The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA in the Twitter Era, the Future of Basketball, Legal Sports Betting, and Last Meal on Earth | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 387)

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

Live from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Chris Ryan, Jason Concepcion, Shea Serrano, Daryl Morey, Joe House, Haralabos Voulgaris, Cousin Sal, and Dave Chang to discuss how Twitter would react to historical NBA moments, the evolution of the NBA, the legalization of sports gambling, meals to eat on death row, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by, as always, ZipRecruiter. Having a high sports IQ is important. We just saw that on display at the Summer League in Vegas. Wendell Carter went seventh. It seems like he should have gone higher. Kevin Knox went ninth. He should have gone higher. Marvin Bagley went second. Trey Young went fifth. Not too sure about that one. Look, when it comes to hiring, you don't need a high hiring IQ. Just use ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter's powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience for your job. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com.

80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Meanwhile, SeatGeek, the best app for buying and selling tickets for sporting events, concerts, and more for $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase on any game or sporting event for NBA, NHL, baseball, or whatever. You know what to do. Use promo code BS. Do it for baseball right now. Nobody wants to go to baseball games. You'll get a great deal. Download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com. It is Monday, Monday afternoon. A lot of us were in Las Vegas for the last few days at The Ringer. On Friday, we ran a podcast, and I realized it was,

the first 30 minutes of it were me and David Chang and Cousin Sal and Joe House, fresh off a long night gambling together the night before. And a reader pointed this out to me a couple of days later. I had written in a mailbag once how I always thought a great TV show would be just people having breakfast with each other after a night in Vegas, retelling all the stories and arguing about what they should have done and not done and things like that. I think we actually achieved that with this podcast.

We were very fresh off everything that happened. That first 30 minutes really held up. It was fun to re-listen to because I had no sleep and couldn't remember anything that happened. So I was actually learning stuff about the night for the first time. But that was really fun. We had a great time in Vegas. Got to say, everybody was super nice.

We had a booth at the Thomas and Mac Center. Liz Kelly, Alex Lee, Haley O'Shaughnessy and others handing out t-shirts and stickers. We had an awesome photo booth. And needless to say, it was our wheelhouse, the people that were there. The crossover of Summer League and The Ringer, the Venn diagram was definitely there. It was really fun. We're bringing everyone next year. We're bringing every employee we have, except Robert Mays. We're not bringing him. But we're bringing everybody else next year to Summer League.

We really had a fun time. I am staggered by how many people go now. I tweeted about this the other day, but I actually went to Summer League in 2001. It was in UMass Boston. I went in 2001, 2002, the last two summers I lived there. And at the time, to say it wasn't a thing is probably overstating it. There were people there. There was lines.

But you're talking, I was in a Div 3 gym. I would say there were maybe 700, 800 people there. I remember the first year the Celtics had drafted Kedrick Brown, who they were all excited about, with the 10th or 11th pick. And he was there. I remember the first year that Celtics had drafted Kedrick Brown, who they're all excited about with the 10th or 11th pick. And he was there and had some great dunk. It was the first time I've gotten overexcited for a summer league player and then regretted it later. Not the last. But to watch what it's blossomed into 17 years later, where they have two arenas at the same time. And in one of them, you got 18,000 people watching pretty crappy basketball, but really enjoying it.

It's just a testament to the craziness that's gone on with the NBA and how it's a 12-month-a-year sport now. And people care about the rookies. And you have situations where you're watching SportsCenter and over a baseball update, you have something where you're watching SportsCenter and over a baseball update you have something scroll on the bottom of the ticker that Trae Young is going to miss tonight's Summer League game there's gambling for this stuff

it's just crazy I remember in 07 I think was the first year they had Summer League in Vegas and I went, I convinced ESPN the magazine to send me, I was very proud of it to go write a column about what it's like at Summer League I really just wanted to go to Vegas. And they had the two arenas. There weren't a lot of people there, but it seemed like something didn't know what it was. And now

it's just blossomed into not only a massive event, not only a massive rookie showcase and a fun way to just watch basketball. All the teams are there now. They have the league meetings there and it extends this NBA cycle, which starts, you know, you go all the way through the season, pre-season September, it goes all the way through playoffs, April, May, June, playoffs end, we immediately go to the draft, draft ends. Now it's like like who's moving to what team all the way to July 1st. Trades, July 1st happens. Everybody makes their stupid signings. And then it goes to summer league. And then there's more dumb signings.

And all of a sudden, it's like July 20th. And preseason's six weeks away. It is amazing what they pulled off. The NBA is a 12-month-a-year sport. And I can just tell you from the ringers' traffic patterns, people want to read basketball. They want to listen to it. They want to watch it.

And it was really cool to be there. We had a great time. Thank you to Caesars Palace. We ran a little thing. Caesars Palace was nice enough to host us there and at the Flamingo for all the ringer people we had. They were great. They gave us this huge villa where we did the pod on Friday.

And they also gave us a little deal. If you want to stay at any of the Caesars properties, what do you do? You go to the website, right, Isaac? Caesarspalace.com. There's like an offer code that we have. Yeah, yeah. It's LVpod. And you can get up to 10% off on a room, I think up until after Christmas.

So check that out. Thanks to Caesars. Congrats on finally modernizing your sports book, by the way, Caesars. It looked cool. I don't know what you're waiting for, but I liked it. And that's it.

What we're running right now is the live podcast that we did from Caesars Palace on Friday night at Cleopatra's Barge. A whole crew of people, Chris Ryan, Shea Serrano, Jason Concepcion, Joe House, Cousin Sal,

David Chang, Daryl Morey, Haralabop Valgaris. Anyway, did I get everyone? I think I got everyone. Yeah. Well,

if there's anyone else, you'd be surprised you're listening to this. This is the live podcast that we did. It was, I think we had about 175 people there. That was the capacity of the place. It was cool. It was a fun vibe. It was great to see everybody. And the highlight for me was Joe House coming out with the Las Vegas Golden Knights t-shirt, the crowd applying, and then he unbuttoned

it. And the crowd was really cheering for House, and then he unbuttoned it, and it said losers on the bottom of the t-shirt. And the crowd turned on house for the rest of the night. He lost the crowd. Anyway, here is the live podcast from Caesar's Palace on Friday night. Here we go. Hey everybody. Hey everybody. I'd like to introduce, from the ringer, Chris Ryan. Jason Concepcion. The one, the only, Shea Serrano. And the guy who ruined my basketball, Daryl Morey.

You dog. Rockets GM. No. I don't blame you for ruining modern basketball, Daryl. You made it better, for sure. You just embrace math. So this segment is something that we hatched basically 2018. You think of all the advantages we have right now to following basketball.

You have League Pass. You have Twitter, Instagram, all these fun things. So what events in basketball history could have happened back in the day that if they happened now would have been absolutely amazing? I think we're taking the Artest melee off the board because that would have been the number one choice. Wait, that was my main one. Well, you can still do it. All right, I'm going to sit.

But things like that, things that happen. The NBA has been around, I don't know, 71 years at this point. It's just more fun to be a basketball fan. But what would have been fun now versus when it happened? Jason, you go first. Well, I think culture is underrated uh in terms of the way it affects a basketball team ac green uh played for the lakers for eight years showtime lakers magic johnson james worthy one of the most virile teams doctor V-Ryle teams, Dr. Buss, of course. Magic. Magic.

And he managed to remain a virgin for those eight years, playing with those guys in that city at that time. James Worthy busted in a prostitution sting in Houston in 1990. Two prostitutes. Two prostitutes. Magic Johnson, Dr. Buss, of course, a fan of... Everyone. Everyone. And he maintains that virginity.

And I think it's one of the great records in sports history. And I don't think it'll ever be broken. Do you think there's been an NBA virgin since? David Robinson. David Robinson. David Robinson only had sex to have a child. Like, that was it. One time a child, one time that's it.

I could remember, did AC admit he was a virgin when that happened? Yeah. And you think about what it would have been like now, I mean, even, maybe more in 2015 this would have been the case, but the tumblers alone, isACstillavergin.tumblr.com would have been great. I mean, you would have had so many opportunities to work on so many different platforms.

Did AC fuck tonight? Yes or no? People, rappers would have been shouting them out in songs. I got blue balls like AC. Daryl, would you have moved a virgin up or down on your draft board? Wow, down. For sure down. Down? Yeah, it's suspect. Why down? Daryl, would you have moved a virgin up or down on your draft board? Wow. Down. For sure down. Down, yeah.

Down? Yeah, it's suspect. Why down? Yeah. It's better for guys to be real. I mean. Okay. So if they're saying that, they're lying.

That's true. That is a good point. What were you going to say, Shay? No, I was just wondering why. I don't know. I thought it was good to be a virgin, but what do I know? I don't know. I think if you have, be a virgin, but what do I know? I don't know. Did he ever say why he was doing it?

Spiritual reasons. For spiritual reasons. Just not fucking for Jesus. It's not his spiritual choice that I think is the funny part. It's where he chose to make that choice. In Los Angeles in the 80s and be like

not for me, though. Later on, there was an earthquake, and that was when he finally did it. I would have believed that. You mentioned in passing the James Worthy double prostitute. Right. Sting.

It was a sting. That's awesome. This was an honorable mention for this conversation. I believe he played that night. The overworked Twitter joke of the week would have been about how James always liked handling the double team. Those kind of variations and things like that. Chris, what's your first thing that you wish had happened in 2018?

Well, this is an interesting one because when you asked us to do this, I started looking at some of the favorite moments that I had had growing up. And a lot of them are a lot sadder than I remember them to be. You're like, practice, we talked about practice, is actually pretty dark when you investigate it a little bit. So the one I want to go with... Wait, why was it dark? I don't remember it being dark. I think he might have been hitting the sauce around that time. There was some dark

stuff happening in his personal life. This is Iverson in 2002, so at the end of the 0-1-0-2 season. So you're saying that was when he started hitting the sauce? Yeah, it was losing to the Celtics drove him to drink. But I thought that the one that I really wanted to talk about was the 0-7 Sun Spurs and the Robert Ori body check of Steve Nash.

Both from a, it would have worked great on Twitter. We would have Zapruder filmed the shit out of this thing. Oh yeah. We would have just been like, look, you can see the intent in his eyes. And then like, you know, like Nash is flopping. And it was like all these Neymar gifs would have been used. But also the post game comments are incredible because Dan Tony is like, we live in a security state where telescopes are watching us at all times.

This is 07 way ahead free snowden and he's just like everyone's watching everything you're telling me that stoudemire left the bench and then pop's reaction was i thought that nash made the basically was like nash made a meal of that like it was the end-of-game foul. He 100% did. He did kind of act a little bit. He does this. Yeah. Like after he hits the goal. It's a little Neymar-esque.

Yes. It's not paranoid if it's true. It's true. It's true. There were so many great characters involved. If you look at the stories now, there's Pop, there's Jerry Colangelo, there's Mike D'Antoni, Nash. Nash was trying to make it be like, it's all good.

This is like hockey. Don't suspend people for it. But the best thing about it, I think was just like how sanctimonious people got about, about it. And that would have just played so perfectly today. We would have gotten like two weeks of takes out of this. And,

and guess what? What? The Spurs were fucking villains back then. So everybody hated the Spurs. They were not the villains back then. And it was like, never been the villains. No,

it was great because everybody was just like, if I have to watch the Spurs again, I'm going to fire myself into space. And they were like these bad guys who were taken down seven seconds or less. So that was, that was peak boring Spurs era. Yeah. When's the last time the best team has been also the most evil team?

That was before Twitter. And when the media, you know, we have the best team has been also the most evil team? That was before Twitter and when the media would make fun of the Spurs. And then you realize about 2011 like, oh, I don't want to fuck with the Spurs fans ever. Crazy. And that was when it came around. And then also it was like, oh, I respect the Spurs. You don't want to be in a

stadium full of drunk Mexicans. Fine organization. It's getting rough. Austin was like, oh, I respect the Spurs. You don't want to be in a stadium full of drunk Mexicans. Fine organization. They don't respect the Spurs. It's getting rough. See, the one thing about that 07 thing was I still think the Spurs had the best team. Of course they had the best team. When stuff years past, it starts being like, oh, the Suns, they should have won. The Spurs were a great thing.

They lost three times with their whole team. Like, get the fuck out of here. We were going to win the series. They were up by 20 points in game five at home and still lost. And then came back to Sonya and still lost. That whole series was like a war. We have some pretty bad playoff series.

Was that in game one? Raja hit Steve in the face. Then Sunsburn blew them out in game two. Suns medical staff came out with some gaffer tape and was like, let's try and tape this stuff back together. Yeah, it was like a UFC injury. The other thing I liked about that was that was Stern at the height of his, I'm David

Stern, I'll do whatever I want. Daryl, don't comment. He might still be able to find you even though he left six years ago. I think he can. But just doing whatever he wanted. Not doing things for the spirit of the game, but just like, here's the law. Everyone's benched. I know where the bodies are buried, David

Stern. Yeah, he said that. He said that. You wonder, like, what does that mean? Literally, what does that mean? What does that mean, Daryl? Shay, what do you got? Well, I was going to do the Ron Artest one. Do it. Let's do it anyway. The crowd won. You want the Artest? Yeah, right. Crowd chanting for the Artest one. Do it. Let's do it anyway. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. The crowd won. You want the Artest? Yeah, right.

Crowd chanting for the Artest melee. Yeah, that was my, I mean, if we're picking stuff, there's a bunch of little ones you can go, like, of course, we would, Jordan retiring would have been mayhem.

Like, if LeBron retired for two years, it would have been fucking crazy for the whole two years he was gone. Well, especially with all the conspiracies that were flowing around at the time, too. For sure sure so you've got that one uh i thought maybe a quick

one would be reggie's eight points in nine seconds how dare you we're not but too soon but i think you have i think you would need to like stretch that out so that happened in 95 in 94 you've got the 25 points in the fourth quarter spike lee in new y New York. Yeah. Series tied 2-2. Like, that would have been a fun one to be on Twitter for because it just kept building and building and building, and Reggie was getting meaner and meaner and meaner. That one for sure. I've never hated an athlete the way I hated him. He's the only guy that I was like,

you know what, if he broke his leg, I'd be fine. What's wrong with you? I've never felt like that before, but he's the one guy. I actually think during the Twitter era, Spike takes a real beating for him going at Reggie like he did. He would have got killed. In New York, people were like,

sit down, stop. Why are you doing this? You thought he was egging them on and firing them up? He definitely was egging them on. 100% egging them on. But yeah, I think the Artest melee was, I mean, Malice at the Palace is crazy.

You've got so much stuff that happens. The whole clip is like nine minutes long from the Ben Wallace shoving Artest in the face. Ben Wallace throws the towel on him. Angry Ben Wallace is one of the most frightening things that's ever happened. Yeah, I was watching an interview with Steven Jackson when he was talking about the thing. And he explained a lot of people didn't know, ben wallace's mother had passed like right before that whole thing happened so he was already sort of out of it but there's just so much stuff we would have had so much zooming in on every single little punch and like there's a clip you barely see it

in a clip now of jamal tinsley running out of the tunnel holding a fucking dustpan swinging it at people like we would have saw so much more stuff. Like, that would have been incredible. That would have been, that's got to be the one. What about Jermaine O'Neal just erasing that one dude? Turtle. He almost killed that guy. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

If he doesn't slip, that guy's dead for real. Full extension. I got to say, for me, the artiste melee is almost like when our parents or grandparents talk about where they were when JFK got assassinatedinated where they remember where they were i remember exactly i remember everything about the night of the artist melee that's what it was like for me i went to my brother's friend's apartment this guy owned like five different kinds of snakes and he's like jay you gotta see this crap that just happened in detroit Fuck a man. You got to see this. And I'm like, what happened? And he played it. Well, it was in the pre-Twitter.

It really was telephone. It was go home and watch SportsCenter. We had BlackBerrys back then, right? I was alerted to it. I remember. We had beepers. I remember Joe House called me or I called him, and we were just on the phone watching it.

Nowadays, we've just been on Twitter dissecting it. Can I add something? Please. No one talks about this. phone watching it like hey nowadays we we were just been on twitter dissecting it can i add yeah i had something so no one talks about this weeks before you'd know this because boston so i'm working for the celtics weeks before this ron tries to go in the stands in boston and literally is tossing security guards no one talks but this is like weeks before he actually goes in the stands and the only one who keeps him in the stands is Mel Daniels. Really? All right.

Wow. Grabs him, pulls him down. He could physically manhandle Ron and dragged him into the locker room. So Ron might not have been all that. I don't know. That's my conclusion. That would have been studied once this came out. Well, I remember when I was a kid, the Celtics in the 81 Eastern Finals were playing sixers they were down three one they won game five go to philly for game six and they're

down 20 in the second half and maxwell ended up behind the basket fighting for a ball and somebody said something to him and he just ran in and started choking the guy everybody's in there they put him back he stayed in the game and then and it was like it was considered a rallying point for the south they said oh well max went in the stands that was when we knew it's like what but it's actually on youtube what do you got daryl mine is i'd want social media for my young cleveland self oh indians are on the cover and then come in last the fumble the drive and then jordan hitting the shot against us would have been peak cleveland depression and i would like a russian novel yeah i just needed

friends yeah it's a dusty f ski arc i would have just wanted friends at that period so what was the arc there so you had the the the drive the fumble fumble major league with charlie sheen the indians were on the cover of, then came in last of the year. They predicted them to win. Yeah. And then the shot, you know, Jordan, obviously, over Elo. Which everyone acts like was, like, this big surprise. No, it was like a 13-footer.

Yeah, it's like just the, and it's over Elo, you know. Yeah. Elo would have been a meme, the way he collapsed. He, like, spins and collapses. It's a great one. Yeah. He really hung up. My first one.

This is great. This was, I think, it might have been the first year I had my website. So 96, 97. The Mavericks had Jason Kidd and Jimmy Jackson and Jamal Mashburn. These three young, high lottery picks. So I guess it would be the equivalent of if it was Ben Simmons, Embiid, and Markel Fultz now. It was almost that level. And none

of them liked each other, but there was no way to talk about it because we didn't really have a fully formed internet. And all we had back then were newspapers and Sports Illustrated and basically early sports radio. Internet chat rooms. So we had the early dark web.

And those guys hated each other. That's not what the dark web is, Bill. I'm old. But those guys hated each other. And then it comes out that Tony Braxton, who is an R&B singer, what's her equivalent now? What's Tony Braxton's equivalent in 2018? Ashanti.

Okay. It turns out... Juliet, what's Tony Braxton's equivalent in 2018? Ashanti. Okay. It turns out... Juliet, what's Tony Braxton's 2018 equivalent? Tinashe. Wow. Yeah, that's actually perfect. So she dated two of them or got involved with one and then might've hooked up with the other. Allegedly. It was murky. It was murky. It was unclear, but there was some sort of love triangle that formed that led to basically everybody getting traded within a year. So Shoemaker, David Shoemaker, works for The Ringer, was encouraging me to pick this, and so I was reading up on it about before the show.

She put out an album called Secrets, and then when she went on the promo tour for it, she was like, I don't kiss and tell, but was not dispelling that it could have involved one or two of the guys who... Also, did you know that they were called the Triple J Ranch? I was not aware of that. That's not a great nickname for a basketball team, frankly. It's a porn movie.

She was basically alluding to some sort of affair going on. Yeah. But in retrospect, probably there was already locker room problems there before Tony got there. Shay, you don't remember this before your time? No, I was a big attention to the Mavericks then. Never watched the Mavericks. See, that's the thing. Nobody knew this happened.

And it got me thinking how badly we need a love triangle in the NBA right now. We've had, you know. How do you know there aren't any? Well, one that we know about, I guess, would be my point. But we've had NBA players that date celebrities. They've dated somebody who somebody used to date, but we've never seen a team

basically combust over a love triangle. I mean, with the Kardashian family, it's like a love tetrahedron. Yeah. It's a love killer octopus. What's your second one,

Jason? LA Sacramento game six. Oh. That's a love killer octopus. What's your second one, Jason? LA Sacramento game six. That's a good one. That got like a groan from the crowd. If it was today with DVRs and GIFs and replaying that play where Kobe runs over Mike Bibby, elbows him in the nose, and then the foul is on Bibby. Like, it would have been just peak vitriol, peak controversy, people screaming at each other that the game is 100% fixed.

It would have been wild. And plus, like, the Lakers took a million foul shots in that game. Shaq fouled out everybody. He did. He fouled out, like, every center they had, I think. Everybody. But the worst one was Kobe, the

forearm to Mike Bibby's face, as you mentioned. Not only was it a foul, it was probably a throw-the-guy-out foul. I mean, that was the one where all the other fouls you're like, I get it. I understand Shaq is impossible to referee. That's the only one where you're like,

it's fixed. This game is fixed. Why? Why is the foul on Bibby? It was funny, for a're like, it's fixed. This game is fixed. Why? Why is the foul on Bibby? It was funny. For a few years, it was even hard to find this game on YouTube. Yeah. And then eventually it ended up there. That was another one.

I remember where I watched that. I was at my 10-year college reunion, and I was so angry at the bar. I was like, oh, my God, they're rigging the game. What is happening? Because it really did feel that way. It probably doesn't feel in retrospect as bad it was that moment but that whole series would have been great for twitter because you had like that's the robert ory in game four mike baby game winner in game five yeah the the cheating in game six oh and then the page

of christy threes the air balls the air ball ball. Pagia's wide open. Wide open. And how do you air, like the greatest shooter in the NBA at the time, just air ball. You don't even fucking hit the backboard. I mean, game seven was a choke job. Yeah. They weren't ready for it. That would have been so much fun on Twitter

while they were melting down. Oh, it would have been incredible. Yeah. I think they missed like half their free throws. It would have been like if they missed like 27 three-pointers in a row When Pager got that wide open three

Oh I was waiting the whole I was waiting the whole day I was waiting the whole day Texas rivalry Yeah, we were close That was like an alley-oop You were rooting for us, right?

The Rockets are going to shit on the Spurs for the next 10 years, so I've got to take every little shot that I can. So four years later was the Dwayne Wade finals. Game three, game four, game five. Shot all those free throws. We still didn't have Twitter yet, but the internet was in better shape. And people really rallied around, what the hell? How does this happen?

For the first time, videos. I felt like that was the last time we've had something that egregious. I actually didn't even think the LeBron charge block thing in game one of the 18 finals. It ended up being the right call. He was moving. It was the right call. They still shouldn't have made it. They messed it up.

Wow, they did make it on LeBron. The third foul of his career, I think. What was the game in the Mavericks Heat Series when Josh Howard called the timeout when Avery didn't want him to? Oh, that was game five. That would have been so crazy. That was tough. That was a tough look for the Mavs.

That was the end of his career. What do you got for your second one, Chris? I'll just say, because I mentioned practice. We're talking about practice, which would have been like, it would be basically the equivalent of Russell Westbrook now doing that because it would be a guy coming off an MVP season, but then having a disappointing

follow-up season and having a meltdown in front of the local media in his exit interview. But to counterbalance that, I want to throw out iverson stepping over ty lue that's gonna be mine because it's a foundational block in nba twitter anyway it's a meme we still use constantly and i don't even know because like when you think about it so much with the exception of like steph threes which are just these incredibly unique acts so

much of it is like a dunk a three a a block. The things that we are understanding as a usual highlight. Iverson stepping over Lou was so crazy when it happened. And it was just so disrespectful but in a way that didn't involve a physical altercation. It was just like,

I am not going anywhere in this game. Do you think they would call him for a technical for that now? No, he's just moving. He was going in the direction. You think so, Daryl? No, Daryl's... That moment is really the triumph of moment over narrative. Because people, you forget, you don't really forget,

but you forget that the Lakers won that series. I remember. That moment is iconic in a way that is separate from what actually happened. And at the time, actually, I don't know if you guys remember, but at the end of game one, they lost, obviously. But Iverson walked out into the middle of the floor and started clapping at Lakers fans, being like, we're not going to be easy targets.

So that was actually the thing that I remember more than the step over. You know, the other thing with Iverson, if he played now in 2018, there would be a lot of cell phone casino footage. Yes. Iverson peeing in a plant at 530 in the morning. Periscoping from the hookah bar would be in full effect. It would not be great for him. On game day. Yeah, right before.

What do you got, Shay? Well, Chris stole my second one, so let me ask a different version of that question. But if Allen Iverson plays today, he's beloved in NBA history right now. Yeah. But if he plays today... It's different.

Is it different? Is it him and Russell Westbrook together? I don't think he would have handled the 24-7 fishbowl very well because he could barely handle the media well, and it was a lot less complicated back then. I want Allen Iverson on Twitter. I think Georgetown Allen Iverson would have been a much bigger thing.

Because he was so phenomenal back then. So you don't have another one? You're passing? I got a ton of them. You wrote a freaking basketball book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And an office book. PDF. It's a pdf pdf um no i'm gonna i'm gonna pick one that would only be fun for like 10 people

all in san antonio but 2003 in the western conference finals spurs are playing the mavs and we're losing in game six steve kerr game kerr game comes off the bench and play the whole game yeah then hits four threes he's fucking diving all over the place just terrorizing it was a sports movie poor stevie nash yeah yeah yeah and then after the game he's like you know talking about how great he was in the series which is wonderful because he barely played but that would have been fun for me and the nine other people in san antonio who have the internet yeah and those those people apparently you have another one, Daryl?

Yeah, I'd say the Joe Smith situation. Secret backroom deal. Oh, yeah. Checking fax records. You had a contract in a vault. Thank God stuff like that happened today. Draft picks lost. Thank God the NBA today is completely above board.

Yeah, thank God there's no tampering anymore. There's no tampering. I remember when Daryl telepathically guessed that Chris Paul wanted to play for him. He held a spoon to his head and was like, Chris Paul is calling me. I used Clairvoyant Bill. Clairvoyant Bill. The tampering rules, there are no rules anymore, right? Are there rules?

He can't answer that question. There are very specific rules we follow. Is it like the speed limit where the speed limit's 55, but nobody goes 55? They just go whatever they want unless it's like 80? All I can say, we pour over the rules and follow every sentence. Okay. All right.

Good answer. follow every every okay all right good answer uh the steve kerr game one of my favorite things about that is that it's called the steve kerr game it is i love when games become named at like the jr smith game yeah now is this somebody say too soon uh the jr smith game there probably could have been other games that would have been the jr smith game Did somebody say too soon? The J.R. Smith game. There probably could have been other games that would have been the J.R. Smith game because he's had a checkered career.

Yes. But this was 100% the J.R. Smith game. And the thing was, because I was there because we were doing that HBO show, you knew it immediately. Oh, yeah. We're on the court going, this is the J.R. Smith game. We'll be talking about this 50 years from now.

It was very similar to an honorable mention that I think we could have thrown out for this. The Nick Anderson missing four free throws. Oh, that would have been tough. To flip the Orlando series in game one. That would have been tough. Orlando-Houston game one, 95, four straight. I think, Chris, play this out. You're a Twitter expert.

Sure. People pile on to him immediately, and then there's the backlash to people being too mean, the defense of Nick Anderson, and then the backlash. I think there's three backlashes within an hour and a half. Oh, within 27 minutes. Yeah. Yeah, Nick Anderson, we go from Nick Anderson and then all the crying gifts or whatever we would have,

but then immediately afterward, it would be like, anybody who's ever tried at something knows how hard it is to see. And maybe if you guys weren't such keyboard gangsters, you'd know. And then we would have the follow-up to that that would be like, no, this is actually... You'd have the analytics people, like, it's 1 in 64, it happened. Well, and then you'd get the reenactors. You'd get the guy who reenacts it in his driveway of nick anderson being like well it's funny at the line when we talk about some of

these moments you know like the deandre jordan spurning dallas and the clippers going to his house and that whole thing which is now lauded and remembered as one of the greatest basketball twitter moments of all time wouldn't have cracked cracked the top 50 of things that could have happened. It was like this center on the Clippers. He was good. He was a borderline all-star. It changed his mind. And we treated it like it was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And they're taking photos of plants in the house. And I don't know. Or a Clippers-Rockets tunnel thing, which would have been... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That would have been absolutely nothing 20 years ago. People don't know you were in the back egging those guys to go in there. Oh, get them!

We got to stand up for ourselves, guys. I was in the back. It was the first time I was checking Twitter to see what was happening where I was. I was like... That stuff is happening, but I don't see it. Nothing's happening. Did you do your second one? I can't remember. Yeah, I did.

Joe Smith. It was so memorable. No, no, no. I have some runner-ups, and then I'm going to go to my big one. You didn't guess it. I think we glossed over the Jordan baseball thing.

If LeBron is retiring and he's going to play double A baseball. I, I, I actually think the internet would break. Wait a second. Is LeBron like baseball? Is he playing baseball?

He'd be like, what? What? He's doing, what? And then the conspiracy theories would have been completely out of control all summer and people would have lost their shit. So I don't think we can gloss over that.

My favorite one though. So the don't think we can gloss over that. My favorite one, though. So the Celtics win the 1976 title. I knew this was going to be a Celtics thing. I could feel it coming. It's a real shocker. You picked a freaking Philly one. Dave Cowens next year decides he loses his desire to play basketball and asks for a leave of absence from the team.

And during this time, he drives a cab in Boston. And there's reports of people, Dave Cowens, this one night, people getting picked up by Dave Cowens in a taxi cab. So that happened. And then he worked at Suffolk Downs, which is a racetrack outside of Boston, and got like a nine to five job at Suffolk Downs because he wanted to knowetrack outside of Boston, and got a 9-5 job at Suffolk Downs because he wanted to know what it was like

to have a real job. This happened for the first 38 games of the season. Who's Dave Cowens' comp today? All-Star Center. I think he was either won the MVP or he was the number two MVP. Would it be like if Boogie was driving a cab? He was better than Boogie. I would say

like I don't know. Thinking. Maybe if Boogie was driving a cab. He was better than Boogie. I would say like... Thinking. What power forward? Not quite Anthony Davis, but he was one of the nine best guys in the league. Okay. And just disappeared.

And then it was in Boston. People were like, where's Cowans? This is like a Mad Men episode. It was. And then he just randomly came back. Like, nothing happened. And then the season went on. But it got me thinking, if a player just

quit and just went into the general workplace, that would be incredible. Remember when Ron Artest tried to get a job at Circuit City? He filled out an application. Best Buy, I believe. Yeah, it was one of those. And he was just like, yeah, I need another job.

And the NBA and the Bulls were like, what? No. That's real. That's a real story. His agent told me the whole thing. There's some dark ones that we're going to avoid. Like for the Kermit Washington punch, I think if that happened in this day and age,

would have... No, he was Lakers. That's not what I'm saying. Another Celtics story is dark. Dark. Oh, yeah, there are some dark ones. So we're going to avoid the dark ones. While we have Daryl here,

any questions for Daryl before we go to the next segment? We have a live sitting GM right now. Anything you want to say? For now. You may get me fired by the end. Should should i remain hopeful about barkel fultz see you're not a professional journalist you can't answer talk about other players i can't really talk about retired players right well can we talk about you had so you had this crazy

comeback against the clippers three years ago that was the height of pulling a season out of your ass, basically. It was over. Basically, this year's 0-27 was a make-up for Corey Brewer, Josh Smith, and Terrence Jones hitting threes against the Clippers. This was the Bazzaro version of that. It was like the karma flipping. Yeah, so you felt that.

Noted three-point shooter, Josh Smith. No, no, no. The three worst shooters in NBA history are Barkley, Brewer, and Josh Smith. And we had two of them, and they hit two, three, six threes, I think, in that comeback. They hit four, and then Terrence Jones hit one, and then we had another one. I went to that game, and I've never experienced a crowd like that where the Clipper fans, all their DNA came out, and they were just convinced they were going to lose.

I think they had like a three-point lead, and people were just in pure panic. I was having dinner with Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. We were watching the game on the TV. We were like, this is a wrap. I take the subway to go home, and I was like, they lost? I think I sent you 74 text messages. Yeah, I come out and wait, wait, hold on.

They lost? Josh Smith hit threes? What? There's a few key things to this. First, Blake did the 360 layup right before our comeback. I always remember that. Yeah. The other thing, no one remembers.

It's very similar to your Red Sox, Mets in 86. We had to go back and win game seven. Nobody remembers. Everyone remembers Buckner, but not. Clippers were kind of the walking dead, though, at that point. At that point, yeah. So those were some of the memories. It's a good sliding doors moment because, you know,

I think if that Clippers team gets past the Rockets that year, it's a pretty good team. Blake was playing the best basketball of his life. And then the Warriors were the next round. And the Warriors weren't quite the Warriors yet. They hadn't had the playoff reps. I don't know. That's definitely one of those.

Yeah, I mean, then we had another sliding doors moment this year where if CP doesn't get hurt at the tail end of game five, you're up 3-2, you're feeling good. Our championship odds got over 50%, about a minute to go in game five, and then Chris went out, and then never after. But if you even go back further, the inadvertent whistle, which led to you getting the possession again, and that was the one he got hurt on, that weird inadvertent whistle.

Right. Yeah, there'll be a documentary about that game at some point. 30 for 30. Maybe 30 for 30. Or HBO. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you make Shea feel better about the Spurs before we go? I just told him before. I mean, I'm here

for the Spurs collapse. I'm here. Yeah, 20 years. I mean, they have the best record since I've been in the league by far. So all we've been trying to do is copy the Spurs and now we're... Shea has vodka in that water. This is a miserable evening for me. All right. We're going to bring on the next segment. Thank you to Jason, Chris, and Shea. Daryl, stay in. Let's take a break, talk about betterment. How do you know

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Are you? Yeah, he's got a reveal. He just, for the listeners, House is wearing a Vegas Golden Age shirt with losers written under it. The crowd turned on House quickly. And then a steam gambler turned, I don't know, NBA Twitter celebrity,

Haralibas Valgueras. So we're going to talk about the NBA, all the changes that happened this decade and whether basketball is better or worse or both for it i'm gonna start with you haralabob haralabob on twitter you love the math generation i love the

what you love the math generation for nba this was your dream what's happened these last four years i don't know you've been touting it you've been going at people on Twitter. What do you love about this? I mean, I don't know that I love it. I think I always love something that's not there. So when there was no math, I was like, oh my God, I can't wait for the math to take over. Once the nerds take over, it's going to be great. And then the nerds took over and now it's brutal. You love the three-point fouls. I love the three-point fouls. I love all that stuff. The shooting fouls that you can basically just maul someone in the paint. I love the three-point fouls. I love all that stuff. The shooting fouls that you can basically just maul someone in the paint. I don't like that.

You made a big point about that on Twitter. I actually agree with him. Low post defense has turned into these stiff, hard forearms in the back and people getting clubbed. And then on the James Harden touch foul, and it's like three free throws. I don't like that. Why is it James Harden? Because you're sitting here.

I was thinking about you first. It's James Harden. No one's in the post anyway. It doesn't matter. People guard in the post. I was going to say it's James Harden because Lou Williams got traded from Houston or left Houston. He was the guy before.

How's your old school like I am? Yeah, so I love where we're at right now. I mean, this space and pace era harkens back to the games back in the 80s when there was no defense whatsoever. We'd sit and watch some of those Celtics and Hawks games where the scores were 141 to 120, whatever. That's my kind of game. I love that game.

I love the innovation in terms of unlocking the three-point. Now, of course, there is going to be some backlash and we need to figure out something to eliminate some of the what we've lost in terms of low post play. I don't know how we get that back, though.

Well, first of all... Unless we made ten-foot shots worth three points. Well, we're just going to unleash Dwight Howard this year. That's what's going to happen. Oh, and the whiz. Yeah. Yeah. Joe House, noted longtime Dwight Howard critic,

is now all in on Dwight Howard and the legend that he's here. The welcome wagon, the Washington, D.C., 40 Pants fan club, number one founder right here, bro. Do your riff on how he's never had a point guard as good as John Wall. That's the riff. He tried that with me. I had to listen to it, too. I was just talking to Daryl about Dwight, and he's not

convinced, but what do you think? You think Dwight can make it happen in Washington? I did. I asked him, though. And then there was like four follow-ups. Well, what if he did this? He's going to get the lobs, and it's going to be good. I'm like, no, I don't think so. I thought he was kidding, and then he was like, Jameer Nelson, Patrick Beverly. He started listing all the Dwight Howard. Busted ass Steve Nash.

I was like, did you drink Dwight Howard Kool-Aid? What's happening? It's a desperate time in Washington. So, Daryl, let's say 2000 Shaq is in basketball right now. Is he demolishing everybody? What happens to him? I think he's crushing. That's how I happens to him i think he's crushing that's what that's how i feel i actually think he scores more and gets more rebounds i mean he's the most

unstoppable force any of us have seen in our lifetimes right i mean shack was i wasn't there for wilt it seems like i wasn't there for wilt either but it seems like the the three most athletically unstoppable dudes were shack and lebron david stern's joke when i first got in the league, he'd tell the new owners, like, you're one player away. And they're like, we're one player away? Shaq. So basically right.

Yeah, I don't. So Wilt was 1959 to 74. And Shaq was 94 through 2000. So this is like once every other generation will get a center like that. But when we do, I don't know what's going to happen on the other end. They'll be great. They'll spread them out though, right?

Like if Shaq's out there, what do you do? You're just trying to get them in PNR. It'll be a mobile five who can shoot, right? There may be some facsimiles in the league I can't talk about, but yeah. So how do you stay, you had these advancements with how you were thinking about basketball there for a few years and now everybody's kind of thinking generally the same way so like what's what's next what's the next frontier you signed michael

carter williams yeah he is you what are you veered what did sam say in his letter you got a zag when everyone's that was certainly a zag. That's a frontier. Rookie of the year. How come no one's complaining we just got the rookie of the year? Everyone's complaining about Golden State signing, but not... Who's the rookie of the year? We just got the recent rookie of the year.

It was like five years ago. What do you think about... What's the next thing that's coming for Albus? I think you'll see more of the isolation stuff. Oh, you think we're going to get more of that? Yeah, because there really wasn't that many teams that did isolation. They started it. Houston started it.

We haven't had the best at it, though. One thing that they got was that it wasn't just isolation. You had to have the floor spread. If the floor isn't spread, you can't iso. That's what the Rockets, back in the day when they had Coutinho, Mobley, and Steve Francis tried to do, was iso the floor spread. If the floor isn't spread, you can't ISO. That's what the Rockets, back in the day when they had Coutinho, Mobley, and Steve Francis tried to do, was ISO the entire time, but the floor was not spread, so it doesn't work.

It's not even so much that the ISO, it's just a one-on-one play. If you watch two NBA players trying to play a one-on-one basketball, they score more often than not when they have the ball. It's very hard to defend. I think that'll happen more. The team teams will start trying to do

the isolation a little bit more. My only fear with that is during a seven game series when you get used to it game after game it seems like it loses effectiveness do you worry about that it was pretty effective we're up three two and well but the last two i'm saying the last two i'm saying it the last round without chris paul this is great great. I love this. You're back in. I'm not sure what you're asking me. What are you asking me? I'm asking you, as the series goes along,

does the other team start to, do you lose that advantage because the other team just gets used to what you do? I mean, our series ended up being just mono-e-mono isolation. So I think some people found that aesthetically unpleasing, but it was the best way for each team to guard the other, and it ended in lots of isolation play. I think it's actually easier to reproduce isolation ball in the playoffs than it is to try and produce motion

or specific stuff, because you can't really do anything about it. What are you going to do, double team? So now they pass it to an open three-point shooter. Or it's just a matter of now, do you have good isolation isolation players it doesn't really break down that much i don't think it's gonna you you're gonna need to have all your players to be fairly skilled like so the main thing i think it takes away is uh the one-dimensional like reggie evans types the guys who could do the guys one thing extremely well but then is a disaster in a bunch of areas. Those guys are tough. The one specialty, I guess.

Yeah, the specialty shooters, the specialty rebounders, the specialty, any specialty guy I think is going to get phased out. House, what do you think the next great advancement is? Dwight Howard? Dwight Howard. Dwight Howard. I was just telling him he's your best basketball, you know, former friend, guest. Former, former player. That was good in college.

Deadly in the PNR. I think the next advancement is going to be studying the mental framework of these guys. And I know that's already started, but I really think that seems to be a recurring theme over and over again. Good luck with that. Well, but I think there's going to be better ways to figure out the immaturity of players versus who's ready to come in and be an adult.

And I think you look at last year, where Fultz came in and was clearly just like a kid. He went to Philly and was talking about how excited he was that they had Chick-fil-A. You just look at these little moments like that, and you're like, wow, you might not be ready to... Chick-fil-A is awesome. Well, it is great.

Listen, sorry, house. I didn't mean it to mean Chick-fil-A. But then you look at somebody like Donovan Mitchell who comes in the league, and he's like a 30-year-old. He was at the finals walking around. He's just this polished dude. His dad was a baseball player. He's been in locker rooms his whole life

and just seemed more prepared. And I wonder, we see this over and over again. I wonder if there's going to be ways to innovate with that. How do you figure out who can come into the environment and succeed? But isn't that, that's like an organizational um you know success trait right this is like the franchises that have figured out how to accommodate players of a variety of dispositions are the ones that are most likely to succeed the guys that can nurture i'll never forget

what michael jordan did to kwame brown kwame Brown was dead within the first two weeks of having arrived in Washington because he was an 18-year-old kid whose entire life experience had been this small town in Virginia, and the franchise wasn't prepared to nurture him, to let him grow at all. The kid didn't know how to do laundry, so he threw all his clothes, he wore them once, and threw them at the end of his bed, and somebody came into his apartment and saw a four-foot pile of clothes and like what are you doing he's like i don't know how to do laundry not great that didn't come up in the scouting report they didn't realize this is why that coaches like coach d'antoni and other guys like that are really taking over the league and why the defensive coaches aren't. You do need to have this environment that makes the superstars feel like superstars,

brings along the young players, and sort of the hard-ass type coaches, I think, are really being phased out because of that. Do you believe in chemistry, Horalibus? Yeah, of course. Okay. You can definitely see it for sure. You know who once didn't believe in chemistry? This is wrong. No Yeah, of course. Okay. You can definitely see it for sure. You know who once didn't believe in chemistry? This is wrong. No, this is true.

This is true. Eight years ago, Bill's like, you have too many good players, Daryl. You need to get rid of some good players. I was right. You ended up with an unhappy team because everyone wanted to play. And I was like, did you figure out the calibration? You have too many guys

who think they should be in the court. You're like, it's fine. You'd rather have the good players. So you're saying I was wrong? Yeah, absolutely. And then when you're wrong, you just go to your next column. No. No. When I'm wrong,

we have to live with paying him $40 million for the next five years. That is true. You just get to go in a column six months later, ah, I was wrong about that. I just can't remember any wrong columns I've written. Someone get on the internet, Google his column. I did.

I won't name the player, but I did try to warn you about one person that you might have brought in. You've given me great intel over the years. Brought in and be like, you know, that guy, people don't like playing with him. He might have been a guy Joe House might have discussed. Did we get to the Western Conference finals? You did.

You came very close. You got a great thing. But you believe in chemistry now that you've been around a team. I think when you have an extremely good team, you want to really focus on that. When you're in the sort of rebuild phase, then I think you need to worry about that less. House is a lifelong Bullets Wizards fan.

He's seen some phenomenal chemistry situations over the years. What was the worst one? Probably the guns in the locker room, right? Probably. Probably? Probably. Probably. Probably.

We missed that in the Twitter era. That would have been awesome. That would have been amazing in Twitter. But you've had some other great ones. Like C-Web was openly miserable there. Yeah, and also openly smoking pot before games. No, we don't have any. Okay, I know.

That's alleged. That's very alleged. Yeah, yeah. But he did seem very, very miserable. Well, I mean, we're in it right now. There is an alpha dog battle going on between bradley bale and john wall it seems yes and uh you know this idea of bringing dwight howard into that mix it's curious not sure i my attitude on it was when your chemistry is already awful why

not just bring in dwight howard like it's not like it's gonna get worse what are they gonna go down lower it could get worse they almost they going to go down lower? It could get worse. They almost had a fist fight in the locker room last year. What's worse than that other than guns? There may be another one. There may be another one coming. Haralbas, you buy an NBA team.

What are the first three things you do? I know. Crypto millionaire. You cash in your Bitcoin. First of all, what team do you target Yeah, you cash in your Bitcoin. Sure. First of all, what team do you target? Do you go small market? I mean, of course.

The fans are tortured. You come in as like the savior, the Bitcoin savior? Sure. I don't know. I would think it depends. I mean, obviously, if I could have any team, I'd want a team. I'd like the Clippers would be great

just because they've just, I mean, they've just had such a horrible run in terms of owners. Ballmer's great now, but they haven't necessarily had much success recently. I don't think Ballmer ever sells the Clippers. No, of course not. I don't think Oliver had enough money to buy the Clippers, so

if we're going to play Fantasyland, I might as well be able to pick a team I want to buy. I would say the Memphis, Charlotte type of teams probably would be more available. You couldn't do that? No, I wouldn't want to. So you'd need to be in a big city. I think it'd be more fun to be a team I want to buy. I would say the Memphis kind of Charlotte type of teams. No, I couldn't find myself. You couldn't do that? No, I wouldn't want to. So you need to be in a big city. I think it'd be more fun to be in a big city, yeah.

What would you do? How would you revolutionize the game as a basketball owner? Hire Darrell as my GM. Go from there. Hey now. Hey now. Have you ever been courted and not told me? By Bob?

No. By a big market franchise has there ever been approaches these are hard questions what's it's a yes or no question you must have been courted

a couple times I'm happy where I am Houston's awesome the funniest thing is I've known Daryl since like 2004 and he was never this good at evading questions until the last couple of years.

So you would go overpay for one of the quality GMs? You just have such an easier time attracting talent if you're in those markets. I mean, look what's happening now in terms of where players are going. They're either grouping with other stars. I don't know a lot of players that are looking to sign with Memphis, even when Memphis had a great team and was competing every year.

So it's just very tough to attract players. I mean, the Knicks would be perfect because they've had just a horrible run in terms of not having been in the playoffs in a long time. Yeah, the Knicks is like following the worst boyfriend of all time. Yeah. And you just come in there and they love you. Yeah, you just come in there and they love you. Take her out to dinner once.

She's like, oh, this is great. You're so nice. See, Bob's right. This is why you can't have a better they love you. Yeah, you just come in there and they love you. Take her out to dinner once. She's like, oh, this is great. You're so nice. See, Bob's right. This is why you can't have a better franchise than Houston, Miami, LA. Like, if you can't recruit the top players, I think it's really tough. Like, you have to go through those, like, really deep depths of. Yeah, blow it up and rebuild. Well, this goes back to the original question about how basketball has changed this decade.

You know, the player empowerment thing, which started with the decision, I think has been the number one thing. That's where just players now have shifted the power dynamic. As they should, by the way, as they should. But the other thing, the big market thing just doesn't matter anymore. What do you mean? Well, in the old days, it was like,

you got to get to LA or New York. And now it's like with League Pass, and Westbrook is as popular as anybody right now. That's an unusual situation. It has to be a city they want to live in, though. Yeah, no, but I'm just saying you can be a big star, I think, in any city. LeBron's the biggest star we've had in the last 20 years. He played in Cleveland for 11 of the 15 years. It didn't matter.

But Oklahoma City also went to the finals and those players were very young. You have to succeed. Yeah, if that didn't happen, you wouldn't really necessarily have them being that popular. I mean, they had Durant, Harden, and Westbrook and made it to the finals back in whatever it was, 2013. I think what's changed the most for me has been instead of the city being the big carrot

or the franchise or the history, it's been more like what front offices are good? What's the front office owner situation? The Celtics didn't get a free agent forever. Who did they get? Al Horford and Gordon Hayward, back-to-back years. Those weren't exactly. Those wasn't exactly.

Stop it. Don't, don't, don't. I hate when you're Celtics troll. No, but I'm- Horford was the second best free agent in 16. I get that, but it wasn't, it's not the, I still think that it's difficult for the Celtics to attract free agents.

I mean, they've done it by trades, they've done it by drafts, by maneuvering, but I don't think they've necessarily... I mean, the Celtics have a great tradition, so it's not like you're comparing the Celtics to the Charlotte franchise. But I think it's the front office slash coach slash owner thing has attracted them.

I think now, for sure. I would say owner, because the owner hires all those people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But isn't it also the players looking at who they want to play with? I mean, that's really kind of where we are right now. I'm wondering... That's the short, medium term, but long term, it's the owner and the environment and the city.

Sure, like the Clippers had Blake, and then all of a sudden they were able to get CP3, and then they were able to attract some more talent. And then it kind of went away. Do you feel like the state income tax is one of your biggest advantages right now? That and Galveston. You know, the beach.

Oh, my goodness. Because in California, it's a 13% income tax. In Texas, it's zero. It's zero and a bunch in Memphis, zero. All the Texas, it's zero. It's zero and a bunch of Memphis zero, all the Orlando, Miami zero. This could be the case for Vegas having a basketball team at some point. Would you guys want a basketball team?

Is anyone from Vegas here? Because the hockey team was a huge success, even though the loss in the cup finals. But yeah, you look at Chris Paul probably saved, what, $22 million by signing that deal in Texas? It's a lot. And then adding cost of living, adding China, the fact that you get huge endorsements being in Houston.

So we've got a good edge. Would you add two more teams? Or do we have the right number? Or do we have too many? I think you have too many, to be honest. I don't think that there's enough talent to support two more teams i mean there is but i i feel like it's better the way it is now where you don't have like a dilution of talent where you're not like digging extra deep

it might be more exciting though because i think it'd be more advantageous for the smarter teams the more the more teams are out there i think we could do two more i just i think yeah right seattle we want out of. Maybe Vegas. Actually, with the way the hockey team succeeded here, I think the basketball would be great, but Seattle and Vegas. You know they're a Canadian team if they're going to have another team. I just think we're going to end up with the same four teams

fighting for the title every year. So whether we have 30 or 32, it's still going to be the four that rise to the top. I just want Seattle to have a team. It'd be great if they expanded two teams and then you could only protect three players on your team. That would be a good way of breaking up the Warriors.

If you look at how that Vegas hockey expansion team I don't like that one. What the best idea we've had. If you look at how they did that. I think they protect one, and then you get two more to protect. You should be able to protect two players, I think, but you can't have more than two players picked from the same expansion team.

That would be cool. I would say probably five. Protect five? Yeah. No, that's not true. You have to have starter level talent, for sure. Yeah, but you take some of the deeper teams, they lose somebody good.

Plus you don't want the team to be good right away. I don't think the other way. That was a great story. Why do you not want the team to be good right away? Because if I was another NHL owner, I would have been furious about it. So you charge them like a... They paid $600 million.

You guys are also going to suck for five years. No, you charge them like $2 or $3 billion. I'm sure the owners would mind that. It worked out fine in hockey. Split that up 30 ways. So you would be okay if you could only protect three guys? I would imagine that would be a nightmare. I mean, I'm thinking about his angle.

I'm not just thinking about Houston. I'm thinking about other teams. I see what you mean. There would be a lot of wheeling and dealing. So, House, the best era for basketball was? Well, you know how. I'm old.

So, 85 to 95. I love that era. I love that era. So brutal. Love that era. If you went back and watched 85 to 95 basketball now on a daily basis, you'd be like, what am I doing with my time? I could be on the internet, I could be on

Twitter, I could be watching Netflix. You're not going to be watching 85 to 95 basketball. Especially 91 to 95. No way. So brutal. See, I think 92, 93 was underrated. Because there's just a lot of good players. You go back and there's just all favorites. I love that Bull Suns finals. I love that Bull Suns finals.

I love that Bulls. Good center matchups. That was 96, by the way. 94 and 95. Bull Suns? Oh, Suns. I thought you said Sonics. We had some bad luck down there, too. Those Cavs teams were really good, and they couldn't stay healthy.

Those are the 80s ones. Then by 93, it was Darnell Valentine. It wasn't good. No, but the 92 team was good, the team that beat the Celtics. That was just a good team. Before we had the NBA. I thought the league was relatively deep, but we also had less teams back then.

All right, we're moving on. We lost most of the audience who hasn't watched basketball in 1992. Who remembers Kennedy? Yeah, I guess, yeah, we might be in trouble with this topic. Daryl Morey, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Albus, thank you. Joass, you're staying. I'm staying. Allbus, thank you. Joass, you're staying.

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Cousin Sal, come on out. Cousin Sal. Wait. All right. First topic for this group. Sports gambling is going to become legal. What? Yeah.

It's going to happen. We have it here. Sal and I cashed in a Mets Red Sox parlay today, actually. By the way, this is not what I expected my intervention to look like, but I can get used to it. It's pretty good. How do you see this going? Legal sports gaming.

C plus. Legal sports gambling. How do you see it going? It's great. I think there's room for everybody. I don't think Vegas is going to shut down because your local 7-Eleven has parlay cards. This is still going to be a bachelor party destination. Unless 7-Eleven had strip clubs in the back.

That's not a bad idea, actually. Some of them probably do. Yeah, they might actually. But no, there's enough room for everyone. The bookies are going to stay alive because people like to stay anonymous and they like to play on credit. Obviously, Vegas isn't going anywhere. And even like the offshore books, I think we'll still offer parlays and props at the mainstream. You won't get in Delaware at the grocery store.

But you don't think we'll have the live betting right away? I don't. I would love it. But don't you think that's like six or seven years away? My issue with the live betting is the people setting the lines, you have to be pretty competent. What do you mean? The betting while the game is being played?

You can do that right now anywhere, really. I mean, the European sports books, you can bet on the NBA playoffs in-game all the time. In the moment? Yeah, of course. I would imagine there's... Every stoppage. So the limits are very low while the game is being played. But then when it's actually a stoppage, like there's a commercial break or a timeout,

the limits get higher. It would seem like that would be a great way to bribe somebody. How so? The person just setting the random live lines. How do we trust that person? It's hard, but most places copy a specific service that provides the lines for everyone.

They'll be like in golf. They'll have live lines. Phil Nicholson will have a chip shot in the air and the line will change. Golf is really the place that I'm most interested in seeing the opportunities arise. Because during the U.S. Open, you could bet matchups.

As the guys played holes in the 12th hole, you could bet a matchup of guys still out there on the 14th hole. Will Dustin Johnson beat Brooks Koepka? You act like we haven't been doing this. And somehow losing every time. Just saying it's very exciting. I'm very looking forward to the opportunity. Soccer is the best live betting game because not much happens.

You can keep betting the entire time. Nothing happens. What do you bet on in soccer for live betting? You bet on who wins, basically. You can bet the first 10 minutes. Will there be a goal the next minute? You can bet anything. Who will get the next corner kick?

Who will get the next shot on goal? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, like Brazil scored today and made it 2-1, and there's like 20 minutes left or whatever. Or even when the score is 2-0, the team could have been favored by one and a half goals or whatever like that.

Do you feel like gambling going mainstream, what would be your biggest concern with that? My biggest concern actually would be if the NBA was adamant about not so much the integrity fee, but collecting a percentage of the handle or being partners with some of the- Like a VIG?

Yeah, I think that's just a bad look. That was one of the things they initially talked about doing was, oh, we're going to do this, we're going to have a piece of it. The teams are going to be worth so much money because of it, but you can't have a league be incentivized

on profits from gambling because now they're incentivized to randomize the games. It's just not good. It's not good. It's a bad thing. Do tell. Randomize the games. What do you mean? You could just give out a bunch of league directives in terms of what types of changes,

what they call the point of emphasis. Oh, for the game three of a playoff series. Something like that, yeah. But the integrity fee in the NBA is so funny. It really is. You've got teams tanking eight games into the season, and they're like, you know what, we're going to charge you for gambling.

No, it's a joke. The worst part of ever bringing up the integrity fee is you're implying that there was no integrity in the league prior to them being able to charge a fee. It's like, oh, we need this fee because our games aren't on the up and up. Gambling's been going on in this town, all over the world. The US is really one of the

only countries where it's not legal or it wasn't legal. I think it comes from the 40s, 50s, 60s. There were all these point-shaving scandals and it really put a stink on sports gambling that kind of carried over. The problem now is on professional sports is the players are just making way too much money

for it to ever be a point scandal. There's some people who... The long snapper. Well, there was a referee who admitted to betting on games. But only for a year. The funny thing about the referee thing is you guys talked about the malice at the Palace

and then the Phoenix Suns thing. Oh, yeah. And guess who's the referee for both games? Tim Donahue. He was an official for both of those games. Yeah. Just kind of crazy. And he was mostly overs, right?

No, he didn't bet totals at all. He just bet who would win the game. He didn't have any... Smart, smart. The reason why people think he bet totals is because he had his little fingers on every play to try and manipulate the outcome of the game that he had to call a lot of fouls,

which resulted in a higher scoring game. But he wasn't smart enough to think, oh, wow, I could just bet on the over and no one would ever suspect anything. I'm going to actually try to fix the key outcome. The ref could rig the over. He calls a lot of fouls early in the quarter. Just any time.

Both teams are in the free throw limit with seven minutes left. Can I just ask something for a second? While you're working the crowd here, I saw how you're doing that. You saw my hand? I'm going to put the over on there at three and a half. Yeah. And the prop is how many wives slash girlfriends were dragged here against their will? I'm going over.

Wow, look at that. How many? Am I seeing four? Yeah. Wow, look at that. How many? Am I seeing four? Yeah. Oh, somebody's standing. She was like standing proudly. He'll make it up to you later. When you guys were discussing if Reggie Evans is a one-dimensional player, this lady

right here reached into a person and grabbed the noose and the girl next to her had to stop her. I'm sorry. It's almost over. All right. Well, let's do our best and worst gambling stories of all time. This is something everybody can enjoy. Yes, definitely. House, you start, because this was something Sal and I were intimately involved with, your worst gambling loss of all time.

And as the crowd is going to find out, they were also intimately involved with it. Yeah, it happened. It all started right next door at no boo in august of 2016 you me the cuz jeff chow president of the ringer sitting together looking at the football season and looking for some creative way to enjoy the nfl season with a certain uh political event that was, the presidential election in 2016, we were able to come up with a parlay of the New England Patriots winning the AFC East

along with Hillary Clinton winning the presidency. Oh my goodness. And for a lot of money. It wasn't like a light bet. Well, and we got two to one odds on it. And the- The Pats clinch the afc is done like september 15th yeah the element of it that that particularly stung was i i was in the company of my partner in this wager jeff chow a week before the election and he sat across the table

from me and he said house we could probably get trump right now we could hedge this four to one five to one i said no effing way only losers hedge that's right he's not gonna win don't worry about it he doesn't have a chance i still believe yeah somehow we we were trying to remember some of our worst gambling losses and you know they kind of blend together oh that was bad We get to just continually relive this gambling loss every day. That's the worst part of it is you wake up every day. Every day it's like, oh yeah, remember that bet we lost with the pass? What was your worst loss ever, Albus? Probably the Clippers-Houston-Rockets series, I would say.

Oh, the game six or the whole series? Just the whole series. I had the Clippers to win that series. That was pretty torturous. Oh, so you're up 18 with a quarter left. Yeah, that was probably the worst one where I was just kind of like, what just happened? Were you at the game?

I was at all of the games in LA, yeah. The worst thing, though, I will say, this is a little bit different. Probably some of my other worst losses where I'm one of the only people at the visiting arena cheering or the cheering for the visiting team and and so like that i remember being at i can't remember which game it was specifically but it was it was in phoenix i remember which team they were playing and i had the i had the away team like for a big

bet oh it was the clippers again it was the the daniel ewing moment when oh against the suns yeah i was at that game on the floor and you feel like the tiniest, littlest person in the world. Every time something bad happens to you personally, the entire crowd cheers. It's like the worst experience ever. I would not recommend it. It is the

worst experience ever. I really do not like going to games and having bets on the away team. It's just not fun. Sal, asking you to pick your worst gambling loss. It's like asking me to pick my most hated

child. They're just all so bad. They're so terrible, all of them. How do I pick one? All right. You know what? I'm going to take you back to July 4th, 2018. Oh. Yeah, try to July 4th, 2018. Oh. Yeah, try to think, you know, a long time ago.

All the way back. The Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. And on my Against All Odds podcast, I gave out that the winner, who was probably going to be Joey Chestnut, would consume under 70 and a half hot dogs. I said under, and I did some research. Chestnut was showing off the last two years.

He was looking to break records. It's going to be hot as balls out there. And it was 110. He doesn't need to eat 70 and a half. That's going under. So we watched. And ESPN shows it. And it's 10 minutes. And by the way, if anyone who says horse racing is the greatest, two and a half, the hot dog eating contest is so much so much it's it's disgusting but so much more exciting and he's at a slow pace and espn has

the tracker and he has his own camera so you have to figure the numbers are accurate and he's ends up with what did he end up 64 on the screen it says 64 and i screenshot it and i'm bragging i'm like oh you were pretty adamant this was the under I loved it it was on there 64 by a ton you know he didn't have it and then something happens I'm like I'm Instagramming my screenshot and everything and they do the interview the post eating interview and Joey Chestnut says yeah they said 64 but I actually ate 74 they missed the plate and the carnival barker interviewing him was like, 74, a new world's record. Congrats.

Like, wait a minute. No one's looking into this? This is it. This is just, this is screwing me over. And the reason this is a bad bet, along with La La Land, I had to beat Moonlight, which also lost in the same disgusting fashion. You could have hedged Donald Trump. You could have hedged Houston,. You could have hedged Houston, even at halftime, Houston Clippers.

There was no live line after ESPN reported chestnut at 64 hot dogs. I couldn't bet against that. The other crazy thing is he had his own camera on him. Yes, yeah. And they had a year to figure out how to count how many hot dogs he was eating the only thing that mattered yeah it would be like if they had the nba finals and the lakers

scored 10 more points than they thought yeah they did it was like oh they actually won well i'm done with the smaller events i'm now just can we go back to how you want chicken wing eating and you know guacamole and chips can we go back to how you also lost on La La Land? I mean, it was- You had like a five movie parlay, right? Yeah, right. It was like actors, like there was a key grip that you had. You just were all spread out.

There's always a key grip. Lighting, everything. And Moonlight was the last one. I just needed La La Land to be announced and it was an extra hard punch to the gut because I was working the event. My cousin Jimmy was hosting. So I'm backstage and I just see it's bedlam.

Like producers are running on stage and stopping people from speaking. And they're like, oh boy, they're just doing this to take my bed away. I'm almost positive now. That's why, yeah. I had, my worst bet is actually a three-part bet. And it led to us breaking up with House for gambling.

So we start out with 2016 Warriors. We have them to win the title. We go all in on that. They go up 3-1. We watch that game in Jimmy's office. And we're saying, if they can win this game in Cleveland, this is over, it's a wrap it's done in five. Draymond punches

LeBron in the balls Sal's like, he's not going to get suspended for that right? No, no, he's fine He should have got his own trophy for that It goes into game five, Draymond gets suspended He didn't get suspended for punching him in the balls specifically Yeah, it was for the flagrant.

Yeah, it was for the flagrant. It was like his 16th technical foul or whatever the hell it was. Yeah, seventh. So you and I have a conversation. Let's just get out. The Cavs are like, what, 8-1 to come back and win the series, some number? Let's just get out. We'll just hedge it.

Nah, hedging's for wusses. And we ride it out to just a disaster. So that happens. Thank you. Hedging's for wusses. And we ride it out to just a disaster. So that happens. Thank you. Hedging is for wusses. Hedging is for wusses. So the next year, so Durant signs with the Warriors. And at some point, I talk myself out of them being a guarantee to win the title.

And what was the field? Plus 120. Yeah, I'm like, we get the other 29 teams. This will be great. We get 29 teams, one injured, maybe Durant, maybe Lobrigo stuff. We got to do this. So we go all in on the field. And the Warriors just kill everyone all year. And it's like being run over by a train that's like five miles away that has a bullseye on you coming at you and then the third one was this year we had the we had the warriors in five we had a chance to hedge yeah we didn't and all this led to us excising joe house from our lebron will go to the lakers bet sorry

and we shed our karma but i wasn't on any of those other bets that was the third one you're on the third one yeah but we were on the text chain. That was good enough. Yeah, it was your fault. So we cut you out of it. What was your greatest gambling win? Oh, wow. I'm sorry for Cuz, but it was the Patriots' comeback against Atlanta.

I had a parlay of both the points and the over. I mean, the three and a half and the over. I mean, the three and a half and the over. And that game at halftime, the exchanges of people that participated in this bet with me were like, well, we're going to lose. That's fine. Let's move on. That was an all-timer. It's the greatest football comeback of all time. So naturally, Cousin Sal was on the other end of it. Well, not only was I on the other end of it, I had the... I'm sick even talking about it. The Falcons plus three and a half. So, all right. All the nonsense that has to happen for it to go to overtime, and it does.

And they win by six. Yeah, you think like you're at least getting the field goal. That was it, yeah. Your greatest win. You had a couple of them back in the day. My best win was the We Believe Warriors versus the Dallas Mavericks.

At 11.1 to 1 average price for a huge amount. With the what? I got 11 to 1 on them beating the Mavericks. 11 to 1? And they won in six. Yeah, that was my best win. The funny thing about that is there was a guy

who owed me like $2 million and I remember pulling him aside and I was like, he was the biggest degenerate ever. And I was like, buddy, you should put a little money on. I was telling everyone after I'd already bet. You should really do it. He's like, no, no, I'm betting the Mavericks. I'll get you some money back once the series

is over and I bet the Mavericks. That was probably my best one for sure. $2 billion. It's an auction all of a sudden? What was that? That was back in the day when people had money. There was a lot of people in poker who had money back then. Money was flying around.

Sal, what was your greatest win? I never win. No, you know what? There have been a few, but I just thought of the one. What do we bet? Who do we bet on the NBA draft? Didn't we win like nine to one odds on a team to get the first pick? Oh, we bet on the lottery.

We bet on the Cavaliers. Yeah, we did. We actually- You look at the lottery, you're like, how do you bet on the lottery? It's just ping pong balls. And I texted you, I was like, the Cavaliers are winning the lottery.

I think it was because LeBron had left. It was Cavs via Nets or something crazy. Like we had a, it was a weird- I think it was maybe the Clippers one. Yeah, that's right. It was the Clippers pick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take that one.

That's the only one I remember. That's your greatest gambling win? No, they're not that great. You can't remember any gambling wins? I have the Pats over the Falcons. Obviously, my team was great. But I remember, you always remember your first great one. And right when I got into gambling, I'm going to say like 1990,

I got into gambling because I was a Patriots fan. And they were horrendous. They were terrible every year. And in 1989, they went 1 and 15. And I just didn't have a football team. Fantasy hadn't really taken off at that point. And just every Sunday, I had no stakes. And somebody in college was like, you know,

you can bet on one of the two teams. I'm like, what? So started doing it and it was either the 90 or the 91 playoffs. It was a Chiefs Miami playoff game. I don't even remember who won, but we had the team that lost plus two and they lost by one.

So they covered. That's nice. And they're dejected. I'm like, this is the greatest, and that was it, and I was hooked from that point on, and it was wonderful. But I think my favorite one I ever had was the Ravens Giant Super Bowl. Oh, yeah, I was in that with you. No, I didn't know you then.

Oh. See, I never win. The Ravens were underdogs, won that, won the Moneyline bet. We had all the defense score bet. We had all the, we'll the defense score a TD. We had that. It was the field to score the first touchdown before they realized how,

that the field odds were too good. So we took the field at like 20 to one. Brandon Stokely, he scored. It was like all these things. I remember it like it was one of my kids. I have another, it wasn't one specific event, but it was the year Cleveland had Ricky Davis a year before LeBron.

They were just tanking. And Ricky Davis was like a free agent the next year. And so I was just betting the over in every Cleveland game for like a nine or 10 games. This is, this is the same year that Ricky Davis wanted to get a triple double by taking a shot at his own basket and getting the rebound and got to a fight with Jerry Sloan.

That was the greatest run. I think that year. then the year that Gilbert Arenas started starting for the Golden State Warriors, like halfway through the year, three quarters. And he just was so fast. I remember betting the first half over in every Golden State game during that time. And then the over in the Ricky Davis Cleveland games, those were my best. I remember those runs. Did you feel like there was an inefficiency time for basketball gambling? Back then was really inefficient, for sure. The 2000 to 2006 range?

For sure, yeah. Even up to as late as 2011, 2012, 2013, for the totals especially. You were one of the first ones to study the official trends, right? The ref stuff is kind of overrated, but I did study it i think that um i mean my worst bets were going to be talking about just trying to fade tim donaghy every game i had no idea they were fixing the games the line was moving so much i was betting

opposite but i didn't want to go down there although i guess i just did do you have any advice for people who do parlays or teasers don Don't. So anyone who knows anything about gambling laughs at us when we do parlays and teasers. They literally laugh at us like we're amateurs. And we do it all the time. What do you mean, like you're amateurs? If you have a theoretical win percentage

of over 57%, which would basically make you like Warren Buffett, then betting three-team parlays is a good bet. Because the math works in your favor for a three-team parlay when you are at that win percentage. But other than that, you're just setting money on fire. Let me ask you this, and we do teasers.

And I know if you're into numbers... You can just stop right there. Well, here's the thing. Every Monday we go over the lines and we say, Patriots are favored over the Dolphins in Miami. We lost all of these last year. By six. Well, hold on, though.

It sounds good, though, right? If they're favored by six, we don't even look to lay the six, because teams don't look to cover the spread. They want to win by one. They don't care. If they're up 10, you could give away the garbage touchdown in the end and win by three and not have to worry about that and just tie it with another team.

So the other, for the NFL, I'm not really a big NFL better, but back when I was more looking at different things in early 2000s, there was a big edge on seven-point teasers when you cross the key number. So when you cross seven or three, if you could have a teaser.

But they've since changed the odds on the two-team teasers where it's no longer plus EV to do that. They've wisened up to just about everything. Yeah, the internet just fucked everything. Yeah, really. The internet and the person who figures something out and wants to tell the world that he figured it out basically fucked gambling for everybody.

Hey, tell our story from the Jimmy Como live offense with the online betting site. I don't even remember. What was it? Was it just the we bet field or something? It was a team to win the. It was a basketball game. Yeah.

And they put the wrong line in the website. The team that was minus 10 was listed as plus 10. Right. So Sal and I had, this was the early days of the online accounts. Sal and I basically take our entire balance and bet it on the plus 10. Right. So Sal and I had, this was the early days of the online accounts. Yeah. Sal and I basically take our entire balance and bet it on the plus 10. So then they switch it. They realized the mistake. They switch it to the minus 10.

We take whatever's left on the balance. So now we have both sides with a 20 point swing. We get this email right before the game that they avoided the bet, the original bet. Yeah, of course. Now we're stuck with the other bet of the one we didn't want, and we get killed, and we lose that.

I don't think I've ever seen you that angry. You were like, I'm going to fly out to Antigua. I'm going to chase down this dummy company, and that's going to be it. It's like, calm down, man. That's what it was like. It was the original plot for Runner Runner with Ben Affleck. I was so mad.

At that point, we didn't even know if we'd ever get paid if we did the bets. Now it seems like people mostly get paid online. I'll tell you what I like is being in Vegas and just handing in a ticket and getting cash. Shout out to Vegas. Thank you to Horalibus. One more break to talk about SimpliSafe Home Security. Before you guys start giving me crap saying I only like SimpliSafe because they're from Boston

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slash BS. One last time, going back to the live show. Here we go. We are now going to bring in the legend, a chef who is in charge of 10 million restaurants, David Chang.

Yeah. How about it? And coming back for seconds, Shea Serrano. That kind of guy. Seconds. Seconds, literally. We went to Momofuku Vegas yesterday,

and Chang was in charge of the menu and it was a terrible idea we ate an incredible amount and then went to play blackjack and you're not going to believe it but not a lot of energy at the table there for the first hour why do you blame the food

all you have to do is point to a card we're not digging ditches he's like we can never eat a big meal like this again before blackjack how hard is it physically I believe in energy i believe in energy and karma i believe in the energy of a blackjack table and five comatose guys sitting around a blackjack table does not win money i've never seen it yeah what happens last so last night we were losing we were losing we do fireball shots have you guys ever had fireball whiskey? Yeah.

It's the only shot Sal can do. Sal doesn't love drinking. And it's basically like doing cocaine. I've never done cocaine, but I think there's a lot of similarities. No? No. And it changed the table,

and we went nuts. We went on a great run, all this stuff. All right, so we're going to do last meal on earth. Everyone, we're going to go around the horn. You have one meal left. We've done this on The Ringer in the past, but basically, you know, when you see this one, not to get dark, but when people are on death row,

they have the last meal, and they can order whatever they want. Comedy killer. Not to get dark, but right before a person is murdered. Right, right, right. The question is, if you knew it was your last meal and you could do anything, what would you do? Joe, how should you go first? Well, here's the thing. I insist that as soon as we're done with this, we go eat somewhere. Because I need to get over this hump that I'm currently operating under, which is my last meal on earth would be the last two

meals that I just enjoyed. It would be the Momofuku experience. This guy, well, I'm trying not to, that's what I'm saying. We got to go eat so I don't die immediately after this. You got to get the meal in. I got to get one more meal in. This Momofuku experience, I mean, it was mind-blowing. We had the caviar boat with a lot of make-your-own. It was an actual boat. It came out like a boat. It was beautiful. We had salmon roe.

There was uni. There was hamachi. It was an unbelievable kickoff to a meal. There was wagyu. There was benton ham. The beautiful madeleines, the corn madeleines. We had Cote de Boeuf. I mean, it was just... We cover his erectionction right now i think he has a boner jesus it's been going for longer than four hours and then we gamble all

night i go to bed i've been awake for 23 hours i wake up the first thing i see on my phone is a text from this dude who's like i can't sleep sleep. We need to go to Palace Station. I don't know, Vegas people, Palace Station? The Oyster Bar, it's a 16-seat half round where they prepare to order seafood. Basically, it's gumbo, but it's much better than gumbo. It's the oyster pan roast. No, the oyster pan roast at Palace Station.

We are there at 8.15 in the morning. Every seat is taken. We have to stand in line. We waited like 30 minutes. Yeah, we waited for 30 minutes. We were the only ones in line, but we had to wait. How were you hungry? That's the part I don't understand.

We ate so much food. We just felt like shit, so it was the only thing that I thought was sensible. And I knew that he'd be it. Right. Because I didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. So that's it. So House, you've achieved your last meal on earth. So we have to go eat

right after this. Okay. So I don't die. That was a tremendous meal last night. And this morning. The best thing about the meal is and I don't know if this was just for us or everyone gets a steal, it was free. He didn't bring us a check. So if you're going to go to Momofuku, expect not to pay, right?

Put it on Sal's account. We had like three entrees too many. Everybody was like basically could move. And then a giant milk birthday cake came out. And then we ate that. And that was really good. We did eat that. It was Sal's birthday.

Chang, what do you got? out and then we ate that and that's that was we did eat that it was sal's birthday yeah chang what do you got um i i really dislike this question because i get it asked all the time and uh the answers are always sort of annoying um because i can always choose some far off place um but last time i said this i think i said san sebastian I don't know if you guys have ever been there. And that's so annoying. It is so annoying. But there's a place called Echabari. And before, it's Elcano Echabari.

These are the two restaurants that I genuinely think about. I would probably think something in Japan or some barbecue restaurant in Texas. But what I actually think about is this restaurant that's nestled in the mountains in about an hour outside San Sebastian. And it's just like nothing else. Everything's cooked over a grill. They have the best of the best of the best. And it's simply done. And it's kind of those, it's a restaurant that you plan to go to. And it's not like foo-foo, you know what I mean?

It's just like simple and the best steak, the best shrimp, the best caviar. Everything is amazing. So that's the shit that I crave. So that would be your number one choice? Right now. It's always changing. We should have this on the ringer where you have just your monthly power rankings and you move restaurants up and down.

I'm sure that wouldn't cause any problems for you. Here's the crazy thing. This morning when we were eating there, it was easily like, oh, man, we said this. It was the best. This is what I'd want to eat on death row. We were eating raw oysters at 830 this morning, and they were fucking delicious. They went off to a chapel and got married. So that's the thing it's it's it's

constantly in flux and it's oftentimes as the people you're with as cliche and cheesy as that sounds but um eating's this fun communal thing and and i want to have a um experience that's not just delicious but like entertaining so shea serrano i feel like the four of y'all before this started gathered together and said hey let's make up let's just make up a bunch of shit and see if shea notices i don't know any of the words y'all are saying right now this is okay i don't know what that is i don't want to eat any of that my the my last meal on earth and it costs four dollars and 50 cents there's a place in san antonio called mind Mendes Cafe off of Southwest Military, which is like where you go when you want to get shot or stabbed.

And you go in there, and they only take cash, and they're only open like whenever they want to be open. Sometimes they just close whenever. But I would get a carne asada and cheese taco and a bean and cheese taco and a Big Red, and that's all that I need to eat. And you cross my fingers and you hope I don't get food poisoning because it's one of those types of places. Right. Right? You're taking a slight risk.

It's either delicious or like the worst night of your life. One death row. It doesn't matter. I'm going to die anyway, so fuck it. We'll go for it. That's what I'm going to eat. That's all that I need. I don't know all this fancy stuff y'all guys are talking about.

Popeye's chicken would be good too. My number one. See, I'm already switching them. Now we're talking about real. There's variations and levels of like what you're feeling. You know what I mean? Even if it's death row. It's like Popeye's chicken would be the best meal.

It really can be. Give me Mexican food. You know what's crazy? This is going to blow your mind. Mexicans don't call Mexican food Mexican food. We just call it food. It's just food is all that it is. Do you want to eat is what we say, and then we eat that. Throw that out there for you guys. Sal, what do you got? I'm going to keep it simple, and I think everyone in this room is lying if they said, I'm going to change it a little bit, because if you had one food left you could eat for the rest of your life, desert island, you would go pizza. And it would

also be my last meal, Branch and Ellie's pizza, Hop Hog Long Island. Nobody? All right, you can pretend to know it, yeah. They have the pepperoni on it, but not the circular pepperoni. It's the one that curls up, or you bake it and it curls up. It's just... Oh, I like when the pepperon on it, but not the circular pepperoni. It's the one that curls up. You bake it and it curls up. It's just... Oh, I like when the pepperonis curl up. It's the best. You have five, six, seven slices. Why can't everybody get the pepperonis to curl up? How do you get the pepperonis

to curl up, Chandler? Tell us about the pepperoni. My favorite pizza in Manhattan is Spring Street Pizza. You got to get the spicy pepperoni squares. And that curls up and it pools of oil in the pepperoni. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, that's, square pizza is like all the rage right now. Sal, those girlfriends that you called out who got dragged here and didn't want to hear about Reggie Evans, are they more engaged now with this food conversation? You more engaged now? They left. You more engaged? Better? Okay.

More engaged, but technically less engaged because you just broke up the engagement with the guy next to you. I'm changing my answer since the last time I did this. I was watching Goodfellas a few weeks ago and there's that scene when those guys, they go and they drive away. They kill, who is it, Billy Batts?

Yeah, he's in the trunk. And he's in the trunk, and they go to bury him. And then they're going back, and they have to get rid of the clothes. And they somehow wake up Joe Pesci's mom, and she immediately decides to cook for them. That's the best. Which is like the most Italian part of that movie. There's a lot of Italian parts.

I'm half Italian. Are you half? Yes, yeah. Yeah. The Italian, the aunts, the moms, the grandmothers, they just want to cook. All they want to do is make everyone around them as fat as possible at all times.

So it's four in the morning. Joe Pesci's covered in blood. And the mom's like, here, let me make you some meatballs and pasta. But that got me thinking, I enjoy nothing more than my mom's cooking. And a family member who knows how to cook Italian food, there's just something special about it.

Like the meatballs, knowing my mom slaved over it, the sauce. So I would go with like, she does like a chicken cacciatore, meatballs, Caesar salad. Are you crying right now? Yeah, I'm just kidding. But yeah, you get it though. The Goodfellas scene actually makes me hungry, which is funny because Joe Pesci is covered in blood blood and they've just buried a guy in the desert or

wherever they did she pulls out the painting he's like one's looking this way one's looking the other way i love it um before we go i want to talk about uh chefs and nba players similarities and dissimilarities a topic near and dear to your heart, Shane. Yeah, geez. So, Shay, if Tim Duncan's a chef, what does Tim Duncan's restaurant look like? It looks like, did you ever see Aladdin when Aladdin just wanted bread and water? That's Tim Duncan's restaurant. Just put a thing of bread and water.

Burgers and fries? And it's called Restaurant. That's the name of the restaurant. Yeah, when we were driving from LA to to Vegas there's a restaurant halfway on the ride like in Death Valley and the sign just says eat E-A-T that was the name of the restaurant eat because I think they think everyone's so punch truck on the drive uh Chang chefs and NBA players um one of my chefs in the restaurant group uh I actually told him, stop trying to be LeBron James, right? So what does that mean? Well, like the whole idea, like when he's not on the

court, like there's not a rhythm, right? So this is going to sound crazy. So you can be so good and not develop any kind of like system to make your other teammates better. And that's the hardest part of being a chef, I think, when you're really talented is you can't make anyone else better. It just takes time. And we talked about Russell Westbrook. So it's a little bit like Russell Westbrook, a little bit like LeBron James. I think a lot of chefs want to play hero ball, and that's when they get fucked.

I've been guilty of that many times. What's the chef equivalent of a Russell Westbrook shooting 43 shots in a a game six i've been guilty of that probably like 2008 to 2012 probably right you're just clearing everybody out you want to make everything like oh you're fucking that up i'm gonna do it you move over there i'll do it what the hell are we talking about like if you're in a kitchen if you're in a kitchen right and like you're seeing you're seeing one of your like cooks or your sous chefs trying to make something and they're fucking it up right you're in a kitchen, right? And you're seeing one of your cooks or your sous chefs trying to make something, and they're fucking it up, right? You're like, you stop doing what you're doing, and I'll just do it for you.

Right. Yeah. Does that make any sense? I don't know. Can I ask you one thing? I don't know why I would ask you, or if anybody knows. But why does it say shave ice when you go to Hawaii? And it doesn't say shaved ice it says shave ice right

shave ice it says shave ice I swear to god look it up it says shave how did how did we get to this yeah this is just something my this is a real thing that happens I don't players and chefs. You should have heard a conversation last night at the Blackjack table. If chefs had to deal with stuff NBA players had to deal with, the part that I think you would have the most trouble with is the post-game press conference. I would probably be like Popovich. I would just be like, yes, no. You would just berate people? And also yell at people,

yeah, at the journalist. I'd probably freak out. You mentioned when we came to vegas how all these great restaurants are here now and it seems like every chef has taken a whack like even when we're driving back from thomas and mac center today we're driving by giordano's yeah i was like what is that that place sounds familiar it's like oh that's the famous chicago deep dish place and there's like 120 restaurants like that in vegas now um how did this start and is it the secret joke amongst like chefs that are opening up restaurants in las vegas or an expansion dare is they must have gotten divorced what does that

happens a lot with uh chefs that are opening up like three to four restaurants. Oh, because they're here in Vegas. Because they need money or they need to expand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It happens a lot. You can see a lot with the French and European chefs that open up restaurants in like Japan and Korea and Abu Dhabi. That's like the equivalent of being a Hollywood actor and doing a commercial in Japan that you hope that no one ever sees. So when we're doing a live BS report every night from Vegas,

you'll know I'm going through a divorce. Is the gambling number one for you here, or is it the food? It's the food now. We covered this, actually, a couple podcasts to look forward to next week, the Dave Chang Show crossover with House of Cards. Oh, yeah. The crowd got into that.

Wow. And we talked about this kind of immense changeover, all in kind of a single generation of Vegas becoming an incredible food town and all of the opportunities that have arisen, and just like it feels like the last 10 years or so, but now the food is absolutely as enticing to me as any of the gambling. But the quality of life is better here for cooks. I was just told that four cooks bought a house last month.

That does not happen in New York City. Right. There's no state income tax. That's a huge thing. For a cook, that makes not as much money as you might think. Sal, you don't want to hear this. You think of Vegas and it's gambling, gambling, gambling. I'm sorry.

I'm fixated on that. I knew you were going to do this. You think of Vegas and it's gambling, gambling, gambling. I'm sorry. I'm fixated on that. I knew you were going to do this. That is Ellen DeGeneres. And what is growing out of your ears? What are they doing there? It's marijuana. How did you come up with shave ice? That was your one question. Shave ice on me, guys, after this. But look it up. There's that one

sign in life. I wish we could hand out the shivet. Shay, when you come to Vegas, you don't gamble. No. I mean, I played poker. So what do you make of it? Oh, you played poker. So what do you make of it? Give us the Shay Serrano take of Vegas.

Oh, Vegas is terrible. The first time I came, I came with Jason Concepcion. We got off the plane. We got in a cab. We got to our hotel. And like five minutes later, I was like, this place fucking sucks. I want to go home. Come on.

It's too hot. And there's Come on. It's too hot. And there's too much. It's too hot. You live in Texas. It's a different kind of hot. This is like, this hot feels racist for some reason. That's what this hot feels like. I don't like it.

I want to go home. Chang, what are your predictions for Vegas next 10 years? I think more talented cooks are going to start moving here like literally moving here yeah be their home operations i mean you can work in new york city and never get your opportunity and you can have this just more there's more shit you can do here and higher quality of life. New York is no longer, in my opinion, unfortunately, the culinary epicenter of America. So every town in America has great food. Almost every town has like a ramen shop now.

That's fucking crazy. 14 years ago, there was not even one in New York City. So now, like when I go to Nashville, because a lot of my friends work down there, you go to the bars where it's after service and all the cooks are getting drunk. They're all New Yorkers. They're all New York trained. I don't say all. I'd say like 60% to 70% are.

So Nashville, Charleston, Austin, Houston. I moved to LA, right? Like everyone's moving out. So I think Las Vegas, because it's the quality of life. You can make more money in the casino restaurants, and there's no state income tax. That's a huge thing. Yeah, remember about six, seven years ago, people started thinking Vegas overexpanded. These casinos, they're going under.

Like, oh, this was too much too soon. The economy collapsed. True story. I signed a deal to do the Echelon Resort by Boyd Gaming. Do you guys know about that? I don't even know what that was. They blew up the Stardust, and that's what it was going to be. And we signed our closing deal the day before the economy collapsed.

That's why I couldn't open a restaurant in Las Vegas. I was part of that contract. And you just had to wait it out? I had to wait it out, yeah. I think, yeah, it seems like it's turned. And I think the sports is at least a tiny part of it like when they're going to get an nba team i think there will be an nba team here in the next five years i think it'll be seattle and vegas but i can't believe you're

asking for an expansion team three teams have the best 10 players and you want to add 30 or 32 who cares who cares still going to be three or four teams that matter. My cousin and Ted Cruz are going to be the backcourt of the Seattle Seamogees. What are we striving for here? That should have been our worst bet conversation. That was a bad bet. We stared at those odds and we knew probably Ted Cruz was I did.

He went 0 for 36. His first 36 shots. Which is almost impossible. He went 0 for 36? It was like the Houston Rockets almost. Yeah, a lot like that. All right, we're going to wrap it up. Chang, any last thoughts? Let me ask Chang one thing.

Do you think they'll ever? No, this is serious. Why don't they serve finger foods around the tables? Wouldn't that benefit? For blackjack? Wouldn't people stay longer, or does that sober them up too much? I think they do a pretty good job of keeping people in the casino. I know, but you could always do more right i mean they know no i mean wow this could be a really long conversation but there's a reason i forget as to why you don't give free food germs

hygiene right even in the drinks are free drinks are free you know what's weird in the we spoke about the asian casinos today uh in singapore macau there's no alcohol oh or macau maybe i can't remember singapore no alcohol in the casino only tea it's weird we went to that's because the dealers are fully nude right our friend uh our friend chen and i went to the cleveland casino which is right in the middle of downtown smoke free strike number one. Pay-for-drink, strike number two. It was surreal.

It was like being on a movie set of a fake casino. Needless to say, not a lot of energy. I like the casino in Cleveland. Yeah, I think it's pretty good. What? I know. I've had good times there. You know what casino I like? Caesars Palace.

They've been awesome. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks, everybody, for coming out. This was a nice size. Sorry for the three and a half ladies out here who got dragged out. And we talked about Reggie Evans for two minutes there. But it was a pleasure.

Thanks to everybody who came on. And thanks for coming out. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ziprecruiter.com. Thanks to Caesars Palace for hosting us and for having us at the Cleopatra's Barge. Remember, up to 10% off at the Caesars Palace properties. Use offer code LVPOD. LVPOD.

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Go to simplisafe.com slash BS. SimpliSafe with two I need. Go to simplisafe.com slash BS. Simplisafe with two I's. Simplisafe.com slash BS. We are going to be back with two more BS podcasts this week. I know. I know you can't wait. I know it's cruel to keep you waiting for that long,

but it's going to happen. We're also going to do a new episode of the Rewatchables. I have no idea which one yet, but it's happening. We're going to run a poll. By the time you hear this podcast, the first part of the poll will be up. I'll just tell you what the poll is now. We're going to need two choices. Choice A will be Step Brothers. Choice B will be Tom Cruise Week. And you're going to pick that. And if you pick Tom Cruise Week, we're going to put a poll up the next day with four Tom Cruise week. And you're going to pick that. And if you pick Tom Cruise week, we're going to put a poll up the next day

with four Tom Cruise movies. And then you get to pick that one. And then we're going to be back with the rewatchable. So that's what's going to happen this week. It's either going to be Step Brothers or Tom Cruise, one or the other. I somehow like doing the rewatchables more than my own podcast now.

Is that weird? It's like my mistress. It's my my mistress. It's my podcast mistress. It's my side piece of podcasts. Check it out, the rewatchables. We did Jaws last week. It's going to be hard to top that one, but we're going to try.

We have 13 more episodes of this 20-episode run. Anyway, back more this week, the BS Podcast. Until then. to do that.