. Frank Jackson, which guys on Orlando played golf, a Royal,

uh, pack Garrity. I should have guessed that one. Jameer. I can totally see him out there. Not to wait. No, Dwight didn't play.

Not Dwight. Can't imagine him out there. Not Dwight. No, Dwight didn't play. Not Dwight. Can't imagine him out there. I can imagine the foursome behind him getting annoyed because Dwight's on the green, like not leaving and messing around with the flag or something. And then them just hitting into him. I'd have a hard time believing that Dwight could take golf seriously. I have a real hard time believing that Dwight could take golf seriously. I have a real hard time. All right, JJ, good to see you. Good luck. Good luck in Orlando. Good luck with

the fam. All right. Thanks Bill. All right. We're gonna talk to Corey Jefferson in a second. First whoop, a fitness wearable that provides personalized data and insights on how recovered you are, how much sleep you're getting, how much stress you're putting on your body over the course of your day, whether you're active, whether you're trying to improve your health. It will help you build smarter habits. It will keep track of your training, sleep, and recovery data. And one of the coolest things is the strain coach, which gives you target exertion goals based on your recovery, takes the guesswork out of your training, shows your progress live, alerts you when you fit your workout goal.

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15% off right now with the code Simmons at checkout, go to whoop.com, W H O O P.com. Enter Simmons at checkout to save 15%, sleep better, recover faster, train smarter, optimize your performance with Whoop today. All right. Without further ado, here's Cord Jefferson. All right. Cord Jefferson is here. He is rocking one of the best quarantine beards I've seen. Wow. I don't even know how to describe it. You said you've had friends compare it to... James Harden. A little early James Harden. Yeah. That's what a friend told me. Yeah. But this is, you know, it's getting pretty long. I was not expecting it to be this long. I think that if I keep it going, I could do maybe Frederick Douglass for Halloween.

That's maybe a new goal. It's impressive. I wish I could grow one. Mine just grows out of my neck. It just makes it look like eventually it just swallows up my chin. We've known each other for a while through mutual friends. And I want to start with The Watchman, but then go into your whole journey. Because I think one of the things that's interesting about you is I just knew about you. And at one point I was like, court's moving to LA. He's going to take a shot at TV and it it's your whole journey is really cool. So I want to save that for later, but the Watchmen, um, which is about six, seven months out of when the season finale was and then all the stuff that's happened in the country the last few weeks. Yeah.

What is our perspective now in that show and how it ties into where we are in 2020? As somebody who works on it and who can look at it objectively, but was also so intrinsically involved in the actual show. Yeah, I think that... So I've had a lot of people recently reaching out to me, friends and stuff, saying like, it's crazy how prescient Watchmen feels. Like, it's insane that that was seven months ago, and it feels like you guys predicted so much. And I say that I think history is prescient. when you're writing about black people in America and you're writing about black history and you're writing about police violence and you're writing

about white supremacist violence, you can kind of set your watch to the fact that that's probably going to happen again in America. And so I think that, yeah, I don't think that we were pressing. I don't think that we predicted the future. We didn't have some crystal ball in the writer's room. It's just, we were talking about history though, in American history, history is prescient. Like the things that you, the things that you,

um, you know, the things that we were touching on are just things that have been, uh, complaints from like my parents and my grandparents and my great grandparents and then issues that people have been dealing with as long as there were black people in this country. So, um, it is, you know, the mask stuff is crazy. Like, like I'll admit that that's a, that's a crazy coincidence, but as far as the, the, the, the sort of themes of the show, um, I think that a lot of them just, just exist because we're in America. The mass thing. I don't even, coincidence is not even a good enough word. Um, Yeah, it's wild. You know, we ran, Victor Luckerson wrote a piece for The Ringer two years ago about Tulsa.

And I took AP History in high school. I was a political science person in college. That was my major. Felt like I knew a lot of stuff. I'm kind of embarrassed by how little I know about some of this stuff. And that was a perfect example, that piece. It was like, oh, I'd kind of heard of that. And then you read that piece like, Oh my God,

I didn't do it. No, anything. Um, it would seem like one outcome potentially from this year is going to be people really doubling and tripling down on the history of some of this stuff and, and how important it is. Um, did you is. Did you know the Tulsa story intimately before you even worked for that show or before Victor wrote about any of that stuff? I didn't know about it intimately by any means, but I definitely knew about it. I'd heard about it.

I remember hearing about it sometime in my childhood. Not that I studied it deeply. I certainly probably didn't. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona and Tucson isn't great on sort of like civil rights education or anything. So I would likely not have, uh, heard about it in school, but, you know, um, because Tucson was a pretty sort of a pretty sheltered environment as far as it comes to diversity. Um, my, my parents tried to make sure that I was steeped in a lot of Black history at home. So there was a lot of movies and TV and documentaries and books

about Black history in America. So I came across it sometime then, but it wasn't something that I paid a lot of attention to until we were in the writer's room and Damon said he wanted it he wanted to use it somewhere in the season it took a few weeks I think for us to decide that it was going to be the opening of the pilot but yeah Damon came in and said he wanted that to be wanted that to be a focal point of the season and I you know I didn't realize how few people had known about it until the next day and a friend sent And a friend sent me one of those Google trends graphs. And just how the overnight from Sunday at 10pm when the episode aired to Monday morning, how much the Google searches had spiked for Tulsa Massacre was insane. Was it weird working on this show knowing that it might be a one and done?

That there's one story you're telling and then that that could be it there is there is because most tv shows now they're trying to keep it going for as many seasons as they possibly can i i think he probably learned from lost if you don't think that way just do your best season exactly exactly like i think that i mean there's so much content now. There's so many TV shows. There's, I think that, I mean, you're now seeing six episode seasons, Fleabag's doing a six episode season, just like basically a three hour movie. You're seeing like people do eight episode seasons, nine episodes.

I mean, Watchmen was nine, an odd number. I think that people, I'm ready. I'm excited for a time in which people just do that. People just pull the plug when they feel like it's time to pull the plug. I worked on The Good Place also. And I came onto that show in season two. And I remember Mike Schur saying in season two, like, I think this is a four-season show. He knew from sort of basically the first day that I started working on it that he didn't want to drag it out to eight, nine, ten seasons.

He just wanted to make four seasons of a show and say what he needed to say and be done with it. I think that, you know, I don't want to name names, but I think we can all probably name a television show that probably should have ended a couple, two, three seasons earlier than it did because it felt like by the time you get to the end, by the time they actually go off the air, you're sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel. And I think that it's great for people to start deciding to pack it up when they feel like they want to pack it up instead of being canceled or just dragging it out for the money. Yeah, it's funny. TV shows are almost like athletes. They have to have that one season where they don't have it anymore to realize they shouldn't have it anymore. It's funny because I know Mike, obviously,

and his favorite show ever is Cheers. Yeah. Cheers is a show that easily could have ended after season five when Diane left. Yeah. Like it had a natural out and then they kind of reinvented it show and it became like a real true sitcom. Yeah. But the first, especially the first three years, the reason it's still one of my four or five favorite shows ever is it wasn't a sitcom. It was a show that was funny, you know, and it was really human and they would go in some stretches, like two, three minutes without a laugh. And so it reinvented itself. And it's almost like there's two separate cheers in my mind, but I'm with you. Like it's really rare for a TV show to just kind of drop the bike. And I think the other thing was, and this is why I didn't watch The Watchmen right away, is I'm just not a comic book guy.

I'm just kind of out. I don't, I'm not into that whole universe. Me neither. I kind of blame it for ruining movies in a lot of ways because it just seemed like it was the cheap way to just get people to come to a theater. Yeah. And it feels like that show reinvented the genre to some degree

in a way that now I'll be interested to see where it goes with comic book heroes and the kind of themes that they can really get into now. You know, I think Joker did that too. The Todd Phillips movie was another one where it, maybe that's the evolution of that genre, right? Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that, you know, I'm the same way. I didn't grow up reading a ton of comic books. I collected X-Men cards because my friends did, but I didn't ever read X-Men. And so, you know,

I've read like a very small number of comic books. I've read American Splendor, which isn't really like a superhero. I've read Black Hole, which is another weird comic book. And then I only read Watchmen after Damon first emailed me and said he's thinking about doing the show. And he asked me if I would be interested. And so I went out and bought Watchmen immediately and then read it pretty quickly and loved it. But it wasn't something that I grew up with as sort of obsessing over the way that Damon did did damon read all those damon read all 12 issues of that comic when they came out with his

dad um so he was like super super um uh steeped in it by the time by the time we got to it so but but i think that the thing that immediately i found compelling about it was that it was genre but it was genre that felt really grounded so So it wasn't just like, you know, superheroes and like flying into space and battling aliens and stuff. You know, it felt like it was hyper political. It felt like it was incredibly grounded in real world issues and real world themes. And it wasn't just, you know, Superman takes on the like Lex Luthor and then saves the day. It just felt much more grittier and interesting and complex than that. So you wrote the sixth episode, which was kind of the famous episode for a lot of reasons.

One, it's fantastic. Thank you. It also does a tiny twist. I don't want to... Look, there might be some people listening, I don't know, who haven't seen the show yet. You can get it on HBO Max. Statute of Max. I feel like statute of limitations at this point. It's okay. You make the decision, uh, you and Dave and everybody else that you're going to reveal who to justice. And in, in, in comic book circles, this was a big deal.

This was going behind the curtain in a way that you guys, especially if it doesn't work, is an all-time backfire and people are just completely out on the show. How scared were you of this might not work backlash versus knowing that this was the right thing to do? Incredibly scared. Because, I mean, you know, the Watchmen, the original text, is so hugely beloved by comic book people

and by Alan Moore fans. Rightly so. It's amazing. But, you know, to take it... So already it felt like dangerous waters to even try to take it on. But then to take this sort of central figure of the Watchmen story and unmask him

and say not only that we unmask him, but also say that his identity is that of a black man, while everything in the book suggests that he is white and perhaps this German bodybuilder, it sort of like flies in the face of a lot of tradition. And so, you know, that episode has a lot of big swings in it. I remember Damon, when I sent him my draft, Damon said to me, he said, if this episode doesn't work, I think we're really screwed.

So it was like so much pressure on it from the beginning. And I was like, God damn, I mean, it's a heavy lift, but I think that if we can pull it off, it will be great. But, um, it was, yeah, it was, it was a ton of big swings that I, I, I, I think they worked out. I hope other people do as well when they watch. Were you on Twitter that night as it was happening, watching the reactions or you don't, you don't want to do that to yourself? No, man, I didn't know.

That's like down that path lies madness because I was sort of the person, I kind of would probably become addicted to that. So the night that it aired, actually, I was in New York traveling for Thanksgiving and I made a friend go with me to dinner. We went and saw that David Byrne show on Broadway and then we went to dinner and there was no phones allowed. So we just didn't look at our phones for like four or five hours while we just bounced around.

And then I finally allowed myself to look at it. And you're just wondering what, deep down, you're just like, I wonder what they thought. Yeah, exactly. I wonder what's happening. Exactly. But I just didn't want to be, if I allowed myself to look at it, I would have just been glued to my phone freaking out. I think for that show to really work and to resonate in a real way, especially when you're taking comic

book material that everybody already feels like they know, you kind of have to take a swing like that. You could do it conventionally, but then the series is just going to come and go, right? You have to take a couple giant swings and hope they work. Do you

feel like Damon was at... The guy's had a lot of success. Do you think he was at the point of his career where he's like, if I'm doing this, I'm fucking doing it. I'm pulling it from 25. I'm just going for it. Yeah, absolutely. I think that

that's the way that Damon does everything, to be honest. I think that, you know, I think that's the way that Damon does everything, to be honest. But I think that this in particular just felt like, I know for a fact that he was incredibly terrified to do this show, just because he loved it so much. So it's like taking this thing that you find really pure, and that you love and appreciate. And on top of that, it sort of like holds a lot of emotion for him with his dad because his dad has now passed. And it's something that he and his dad fell in love with together and shared when he was alive. So I think that Damon was incredibly nervous about going into it. But I think that you're right. I think that at a certain point, he said, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to take a lot of big swings. And if I fall flat on my face, then so be it. But I might as well do this. And I'm going to take a lot of big swings. And if I fall flat on my face, then so be it. But I might as well do this. And I think that something

that you said earlier is correct in that we are now so inundated with superhero stuff. It just feels... I agree with you. Sometimes it feels like superhero is just the culture at this point. Every movie is a superhero movie. Every successful

movie, at least. Every TV show is a superhero TV show. And so, so I think that distinguishing yourself from that pack is important and doing things that make it feel fresh and new and original is important. Otherwise it's going to get caught in the superhero noise. And yet nobody will remake plastic man. It drives me crazy. What?

Lube man? Plastic man. It drives me crazy. What? Lube Man? Plastic Man. Who's Plastic Man? Yeah. See, nobody knows. When I was a kid for two years, there was a cartoon. I thought you were making that up. No, there was a cartoon called Plastic Man.

And he could just reach across the city and grab something. And it was great. I was really into him. I've never heard of this. Hot, hot, hot girlfriend, by the way. It sounds like a bad super... If I had a superpower

and it was that I could reach far distances... You'd just stretch. But he could stretch in all these different ways. We're in the CGI now. We could do it. Wax superpower. So you don't think there's any way season two happens? I don't think so.

Yeah. In the conversations I've had with Damon, he's been pretty adamant about the fact that he doesn't want to do it anymore. I think that, like I said, I think that, you know, this was a... We started writing that show in September 2017 and worked on that show for two years.

I can't believe that. Yeah. Like that is... We worked on that show for two years i can't believe that yeah like that that is we worked on how many writers in the writer's room um there was i think about 10 of us off the top of my head uh nine to ten um and so but but you know that that was a it was a huge labor of love for for everybody that worked on just because it was it was a little time consuming and it was you know emotional and there was a lot of sort of there was a, it was a huge labor of love for, for everybody that worked on it just because it was, it was a little time consuming and it was, you know, emotional. And there was a lot of sort of,

there was a lot of emotional energy invested in it by everybody. So I think that, I think that Damon sort of is, is happy with what he did and is happy with the story he told and wants to move on now. Has he moved on from the lunatics that love lost who are still mad about like seven different things i don't i don't i think that's why he's still off twitter if i'm being honest i think i think he's

i think he said openly i hope that i'm not betraying his confidence but i think he said openly that he got off twitter because of because of the response to lost and so uh you know i i don't know that he's he's fully over it yet i i can't speak to that, though. It's so funny the power that a TV show has over people, for better and worse, and the ownership that they feel over it after a while. And I still remember even the shows that, when I was growing up,

that I loved, and they would end badly. They would always have that one last bad season. It would just make me so mad. Yeah, well, TV is like, it's because tv you spend so much time with it you know movies over in in 90 minutes two hours tv you know if you're a show like cheers if you're a show like lost people have spent hundreds of hours of their life with these characters and it's like there's somebody said something once that i i think may

be true also which is that like TV is consumed. Well, basically everything is nowadays, but TV for the longest time was one of the few things that you consumed in your house. You literally brought these characters into your home with you all the time, week after week after week for years on end. And so people do start to feel like real emotions and ownership over these stories. And so I understand if people get pissed off. I mean, I don't think that you should harass a creator on Twitter if you're mad about the

ending to a show, but I understand where those emotions come from. I'm trying to think the maddest I've ever been at the end of a show. It might have been the killing on AMC. I think that might have been the single baddest I've been. I haven't seen that in so long. It was 10 years ago. I just, I was really into it.

And the way it ended, I was so mad that I had spent a whole year wondering what the killing was. And I was like, you motherfuckers. I was like, why don't you go outside and start punching people? The lame is ending up. There's a, there's a thing that have you ever seen Top of the Lake?

That Elizabeth Moss show? Yeah. So I don't think the ending on that was bad, but it made the single, I think, the single weirdest choice for any TV show I've ever watched in the last episode, which was Elizabeth Moss, when she finally finds the rapist and is about going into his house to arrest him.

She goes in and there's a pill bottle on the counter in the rapist's house. And the pill bottle has a piece of tape on it and written in huge block letters, it just says, Roofies. Which is like... Oh, no. This horrible, evil rapist that you've been looking for

all season is like... He's not even smart enough to not write roofies on his roofies. That can't be true. That's a real thing that happened? Go look for it. Go look for it. It's one of the craziest decisions I've ever seen in a finale of a TV show. Oh, my God.

Wow. Let's, uh, let's go backwards. All right. Cause now you're the guy that other people point to when they're like, well, cord did it.

Oh, I could be like cord. Well, I don't know what happened with cord. Now there's all this pressure on you because you're one of the few people that pressure on you. But I mean, just the whole story

of like, you go from the internet basically to writing for TV shows. And now you're in a position where I'm sure you, I don't know what you have cooking, but I'm sure at some point you're going to unleash your own show. But you, you were in that whole gawker world for how many years? I was there for two years, but before that I was writing for the internet for like years and years and years. So I was a journalist altogether for two years, but before that I was writing for the internet for like years and years and years. So I was a journalist altogether for about eight, nine years. So you were like early blogosphere. Yeah, yeah. I jumped around. I was doing a bunch of blogging from, I would say, gosh, 2007 to 2006 maybe to 2014 is when I went to TV.

So Gawker, what were you doing there? I can't remember. I was a West Coast editor, but that just meant I was a writer who didn't want to move to New York. So I just worked in my apartment in LA. That was all it meant. West Coast editor was just phony.

It just meant I didn't want to leave California. That pace that all the Gawker writers were on did not seem sustainable and i think they've they've been pretty open about it since now it's i mean it was it was brutal i mean you started working at as soon as you woke up and you looked at the internet and you stopped working 12 hours later 12 13 hours later and then if you were off somewhere on on a Saturday enjoying your life and something broke, you got back to your computer and tried to put up a post. It was, you know, it was just breakneck and brutal. I don't, but, and, you know, but, but I think that that's, I think that that's every job nowadays, though. I think we're all working 24 hour days now. It sort of happened when we started putting little computers in our pockets and we're never away

from email and text messages and Slack and everything. So I think maybe it was just a precursor to all of that. I feel like everybody works that hard now. Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, I do wonder about that. I go in stretches where if I feel like I'm looking at my phone too much, I'll just start either taking stuff off it, just cutting. And I'm not a person who's on Twitter a lot, but I do, you know, with the way the news has been going, I do get my news a lot of times instantly from Twitter, Apple news, places like that. And you just get in this habit of, Oh, what's going on? What's happening? And, and, and what's that? And this, this kind of half-assed curiosity that just dominates for 10 to 12 hours of the day, unless you're not looking at it. It's not a great way to live.

I've, I've, I've locked, I lock mine at, at an hour. I give myself an hour a day. And when I get to an hour on Twitter or Instagram... Oh, it locks on you? Yeah. I mean, I could bypass it if I want to. But after an hour, it just says you've utilized your hour for the day on these apps. Oh, you're like parenting yourself. I like this. Exactly.

This is smart. But I mean, it's pathetic. That's what I've had to resort to. I don't have self control. Now that we're seven, eight years out of that end of that Gawker run, not just because you left, but it

really seemed like it was 07 to 13, something like that. What's your perspective on it now looking back? Do you have any regrets? On the internet or Gawker? Just everything. How do you see it now looking back what like do you have any regrets do you wish on the internet or gawker or what just just everything how do you how do you see it now um i really i really loved being a journalist i think that i was uh i had i had sort of i and i think that i utilize all those skills and what i do nowadays i think that learning to write a lot, learning to write on deadline, learning to, um, learning to analyze information and analyze news and learning to listen to people and learning to, um, try to figure out, um, the meaning behind what somebody might actually might be saying, like the actual meaning behind what somebody is, is trying, like the facade somebody's putting up. I think all of that is helpful in writing TV now. So I think that it was a great crash course

on how to be a writer. I could never go back to that pace nowadays. I think it just took a lot out of me emotionally. Because by the end too, I was writing a lot about race and politics in America. And if I was doing that right now, I just feel like it's brutal, man. It just takes a lot out of you, particularly when the news is like this and this bad. Do you feel like there's a shelf life for that kind of pace?

A certain number of years to do that? Because it doesn't seem like it's that sustainable. Yeah, definitely. I think that if you... I mean, there was for me. There is for other people that if you i think that i mean there was for me there is for other people that i that i know who did that kind of work i think that it's it becomes a thing where um where you sort of it just it just you you reach a breaking point eventually i mean i think that there's there's still people out there doing it who have been doing it for you know years and

years and years now i think that there's writers like Jelani Cobb and Nicole Hannah-Jones and these kinds of people who have been doing this work their entire careers and who continue to do excellent work. So I'm not saying that it breaks everybody, but it certainly hit a breaking point for me and I had to get out of there. So when I got an offer, so another mutual friend of ours, Mike O'Malley, O'Malley reached out to me in 2014 to come work on a TV show. And I kind of didn't know what to expect.

It was only 13 weeks of work, but I took the job and I haven't really looked back since. I still do journalism from time to time when I have some room to do it. But I sort of focus mostly on TV and features now. I remember in 2001, and I'd had my old site in Boston for a while, like four years. And I was just constant every day. No way out. Like there was only one way to do it. I'm trying to bring people to

me. I'm not attached to anybody. And then when I got hired by ESPN, I remember I asked them for, um, I knew I was burned out and I asked them like, Hey, before I start, can I have five weeks off? And they're like, uh, well, we won't start the contract till that. I'm like, that's fine. And then they actually felt bad. They're like, yeah, we'll start it early. That's good. Take the five weeks. So I somehow jet my mind trick them. But I remember I took that first two weeks off in the habit of just feeling like, almost like being a doctor, like you're going to the hospital, like I got to go, I can put my, and just not having that and just being, it was like having a tumor removed.

Yeah. And it was like, wow, this is, it's 930 on a Monday. And I'm just looking around and the sky's blue. And I'm like, oh my God, what did I just do to myself the last four years? So I, I, I get it. I do think you can hit a breaking point with that stuff. Yeah. And even, and in 2001, when you were, when you were doing that, Twitter didn't exist.

Instagram didn't exist. Like all these other pieces of information did not exist. And now I just feel like, you know, you have every bit of information in the world coming at you all at once. And a lot of it is negative. And you have criticism coming at you. And you have awful, horrible news stories coming from around the world that affect you emotionally. I'm not a doctor, but I just feel like it can't be healthy to just plug yourself into that all the time and jack your brain into the internet constantly. Well, it's definitely not healthy,

especially during the pandemic as everyone's just home driving themselves crazy and wherever they're living. Exactly. You left out a crucial point of you had a quote unquote break where you had that, what was the name of the show where they invited you on to do the thing? Oh, Survivor's Remorse. Oh, no. Oh, Chris Hayes. Yeah. What was that story? I vaguely remember it., no, Chris Hayes. Yeah, what was that story?

I vaguely remember it. All in with Chris Hayes. I wrote this piece for Gawker, this satirical piece about there was a surf riot in Huntington Beach and all these white kids, surfers, destroyed Huntington Beach. And we're looting stores and getting in fistfights and toppling porta porta potties and stuff and just running amok and so i wrote this satirical piece for gawker about the white culture of violence and like where are the white parents and there's like white kids are sort of like going crazy basically all the all the stuff that people say about black people when when sort of they they do the same things and so um and so that sort of did well on the site. And the next day Chris Hayes reached out and asked if I would come do, come do a, a bit that was basically that on the, on the show.

And that sort of, that is what you're right. That is what O'Malley saw that caused him to reach out to me. He saw that appearance on Chris Hayes. That, that like truly, that truly changed my life and I almost didn't do it. It's so funny. People always ask for advice or whatever. I hate telling

people. Sometimes it's something like that. It's just this one thing where the right person sees the right thing at the right time. I know that happened for me at ESPN. The right person saw the right call on the right day. Would it happen anyway? me at ESPN. The right person saw the right call on the right day, but would it happen anyway? I don't know. Yeah. You just got to say yes. When you're starting out, say yes to stuff. Just do it. Even if it scares you, even if you've never done it before, because you have no idea whose eyeballs are going to

reach your work. And that sort of can be your huge thing. It was for me. So you get survivor's remorse where... I know LeBron wrote all the scripts, right? He was in the writer's room constantly. Yeah. He took off. Yeah. He sort of was writing in the locker room a lot. He called notes calls. He had written notes and towels. No, he wasn't... LeBron was at the premiere, but I didn't see him before that. But Maverick was in the room a few times. Maverick would come by and sort of give us help with ideas and stories and stuff.

But that was short. It was 13 weeks. Like I said, it was an abbreviated season. It was six episodes. And then we were done. And that's why it felt like a huge, scary leap for me because it was less than four months of work. I had to quit my job to do it. And so there was no guarantee for another season after that.

There was no guarantee of getting another TV job after that. It was just kind of, I just had to jump and hope that I could swim. You took the big swing. Yeah. But the big thing is you didn't have the wife and two kids being like, hey, where are we going? What's happening?

Yeah, exactly. So the lesson is don't get married. And then what was next? Wilmore? Wilmore was after that, but Wilmore was like seven months later. So there was like seven months of just general meetings, going around town, pitching myself, trying to sort of dance for my dinner for executives. Didn't get hired. Oh, so you did the LA dance. Oh, yeah, man. You did the LA meeting dance. The couch and water bottle tour, the famous. Yeah, you can sort of go in and they offer you some water and then they tell you to sit on the couch

and you tell them all about yourself. I did that for seven months without getting hired. And then I finally got an interview with Larry. He was still working on Black-ish. He was shooting his last episode of Black-ish. And so I met with him on the set and we chatted a little bit. And he hired me to come. So that was October and I moved back to New York in December 2014 for that.

Yeah. I happen to know Larry Wilmore. He might have a podcast on the Ring of Podcasts. I know. He's an awesome guy. What was he like as a boss, just out of curiosity? Very, very, very incredibly interesting and mellow

and thoughtful and smart. Everything you want out of a boss. You know what I mean? He is a dude who incredibly interesting and mellow and thoughtful and smart, everything you want out of a boss. You know what I mean? Like he was, he is a dude who, um, he is a dude who is incredibly curious and interested in everything and like willing to talk about everything. I think that that's like, I think that that some of that is a background in standup comedy. You know, I think that, I think that a lot of comedians are one of the,

one of the things that makes a comedian good is somebody who's just interested in everything and willing to have an opinion about everything. You just got to be able to talk and come up with ideas really quickly and generate stuff. And so he was that kind of guy. But also, you know, very laid back and cool too.

Like you never felt... That kind of job is incredibly nervous making sometimes because you have to do four shows a week and then on fridays you're planning the show for monday so on a show like good place you know we work for eight months on 14 episodes of television for uh 14 half hour episodes of television for, uh, 14 half hour episodes of television for a show like the nightly show, you make 14 episodes of television in three weeks. And so it's like, you just have the turnover is crazy.

You're writing all, all day and all night when you're done with the show, when you're, when you're done taping the show at like 8 PM the night before, then you've got to immediately start working on the next day's show. Uh, the first meeting for which is like at 9 AM p.m. the night before, then you've got to immediately start working on the next day's show. The first meeting for which is like at 9 a.m. sometimes. So it is just like a breakneck pace and it can be terrifying and a little frustrating and feel like you don't have time to come up to breathe. But Larry never made it feel that way. He never felt tense or nervous.

He exuded calm when you were around him, which I think is incredibly important for somebody who's Larry never made it feel that way. He never felt tense or nervous. He exuded calm when you were around him, which I think is incredibly important for somebody who's on top of a show like that. Yeah, I described my experience with Kimmel. Obviously, I'm very familiar with the four days a week holding on for dear life. It's like being a baseball player where it's a 1622 game season. Yeah. And

it's like, you could have the game where you're like, I was four for five with two homers. And then 12 hours later, you're playing again. And the game before it just didn't matter at all. It's like, guess what? Today's a new day. And you could have the shittiest day possible and be like, oh my God, the world's ending. And then the next day I'd be like, yep, another show. And I think we, we had so many people on that show who just hadn't done a show like that. All of us, we were just the, the, the way it would move day to day, week to week, the swings of it. You know, I think now it's like when, when I'm sure that show now he's almost had it 20 years. I'm sure it's like a machine. Oh yeah. Then that, if we had a bad show,

I felt like the world was over, you know, it was like, Oh my God, I have to put my lease of my car online and try to, you know, and then you have a good show. And it's like,

this is good, man. We're here for 10 years. Exactly. It's, it's really, there's nothing like it. This swings.

It's terrifying, but also, you know, thrilling. I, but I also think that it's like a young person's work like i could never go back to late night i could never go back i could never go back to four shows a week i think that you know the i in my mind it's you know a show like john oliver is consistently really good because john oliver was like oh instead of doing the daily show model of four shows a week i'm gonna do one show a week

and we're gonna have a season and it's not gonna be 52 weeks a year and we're gonna sort of like really dig down on issues and make something that's really really good every episode i think that that um if i were ever to go back to a show like that i would want it to be like a john oliver type thing as opposed to uh doing it every night just because it's a grind man i think that you know that's so surprised that a lot of young people sort of populate those offices yeah and then the good place happens you get to work with mike sure one of the all-time good guys yeah i don't know if you know that's baseball yes oh god please i do I mean, the, the, the only, the only time I've ever seen Mike sure. Like actually angry was a baseball,

uh, was we, it was, we had a, uh, we used to have a soundboard in the, um, we used to have a soundboard in the, in the good place writers room where sort of we clicked on different videos, uh, that we would like, we would set up like it's incredibly complicated but there was a bunch of we would set up a bunch of different youtube clips on the on the uh bookmarks bar so you could just like if somebody said something you just click on a youtube clip and it would like go directly to the line that we wanted and mike had one

i don't know anything about baseball but mike had one that was like a Boston Red Sox dude, like hitting a home run or something that he really loved to go to. And somebody replaced it one time with a Yankees, like a walk-off home run where they beat the Red Sox in the playoffs. And it was literally... It was an act of war. It was truly... I believe Mike unplugged the computer and threw it in the trash.

He unplugged the monitor and turned it off and put it in the garbage can. He was so mad. They probably did the Aaron Boonhomer. That's what it was. That's what it was. The Aaron Boonhomer. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's an act of war. That's an HR violation. Even though it's Mike's show, it's still an HR violation. It was amazing. So, so you get the good place and now you're like, oh, this is, I'm actually now, I have now have a resume.

Things are going to happen. Like that's probably when you start feeling safe, right? Before I was on the good place, I did Master of None season two. And those dudes are how, so Alan and Aziz were super into, they had worked with Mike for years, obviously on Parks and Rec.

And they were so, they just spoke of him so effusively and glowingly. I was like, if I ever get an opportunity to work with Mike, I'm going to do it. And so I worked on that until August of 2016. And then in November, December of 2016, I had an interview with Mike. And he hired me for Good Place Season 2. And I moved back to LA in January 2017 for that. I forgot you had a whole Alan Yang experience too. Yang, man. He's great. Did you ever see him not dressed up or no? No. He's always in at least a blazer. I rarely see him in a full suit, but he's always in at least a blazer. It makes me want to like, he's, he's given me, um, he's given me a little bit of shame and I feel like I want to start wearing a

blazer places now too, but I don't know. I want to zoom him at some point to see if the quarantine broke him and he's just wearing a t-shirt jogging pants like everybody else. At some point in month four, it probably had to have happened, right? I, I, I wouldn't, I happened, right? I will tell you this. I saw a Zoom that he did probably two months ago with some people. Yeah. And he was still in a button-up shirt and drinking a glass of white wine

from a beautiful crystal. It's like a Burberry catalog. Yeah, it was amazing. So you had that, then you had The Good Place, and then you start working on The Watchman too. Yep. Went to Watchman.

I was at The Good Place and Mike introduced me to Damon because they were friends. Because when Mike, I think they might've been friends before this, but when Mike was writing Good Place, he went to Damon to ask about how to do a cliffhanger show

because Damon was super famous for doing that from Lost. And they started chatting. So Mike introduced me to Damon and Damon and I hit it off. And so I went to Watchmen in September 2017. We started writing.

That's a great list of people to work with. I feel like you're ready now. I feel like you're ready for your own show. This is it. You put in the time. From your lips, man. From your lips to God's ears. We'll see.

I mean, I do know that those guys are like truly the best teachers that anybody could have. If you want to learn this business, I feel like... Give me like two lessons. Oh, man. Two lessons. could have if you want to learn this business i feel like two lessons oh man two lessons uh i i will say that like i will say that uh a lesson from mike that i learned that that i that i sort of take with me everywhere is just that mike is is a normal human being and that he is he i think that there's something that i think i think it's for every industry but but i but i'm talking about hollywood here so i'll be hollywood specific i think that that in hollywood there's this idea that genius needs to go hand in hand with being

a being a jerk and being um intolerant and being aggressive and angry and rude. And it's just basically like the idea that you can be... That genius goes hand in hand with being an asshole. And Mike, I think, is somebody who is incredibly talented, incredibly gifted, very successful, very good at his job. But at the end of the day, he's just a normal dude. And he wants to leave the office at like 630 and go coach his kids baseball league and like go to his kids baseball games like this idea that you need to

be in the office until 2am and screaming at assistants and throwing stuff in order to make a great show is just, it's just absolutely not true. And sort of a failure of people's imagination. I think that that's a good lesson. Yeah, it's great. I mean, and it's... I only want to work with people like that. I think that it's made me realize that you don't have to work for jerks to make good work. And I think for Damon, it was...

Damon really put his money where his mouth was when it came to diversity in a room and getting a diversity of voices and opinions. Watchmen to me was, I think that some people will do lip service, pay lip service to this idea and say like, okay, I'm going to hire like one black guy, but like not really listen to him and not necessarily pay attention to what he's saying. Or I'm going to hire one woman and talk over her a lot but she's in the room and like that's all she needs right is just like the the experience but damon damon came into that show saying like i want to make a show about race in america

i'm gonna hire a bunch of black people to work on this show i'm going to actually value their opinions and listen to what they have to say and learn from them i think that's a that's the thing too is that so many people in this industry there's a lot of big egos in Hollywood. I don't have to tell you that. And so I think that a lot of people find it hard to leave their egos at the door and listen to, listen to people who are working for them and people who are working with them. Um, I think that it's like, you know, if it says showrunner as your title, I think that it's easy to just lean into that and say like, well, this is my show. And if you don't like it, hit the bricks. But Damon didn't do that. He sort of really,

truly wanted to make a diverse show and wanted to listen to people's opinions and value what they had to say. And I think that that to me is crucial. And I think that even if you are, I've said this before, but even if you are, I believe it's the morally right thing to do is to hire women and people of color and queer people and other minority groups. I think that that is morally the right thing to do because for so long, those voices have been marginalized and shut out of these conversations. So, but even if, even if you don't believe that morally, even if you sort of want to ignore that, I think from a business perspective, it is smart business to hire marginalized voices

because there's millions of people out there who have never seen their stories told in television and movies. And so I think that, you know, when you see stuff like crazy rich Asians blow up, it's like people are desperate for that, man. People are thirsty and you can make a lot of money if you do that. So even if you're not coming at it from a moral place,

you should at least come at it from a business perspective and understand that there's money to be made there at the very least. Do you think Hollywood has changed their perspective on that because there's been so much stuff that has had success the last three, four years? 66% of executives are still white people. You get like, I think 65% of, 65% of TV writers, I want to say, maybe, maybe lower. I mean, I don't trust me. Don't quote me on this stuff

because I don't know exactly for sure, but I think 65% of TV showrunners are still white. I think that it still skews heavily male. So yeah, I think it's getting better. I'm not a person who, I believe that America is getting better all the time. I don't think, I believe that America is incredibly imperfect and has so much work to do.

But I'm also sort of, I don't, you know, I don't fawn over like, I haven't feel no nostalgia for like earlier America because it's even worse back then. So I think that people are making incremental change and things are getting better, but I just think there's a lot more work to be done to actually get to a place where we need to be.

So what kind of show do you think you want to create? Would it be a half-hour comedy? Would it be a drama? Would it be something that you could get in and out of in a year? Without giving away what your ideas are, what is appealing to you? I mean, I don't mind drama or comedy. I would never want to do like a slapsticky,

just like straightforward sitcom. I don't see myself ever creating something like that. I think that there's a lot of shows... People's attention spans are courted in many ways nowadays. And so I do it myself. I think we all have TV shows where we look at Twitter while it's playing or do laundry laundry or, or, um, check email and stuff that just play in the background. I think that for me, the stuff that I create and the stuff that I work on, I want to feel like it's not shows like that. It's not shows that people

feel like they can scroll Twitter and, um, click around the internet while you're watching them. I want them, I want people to sort of actually be thinking about them and I want them to be thoughtful and I want it to feel like it's asking important questions and causing people to reassess things in their lives and and question their question their existence and question question the world and so um you know i think that that is if there's like a thread that connects that connects the shows that i've worked on um i think it's just that it's that the shows feel additive and they feel like they're doing something interesting and causing people to reflect and be thoughtful

more than just turn on and zone out. I'm not against zoning out. I have shows that I turn on to watch to zone out and not think about after a long day, but it's not something that I really want to write. So you wouldn't do a sitcom that has the character's name in the title but with an exclamation

point after it like Gary not for me not for me more power to people who do though but it's just not for me would you ever do a two hour movie called Brunch with Ezra Edelman where he just frowns

at whoever the five people are and only chimes in a couple times and seems put out the whole time. I would kill for Brunch with Ezra Edelman. Truly. Truly. What was that movie? My Dinner with Andre? I was just going to say My Dinner with Andre. My Dinner with Ezra. My Brunch with Ezra. Yes.

It's him eating with six people and he's just completely unimpressed the entire time. But then you make him laugh twice and you feel like it was a complete win. Yeah. I love, I love Ezra's energy. It really was. Every time that I've been at those branches,

it wakes me the hell up. Cause I, you never know. It's great. He, I, those are my favorite people. Yeah.

Because the energy they have, some people don't know how to prep, but to me it's like, it's like those are the best. Because if you can make those people laugh, it's like winning the World Series. Exactly. If you can get them, that's where you want to be. Exactly. I fully agree.

What about a Tommy Alter show? Would that work or no? Yeah. Are you kidding me? I'm surprised Tommy hasn't gotten his own reality show yet i mean talking about the most famous dude that people don't know anything about six six feet away a quarantine show a social distancing show with tommy alter it would be amazing are you kidding me it's like he said yeah i mean Tommy is nobody knows how old he is nobody knows I feel like

his Rolodex is crazy everybody knows who he is nobody really knows anything about him he's a man of mysteries I mean he definitely deserves his own shot he has a long a long plan that started I would say about a year

and a half ago when he started putting shirtless pictures of himself on his Instagram feed looking muscular. So I was like, all right, he's up to something. Now he's on the JJ pod. His profile is increasing and I don't know where it leads, but could it lead to him just walking around in a body cam filming,

filming everyone he interacts with 24 hours a day? Yes, possibly. It's possible. Well, think about him. Those are my two ideas. My dinner with Ezra and Tommy with an exclamation point. A half hour, half hour sick up.

All right. Good luck in quarantine. Keep going with that beard. It's impressive. Thank you so much. I like yours too. Yeah, I'd trim it though. Silver Fox.

Silver Fox. Yeah, I'm going with Silver Foxy. Good luck. Congrats on everything. Thank you, Bill. Talk soon. All right. Thanks to zip critter. Thanks to whoop. Thanks to JJ Reddick. Don't forget about his podcast. He's been killing it over the quarantine. Thanks to core Jefferson. If you want to catch up on the watchman, I believe HBO made the episodes free. So you can check that out over the weekend. Stay safe. Enjoy the weekend. We'll be back on with, uh, Russillo 2008

redraftables. I did 2009 on Zach Lowe's podcast, by the way, if you want to hear that, that one's already up. We're going back now. I'm going to do it in 2008. So that's going to be Sunday night. See you then.